Ross Lockridge, Jr. on the Republic 1/17/21

What 1948 Can Tell Us About Our Politics Now

 This will be the last I see writing about Raintree County (Houghton Mifflin 1948). I was reading this novel when the yahoos invaded the Capitol, when Donald J. Trump was doing his best to stay President in the face of not getting enough votes (which shows what constitutes Donald J. Trump's best). These selections hit me between the eyes. I should have known there would always be those who hate the Republic. Even more dangerous are those apathetic types like me who forgot about their obligation to keep the Republic safe from the haters. In short, I quote the following as reminders to keep the Republic alive and well, and progressing in its freedoms.

- The Civil War, Mr. Shawnessy said, drawing a deep breath and weighing his words, was fought for the Republic- or what Lincoln called the Union.  The Republic transcends boundaries, tramples over space. In America, a man not only possesses his home and his local gods, but he possesses the Republic, which is a denial of tribal boundaries and tribal prejudice. The Republic is the symbol of man's victory over the formless earth. It may be an illusion, but to be human is to accept the human illusions, which were created by centuries of struggle. The Republic is, in Lincoln's phrase, the last best hope of earth.  It affirms that a portion of America - this earth, discovered adorned, and named by human labor - shall not be the property of a single generation to wrest it away and shape it to new things at will. The North didn't fight through the desire to acquire the South, to possess it, to invade it, to enslave it. They didn't even fight to destroy slavery within it. They fought to preserve the Republic, a mystical concept that affirms the humanity of man. The Southerners threatened to destroy the Republic on a point of inhumanity - the perpetuation of slavery. Thus their moral position was hopelessly weak from the start. The antebellum South was a proud, feudal, voluptuous dream. In their blind way the Southerners too imagined they fought for freedom. But it was the freedom to enslave other human beings. Their so-called right was not the world's right nor humanity's right. Thus a war came to be, in which the North was lucky to find the great moral leadership in the person of Lincoln, while the South - significantly - found great moral leadership in Robert E. Lee. As a series of physical facts, we know how terrible the War was. As a series of Moral Events, it was necessary and even sublime. It had to be fought and won for the future of humanity. If the Civil War had been lost by the North or had never been fought at all, Balkanization of the American Republic would have resulted, and the last, best hope of earth would have been lost for a time.

pp 385-86

Again from Mr. Shawnessy:

- The Republic is the world of shared human meanings - ideas. A man voluntarily votes himself a citizen of the Republic, the great fruitful fiction where men and women exist n time and space, desire each other, perceive beauty, beget children, create institutions, share words. In a very real sense we live in Humanity, that being the only place where we can live. 

p. 745

And this also reminded me of today's politics:

- By appearing to give them what they wanted, Mr. Shawnessy said. The people want a chance to own their own land, to have economic security, to see government perform its function of protecting the interests of the many instead of the interests of the few. You'll promise the same things that the People's Party are promising, to keep your party and yourself in power, and once elected, you'll go on doing what you've done before because it's the easiest way and because it's always been successful. You'll continue to obey the voice of the Big Interests, while wooing the votes of the Little Interests.

p. 602

Put in context, the last quote is Shawnessy speaking to U.S. Senator Garwood B. Jones, a Republican who started his political career as a Democrat. How little things have changed since the time of the novel (1892) or of its publication (1948).

sch

[Typing this up, it seems things have only gotten worse, or maybe it is that the rot is now in the open, and the Republic is at stake. Gore Vidal wrote in his essays that the Republic had died with the creation of the National Security State. Perhaps our mystical bonds still exist, only needing the tarnish removed, but a change has to come. The struggle between authoritarianism and democracy is between inhumanity and humanity. 9/10/22]