David Brooks NOV. 23, 2017, New York Times
1865 Lincoln image from article
We once had a unifying national story, celebrated each Thanksgiving. It was an
Exodus story. Americans are the people who escaped oppression, crossed a
wilderness and are building a promised land. The Puritans brought this story with
them. Each wave of immigrants saw themselves in this story. The civil rights
movement embraced this story.
But we have to admit that many today do not resonate with this story. This story
was predicated on the unity of the American people. But if you are under 45, you
were probably taught an American history that, realistically, emphasizes division —
between the settlers and the natives, Founders and their slaves, bosses and the
workers, whites and people of color. It’s harder for many today to believe this is a
promised land. It seems promised for the privileged few but has led to
marginalization for the many.
The narratives that appeal today are predicated on division and disappointment.
The multicultural narrative, dominant in every schoolhouse, says that America is
divided into different biological groups and the status of each group is defined by the
oppression that it has suffered. The populist narrative, dominant in the electorate,
says that America is divided between the virtuous common people and the corrupt
and stupid elites.
Today, we have no common national narrative, no shared way of interpreting
the flow of events. Without a common story, we don’t know what our national
purpose is. We have no common set of goals or ideals.
We need a new national narrative.
One way to identify one is to go back to one of the odd features of our history.
We are good to our enemies after wartime. After the revolution, we quickly became
allies with Britain. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson was humane to our
European enemies. After World War II, America generously rebuilt Germany and
Japan.
Elsewhere, enmities last for centuries. But not here. Why? Because we have a
national predilection for fresh starts. Coming to this country is for many people a
new beginning. We turn every new presidential administration, every new sports
season, every graduation ceremony into a new beginning. It’s said Americans don’t
settle arguments, we just leave them behind.
The story of America, then, can be interpreted as a series of redemptions, of
injury, suffering and healing fresh starts. Look at the mottos on our Great Seal: “A
New Order for the Ages” and “Out of Many, One.” [JB emphasis] In the 18th century divisions
between the colonists were partially healed. In the 19th century divisions between
the free and enslaved were partially healed. In the 20th, America partially healed the
divisions between democracy and totalitarianism. In the 21st, we have healing fresh
starts still to come.
The great sermon of redemption and reconciliation is Lincoln’s Second
Inaugural.
This is a speech of tremendous intellectual humility. None of us anticipated this
conflict, or its magnitude. All of us “looked for an easier triumph.” None of us are
fully in control. “Let us judge not that we be not judged.”
This is a speech of great moral humility. Slavery, Lincoln says, was not a
Southern institution, it was an American institution, weaving through our common
history for 250 years. The scourge of war, which purges this sin, falls on both sides.
Lincoln fought any sense of self-righteous superiority the Northerners might harbor.
He rejected any thought that God is a tribal God. He put us all into the same category
of ambiguity and fallenness.
The speech is a great reconciling speech. The words recurring through it are
“we” and “all.” “All thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All
dreaded it, all sought to avert it … Both parties deprecated war.”
Lincoln sets the course for mutual forgiveness, not the cheap forgiveness that
carries no weight but the kind that contains all the stages of proper rigorous
forgiveness: mercy, judgment, confession, penitence, reconciliation and re-trust.
He sets the course for political flexibility and pragmatism. We cannot really
understand the course of events or God’s will. Therefore, we can’t be certain of our
notion of what’s right, or rigid in clinging to abstract principle or dogmatic ideology.
Everything should be open to experiment, flexibility and maneuvering.
The final prayer heralds a new beginning: “With malice toward none, with
charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive
on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds...to achieve lasting
peace among all nations.”
In his speech, Lincoln realistically acknowledges the divisions and
disappointments that plague the nation. But he does not accept the inevitability of a
house divided. He combines Christian redemption with the multiculturalist’s love of
diversity. In one brilliant stroke, Lincoln deprives Christian politics of the
chauvinism and white identitarianism that we see now on the evangelical right. He
fills the vacuum of moral vision that we see now on the relativist left. He shows how
American particularism always points to universalism — how the specific features of
our settler’s history and culture point to vision of communion for all mankind. This
is a story we can join and live into.
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