Memorial Day is, obviously, a time to honor dead soldiers, so I’m not publishing this on Memorial Day. But the question of how to honor fallen heroes (not just soldiers), and what to do to preserve their memories, is ever pertinent. I happened to come across two great stories this weekend, about two groups of people who were rather unappreciated in their days, who nonetheless worked tirelessly to preserve the memories of great Americans (Jefferson and Washington)—people they believed deserved to be remembered for their work preserving the blessings of liberty to future generations. And these particular stories don’t concern Jefferson’s or Washington’s political accomplishments, but rather their homes and the legacies they left behind from their personal as much as their political lives.

How the Women of the South Saved Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon’s legacy was the work of a great man. Preserving it was the work of many great women.

The Mount Vernon estate had been in George Washington’s family since 1674. The first president had grown up there, and managed the classic federal-style house since he inherited it in 1754 (ownership became official in 1761). He had put a great deal of work into improving both the house and the estate, but after his death in 1799, both started to go downhill. His descendents didn’t have his success or his management skills, and by 1853 had given up on the place.

But not everybody had. Ann Pamela Cunningham, a South Carolinian who had grown up on a plantation herself, was shocked and saddened when on a family sail up the Potomac River she saw the state of Mount Vernon. She asked herself, “Why was it the women of his country did not try to keep it in repair, if the men could not do it?”

She sent a letter to a Charleston newspaper in December 1853, appealing to the women of the South to save the estate, and in 1854 founded the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. By 1858, despite tensions along the Potomac just prior to the Civil War, she had raised enough money to try to buy the house. John Washington, George’s great-grandnephew, refused. Undeterred, Cunningham met with John’s wife, and Washington promptly sold the house for $200,000. Thousands of people, including President James Buchanan, donated to fund the final purchase, and the Association took possession of the nearly empty house in February 1860.

Resisting suggestions to turn the estate into a memorial park, Cunningham wanted to restore and preserve it as it had been in Washington’s day, an unusual idea at the time. With an impressive campaign of fundraising and PR, the ladies were able to raise large sums of money and jumpstart the historic preservation movement.

Over time, as restoration techniques have improved and the furniture and décor collection has grown, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association has been able to very closely recreate the house’s appearance in 1799, the year Washington died. Today, the Association, now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, still manages the estate, governed by a Board of Regents (all women) from almost 30 states. It employs 500 staff and 400 volunteers, and has preserved approximately 500 of the original 8,000 acres of the estate. Mount Vernon is the most popular historic estate in the country, seeing an average of a million guests a year (over 80 million total). The story of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association remains a case study in effective grassroots conservation.

How Religious Liberty Saved Monticello

Thomas Jefferson thought the Constitution should be rewritten every 19 years. He believed that the earth belonged to the living, that each generation owed little to those before or after it. In an irony, he lived as though he believed it, which allowed his children to prove him wrong.

When Jefferson died in 1826, he left over $100,000 in debts with which the next generation of his family had to deal. They were forced to sell most of his eclectic collection of furniture and artwork, thousands of acres of his estate, and, in 1831, his beloved home, Monticello.

Jefferson had designed Monticello himself; he had called it his “essay in architecture,” and the home was full of the Greek, French, and Roman influences that had shaped his political philosophy. Franklin Delano Roosevelt would later say that he had never seen a historic home that was such a perfect expression of the personality of its builder.

But yet another piece of Jefferson’s legacy, beyond his culturally anarchic conception of society, would save the historic house. Commodore Uriah Levy was the first Jew to serve a career as an officer in the United States Navy and a passionate believer in the freedom of religion that America had offered his family. He was grateful to Jefferson for the role he had played in preserving that landmark liberty. Uriah had gone on to a successful career in real estate speculation, and when the Marquis de Lafayette inquired after Monticello, Levy found that it was in disrepair. He bought it in 1836, and restored it.

The Levy family briefly lost control of the estate after Uriah’s death, at which point the house once again deteriorated. But then, the not-accidentally named Jefferson Levy, Uriah’s nephew, regained possession in 1879. Levy was also a speculator, and a three-term New York congressman. Despite facing anti-Semitic outrage, Levy put hundreds of thousands of dollars into restoring the house to its former glory. All in all the Levy owned the home for nearly 90 years—far longer than Jefferson—in explicit tribute to its owner, transferring it to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923. The nonprofit continues to operate the home as a museum, historic site, and research center to this day—a tribute to the man whose personal convictions, played out in his life and politics, had both lost the house and regained it.

Notes

For these stories, I’m indebted to historian Marc Leepson, for his book “Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built” (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2003); and to the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association for the depth of detail on the Mount Vernon website, and the National Building Museum and National Women’s History museum for the fantastic information they’ve published on Mount Vernon and Ann Pamela Cunningham. I encountered these stories in the course of some research for Philanthropy Roundtable, which will own the copyright to the finished versions of these stories.

