Wisdom Revisited

Two years ago, I began writing these weekly missives in the hope that somehow, I could share a bit of wisdom that has accumulated over the years. The update this week marks number 100 in my effort to do so. 

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to most of my readers that I am an ideological conservative. Some people try to parse that. We have all flavors, it seems. Reagan conservatives, Eisenhower conservatives, fiscal conservatives, social conservatives. In the past I have embraced the Reagan adjective. But I have lost interest in political modifiers when thinking about conservatism. I am happy now just to conserve what I know needs to be saved to sustain the founding vision. That includes the values that are the foundation of our customs and culture and are so necessary to preserve our civilization.

Our founders seemed to understand this necessity. They knew that if our nation abandoned virtue that we would set ourselves on the certain path of demise. The way they described how to avoid straying from the right path was straight forward.

A “frequent recurrence to foundational principles” was the language of wise men like Patrick Henry, James Madison, and James Monroe. Actually, Henry put it best:

“Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

In my first update I noted we must “embrace the proverbial wisdom of the ages while rejecting the folly of latter-day thinking that would lead us away from our republican form of government, away from a free market economy, indeed away from the virtues derived from faith that the founders thought vital to equip us to be worthy of self-governance.”

I cannot say that as a nation we have done that in recent years. “Woke” policies seem to have prevailed on many fronts. As a conservative, I am encouraged to see that many among us are now aware how those policies and politics have been harmful to our nation, making us weaker in body, mind, and spirit. We are less worthy of freedom than we once were because we have failed to recur to “fundamental principles.”
The wisdom of the present age is failing America. And we should do our level best to refocus on that wisdom that undergirded our founding. This is not a new idea. In his 1919 poem “The Gods of the Copy Book Headings,” English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist, Joseph Rudyard Kipling observed how fashionable and naïve ideas of modernism—like that found among the “woke” of our society—contrasts with the wisdom of the ages.

His concluding verses were blunt.

“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began
as the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire; 
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”

In titling this work, Kipling was brilliant. In his time, young students used copybooks to practice their penmanship. Inscribed in the headings of each page were wise aphorisms and sayings that a child would copy in the lines below. In the process, those sayings would imprint the minds of young children. Imagine if our children today were to write things like “A penny saved is a penny earned,” or “Never ruin an apology with an excuse,” or “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” All of those sayings were products of one of our most important Founders, Benjamin Franklin.

Kipling understood that the wisdom of the ages—those under the guardianship of Kipling’s imaginary “gods”—would prevail and return with a vengeance on people and nations that abandon timeless wisdom. Reject that wisdom and the result will be devastating to people and nations alike.
People are awakening to this. There is a “quickening” of the mind and spirit in America that I hope will wipe away the woke notions that are dividing us by class, race, and religion simply to attain fleeting political and social ends. It’s destructive and the Gods of the Copybook Heading will indeed eventually return.

One way or another, wisdom will work its will.

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