History

My wife Sara has, to my surprise and delight, accepted and absorbed the ambiance and tone of this small town she has adopted for her own. About a quarter mile down the dirt road from our house is an old bridge. Nearby, there is a small granite plaque declaring with simple reverence that General Knox crossed here, hauling cannon to Cambridge from Fort Ticonderoga during the Revolutionary War. (Or War of Independence depending on one's viewpoint.) Her first blog outlined her delight and pleasure at finding something unique in what many consider just another pie-slice of suburbia in the Boston conurbation.

Although the bridge is intact, it reaches only halfway across the river, because past floods have washed away the bank on one side. The bridge is now a jetty. The form and grace of its original purpose is not lost however. Even the most casual observer can stand and admire the primitive arches. They are solidly locked by their own weight, without mortar or concrete, in harmony with gravity, sturdily carrying automobile traffic well into the '50s.

This ancient object of American history points to a lesson in relativity, or a type of it. I am British by birth, or finer still, English, and Cockney to be exact. My historical heritage is Stonehenge, Roman conquest, the Magna Carta, Drake and the Spanish Armada, the Reformation, the New World, global exploration , imperial endeavor, and probably too smug a knowledge that the best of my country's institutions and language are ingrained in much of the world today.

In London, the road I lived on was not particularly historical by any standards. The house was built about 1830, along with hundreds of others, on a spine of land that fell away steeply on each side. The road was originally built about 1320, according to the earliest documents available, and was used by swineherds to drive their livestock to the local market. It had been built on the point of the ridge to avoid easy attack by robbers. The whole area was thick with human history and formed the land and its people, all around. Similarly, where I lived as a young boy, houses were built on land once owned by Henry the Eighth. Nearby was a house, the third built there since 1510.

Wayland's Old Stone Bridge at high flood.

What is the connection between this little bridge in New England, and that London street? Both are an integral part of their neighborhoods, and to a larger extent, their country's history. The bridge holds the same foundation for the future of this neighborhood as King Henry's hunting lodge for my childhood's yesteryear. Both historical perspectives belong in the same eye.

One might find it easy to scoff at long time residents of this small, (but growing,) country town when they speak proudly of the old bridge. The events of 1775 are not as historic, perhaps, as Roman baths, but history begins in the hearts of men rather than in machines and events. Thus is our sense of history connected.
To witness the passing of time is to be a part of eternity. As I stand on that bridge and watch the water below, I realized that, in effect, the same water once flowed under Westminster Bridge, and will flow again in the Danube, the Nile and the Amazon. As part of nature, this river will take its own sweet time to form and shape this tiny piece of New England, as I have been shaped by English history. Hopefully, I can become part of the shaping of history here.

Are we a part of history, or are we just witnesses or "labels" to preterition? The moment we become aware of an historical event, it has passed us by. But all history lies in the future of our actions. Within us, embryonic history grows as surely as our limbs and minds.

Each of us needs to feel that he is a locus of meaning in a meaningful world. We are not content to leave history up to the famous, known and potential. We crave to be a part, not only of our own lives, but to influence each of those around us; wanting that '15 minutes" that Andy Warhol prognosticated. As proud as we are of the land we live in, few of us really know how rich and strange and full of wonder it is. Even fewer understand how it came to be that way. History provides us with legacies that we can use to make the connection between what is and how we feel about our inheritance.

These legacies have neither past nor future, but keep pace with us as we move from era to era, from millennium to millennium. Each man writes his own history by pitting himself against the world's past, to prove his own individual excellence. All too often we see history as something we have no control over, because it has already happened. Perhaps then, we have all the more reason to look to future history; one that will depend on the kind of present we live.
Generations of mankind are linked as surely as one season is linked to the next. Not to believe so is to construct our own little "me generation" around us. Perhaps, because man seldom believes he lives forever, we have, indeed, this "me generation."