Jace Yarbrough: Snubbing (or at least attempting to) a few economic stories from the last few weeks.

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(Aside: I remember reading a comment from David Ricardo concerning the following quote from Abraham Lincoln: “I don’t know much about the tariff. I do know that when I buy a coat from England, I have the coat and England has the money. But when I buy a coat in America, I have the coat and America has the money.” “Lincoln was right,” claimed Ricardo, “he didn’t know much about the tariff.” I don’t have a thorough knowledge of the economic/financial issues raised in this essay. Perhaps after reading it you’ll agree.)

Economic news of late has been plentiful to say the least. Due to lack of regulation JP Morgan Chase lost a bazillion dollars (and counting); challenger Francois Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy proving that austerity is bad; Vice President Biden said the economy is stronger because we’re making stuff; and Republicans would rather shut down the government than feed small children.

A few points to keep in mind:

1. Banks aren’t the government.

Governments keep people—good, bad, or incompetent—from doing harmful things. Most of the financial regulations I’ve heard pundits arguing over are an attempt to make business more like that, i.e. to ensure that the JP Morgan’s of the world don’t do greedy, incompetent, or negligent things. The problem of course is that the possibility for those shortcomings is essential to the nature of business. Perhaps our reforms should focus on mitigating the consequences of the inevitable mistakes, oversights, and squanderings of those (often helpful) capitalists.

2. France’s spending since the financial crisis hasn’t exactly been austere.

But if by “austerity” we mean slight increases in public sector spending and higher taxes, and if the recent presidential election was primarily about economic policy and not about personality, then yes, the French have spoken. Bad austerity. Bad.

3. Our economy can be (and has been) healthy in spite of a small manufacturing sector.

Both Vice President Biden and Treasury Secretary Geithner recently visited manufacturing sites in Ohio and talked up the importance of that sector to our economy. Strangely enough, they seem convinced that fabricating physical objects is a requirement for economic growth. In fact, from his tirade against “Romney Economics,” it appears that Vice President Biden prefers manufacturing to less tangible services.

Hmmm…Since venture capital is out, what’s to be done when we need money to start a new manufacturing company? Oh, of course, manufacture it.

(My guess is that neither of these gentlemen actually holds this view. They’re in Ohio because it’s a swing state; they’re stressing manufacturing because Ohio is in the Rust Belt.)

4. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Many critics are upset about the debt-ceiling “showdown” starting again. Threatening the credit-worthiness of the U.S. seems ugly and juvenile no matter the goal. Nevertheless, I’ve witness a change in fiscal perspective that has resulted from the Tea Party’s influence. The federal organizations I’ve worked in are now constantly searching for ways to do more with less (whether or not those efforts are effective is another post for another time), and this approach is contrasted with “the way things used to be.”

Our national understanding of goods and services is fairly juvenile: we want the goods, and we want someone else to fit the bill. Maybe these extreme measures aren’t so ill-suited to our current condition.

Just hours after President Barack Obama expressed his support for same-sex marriage, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg released a statement applauding the move. While Bloomberg’s support for the conclusion of the president’s personal evolution on the matter is anything but surprising, his views about civil rights are considerably more interesting because they are distortions of political history and symptomatic of the general muddled public thinking on civil rights.

His statement, in relevant part, reads:

This is a major turning point in the history of American civil rights. No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people—and I have no doubt that this will be no exception.

Notwithstanding Bloomberg’s confidence about the resolution of the marriage debate—the basis for which some might question, especially in light of very recent events—his characterization of civil rights history is, to say the very least, puzzling. By his estimation, civil rights are protections and entitlements whose moral and political authority depends on the power of the state. For those things yet to be codified in law, like same-sex marriage, it is just a matter of time before someone brave enough comes along to fight for their inclusion. Only by this understanding can the mayor look back on American history and tell his tale. Call it the Great Man Theory of Civil Rights: if not for the heroic actions of a courageous politician or activist, certain civil rights would languish in history’s legislative hopper, awaiting their elevation to law.

As dramatic and enchanting as this story may be, it’s just not an accurate account of what has happened. And that’s because civil rights aren’t what Mayor Bloomberg thinks they are. Far from the platonic ideals he fancies them to be, civil rights are simply those things the state has, through concrete political acts, decided to recognize and protect by law. This is not to say that civil rights are insignificant or any less worthy of protection, but only that they are fundamentally a matter of legal recognition. It is, therefore, a logical impossibility for the potential of state recognition to be a justification for state action. To call something a civil right is to describe it, not to provide an argument for it.

