Mr. Thornton is a businessman in Covington, Kentucky.
"In times of insecurity when the foundations of life are severely shaken," says Bernhard W. anderson, "men often turn to the past to gain perspective. In our time, for instance, the world crisis has stimulated an intensive study of the past and the tradition in which we stand."
Our age surely qualifies as a time of insecurity so it is likely that more and more thoughtful people will, as Anderson says, turn to the past to examine their heritage. Thus, the renewed interest in the most important of the Founding Fathers: Washington, Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton. All have their critics, to be sure, but they have not been forgotten in the nearly two hundred years that have passed since this nation was founded. We may wish to discover what makes them great, what sets them apart from others who lived in their time.
But while we want to know what made the Founding Fathers great, few of us are interested in reading anything that treats them as plaster saints. We need to know each one’s personality with all its shortcomings, that is to say, we need to treat them as human beings, for only in that way may we appreciate their greatness, only so can they serve as inspiration and challenge to us. To proclaim perfection for these men is, as Douglas Southall Freeman has explained, to deny growth. Paul Wilstach speaks of a need to "balance their noble qualities as great characters with their amiabilities as fellow human beings." We can best understand persons of the past, suggested Albert Jay Nock, if we think of them as men and women much like ourselves with twenty-four hours a day to get through as best they could. The need, in brief, is to humanize the Founding Fathers without demeaning them.
But, it might be asked, are there really persons who may fairly be called heroes—for instance, persons who overcome their fear and risk their lives for others or persons who stick by their beliefs in the face of strong opposition or temptations? Some "intellectuals" go so far as to say there are no heroes since all of us are mere products of determining forces — biological, psychological, and environmental — over which we have no control; hence, we are little more than robots doing, not what we choose to do, but what these forces make us do. Granted, if the nature of man is such that he can not make free choices and can not act from disinterested motives and can not do what he knows he ought to do regardless of what he wants to do, it is futile to argue whether at certain times, say, during the period when America became an independent nation, particular men risked "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" out of love of principles. If, on the other hand, man is not a helpless pawn and can act disinterestedly, then we can investigate to learn if, for instance, the Founding Fathers were guided by principles and ideals or only by selfish motives disguised as a love of liberty. How the acts of the Founding Fathers will be interpreted depends, then, not only on historical knowledge and understanding, but also on the view of the nature of man that is implicit in any work of history.
It is not unexpected that a mass society derogates the value and relevance of individual action; hence the "debunking" and disregard of our national heroes. But in diminishing our forebears we diminish rather than exalt ourselves. In demeaning the motives of the great Founding Fathers we compromise our own character as free and responsible men. And it is hardly right to live off the fruits of their commitments while insisting they were either unaware of what they were doing or were moved by motives different from those they professed.
It is fruitless, anyway, for "intellectuals" to say there are no heroes because most persons, especially youngsters, will have their heroes — like it or not. The real question is who will be the heroes to look up to and emulate. Daniel Boorstin has observed the modern-day worship, not of heroes but of celebrities. "The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name." These new-model "heroes" are no longer "external sources which fill us with purpose" but "receptacles into which we pour our own purposelessness." "The hero," he goes on to say, "is made by folklore, sacred texts, and history books, but the celebrity is the creature of gossip, of public opinion, of magazines, newspapers, and the ephemeral images of movie and television screen. The passage of time, which creates and establishes the hero, destroys the celebrity." Perhaps, remarks Boorstin wisely, "our ancestors were right in connecting the very idea of human greatness with belief in God. Perhaps man cannot make himself. Perhaps heroes are born and not made."
Our generation, in its worship of the present, scoffs at history as dull and unimportant; a cocky bunch, we fail to appreciate that only if we know where the road we travel came from can we know where it will take us. We fail, too, to understand that all of us, even the greatest, stand on the shoulders of those who came before. Man, Renan has said, does not improvise himself. Likewise, American society in the middle of the twentieth century did not suddenly spring into existence, and the spiritual and material blessings enjoyed by Americans today would not be ours if those who preceded us had shirked their responsibilities to future generations as we are guilty of doing today. A true community, after all, is much more than just a group of people living at a particular moment; it is, if you will, a spiritual body including those who have gone before and those yet to be born.
Written history, explains Page Smith, is "the effort to pass on to the sons the wisdom of the fathers, and thus to preserve, rather than destroy, the continuity between generations." History thus defined will help the individual to discover his identity, for an essential part of that identity is found in the story of his past — his "collective autobiography." To destroy the links with the past and live simply in the present, he continues, is to leave oneself at the mercy of neuroses, so common in the present day. Great history, writes Smith, is "the history that has commanded men’s minds and hearts, [history] with a story to tell that illuminates the truth of the human situation, that lifts spirits and projects new potentialities." For the historian himself the important thing is not to seek a cold objectivity but rather "to conceive of his task as one of sympathetic understanding of his subject, a matter of attachment rather than detachment, of love rather than aloofness." History, Maritain has said, "is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be looked at…."
Many readers will recognize the above-mentioned ideas on history as conservative, not radical or "liberal," for the underlying premise of this concept of American history is that there is something to conserve, a heritage to treasure and to pass on to our posterity. There is, indeed; and our tradition, to put it briefly, is liberty. As Clarence Carson has demonstrated, ours is not a revolutionary tradition but a "tradition of individualism, voluntarism, constitutionalism, representative government, government by law, equality before the law, recognition of moral order in the universe, natural rights, and personal independence."
Authors Cited:
B. W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1957, p. 288.
Paul Wilstach, Patriots Off Their Pedestals. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1927, p. 15.
Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1964, pp. 61, 63, 76.
Page Smith, The Historian and History. New York: Knopf, 1964, pp. 130, 142, 155, 206, 245, 248.
Jacques Maritain, University Bookman, Winter, 1966, p. 32.
Clarence B. Carson, The American Tradition. Irvington, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1964, pp. 26, 27.