Because he sees himself as starting alone, and finishing in solitary endeavor, he has produced a generation of limited thinkers who deal in temporary compromises rather than eternal promises. But Cicero said, "History illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity."

I am a part of this town. This bridge, a minuscule reminder of something built and left by men who left their country hundreds of years before I left mine, belongs to me as surely as it belonged to them. In each part of time and reality, this little bridge is as important as Stonehenge, or the Pyramids, or Lexington Green. And each of us is as important as those before us, and as those following.

© Copyright 2001 Roy H. Barnacle. All rights reserved.

Constitutional Government

Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, is a co-educational, liberal arts college known for being the first American college to prohibit in its charter all discrimination  based on race, religion, or sex; ( E.G:  its students refused to segregate their troops in the Army during  WWI, and the Army tacitly consented. Furthermore, Hillsdale's football team refused to play in the 1956 Tangerine when the committee refused to allow the team's black players to join the white players on the field, forcing the committee to select Juniata instead.) its refusal of government funding; and its monthly publication, Imprimis. National Review has described Hillsdale as a "citadel of American conservatism."

Hillsdale often features prominent speakers at college events, including its Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) program. Speakers include Stephen Ambrose, Benazir Bhutto, Russell Kirk, Ralph Nader and Phyllis Schlafly.

  In the latest issue of Imprimis, President Larr p. Arnn outlined a platform for the return of Constitutional Government, in remarked delivered on Sept 10^th 2010. Here is the outline from his remarks, and offered without comment.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Outline of a Platform for Constitutional Government

1. Protecting the equal and inalienable rights of individuals is government’s primary responsibility.

a. By rights, America’s founders meant those things naturally belonging to us, and those things earned by our own labor. The protection of rights understood in this way breeds harmony in the society, because each of us claims for himself what he can also give to all others. We may all speak, worship, assemble, and keep our justly earned property without taking from another.

b. Each branch of government is subservient to the Constitution.

c. The federal government has the constitutional duty to ensure that each state maintains a republican form of government. This obligation is strengthened and clarified in the 14th Amendment. It must ensure that no state infringes on the rights or the “privileges or immunities” of citizens. Yet it must also recognize the constitutional standing of state governments.

d. The duties of Congress are clearly delineated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. It should do no more, lest liberty be endangered. It should do no less, else anarchy ensue.

2. Economic liberty is inversely proportional to governmental intrusion in the lives of citizens.

The platform upon which Abraham Lincoln was elected president stated “that the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government.” It urged “a return to rigid economy and accountability” that “is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favorite partisans. . . .” Likewise today:

a. American economic recovery requires that we liberate the American people to work, to save and to invest, secure in their property, confident about the dollar as a store of value, and sure that the government will be an impartial enforcer of the law and of contracts.

b. In all administration of federal programs we must demand the utmost economy, and that every care be taken to avoid further growth and sprawl in the federal administrative establishment.

c. Our massive public investment in entitlement programs must be protected through privatization programs, which should utilize the real practices of insurance against catastrophe and of savings for future needs. In this process our investment must be safeguarded from loss, as the government must keep its contracts.

d. Sound money is among the most sacred of the federal government’s responsibilities, and price stability should be the aim of monetary policy.

e. The federal government must not subsidize corporations or individuals in its tax code or any other policy.

f. Philanthropy is the natural outgrowth of American principles and institutions. It should be encouraged and relied upon, along with local and state government, as the great engine of social reform and the amelioration of distress.

3. To accomplish its primary duty of protecting individual liberty, the federal government must uphold national security.

a. National defense has been for most of American history the chief undertaking of the government under the Constitution. It has been supplanted by the federal entitlement and regulatory state. This reversal of priority hampers growth at home, deprives the American people of scope for self-government, and undermines the defense of the nation.

b. We should pursue relentlessly every form of defense against foreign threats. Especially is this true in the case of attack by weapons of mass destruction. Therefore missile defense and a vigorous policy to combat Islamic and other forms of terrorism are urgently required.

c. We must overcome all international and domestic efforts to undermine American sovereignty, including those mounted through the United Nations and other international organizations, or through efforts to impose new treaties.

d. Promotion of democracy and defense of innocents abroad should be undertaken only in keeping with the national interest.