When its advocates claim that same-sex marriage is a civil right, what they are really saying is that it should be a civil right. And as a matter of political strategy they are wise to do so. By evoking America’s civil rights tradition, they are seeking to benefit from the political and moral victories that have secured equal treatment before the law regardless of race or gender. It was the burden of the abolitionists, the suffragettes, and the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement to build the political consensus necessary to gain civil recognition, to adduce the reasons why the power of the state must recognize the legal equality of men and women, blacks and whites. Their end goal was civil recognition. They got there not by appealing to the power of government, as Bloomberg does, but by forcefully asserting what it was incumbent upon the state to recognize.

It’s telling, and more than a little unnerving, that in our day we’ve elevated actions of the state to transcendent importance, that the strongest argument we can make on behalf of a public policy is that it should be recognized by law. We must remembered that there was a time, a shamefully long time, when women’s and minority rights were not legal guarantees—when they were not civil rights. And that is why the power of the state is an awfully weak foundation on which to ground something like marriage, an institution that both sides of the debate believe is quite more than merely a matter of legal recognition.

Last September I listened to CJCS Admiral Mike Mullen’s retirement speech. Having just received my commission earlier that month, I was especially interested in this comment from him.

“And we talk about the resilience of our troops and their families as if it is something apart from the rest of society. It isn’t, or at least it shouldn’t be. Where do you think those troops learn to be so brave? In your homes, in your schools, in your communities.”

Unfortunately I think Adm. Mullen’s hesitation (i.e. that resilience and bravery shouldn’t be unique to military members) is timely and much needed. While courage is still alive in many who serve in our armed forces (and many who don’t), the predominant cultural shifts of the last century have denied us collectively of exactly those considerations that are so essential to valor: namely, purpose and direction.

That bravery depends on the two considerations just mentioned is obvious from the structure of the military training environment. Basic Training is intended to strip recruits to the core, and after almost two and a half centuries of practice the US military has pretty well perfected that art. So at the end of Training Day 0, every trainee is lying in bed asking the same fundamental question, “What in the Sam Hill am I doing here?” That’s exactly what Head Quarters wants. They know how difficult a military career can be, and they also know that humans don’t handle hard stuff very well without purpose. You’ve got to answer that question from the outset.

Although purpose is necessary, it isn’t sufficient; we also need a goal, a direction to work toward in the immediate. In my case, MTIs (military training instructors) suggested that direction with two words: “Butter Bars.” It became a common motivator, and gold second lieutenant rank began to pop up at the final checkpoint of several field exercises. Whatever answer my peers and I had for the purpose question (e.g. family tradition, love of country, good retirement benefits), the next step was earning those bars.

We should now ask ourselves how successful twentieth century American society was at providing the next generation with purpose and direction. As I previously stated, I think the answer is pretty lousy. That’s apparent on a number of fronts, but take architecture as an example. The two dominant philosophies of the last century were Modernism and Post-Modernism.

The former gave us structures like this:

Anyone want to venture a guess as to what this building is used for? Me neither. It might be a courthouse, or commercial office space, or a library. Heck, the Google image caption reads “blood_bank_0.” Its purpose isn’t obvious from the outside—and that’s the point. Thank you, Modernism.

This structure is one of my personal favorites:

You might recognize this as the Denver Art Museum. A few years ago some friends and I interacted with it; we actually circled all 360 degrees of the building without finding the main entrance (woops). It provides its patrons with little guidance for even the most fundamental spatial question, i.e. how to get inside. Thank you, Post-Modernism.

Given the courage-zapping philosophies that have dominated our  national life for the last hundred years, we should give thanks for the “beneficent obstinacy”  (to barrow a phrase from Lewis) of those homes, schools, and communities mentioned by Adm. Mullen. They haven’t yet surrendered to the Modern and Post-Modern schools, and if they hold out long enough, maybe they won’t have to.

Miriel M. Thomas: A lecture on the power of swing voters has me wondering whether Mitt Romney might be exactly what the Republican Party needs in 2012.

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Last week, I attended the annual meeting of one of the many regional professional associations boasted by my academic discipline. One of the conference events was a luncheon featuring a keynote address by a woman named Linda Killian. She is a journalist, not a political scientist, but the organizers had invited her to discuss her most recent book, titled The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents.

It was an interesting talk. I haven’t read Killian’s book, but from her remarks, I gather that its argument is something like the following: we know that forty percent of registered American voters self-identify as independents—a greater proportion than those who affiliate with either the Democratic or Republican parties. (An interesting side note is that many registered independents choose that affiliation to their own detriment, since roughly half of states have closed presidential primaries.)

Of these, Killian estimates that about half are true swing voters, a group whose essential characteristic is their willingness to…well, swing: to split their tickets, vote for members of different parties from election to election, and generally adhere to an issue-driven rather than party-driven voting rubric. If she’s right, that means twenty percent—that’s one-fifth—of all registered voters are swing voters. Twenty percent is a lot.

