Chinard argued forcefully that when it came to the Declaration as well as to the laws of Virginia, Jefferson understood what would and would not work in America. “No greater mistake could be made than to look for his sources in Locke, Montesquieu, or Rousseau,” Chinard argued, most certainly exaggerating to make a point. “The Jeffersonian democracy was born under the sign of Hengist and Horsa, not of the Goddess Reason.” As proof of this, Chinard—himself, it should be remembered, of French birth and stock—drew upon John Adams’ description of Jefferson’s proposed seal of the United States in 1776. “Mr. Jefferson proposed, the children of Israel in the wilderness led by a cloud by day, and a pillar by night—and on the other side, Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon chiefs, from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.” Even if you’re an extremely intelligent reader—and, after all, you wouldn’t be here at The American Conservative if you weren’t—you might be scratching your head as you read this. Newton and Locke, certainly. You know them well. But Hengist and Horsa? Who on God’s green earth are these two? Unless you spend your time reading early Medieval Celtic or Anglo-Saxon poetry—such as Beowulf—or modern British fantasy by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Hengist and Horsa probably mean almost or even less than nothing. The two Saxon chiefs reside more accurately in myth than they do in history, at least as professional historians understand the term.
For Jefferson, though, Hengist and Horsa represented the great republican tradition of the Germanic tribes sitting under the oak trees, deciding what was common law and what was not, speaking as representatives of their people in the Witan, and living as free men, bound to no emperor. To the American founding generation, Hengist and Horsa were as real as Cincinnatus, the Roman republican who threw down the sword, refused a permanent dictatorship of the city, and walked into the country to spend his life as a farmer. In the long scheme of things, the accuracy of the founders’ understanding of history matters little. They believed in Cincinnatus, Hengist, and Horsa, and they acted accordingly.Many scholars, including myself, see the American Founding as a synthesis of competing ideologies. Jefferson for instance, self consciously tried to take "the best" from the different groups in forming his vision. (In the context of religion, he called it Apriarianism, where he analogized himself to a bee taking the "honey" from every sect.)
This could be seen as a larger project of Western civilization itself which has different ideologies in its makeup, some religious, some secular, some pagan. We have often heard about the "twin" foundings of Western Civilization: Athens and Jerusalem.
"Athens" is the noble pagan source. But it also has another pagan source whose nobility is more questionable than Athens': The Anglo Saxon. Remember, Thursday is Thor's Day.
The Norse gods, like the Greek's certainly have nobility embedded in their tales, along with some ignobility. But Anglo-Saxon paganism lacks one major thing that Greco-Romanism has that arguably is responsible for most of the latter's nobility: Philosophers like Aristotle, Socrates, the Roman Stoics, etc.
In fact, my friend Wayne Dynes believes the Hengist and Horsa represent white ethnonationalism, something many of us consider to be quite ignoble.
10 comments:
” Even if you’re an extremely intelligent reader—and, after all, you wouldn’t be here at The American Conservative if you weren’t—
It's a not-very-challenging opinion magazine that employs people with emotional problems. The palaeo drivel-peddlers need to get over themselves.
Many scholars, including myself, see the American Founding as a synthesis of competing ideologies.
I'll leave aside the games you play with terms like 'American Founding' and point out that whatever was up at Lexington and Concord, Valley Forge, or Yorktown, 'synthesizing ideologies' wasn't it.
Many scholars, including myself, see the American Founding as a synthesis of competing ideologies.
I'll leave aside the games you play with terms like 'American Founding' and point out that whatever was up at Lexington and Concord, Valley Forge, or Yorktown, 'synthesizing ideologies' wasn't it.
Since "Christian thought" at least from the time of Aquinas included things like Aristotle and Roman civil law, "synthesis" goes without saying, since Aquinas is a "synthesist," or more accurately, "syncretic"--not that Christian thought even starts with Aquinas. Christianity's argument from the time of Paul of Tarsus--who was a Jew but also a Roman citizen--claimed possession of all truth, both revealed and reasoned.
This was the Founders' milieu, not just the Johnny-come-latelys like Locke.
https://medium.com/omega-point/aquinas-syncretism-7bd396797355
Anselm of Canterbury brings back philosophy. Reaching into the deep past, to a past so ancient and so removed from his English reality, more ancient than the Roman Empire, more ancient than the Roman Republic, more ancient than the Hellenistic Kingdoms — all the way back to Classical Greece — Anselm re-discovers Plato.
Plato. The significance of the rediscovery is archeological in its mode and tectonic in its impact. This is not understood to be part of the Renaissance. This is the 11th century now. But this is the beginning of the Renaissance. This is the spinal cord of civilizational time, the amnesia of civilizational memory, healing itself.
What does he realize? Anselm realizes that religion needs philosophy. That is the thought that Anselm thought. And in seeking a philosophical ground for Christianity, Anselm realizes that Plato’s conception of God is entirely consistent with Christian theology. Anselm makes an ontological argument for the existence of God...
The Enlightenment is a playground in comparison, Jefferson's "Apriarianism" the conceit of a pretentious dilettante.
"It's a not-very-challenging opinion magazine that employs people with emotional problems. The palaeo drivel-peddlers need to get over themselves."
What a bizarre smear on Dr. Birzer, a very distinguished scholar. Anyway I am interested in both of your opinions on Dr. Dynes' link. Personally I'm skeptical that Hengist and Horsa represent white ethnonationalism; but I thought I'd throw the idea out there.
