On September 5, I got into an exchange with Mark Tapscott. Keep in mind, this is before the whole Charlie Kirk Murder thing, but as you will see, it bears on that, said Mark, on Instapundit:

No, it’s not the move of young male voters to the Trump/Republican column, important as that certainly is in the political calculations of the days ahead.

But politics is downstream from culture and culture is downstream from you know what, and that’s where the most important — and totally unexpected — shift in the tectonic plate underlying the American experience is happening.

He went on to reference one of his latest columns, which I urge you to read.

Anyway, in response, I agreed and pointed out that it was cultures that formed governments; the idea is that governments were to be the servants of cultures, not their masters. (Which in turn explains the differences in the construction of governments around the world; the idea is that each culture created each government in a way, originally, that served the interests of each culture.) I told him in a private note that culture always outlasts government, particularly when governments go astray from their original purpose.

I also passed along to him something I wrote several years ago, now, and I’ll pass it along to you. In the former home of Mahatma Gandhi, we find the following quote, prominently posted: 

“It is doubtful that the efforts of the Mahatma would have succeeded except that he was appealing to the conscience of a Christianized people.” — Bertrand Russell

So here we have, posted in the home of a Buddhist, the words of a militant atheist, extolling the virtues of Christianity.

So much for the argument that the Judeo-Christian ethic is not foundational to Western culture. The constant claim that it is an evil to be overcome similarly should get bombed out of existence.

Okay, before you start tuning up, let me finish my point, which is decidedly not about setting up a theocracy. It is, however, an acknowledgment of what imparted our cultural values to us.
I refer you to the work of, ironically, another Kirk: Russell Kirk. (1918-1994). Specifically, I call your attention to his book The Roots of American Order (1974). 

It is in that book that Kirk suggests that we can trace our roots directly to five different cities: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philly. As Russell Kirk himself summarizes it, it is a story of five cities. Jerusalem for the revealed source of order, the concepts of the sacredness of life, the sacredness of property, and so on; Athens for arts and science; Rome for government; London, where these influences grew and coalesced; and, of course, Philadelphia. Kirk looks at all of this and makes the observation that “the imprints of Athens, Rome, and London are still upon us. But the all-important endowment of Jerusalem has been tossed to the winds.”

Now, keep in mind this is 1974. We have progressed somewhat down the road since then. I’ll get to that.

I submit that every great culture in world history has had one religion or another as its philosophical core. Please note that I did not say it was part of its government or even that it necessarily controlled those governments. For their part, Western cultures have always had the Judeo-Christian ethic as their core philosophy, from which we obtain the value of life, property, and the worth of the individual. Western culture is fairly unique in that aspect.

I submit that the concept of individual rights is, in fact, a cultural concept and meaningless outside that cultural construct. I refer you to the Declaration of Independence, wherein Jefferson stated flatly that “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal...”

I respectfully submit that the operative word in that well-known line is “WE”. He most certainly was not talking about a universal truth, but the cultural POV of the then-new American culture. That reading gives a different angle on the line than most Americans of this day and age understand.

I suggest that if it was in fact a universal truth, a point that the whole world agreed upon, that all men were created equal, that their rights are not granted by government but by their creator, it wouldn’t have been such a radical idea, even for the time, much less now. Look around us, and I think you will find that it is quite true that a vast majority of cultures around the world still do not consider these as any kind of truth, universal or otherwise. Royalty still exists, as do slavery and class structures, and many governments operate under the (I think) misguided notion that our rights are from the government, not from God.

I consider that the Judeo-Christian ethic taught us the philosophies that imparted those cultural values surrounding individual rights to us. Russell Kirk is correct when he suggests that we’ve been moving away from that basic cultural touchstone, that philosophy. I submit it is to our detriment, and that we’ve gotten ourselves into problems as a culture and as a country, to the precise degree that we’ve rejected the lessons Jerusalem has taught us. I hasten to fearfully add the specter of Tim Kaine just the other day, arguing that our rights come from government.

I suggest further that continuing down that path is a threat to the rights that philosophy affords us. If the cultural values we hold dear find their basis in the Judeo-Christian ethic, then what happens to our rights, which find their basis in that ethic, are abandoned in the efforts we see to eliminate that ethic and remove those religious philosophies and their expression, not just from our government but from our society as a whole? Put another way, what happens to a building when you remove the foundation? Can anyone honestly say that the unsuccessful attempts on the life of Donald Trump and the successful attempt on the life of Charlie Kirk were performed in support of the values we’ve discussed here?

I submit we are on the leading edge of the answer to those questions. I suggest further, the reaction to those attacks (and of course, much more) is an estimated 200,000 people who showed up from all over the country and around the world on short notice, to squeeze into a stadium designed for 70,000 people, for Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, and the multiple millions more who streamed that same event, as evidence of widespread recognition of that cultural relationship and the need for returning to that basic philosophy. That response heartens me, and I see it as evidence that the move back to those basics is already well underway.

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