Now, my first instinct is to raise an eyebrow at this number. Politics has always been a big part of my life; I went to my first protest march before I could walk, and my interest in political things never really waned. I have spent a lot of time around politically engaged people. Some of them are true-blue Democrats or dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. Lots of them are registered as independents, but that’s usually a function of some strong moral or philosophical commitments that balk at elements of both parties’ platforms but end up pushing them to the same side of the aisle election after election. (Believe it or not, I know people like this whose votes end up canceling each other out—they’re not all pro-lifers who always vote red.) Very, very few of them would fit Killian’s definition of a true swing voter.

Then again, there’s undoubtedly some kind of selection bias in my personal experience, and since I haven’t read the book I can’t argue with her data. If I remember correctly, she bases the working figure of 20% on exit polling, Pew surveys, Gallup polls, and phone interviews of nonaffiliated voters, all of which sounds pretty legitimate to me.

So let’s say she’s right. Do you realize what that means? It means that the outcome of this fall’s presidential election quite possibly hinges on the way swing voters cast their ballots. Think about it: President Obama’s electoral college margin of victory in 2008 was right around 35%. His popular vote margin? Less than eight percent. The last time a presidential election was decided by more than 20% of the popular vote was Richard Nixon’s second victory, in nineteen hundred seventy-two. I bet most of the people reading this piece weren’t even born in 1972.

Of course there are some requisite caveats—independent turnout is lower than party-affiliated turnout, popular votes don’t really decide presidential elections, it depends on where the swing voters are living, blah blah blah—and Killian acknowledges all those factors. But her research focuses on voters in key swing states (Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, and New Hampshire), and she argues that swing voters could quite possibly tip the 2012 election. And swing voters are by nature difficult to classify, though Killian sorts them into four general types, but the most basic generalization that seems to apply to the swing voters as a bloc is this: on the whole, they tend toward liberalism on social issues and conservatism when it comes to fiscal/budgetary policy.

Killian describes these voters as “moderate,” which is not the word I would choose, because it evokes a sense of unity or coherence to their views that I’m not sure is present. True moderation is internally harmonious, like a chocolate milkshake. From Killian’s description of the swing voters’ positions (and the following image is very hard-won, so please click through and consider it), they sound more like the political equivalent of Rachel Green’s trifle: half dessert, half beef sautéed with peas and onions. Quibbling over terms aside, though, I think it’s plausible to suggest that they’re the key demographic to go after in 2012.

This gets us to the interesting part, and it’s an observation I can’t take credit for—I actually happened to overhear Killian making it, during a coffee break in the afternoon following her talk—but I wanted to think it through a bit. Here’s the thing: I know very few people (either actual Republicans or Republican “leaners”) who are thrilled with the idea of Mitt Romney as the party’s 2012 nominee. But their criticism of him usually runs something like this: He’s not a true social conservative. He’s not sufficiently pro-life. He has a secret social democratic agenda. He’s from Massachusetts! (Okay, maybe I just threw that last one in for fun.)

For those who have genuine commitments to a certain understanding of the Republican project, I can understand why Romney’s ideological impurity would be troublesome. But for people whose favorite horse in the 2012 race is named Anybody Who Is Not Barack Obama, it seems like—given the contextual importance of swing voters—Romney might be a stronger candidate than people are giving him credit for being. As Killian put it, swing voters aren’t going to care that he’s changed positions. It seems to me that certain kinds of swing voters might even find Romney’s particular idiosyncrasies specifically attractive.

I’m curious about other perspectives. Do you buy Killian’s estimate of the number of true swing voters? Does it seem plausible to say that the outcome of the 2012 race will hinge on those voters? And—this is particularly interesting to me—do you think Romney might be the Republicans’ best bet for capturing their votes. Weigh in!

Wendell Berry is a tall man. It is hard to imagine any 77-year-old as tall, but Berry appears to be at least six feet. It’s often said of height that it bestows stature, which might be why we’ve only had one president under 5’11” ½ in the last 50 years (Jimmy Carter).

But I still don’t expect poets to be tall. The deep thinkers aren’t supposed to tower over us or remind us in any way of their physical superiority. It’s true that Thomas Aquinas was a “Dumb Ox” – but my mind won’t really let him be that big.

On Monday night, my wife and I attended a rare lecture given by Berry in receipt of an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The evening’s “playbill” contained the well-known fact that the agrarian “owns no television,” but also elaborated that he “says he is increasingly wary of screens.” And during Berry’s talk on the destructiveness of industry and statistical knowledge, it was hard not to notice (behind his tall figure) a 15’ by 30’ screen projecting his real-time image.

