The American Political Tradition

In his little book, The Decline of Wisdom, M. Gabriel Marcel observes that to many modern men the weight of tradition is onerous: they wish to shake from their shoulders the wisdom of their ancestors. Tradition is what G. K. Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead.” the body of considered opinions of the wise men who have preceded us in time. It is the filtered experience of the race.

“The dead alone give us energy,” Le Bon wrote once: but the contemner of tradition trusts to his little private stock of rationality and his overweening ego for sustenance in our Wasteland. In much of the world, the voices that speak for tradition are dinned under by more drums than those which beat to drown the last words of Charles I. Yet I think that tradition, like King Charles on the fatal scaffold, will be heard nevertheless, in the age which is dawning, though a social catastrophe may intervene to vindicate the truths of tradition. “Nay, but I shall be heard, and that to the end of time.”

RK

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Russell Kirk

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Socialism

In his little book, The Decline of Wisdom, M. Gabriel Marcel observes that to many modern men the weight of tradition is onerous: they wish to shake from their shoulders the wisdom of their ancestors. Tradition is what G. K. Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead.” the body of considered opinions of the wise men who have preceded us in time. It is the filtered experience of the race.

“The dead alone give us energy,” Le Bon wrote once: but the contemner of tradition trusts to his little private stock of rationality and his overweening ego for sustenance in our Wasteland. In much of the world, the voices that speak for tradition are dinned under by more drums than those which beat to drown the last words of Charles I. Yet I think that tradition, like King Charles on the fatal scaffold, will be heard nevertheless, in the age which is dawning, though a social catastrophe may intervene to vindicate the truths of tradition. “Nay, but I shall be heard, and that to the end of time.”