STARTING IT OFF

 

For readers of this blog, it might be interesting to know that this blog has been online for quite a few years.  This posting approaches the 1100^th entry; just fifteen more to go.  Perhaps some might be interested in looking at the first of these postings – say the first one hundred of them.  This blogger plans to make them available online where one can read them at leisure or print them and have them in book form.  They will be presented in book form and as such, they will be preceded by an introduction.  To perhaps entice the reader to look for this rendition of the first 100 postings, this posting will share that version’s introduction.

            Before presenting the “Introduction,” here are a few words regarding this version of the postings.  They are edited to match the editorial style that the blog currently utilizes.  Hopefully, some the phraseology is smoother and more polished than it was originally.  They do set this blog on its course by reviewing many of the assumptions this blogger has relied upon all these many years.  The first topic he addresses in the first set of postings is the importance of civics education.

            So, here is the Introduction:

INTRODUCTION

Unfortunately, civics education does not enjoy the gravitas that other academic subjects seem to enjoy.  This book contains the first hundred postings of a blog dedicated to civics education.  The blog, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, attempts to first point out not only why civics should be considered with more respect, but why it should be considered a lynchpin for all of education, especially public education. 

Its author, a retired educator, hopes the reader can begin reading this book with at least an open mind to reconsider his/her own sense of what role civics should play in the overall education of the nation’s youth.  The blog addresses an array of issues its writer sees that affect civics’ actual role and/or its potential role in the lives of the students who take either civics in middle school or American government in high school.

Beyond its lessened importance in the eyes of most, there is the basic view of the subject – not only by the citizenry but by those in charge of its presentation in American schools.  The argument presented here is that that view of the subject’s content – of how civics presents American governance and politics – falls short of representing and explaining what the founders of the nation – those responsible for the Constitution and its ratification – set out to establish.  That aim was a federated union of not only the states, but of the citizenry as well.

          While the various postings of this blog elucidate what that general aim was, one can summarily describe it as establishing a union in which the citizenry entered a grand partnership.  That is, “We the People …” established the resulting polity and that “we the people” were meant to maintain ownership of it.  That would be what James Madison would later describe as a government instituted by choice as opposed to by accident (with a resulting ownership by a nobility or some self-anointed elite class) or by force (with a resulting ownership by a “strong man or woman”).

          The blog’s author argues that that agreement was motivated by an amalgamation of influences that the history of the American people had experienced by the late 1700s.  In sum, those influences affected their political beliefs, values, and biases.  In this, one needs to remember that when one decides to act in a situation where choices are available, two forces are at play:  what one believes should happen and what one sees as the reality of the situation.[1] 

          And the founders were not immune; they strove for what they believed should happen, their espoused theory, but within the parameters of the factual conditions presented to them and while they were not infallible, they collectively held a highly functional theory-in-use.  Given the importance of what they were about, one can readily assume the founders were keenly aware or conscious of both realms.

          That is, the founders were disposed to exert the energy or effort to figure out what was best to do, and given their subsequent political careers, what was best for the nation apart from their individual interests.  And, as when those types of situations concern either government or politics or both, real far-reaching consequences could and did ensue. 

Those points in time need to be treated with the utmost respect.  Surely, whoever or whatever taught the founders their civic lessons and taught the citizenry, those involved with the ratification of the Constitution, could not have been more important to them and to their posterity.

Is it hyperbole to ascribe this sort of importance to what one learns – way back when – in a civics classroom?  Collectively, it is, and the nation is experiencing how a poorly conceived civics program affects the governing health of a people.  Polarized politics and its effect on the current governance of the US attests to that belief.    It behooves Americans to understand what has happened in recent years and to become an active citizenry to determine what the right course of action this polity should take from this point onward.

          This simple notion of an involved citizenry being sufficiently informed of what constitutes politics and how that level affects the collective – no, better stated, communal – health of a people should be respected.  Unfortunately, that seems to be ignored or belittled by the current efforts in the nation’s civics programs. 

This current situation is not seen by the common fellow as unfortunate, unusual, or out of place.  Why?  Because it is much in line with how Americans view governance and politics – that being each can be uninhibited or encouraged to either become proactive, totally indifferent, or anything in between these dispositional orientations. 

Much of this blog’s message concerns the current political culture that the nation sustains.  It, that shared perspective, has and continues to support a natural rights view.  This is explained in the first 100 postings, but to define what natural rights means, it is a view of governance and politics that features, as a trump value, natural liberty.

          It is a view that holds the right of each to determine his or her behavior as long as each does not inhibit or interfere with others having the same right.  Since such a claim encompasses a large array of behavior, it is more useful to think of this right as a large set of various rights from speech, movement, advocacy, employment, religion, entertainment, etc. 

While one might, without reflection, adhere to this view of rights, one should know that not all people who support republican governance agree with this view.  Another rivaling view is a view known as federalism.  And one can make the claim that the founders held to this other view. 

 Stated another way, the founders employed another view of liberty in establishing the polity they created.  They did not adhere to natural liberty but to a form of federal liberty.  And they arrived at that view, as alluded to above, from an array of influences. 

Those influences included the Puritanical religious ideals (congregationalism, engagement, localism, and a covenantal foundation), Enlightenment thinkers (not just Locke and Hobbes, but Hutcheson and Reid, among others), a developmental history that allowed a great deal of independence from the British Parliament, the formation of local governance, and the values developed through English constitutional history.  The bottom line is that they believed a republic needed to encourage certain values among the populace.

Hopefully, this introduction stirs the curiosity of whoever reads it and that he or she continues to read the postings that follow.  The intent is to follow this volume with subsequent volumes of the postings that appeared after the first 100 postings.  To date (mid-2021), that’s approaching 1100 postings.