It felt a little awkward, really. The audience laughed at Berry’s wry quips, which interspersed his sober thoughts. We laughed because it is ridiculous to hear the story of a tobacco monopolist who held farmers under his thumb while disgorging himself of bags of cash as a “philanthropist.” But while intending the irony, it somehow seemed Wendell wasn’t in on the joke.

An earlier generation saw an event like this – an agrarian speaking at a glamorous opera hall, a localist accepting an award from the federal government – and convulsed the word, “hypocrisy.” Not that Berry appeared to be a hypocrite, but all of us in the audience did. We received his words with good humor. We made him into a caricature, so that we could call him “interesting.” Berry said, “To think one thousand square miles is one thousand times better than one square mile – that is no imagination.” But we all returned to our jobs where there is no upper limit for profit, for client base, for constituents and voters.

In the 1960s, they used the word, “hypocrite,” a lot. It was jejune, sure. What does a 23 year old know about life? But it was sensitive, and morally sensitive at that. I’m not calling hippies saints, but isn’t it the job of a prophet to call people hypocrites?

People who are quick to feel the contradiction of hypocrisy are searching for purity. In older age, they’ll find out that they are not pure, and the gateway will open to the wisdom that only old people like Wendell Berry know (really know): that with age comes acceptance, and acceptance learns moral complicity. This is not necessarily a surrender of ideals, as much as realizing that we must hold our ideals with the tightest grip because we are always transgressing them. As Berry said the other night, “We are all implicated. We all assent to it, whether or not we approve it.” Berry does not use a computer, out of moral striving for purity, but he also recognizes that he is constantly taking part in an economy that he calls sinful. You cannot buy a shoe or a shovel or a Golden Retriever without being complicit in the economy that ignores personal knowledge and alienates each member of the production cycle from each other. Every transaction is an interaction.

Wendell Berry’s conclusion was abrupt: “We do not have to live as if we are alone,” he said, without the audience knowing he was finishing. And he grabbed his notes and exited the stage, leaving us alone. Clearly it was time to applaud, and we did. With some prodding, Berry was coaxed back on stage while we stood in ovation. The tall, old man sheepishly smiled and then turned quickly for the door again, stage right.

After the Puritan roiling of England in the mid-1600s, the English people were exhausted. The three decades following the restoration of monarchy saw a huge slide in public morality and even aversion to religious purity. The promiscuity of King Charles II was open for all to joke about, and indeed it was a joke. It is not uncommon for cultures that have been heavily seized by accusations of hypocrisy and feelings of moral sensitivity to drop into the baseness of sarcasm. But it is Wendell Berry’s hope that we will not give up when we find out we are morally compromised, but find through the discovery the wisdom that will help us hold to ideals with equal parts firmness and humility, not decreasing the one in order to meet the other.

Granddaddy was a police officer for three decades; his rough upbringing made him an exceptional undercover cop. When I speak with his former co-workers, few recognize him by his first name, but each of them remembers “Fox” Yarbrough—sharp as a tack and sly as the devil. In my memories he always smells like cigarettes and metal, and his clothes are scratchy from blotches of dried paint and rips that he’d “fixed” with super glue. I can still see him snorting hydrogen peroxide to clear up a runny nose, and I’ll never forget the day I asked him about the pepper spray in his gun cabinet; he put a drop on my cheek. I was six.

Looking back on the specifics of his character and demeanor, I wonder that I wasn’t terrified of him. (He cursed and swore, and on more than one occasion almost came to blows with another member of my immediate family.) But I wasn’t. My childlike affections and admiration for him were beyond strong, and I felt utterly secure and comfortable with him, especially when we were alone.

Papa was (unexpectedly) a different story. I was slightly unsure of this grandfather, but in hindsight, that too seems strange. He was a kind of Charlton Heston figure: a hard working, morally upright Southern Baptist pastor with a sonorous, warm voice who usually complied with his grandchildren’s requests for cherry snow cones from his ice machine. From my perspective if he wasn’t eating, sleeping, or preaching, he was in his recliner reading his Bible, and I have no doubt his character was highly regarded in the community. Like all good grandfathers, he could be gruff when he needed to be, which explains my fear of him, but I was also wary (though I know it would grieve him to hear it) of this man who so overtly and stringently stuck to his principles. That was something I couldn’t explain until reading Brooks’ article.

Brooks (graciously) highlights a lack of moral realism in today’s up-and-coming social entrepreneurs, which he argues leaves them ultimately ineffective. ”In short, there’s only so much good you can do unless you are willing to confront corruption, venality, and disorder head-on.” He points to film noir sleuths as obvious embodiments of this confrontational quality (virtue?), which is what got me thinking about my grandfathers.

