Building social solidarity is a difficult, risky process.
In the 1990s I was a student at the Defense Language Institute training to become an Army linguist. One of the buildings is there named "Nisei Hall" in honor of the Japanese-American linguists that served in the Pacific in WWII. We had a "Nisei Day" when the aging veterans returned to tell first-hand stories of their hellish war experience. Long story short: many of their fellow American soldiers hated them for being Japanese and many of their Japanese friends and relatives, most of whom were unjustly detained in the US, hated them for fighting on the American side.
And yet they fought with great distinction and were treated by the 90s Army as heroes. The Nisei, while still bitter about their treatment, were fiercely patriotic and proud Americans, even more so because of the price they were forced to pay.
My conclusion: used wisely, patriotic language and symbols can be the common currency that enable us to reunite in spite of the grievances of the past. It is possible to teach the truth about past injustices without destroying unifying symbols and language. It had better be, unless we want to go the way of Yugoslavia. I fear that today's military is knocking down Chesterton fences left and right, for example, the renaming of Southern military bases.
I've just placed an order for the book, in part because it might contribute to something I have to write for my dean next semester.
But one of the missing elements I see from this formulation is that it presupposes that the Great Levelling of the 20th Century and its dissolution of all intermediate social institutions is permanent. This is one of the great warnings that J. G. Machen gives us - that by demolishing the "little avenues and cul-de-sacs" of society, replacing them with superhighways, we open ourselves up to an ultimate destruction. "We have to find a way to live together" isn't actually true. We don't. Powerful economic and social interests want us to all live together because it's more profitable to run a society according to the cultural economies of scale that are possible in a deracinated, consumerist, globalized wasteland.
What "we" need to learn to do is leave folks alone. We need to accept that the "little platoons" of our old, dead civil society were necessary to human flourishing and do what we can to jury-rig a temporary replacement for them until our grandchildren can live in authentic communities. Part of that means firmly rebutting anyone who feels like they have a right to bust open these intermediate communities for their own or their group's benefit. Being excluded from where you don't belong isn't a wrong; trespassing is a wrong.
Communities sequester capital: human, financial, and social. This is why our current regime is so hostile to community-formation. The mass-organizations that dominate our current societal wasteland lusted after that capital, as did people who saw the dissolving of community as an opportunity for rent-seeking and looting. Just look at the kinds of crooks who profiteered off the social disjunction of the Civil Rights era by block-busting the old Northern rust-belt cities. Part of this problem is that the elites who derive their rents and patronage from the current situation will fight to the death to prevent reform. This is why I'm not so sure that we can move forward without accepting that some people really can't live with us.
Agreed, I don't need to live in peace with 330 million people. I need to live in peace with my family, neighbors and go to a church that is left alone.
I don't think I've ever thought of Davisson Hunter as a libeeral. I htink my concern (and others) is that he's been employed as sort of a "this is the orthodox way that a Crhstiain ought to engage politics and culture" by many. It's assume that if a Chrsitian engages in the culture then he doesn't recognize that culture wars have failed and the only thing left for a faithful Chrsitan in the political and cultural sphere is to engage in "Faithful Presence". Anything short of that is often labeled as some form of unthinking fundametnalism or idolatry.
There are certainly unthinking and shrill ways to engage in politics and laws, but I aslo think that the "Faithful Pressence" approach is long on sort of a "Christian criticial theory" approach to every issue where the Christian is intended to ony see where both conservative and liberal voices are falling short of the perftect Chrsitain ideal on an issue and the Chrsitian is content to remain quiet and simply do his faithful work within cultural structures satisfied that he has not engaged in extremes.
Contrast that with Robbie George as just one example where he contribues to natural law critiques of the cultural pressures or movements like abortion. Many arguments utilized arise from a more positive approah that priveds an actual policy answer to move forward rather than merely harping on people for coming up with a Conservative or LIberal approach that engages in "culture wars".
As just one example, some point to Franics collins as a poster child for Faithful Presence. He had a respectful seat at the political and scientific table but oversaw researh into emryoes, etc that Crhsitians would find abhorrent. Why did he never use his position to speak against these and make puglic arguments or would that be engaging in "culture wars".
The point is apt that wars and laws do not necessarily change culutre, but waht Davisson Hunter doesn't say is that the North should have failed to prosecute the end of slavery by those means. It was the engagment in the political and cultural realm that forced the change of laws and, even though ti didn't immediately changed the cultue, it did downstream. I'm not advocating another Civil War to change culture downstream, but I'm only noting that we shouldn't think that the only way to change things in the country is to wait 150 years for the cultural institutions to change through "Faithful Presence". After all, those pushing for the way culture currently is weren't sitting on the sidelines for the last century waiting for the culture to go their way, but changes came about through laws and policies in part as well as through education and the arts.
Building social solidarity is a difficult, risky process.