---

[1] This distinction refers to what change theorists might call espoused theory – what should happen – and theory-in-use – what conditions prevail in the situation.  See Kenneth D. Benne, “The Current State of Planned Changing in Persons, Groups, Communities, and Societies” in Planning of Change, eds. Warren G. Bennis, Kenneth D. Benne, and Robert Chin (New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), 68-82.

A PANTHEIST IN THE MIX

The purpose of this posting is to review, in a few words, the effect of Ralph Waldo Emerson – known to his acquaintances as Waldo – on the Transcendentalist movement in the US.  This account will be spotty but hopefully cover the importance of Emerson in advancing and, at times, inhibiting federalist values.  He initially set out to do his work in religious venues – he trained to be a minister – but in time he left that behind.

          Probably his most utilized stage was that of an essayist.  Originally, his efforts usually appeared as lectures that he then converted into written form.  His overall messages portrayed him as a champion of individualism and as a social critic.  As such, he portrayed an uncanny ability to foresee developments as he repeatedly set out to dispense good advice in relation to countervailing societal forces. 

In that effort, he described how and why those forces did what they did.  For that, he enjoyed an expansive audience that grew not just across the nation but extended into Europe.   From his 1500 or so lectures, one can find the core of his thinking in the first two published collections of his essays, those being Essays:  First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844).  A few of his well-known essays include “The Over-Soul”, “Circles”, “Experience”, “The Poet”, “Self-Reliance”, and his most famous piece, “Nature”. 

And underlying his main themes was his transcendent view and reliance on the role of intuition in determining one’s knowledge and the direction one takes in life.[1]  As a cited source puts it, using Emerson’s words,

… he explicitly identifies Transcendentalism as a form of philosophical Idealism. Emerson wrote:

As thinkers, mankind have ever been divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell…Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude. Everything real is self-existent. Everything divine shares the self-existence of Deity…[Kant showed] there was a very important class of ideas or imperative forms, which did not come by way of experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendental forms.[2]

          

On more political topics, he espoused the potential of the individual and of his/her freedom to seek those potentials.  This individualism should not be seen as the one seen in the twenty-first century.  It was more a concern for the integrity of a person and his/her challenge to overcome his/her weaknesses or other obstacles in life. 

And in true Romantic spirit, he extoled the virtues of nature.  Some would consider his philosophic bent to eventually become a pantheist or pandeist.  He is quoted as saying, “In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.”[3]  His political contributions gained steam during the Civil War years. 

An antislavery person, he initially shied away from entering that arena.  But probably as a reaction to the number of his friends and family members being outspoken critics of the institution, he eventually joined the fray.  Besides a series of lectures opposing slavery in 1837, he began taking a more active role in 1844.

Beyond giving speeches, he hosted John Brown in his home in Concord.[4]  During the war he met with Abraham Lincoln and upon meeting him, changed his estimation of the President.  His initial concern with Lincoln was that he was not as committed to ending slavery as he was in saving the Union.  His face-to-face meeting convinced him that his judgement was not accurate and became one of Lincoln’s great admirers.

So, on the pro-federalist side of the ledger, Emerson strove toward inclusion of blacks into the political partnership of the nation.  In that, he had no hesitation in promoting his belief in the need for a civil war and seemed to consider it as a rebirth of the nation.  On the not so federalist end of the scale was Emerson’s attraction to Thomas Carlyle.  Apparently, the Scot had a profound effect on Emerson. 

As alluded to earlier in this blog, Carlyle was a strong proponent of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon “race.”  In this, one can sense an exclusionary trait and the degree to which Emerson shared this belief is not clear.  Emerson wished for Carlyle to visit America and served as a sort of agent for the historian on this side of the ocean.  The two kept up an ongoing correspondence until Carlyle died in 1881.[5]

In this blogger’s opinion, Emerson did much to secularize American thought.  His opposition to slavery helped bring an end to that scourge on American federalism.  His travels, both domestic and in Europe, led him to meet just about everyone of any note in the literary as well as the political world of his time.  Early on, while living in St. Augustine, Florida, he even met a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Achille Murat. They became close friends as they discussed the heady topics of the day such as religion, philosophy, sociology, and politics.[6]

That stay in Florida was where Emerson witnessed slavery firsthand and noted that on one of his outings to a Bible Society meeting, there was a slave auction taking place nearby.  He is quoted as expressing, “One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with ‘Going, gentlemen, going!”[7] 

          The history of Emerson’s time and his influence betray much of American culture of the 1800s.  While his family’s background spanned the European experience in North America up to his time, he helped further define what the espoused political values of his countrymen should be.  In his efforts, he was more a force for liberating the prevailing federalist thought than adding to its parochialism.  In that, he helped Transcendentalism as a movement stay true to the nation’s basic moral stand in defining its political proclivities.

          Eventually given the title, Sage of Concord, he is judged to have upgraded the art of lecturing.  Reported are the later thinkers and writers who were influenced by Emerson’s work, and they include William James – who happened to be Emerson’s godson – and Nietzsche.  And despite his anti-establishment religious turn, he is credited by some as having a great influence on American theology.  With the focus this posting gives this great American lecturer/essayist, the blog ends its review of the Romantic/Transcendentalist movement in the US.

---

[1] David Boersema, “American Philosophy,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:  A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource (n.d.), accessed September 20, 2021, https://iep.utm.edu/american/#H2 .

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal entry, April 7, 1840.

[4] Len Gougeon, Virtue’s Hero:  Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform (Athens, GA:  University of Georgia Press, 2010). 

[5] Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson:  The Mind on Fire (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1995).

[6] Peter S. Field, Ralph Waldo Emerson:  The Making of a Democratic Intellectual (Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 

[7] Richardson, Emerson, 76.