I can go as far as observing that some very loathsome white nationalist types have co-opted Norse mythos, etc. It doesn't ruin Thor, though.
Anyway I am interested in both of your opinions on Dr. Dynes' link. Personally I'm skeptical that Hengist and Horsa represent white ethnonationalism; but I thought I'd throw the idea out there.
Everyone's ethnonationalistic. The British had good right to be, as that tiny country fairly ruled the world [or at least the parts they were interested in] during that era. And after the Gloriuos Revolution of 1688, they thought they had the world's best governmental system too.
The racism part is a little harder to get at. For instance, they weren't crazy about even the Germans.
Thomas Jefferson, too, despite believing in emigration as a fundamental right, wasn’t too keen on the Germans, whom he apparently saw as setting a bad example for other immigrants. “As to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses,” he wrote, “wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government.”
“Not being used to Liberty, they [German immigrants] know not how to make a modest use of it.”--Franklin
The "ethnonationalism" was more than just race, although surely that was a part of it. OTOH, Jefferson and Franklin rather admired the American Indians. What is flagged as bald racism is usually a blend with a disdain for their cultures as well. The American "melting pot" experiment had not yet taken flight, and early returns with the Germans were questionable: Race and culture were not self-evidently discrete from each other to the 18th century mind.
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What a bizarre smear on Dr. Birzer, a very distinguished scholar.
Brad writes at Pat Buchanan's American Conservative, which is pilloried for its taint of Buchanan's, um, ethnonationalism. I was not familiar with the following controversy until just now googling it. I was among the many who associate American Conservative with ethnonationalism flirting with racism.
Even if innocent of the charge, it's not a good look for a scholar.
http://buchanan.org/blog/rod-dreher-politics-betrayal-127544
The period following Charlottesville has also been marred by many attempts to score political points. Most have been at the expense of President Trump, whose election has never been accepted by many in the mainstream media, the entrenched bureaucracy, or the left. But some of these attacks hit closer to home. On Friday, Rod Dreher used his perch at The American Conservative to attack one of the men who founded that magazine, Pat Buchanan. Dreher charged that Buchanan’s column from the previous Tuesday, “If We Erase Our History, Who Are We?”, was a “shameful defense of white supremacy,” “abhorrent,” and “disgusting, racist, indefensible.” From Buchanan’s statement that the belief that all men are created equal is “ideological,” Dreher concluded that “Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core teaching of the Christian faith, which holds that all men are created in the image of God.” To bolster his attack, Dreher then cited a similar attack on Buchanan by neocon Mona Charen.
Without Pat Buchanan, The American Conservative would not exist. Thus, Dreher’s attack on Buchanan is an example of treachery and ingratitude, as well as Dreher’s customary hysteria. (Charen is an ingrate too, since Buchanan helped her in the Reagan White house and after). It is also false: Buchanan’s column merely points out, as suggested by its title, that if Robert E. Lee must go, so too must many other central figures in American and Western history.
Yeah I think that there is much more to pin Jefferson with on the race issue than affinity for Hengist and Horsa.
What a bizarre smear on Dr. Birzer, a very distinguished scholar. A
Why do you engage in these deflections? I was commenting on The American Conservative, an undefined corps of those writing for it, and Birzer's assessment of its readers. I wasn't commenting on Birzer's literary criticism or political writings, but on his promotion of some of the conceits abroad in that type of publication. Reading The American Conservative doesn't require much intellect or much liberal education. That remains true no matter how much smoke is blown by Birzer. And, yes, Rod Dreher is a head case. He's their star contributor.
As for Birzer, he's a scholar / teacher of a sort you see at colleges with a certain amount of cachet, less prolific than the norm at a research university but more prolific than you see at an ordinary teaching institution. His work is oddly eclectic. He used to write about settlement of the west, then shifted gears to literary criticism (I seem to recall Sandra Meisel writing a cutting review of his work) then shifted to the literary wing of political science, with a particular emphasis on Russell Kirk.
Buchanan's writings are not my cup 'o tea, but he's a fairly sensible fellow. He founded The American Conservative, but he's never had more than an emeritus position with the magazine. It's run through several patrons over the years - Taki, Ron Unz, and Wick Allison - and run through a series of editors - Scott McConnell, Daniel McCarthy, and whoever has it now. It's long been a collecting pool of oddballs not at home elsewhere, generally people who've had some sort of idiosyncratic disaffection. In different ways this has been true of Dreher, Andrew Bacevich, Noah Millman, Daniel Larison, and Steven Sailer.
I often like Brad Birzer's stuff, sometimes a lot. But as previously stated, The American Conservative is a bad look for a scholar.
It's long been a collecting pool of oddballs not at home elsewhere, generally people who've had some sort of idiosyncratic disaffection. In different ways this has been true of Dreher, Andrew Bacevich, Noah Millman, Daniel Larison, and Steven Sailer.
Indeed. I mean, you just don't want to be in the same binder as Steve Sailer. I don't want to discuss Sailer on these pages except to say that he just doesn't touch the Third Rail of American politics--race--he willingly grabs it with both hands. Any contact with him, even indirectly, endangers oneself.
Sailer's actually the voice of sweet reason at The Unz Review, relatively speaking. See the comment boards at that site. Choice crowd.
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