In the 1990s I was a student at the Defense Language Institute training to become an Army linguist. One of the buildings is there named "Nisei Hall" in honor of the Japanese-American linguists that served in the Pacific in WWII. We had a "Nisei Day" when the aging veterans returned to tell first-hand stories of their hellish war experience. Long story short: many of their fellow American soldiers hated them for being Japanese and many of their Japanese friends and relatives, most of whom were unjustly detained in the US, hated them for fighting on the American side.
And yet they fought with great distinction and were treated by the 90s Army as heroes. The Nisei, while still bitter about their treatment, were fiercely patriotic and proud Americans, even more so because of the price they were forced to pay.
My conclusion: used wisely, patriotic language and symbols can be the common currency that enable us to reunite in spite of the grievances of the past. It is possible to teach the truth about past injustices without destroying unifying symbols and language. It had better be, unless we want to go the way of Yugoslavia. I fear that today's military is knocking down Chesterton fences left and right, for example, the renaming of Southern military bases.
Helpful review. I just ordered the book (via your link).
Thank you.
Would be interested in a discussion, in person or virtual, about this book and its implications.
This is not a critique of you or JDH or anyone, but I'd like to read more pieces about what _to do_ in addition to reading about what is wrong.
I've just placed an order for the book, in part because it might contribute to something I have to write for my dean next semester.
But one of the missing elements I see from this formulation is that it presupposes that the Great Levelling of the 20th Century and its dissolution of all intermediate social institutions is permanent. This is one of the great warnings that J. G. Machen gives us - that by demolishing the "little avenues and cul-de-sacs" of society, replacing them with superhighways, we open ourselves up to an ultimate destruction. "We have to find a way to live together" isn't actually true. We don't. Powerful economic and social interests want us to all live together because it's more profitable to run a society according to the cultural economies of scale that are possible in a deracinated, consumerist, globalized wasteland.
What "we" need to learn to do is leave folks alone. We need to accept that the "little platoons" of our old, dead civil society were necessary to human flourishing and do what we can to jury-rig a temporary replacement for them until our grandchildren can live in authentic communities. Part of that means firmly rebutting anyone who feels like they have a right to bust open these intermediate communities for their own or their group's benefit. Being excluded from where you don't belong isn't a wrong; trespassing is a wrong.
Communities sequester capital: human, financial, and social. This is why our current regime is so hostile to community-formation. The mass-organizations that dominate our current societal wasteland lusted after that capital, as did people who saw the dissolving of community as an opportunity for rent-seeking and looting. Just look at the kinds of crooks who profiteered off the social disjunction of the Civil Rights era by block-busting the old Northern rust-belt cities. Part of this problem is that the elites who derive their rents and patronage from the current situation will fight to the death to prevent reform. This is why I'm not so sure that we can move forward without accepting that some people really can't live with us.
Agreed, I don't need to live in peace with 330 million people. I need to live in peace with my family, neighbors and go to a church that is left alone.
Top notch comment.
Great post and summary.
I don't think I've ever thought of Davisson Hunter as a libeeral. I htink my concern (and others) is that he's been employed as sort of a "this is the orthodox way that a Crhstiain ought to engage politics and culture" by many. It's assume that if a Chrsitian engages in the culture then he doesn't recognize that culture wars have failed and the only thing left for a faithful Chrsitan in the political and cultural sphere is to engage in "Faithful Presence". Anything short of that is often labeled as some form of unthinking fundametnalism or idolatry.
There are certainly unthinking and shrill ways to engage in politics and laws, but I aslo think that the "Faithful Pressence" approach is long on sort of a "Christian criticial theory" approach to every issue where the Christian is intended to ony see where both conservative and liberal voices are falling short of the perftect Chrsitain ideal on an issue and the Chrsitian is content to remain quiet and simply do his faithful work within cultural structures satisfied that he has not engaged in extremes.
Contrast that with Robbie George as just one example where he contribues to natural law critiques of the cultural pressures or movements like abortion. Many arguments utilized arise from a more positive approah that priveds an actual policy answer to move forward rather than merely harping on people for coming up with a Conservative or LIberal approach that engages in "culture wars".
As just one example, some point to Franics collins as a poster child for Faithful Presence. He had a respectful seat at the political and scientific table but oversaw researh into emryoes, etc that Crhsitians would find abhorrent. Why did he never use his position to speak against these and make puglic arguments or would that be engaging in "culture wars".
The point is apt that wars and laws do not necessarily change culutre, but waht Davisson Hunter doesn't say is that the North should have failed to prosecute the end of slavery by those means. It was the engagment in the political and cultural realm that forced the change of laws and, even though ti didn't immediately changed the cultue, it did downstream. I'm not advocating another Civil War to change culture downstream, but I'm only noting that we shouldn't think that the only way to change things in the country is to wait 150 years for the cultural institutions to change through "Faithful Presence". After all, those pushing for the way culture currently is weren't sitting on the sidelines for the last century waiting for the culture to go their way, but changes came about through laws and policies in part as well as through education and the arts.