I remember watching The African Queen in my late teens and Casablanca more recently and thinking how much Charlie Allnut and Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) reminded me of Granddaddy. “He [knew he was] not going to be uplifted by his work; that to tackle the hard jobs [he’d] have to risk coarsening himself, but he doggedly [plowed] ahead.” Maybe I sensed all that as a child; maybe I didn’t. But my intuition was right to be comforted by a man whose action was appropriate to the condition in which he lived, and to be nervous about another who behaved somewhat without regard for the world around him.

Don’t we have the same sentiments toward our political leaders? We say we want someone of integrity, but we’re slightly apprehensive about the nice guys who don’t play the game very well. Will they be able to get anything done? It’s not that hard to be a squeaky clean politician; there are a handful of them in every legislative body. The really difficult thing is accepting a coarsening of oneself, but doggedly plowing ahead while maintaining a basic sense of and commitment to “good order,” as Brooks puts it.

The question this raises in my mind is this: can we really call something good if it fails to shrewdly account for and respond to the venalities and corruptions of a marred world?

The other day, one of my high school students closed our segment on Flannery O’Connor with the protest, “These aren’t very happy stories.” Everyone in the class laughed, of course, because she’s right: never does an O’Connor tale leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling in your belly. Indeed, if you pick up a story like “A Good Man is Hard to Find” expecting warm commiseration about the lack of good men out there – and vindication for the fact that you’re spending the evening alone – you’re most likely to throw the story down at its finish, and jump up to make a cup of warm cocoa and find a brainless romantic comedy to chase away the images of murder that just flashed through your imagination.

The reader within me agreed with my student, but the side of me that is a teacher interrupted the sympathetic laughter to explain anew the value of O’Connor’s style and contribution.  Had we forgotten her beautiful descriptions? The realistic portrayal of the interior struggle for freedom? Need I bring up the depressing auroras surrounding the works of her literary contemporaries?

Nevertheless, long after our discussion came to a close, these two emotions remained strong: a sense of camaraderie with the girl who first voiced her objection and a frustration that for many of us, our first impulse as we seek to build a criterion for judging any work of art is to consider whether or not it has given us a sense of comfortable well-being. Have we lost the realization of what art is? Or has its purpose actually changed?

What Makes Art

Few would dispute that art is meant to be a representation of reality. The true question is: of what reality? Aristotle writes that poetry (poesis, which encompasses all literary forms) springs up from the desire for imitation, which is implanted in us as children. The pleasure derived from the poetry then comes with the recognition of what is imitated or the appreciation of the art’s presentation. Aristotle’s definitions do not specify, however, whether the artist should then focus on his object or the execution of his work. The importance of this question serves as the focus of Henry James’ study in his short story, “The Real Thing,” in which an artist realizes that not anyone can serve as a model for his illustrations. Sketching his subjects, the Monarchs, does indeed provide an imitation of reality – but the result is poor art. If the essence of art is truly the “question of execution, the direction of strokes, and the mystery of values,” as the author’s friend Hawley puts it, then his models are sorely lacking in inspiration. To these artists, reality is their imagination applied to actual objects.

As the focus in art has shifted from the actual object to the impression of it seared into the mind of the artist, art has, in a way, become less objective. The question then arises whether one’s appreciation of art might also be guilty of straying into the realm of subjectivism. If this is indeed the case, then basing our judgment of a piece of art on our emotions as we consider it would be justifiable.

I would argue, contrarily, that the value of art is not merely subjective. T. S. Eliot takes up this question in relation to poetry when he links the enjoyment of a poem to the reader’s understanding of the verses.  He maintains that a poem must be understood for the “right reasons – one might say it is getting from a poem what it is capable of giving: to enjoy a poem under a misunderstanding of what it is, is to enjoy what is merely a projection of our mind.” In other words, a poem – and I believe we can rightly expand this principle to apply to any piece of art – possesses an essence that does not depend upon the receiving ear.

Arts and Media

I think I may rightly suggest now that a divide has grown between what is art and what is a projection of our minds in the area we acknowledge as arts and media. Art must still be, according to its definition, an imitation of nature and present through either the skill of its maker or the truth of its object something of beauty that arrests the eye or the ear that receives it. On the other hand, our attachment to our own projections has created a new form, the “art” of entertainment, which is directed solely to the passive acceptance of its audience.  Its success relies not upon the critical skills and perception of its viewers, but upon its ability to elicit from them some emotional drama of their own making.

This is not to say that there is no value to the heart-warming sensations that follow a moving picture or the awe that grows when one gazes upon an inspiring painting. Even Aristotle recognized the importance of “pity and fear effecting a proper purgation of the emotions” as an essential part to the imitation of life discovered within a Tragedy. The difference is that, because entertainment is removed from the purpose of art, it allows room for inferiority to develop without censure. Its elements are not for analysis, nor its execution for judgment; its worth is determined by the fickle mood of its audience. Whereas the superiority of a work of art arises from the refined use of  plot and character in a piece of literature, or the skillful mixture of color and lines in a painting, in order to reflect something true in nature and thereby implant a recognition of beauty within the viewer, the superiority of a work of entertainment is derived from what the audience gives it according to the feelings they possessed before viewing it, the emotional associations they make during their reception of it, and their overall state upon leaving it regardless of the work’s elements.