4. The restoration of a high standard of public and private morality is essential to the revival of constitutionalism. As the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The Constitution itself says nothing about education, for the same reason it says nothing about families or marriage or child-rearing: the federal government should not control or regulate these things. Parents and teachers, not the federal government, teach children. What they teach them matters most, for without proper moral and civic education a republican form of government will falter. With it, and with a strong defense of our right to religious liberty, republican government can flourish.

We close again with the words of Lincoln, from the same speech with which we began. Quoting the Bible, Lincoln said that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” We shall be governed either by ourselves, under a Constitution, or else we shall be governed by the new kind of master invented in our day, the bureaucrat, and by the impenetrable web of rules that he fabricates and enforces.

Let us stand together against the rule of bureaucracy, and for liberty and the Constitution.

 

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Copyright © 2010 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the following credit line is used: “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. ISSN 0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trade Office #1563325.

I have been keeping, or owning, or writing in, or whatever one does to create a daily, weekly, sometimes monthly entry in a diary or journal. The only other family member I know that regularly keeps a journal is my daughter Sarah.
    Reactions to my announcement or remark that I keep a journal range from slight curiosity to rampant indifference. Questions like "what on earth do you write about?" which seems to indication that my life is so  uninteresting, unfulfilled or boring that I could not possibly write anything that anyone else would find interesting. Then my favorite: "Am I in it?"  I love this question because the answer is cooked to the tastes and individuality of the one that asks. A good friend would be told, "Of course you are in it." accompanied by the relating of a time that we both enjoyed or created together. One of whom I, or he and she, would not find our association particularly solid, might be told a simple "No" or at worse, to make the point, "Definatley not, are you kidding?"
That may not be true of course. One writes in ones journal about everything, good, bad, up times and down times, special occasions and unspectacular events.One's journal is a continued writing made by one, me in this case, in response to their life experiences and events. Most I write some kind of a description of day to day events. Besides those it also contains reflections on what took place, and why, and expresses emotions and understandings about them. It comes a history of your life.
      I have been writing my journal(s) since 1972. I can, and do, look back and see myself then, make comparisons as to any progress or failures in my life, its triumphs and its tragedies. Anita Brookner, the English novelist,said "You never know what you will learn till  you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed."
      One thing I have learned; never use your diary as proof of, or to justify, anything, unless it is a matter of survival or of a life or death experience. In two marriages, I have made the mistake of trying to win an argument, make a point, or defend myself against an uncalled for attack. The response to this has been "You and that damned diary...." or to be accused of actually going back and rewriting the event to my advantage. This is why it is more appropriate to actually put pen to paper and write, in my case, scrawl, the event to keep it in its original meaning and entry.
    Nevertheless, I have found great satisfaction in my journals. There have been times when I have completely forgotten an event, or remembered it in a different way, often realizing in the reading how much I have grown, matured, progressed or, thank goodness, forgotten. Many of my published writings have emerged as re-writes of my journals. Those I have loved and who have loved me, have filled my pages positively, and those that haven't have been remembered more in affection or nostalgia, than in bitterness.
   My childhood, the growing years, my marriages, the birth and maturing of my children, waymarks and milestones of my journey from birth to present day,  are all spread across the pages, recording family, friends, and the world at large. I can no more NOT write in my journal than to stop breathing. Journals have been reliable records of the famous and infamous. They have been records of families and fortunes by those fortunate to have both.  "Writing is my refuge." said Charles B. Johnson, "It's where I  go. It's where I find that integrity I have."   I agree.

