Solid piece of writing. Mr Swaim gives clarity to the present through the lens of the past. Given the current bearing offered by the article my concern is on the path forward. I think the answer to that concern is in the one sentence in the article I take issue with, or at least the second half of it:
"Today’s liberals don’t much appreciate the Christian component of their inheritance, preferring to think of themselves exclusively as children of the Enlightenment"
With sensibilities born of the Enlightenment, the authors of America’s liberties were mostly close students of the natural sciences - Thomas Paine an engineer, Benjamin Rush a physician and chemist, Roger Sherman an astronomer, Thomas Jefferson an architect and agronomist. This is not the cue from which Bernie Sanders appears on stage.
What was temporarily left behind as our founders embarked for the coast of Virginia was the Globe Theatre on an embankment of the Thames. And history has caught up with us. If there is anything Elizabethan about American culture is only the Elizabethan imagination. The legend of Obama, entering from stage left and taking the stance of a remarkably alert parrot for eight straight years, stems from Marlowe’s tragical Doctor Faustus through shared dreams of “profit and delight,/Of power, of honor, of omnipotence”. We have witnessed the rise of the metaphysical over the physical.
It has been a few generations since engineers and a national budget converged to focus on America's infrastructure. We can no longer afford it. Not monetarily, not culturally, not spiritually. We are quite near spent. And that, I think, is the goal of America's detractors. Many of whom are squatting in chambers on Capitol Hill.
If we do not take back out national inheritance we and future generations will be stripped of it. Trump, for all of his innumerable foibles, has at least given voice to a middle America left behind. Vote, speak your mind, donate to candidates (far and wide) who represent your interests, and buy more ammo.