“Just Enjoy It!”

Throughout recent years, many friends have groaned in protest as I’ve attempted to dissect the plot and characters of a film, adjuring me to “just enjoy it!” To them, let me clarify that it is not my wish here to demean pieces meant for entertainment. My intention is rather to draw to light the distinction between entertainment and art, lest their differences become more and more muddled until we cannot distinguish anymore what comprises art. It would have been sad indeed if the Roman crowds had decided their bread and circus were “art” enough for the satisfaction it brought them and given up the literature and sculpture we now admire.  Let us rather recognize the warning in James’ subtle barb, when his character Hawley scoffs, “those Cheapside [editing and publishing] people are the biggest asses of all…It’s not for SUCH animals you work.” To escape the temptation to content ourselves with “cheap” art and so prove to be “asses,” we must continue to hold high standards for our artistic achievements and save the question of “does it make me feel good” as a criterion to appraise entertainment only. In this way, we can unabashedly enjoy the latest flick or pop fiction without conflating beauty with warm fuzzies.

Rachel Ronnow, a graduate of Ave Maria University, loves to write during her afternoon coffee break (a.k.a. nap-time) when her duties as a mother and teacher abate temporarily. She currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband and darling baby girl.

Zachary Crippen’s article yesterday made a case for the value of national goals. As it happens, I’m currently reading Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” and just on Sunday I was sitting in Starbucks reading Hoffer break down why national goals are appealing to certain people. (For more on Hoffer, read Bryan Wandel’s look from a couple years ago.) So since I was all warmed up, I thought I’d add some thoughts, because I disagree with Mr. Crippen’s argument.

Let me first acknowledge a few things. First, Mr. Crippen’s case for national goals was a qualified case. He acknowledged the tendency of America’s national goals (at least in practice) to foster bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive government programs. Second, he pointed out that national goals tend to lead to great advances in technology. I’ve had the privilege of attending the Space Foundation’s annual conference a couple times, so I won’t dispute the excitement of private companies pursuing incredible technologies thanks to Kennedy’s starting gun.

What I’m most interested in are Mr. Crippen’s first and last points:

“What followed wasn’t simply characterized as a “Space Endeavor;” it was a “Space Race” because we had to beat the Soviets.” …

“But perhaps the strongest reason to possess and gloriously pursue a national object is one that is not yet obvious in retrospect: the pursuit of a national object gives us confidence and pride in our own abilities. Every American watching that live broadcast of the lunar landing felt proud to be an American. Everyone who had a hand in making it happen found the inconceivable to be possible. The goal did indeed “organize the best of our energies and skills,” and we were all the better for it.”

Crippen accurately points out that, when we’re talking about peacetime goals, we pretty much have to be competing with somebody in order to get the people excited. That’s why most people yawned (even if they approved) when President Obama tried to get them excited about alternative energy, and why they’ve sooner or later done the same with every major national project or national service program since the institutionalization of administrative government in the New Deal (after which, as the University of Virginia’s Sid Milkis has demonstrated, voter turnout declined sharply and never recovered). The “moral equivalent of war” only works when there’s a bad guy; when we’re defining ourselves in opposition to somebody.

And that’s nationalism, not patriotism. It doesn’t just happen to lead to the centralized state, it requires it. The Germans developed it in the 19th century, the Americans borrowed it a few years later, and it’s always led to public apathy when the latest national goal has faded.

But this leads to Mr. Crippen’s second point, which is that we need the pursuit of a national object to give us pride in our own abilities. I would qualify that statement: pride in our collective abilities. Only in a centralized state, where we have (or think we have) little power over our circumstances, does this matter (read on).

But what about a state in which people do think they have control over their circumstances? One in which entrepreneurs thrive, as they had in America for centuries before anybody decided we needed a government-set National Object? In which people are largely satisfied with their lives? In which people, full of self-confidence, invent new things and try new ideas; not in the irrevocable all-or-nothing sphere of The Nation but in the many “laboratories of democracy” in cities and states across the country? Does a country like that need a National Object?