 

 

Looking around, one would be hard put to think that Christmas is, for Christians at least, the celebration of the birth of one who gave us guidelines to replace material values as per Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with, at the very least, spiritual values of kindness, forgiveness, love.  Despite the seductions of rampant materiality, many Christians feel that even a Christmas with the overt trappings of commercialization has a special feeling that can only be attributed to faith in a good and almighty God. To many it is still a time to renew one's faith - in the goodness of man and God, or merely to come closer to the birth of a religion which sustains many.

DURING trips to England, I visit Newington Green, the place of my teenage upbringing. The Unitarian Chapel, built 1708, still stands, as do the large gabled houses, built around 1650. The Acorn Seed and Leaf Company is still engaged in the business of artificial flower-making, and much of the green has not changed in the past 100 years.
I feel particularly fortunate that this small village embraced by the larger mass of London can still remain as I remembered it as a small boy. But times and locales change, as do people, and often we don't really perceive the shift until someone reminds us, through gesture or comment, of the mores and fashions of another period.
During one such visit back to my childhood locale, I visited one of my mother's neighbors. I asked her what she felt had changed the most, and she told me that more than anything - more than the constant presence of traffic, more than the consistent noise of TV and radio, more than the visual assault of advertising and buildings - she felt that it was how people behaved.
"When I was a girl," she said, "people were kind to each other. Even those that had no manners pretended that they did. My mother always told me to be kinder than necessary, to go the little extra length and give that little extra measure to ensure that harmony and accord were always given a chance to guide us through the anxious moments."
At first, I thought that this might just be the wistful reminiscences of an old woman, who preferred to dwell on memories than face modern times. But when she recalled how her family behaved each New Year's Day, I realized just how much things had changed.
"It was a custom to make New Year's calls," she said. "My father and mother would take us as a family to call upon friends and neighbors in the locality.
"As children, we really didn't care for it. But when I grew into adulthood, I realized what an equanimity and healing there was in such an observance."
 I listened as this senior citizen recalled how guests on their entrance into the hallway were expected to remove overcoats, hats, and gloves, so that they could enter the drawing room free to receive and offer salutations. Sometimes gentlemen could retain a glove on the right hand, and cards, if given, would be sent up to the reception room while the visitors were preparing to be ushered into the presence of the ladies.
She told me how the reception rooms would always be warm and beautiful for the festive season, and how there were many forms of refreshments, even though eating was not the chief means of celebrating the holiday season.
There were no growls of automobiles nor the grinding of trolleys, but the clip-clop of horses as they drew their carriages up to the front door.
"We always walked," said my mother's neighbor. "Often, people still sang carols well into the New Year. We weren't so in a hurry to see the Christmas season disappear as we are today."
I AM sure that many today feel that such niceties are not only outmoded and obsolete, but that such behavior could serve no useful purpose in today's hurly-burly world with its emphasis on instant gratification and its need for precipitous results in everything from cooking to communication.
I have learned valuable lessons from these trips back to the "village in aspic" as my sister calls it.
I have learned to pull back from the precipice of confrontation. It takes place in letting the tight-faced driver go first in the traffic jam, of depersonalizing the blooper or deception by the person behind the counter, of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt in unproven circumstances, and finding affection in the place of disobedience by my children.
There is much to be treasured in ways that grace the human condition and the human spirit.
Each time we lose these practices under the weight of modern living and its demands on us, it becomes one more layer to peel away to find our true self that not only cares for our individuality, but respects and cares for the individuality of others.
I am reminded of Francis Thompson's verse from "Grace of the Way":
The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.


© Copyright 2001 Roy H. Barnacle. All rights reserved

Introduction

It's no accident that we all lie nestled together in the curves of the universe. We are tugged by the forces of celestial tides. Time unfolds in on itself and outward again in gladness as we spin around, each of us an utter miracle in a sea of tin white stars.
                                                                                            Jamien Morehouse