Rapid Shape-shifting

In God We Most Certainly Do Not Trust

Angelo Codevilla's volume, The Character of Nations [New York: Basic Books, 1997] is well worth the investment and reading time--in our humble opinion.  We will probably find ourselves excerpting quotations and citations in this blog over the next six months or so.  

Codevilla's basic thesis is that the ruling "regime" of a nation shapes the character, faith, beliefs, hopes, fears and habits of citizens.  The regime shapes the culture of a nation profoundly.  It has often been argued that as go the people, so goes the State.  There is certainly truth in this maxim.  But the reverse is also true: as goes the regime, so go the people.

As Lorenzo De Medici put it, "What the Prince does then do many, for upon the Prince are the eyes of all."  Codevilla makes the obvious point that there has been a pervasive regime change throughout the West in the last one hundred years.  That change has been from societies grounded in Christendom's doctrines to societies grounded in secular materialism.  The consequent regime changes have been substantial, comprehensive, and profound.

Writes Codevilla:

The ancients, however, realized that changes in political rules favor one set of habits over others and lay down new layers of habits.  We have difficulty understanding this because we are the intellectual heirs of Western Christianity, which made society and individuals less dependent on government than ever before or since.

The twentieth century, however, took sovereign government to its logical conclusion.  Nowadays, few governments spend less than one-third of their people's wealth.  Nearly all have become the chief makers and breakers of fortunes and reputation, even becoming the arbiters of truth.  They create wholly new professions and sustain entire classes of people.  In short, we now understand perhaps better than at any time since the fall of Rome what the ancients meant by "regime": an arrangement of offices and honors that fosters a peculiar complex of ideas, loves, hates, and fashions and that sets standards for adults and aspirations for children. [Ibid., p. 7]

Upon the coins of the United States is the inscription, "In God we trust".  That particular vestige of a former age now seems shockingly inappropriate, even grossly hypocritical.  It is a false confession of the True Faith.  For truth's sake, it needs to be replaced by a confession of the current False Faith: "In Government we trust".  The change has been thorough-going, profound and rapid.  The collapse of the Soviet bloc was the event which, more than any other, turbocharged the change throughout the West.  It was called the "Peace Dividend".  It should be renamed as the "Corruption Dividend".

Codevilla points out that democracies can change rapidly because democracies have no character except that which their regimes and people combine to give them at any one time.  Doubtless, in the United States, the character of the regime will be shaped by the election of a new President.  But consider the characters of the two candidates (Clinton and Trump) whom the people have put forward.  They are a fair reflection of that once great country: the character of both nominees is thoroughly statist in belief.  Both nominees reflect, for example, the regime's relentless intrusion into every aspect of the lives of its citizens--even into its community bathrooms--whilst the people cheer and sing.  Democracies can morph into tyrannies, rapidly.

The history of the Roman and Athenian democracies, to name but two, is replete with swings between valor and cowardice, poverty and prosperity, freedom and tyranny, piety and sacrilege, harmony and civil war.  While no people is spared the choices by which it defines its character, democratic peoples face those choices constantly.  Alas, history teaches that when democracies find themselves astride the world, their enemies vanquished, they tend quickly to destroy the remnants of the habits that had made them great.  [Ibid.]

Trump's campaign slogan, "Making America Great Again" stands out as a mocking parody.  Regardless whether Trump is elected, or his opponent, that slogan will stand as a Divine irony, indicting us all.  National repentance is the only apt response.  But, in this case, because the the regimes of the West are democratic in form, national repentance can only come about if it is preceded by the repentance of persons and citizens.