Hoffer argues no. He thinks that mass ideologies appeal precisely to the kind of people in the Centralized State, who see their lives as “irredeemably spoiled” through the fault of a system that’s too big for them, and need causes or leaders to inspire “hope and change.” He writes:

“Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business. …One of the most potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope.” [emphasis added]

Mr. Crippen cites Niall Ferguson, who argues that competition, work, and consumption are what once put the West ahead. Regardless of their positions on “big” or “small” government, on the welfare state, or on “free markets,” I think most people would agree that a world where people (accurately) felt they had some control over their immediate environment; and had a sense of hope that motivated them to work hard, try new things, and help those less fortunate…well, that would be a better world. This is what Ferguson, and Mr. Crippen, thinks we need to rediscover. But as Hoffer keenly observes, a national object is precisely the kind of thing that stunts this kind of development on a broad scale, by allowing people to leech onto the national hope rather than gain a sense of their own (either as individuals or “little platoons”).

If you want to see what happens to people who choose that route, talk to the poor people who voted for Obama in 2008 thinking their lives would never be the same.

Photo Credit: (NASA/Smithsonian Institution/Harold Dorwin)

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

-John F. Kennedy’s Address to the Nation on the Space Race

I used to think that the space program was a waste of time and money. What did we gain, I asked, from spending billions of dollars just so we could put a man on the moon? Were we solving the world’s worst diseases with our scientific experiments done in free-fall environments? Was rocket propellant that burned at inconceivable rates a more worthy purchase than defense expenditures? What did we gain from any of this?  What are the merits of a national object?

This week’s retirement of the Space Shuttle Discovery – the most-flown spacecraft in the history of our space program – marks the completion of our government-led manned space age. The retirement is reflective of a new space strategy for the Obama administration. The era that was born in John F. Kennedy’s monumental address from Rice University has served its purpose; we landed a man on the moon on July 20, 1969. We beat the Soviet Union.

My onetime critique of the space race aside, I think that there are immense merits to the pursuit of a national goal. The method that we employed to put a man on the moon, however, was anything but conservative. In fact, the New Atlantis has called the space race “perversely unconservative in design,” because we sought to defeat the socialist USSR state with a paradoxically large government agency. We did it, but not with capitalism. We mirrored the Soviets’ statist approach and poured endless amounts of public sector dollars into a goal so unprecedented that we captured the attention of a nation.

Yet that last part is what I love about the Space Race. It captured the imagination and galvanized the efforts of a nation. Those readers who have seen October Sky will remember the amazement in Homer Hickham’s eyes when he watched Sputnik 1 float across the West Virginia sky. I’ve heard stories from older generations tell me of the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing–one that captivated every audience that was fortunate enough to see it.  To children like Homer, it was sheer inspiration. To philosophers, this represented an unprecedented step (or “giant leap,” as it were) for mankind. To scientists, it was the accomplishment of a near-impossible feat. To political aficionados, the triumph of democracy over communism. To everyone, it was something incredible. The national object of putting  a man on the moon was unparalleled in its success.

Why have a national object? First, it provides credibility to the raison d’etre (reason for existence) of a state. When Kennedy announced the beginning of the moon landing project, it was probably in part to divert public attention from the Bay of Pigs fiasco. But the true end of his endeavor was to galvanize the nation’s efforts in order to defeat the threatening statist leviathan in the opposing hemisphere. What followed wasn’t simply characterized as a “Space Endeavor;” it was a “Space Race” because we had to beat the Soviets.

Second, national objects advance economic and technological growth and development. It is no coincidence that, in the years between 1961 and 1969, the United States never experienced a shrinkage of Gross Domestic Product. NASA research and development has also given us Teflon, the artificial heart pump, cancer screening instruments, weather satellite capabilities, satellite communications, and a host of other technologies that improve our quality of life and  in some cases save it. NASA’s various contracts with private corporations and its partnerships with academic institutions have been beneficial for the private sector and bettered the minds of our young engineers.

But perhaps the strongest reason to possess and gloriously pursue a national object is one that is not yet obvious in retrospect: the pursuit of a national object gives us confidence and pride in our own abilities. Every American watching that live broadcast of the lunar landing felt proud to be an American. Everyone who had a hand in making it happen found the inconceivable to be possible. The goal did indeed “organize the best of our energies and skills,” and we were all the better for it.

Niall Ferguson’s most recent book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, argues that competition, work, and consumption are three of the “killer applications” that allowed the West to surge ahead of the rest of the world in its aggressive development and progress. As the rest of the world has slowly begun to acquire what we have taken for granted for so long, we are in danger of being eclipsed and overrun. What Ferguson sees as the greatest danger to our own Western civilization (of which the U.S. is the undeniable leader) is not from other civilizations but instead from “our own pusilanimity.” The Space Race is the antithesis of that pusilanimity–as is any equivalently magnificent national object.

What is next? Manned space isn’t on the agenda for the current administration. Nation-building and democracy-planting didn’t work for the last one. It might not be Mars or an Iraqi parliament, but we need to find something. A national object could, in the words of Ronald Reagan, preserve America as “the last best hope for mankind.”