Category: History

Growing Creative

Leonardo da Vinci is best known for the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Yet it’s possible his achievements in science even outstripped those monumental paintings. A hundred years before Francis Bacon (the “father” of the scientific method), da Vinci pioneered key concepts in anatomy, geology, and fluid dynamics by the uncommon means of observation and experiment.

Perhaps the most extraordinary of all these was his investigation into how the human heart functioned. Remarkably, he made a glass model of a heart so he could better see how blood flowed. Some of his findings were not proven until five hundred years later. Even as late as 1960 scientists misunderstood some aspects. Only in 2014 was da Vinci conclusively shown to be correct.  

How did da Vinci manage to be hundreds of years ahead of his time in so many different areas of science? That is the story Walter Isaacson tells in his fascinating biography, Leonardo da Vinci. Isaacson’s other biographies also focus on some of the most creative minds in history—Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs—because Isaacson wants to know where inventiveness comes from and how to nurture it.

In his last chapter Isaacson offers a list of how we can all learn from Leonardo to be more creative. One is being collaborative. Da Vinci readily consulted with those who had expertise that he lacked, such as in anatomy and mathematics. He also cooperated, for example,  with several colleagues in developing his Vitruvian Man which famously shows the proportions of a human figure inscribed in a circle and a square.

What Isaacson does not point out is that being in an urban setting enhances the possibilities of multiple connections which is the essence of creativity. Many recent studies have shown how social proximity, networking, and openness in cities can result in expanded creativity. The more people you can interact with, the more your own mind is stimulated. Da Vinci worked almost his entire adult life in the thriving centers of Florence, Milan, and Rome.

Isaacson also highlights the role of being interdisciplinary. Da Vinci was fascinated by almost everything—optics, neuroscience, aerodynamics, paleontology, and more. Like being collaborative, having many interests (and reading widely) makes possible many more fresh connections, stimulating new insights, and unexpected questions which, again, is at the heart of creativity.

These first two, being collaborative and interdisciplinary, allowed him to develop a habit of using analogy to understand what he observed. He saw eddies in water and by analogy correctly assumed there must be similar eddies in air movement. He even went further to suppose that curling locks of hair followed some of these same patterns. He also deduced from autopsies and other observations that eddies must occur within the bloodstream as blood circulates, even though the medical assumption of his day was that blood didn’t circulate but went back and forth.

Likewise he wondered if the principles by which trees branched was analogous to that of rivers and then to how blood vessels branch in a body. He was right about it all.

And if anyone is going to remember your work, writing everything down on paper is essential. No one is going to have your Facebook posts in fifty years. Da Vinci probably filled 35,000 pages of books with his notes, doodles, observations, sketches, and lists. While only about a fifth of these survive, if he hadn’t put things down on paper, we’d have none of his insights.

Not all his ideas were brilliant. Some were dead ends. But by being immensely productive, we increase the chances that something remarkable will emerge.

Sadly, his genius was hidden in those notebooks for centuries. Why? He never published and rarely finished paintings.* Therefore, only hundreds of years later did others unknowingly perform experiments and make discoveries that ended up replicating what he had done much earlier.

Why did he release so little to the public? He was a perfectionist and possibly ADHD, haphazardly following every shiny idea that flitted across his mind. He was too distracted to finish much and didn’t seem to care about sharing knowledge.

Ironically, the hyper-charged mind that so sidetracked him also made him incessantly curious about everything—which may have been his greatest strength. Did birds flap their wings faster on the downswing or the upswing? Why were fossils on top of mountains?  Why do we see objects with slightly blurred edges instead of in sharp outline?

No, we can’t all be Leonardos. But we can be more creative at home, at work, in relationships, in gardening, in cooking, in writing by making one or two of his natural impulses into our habits.

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*Da Vinci even kept the Mona Lisa till his death, never turning the painting over to the patron who commissioned it (and was thus never paid) because he was forever tinkering with it.

The Rarest of Leaders

When John Kennedy ran for president, I was excited. He was young, charming, and witty. And as an eight-year-old Catholic, I thought it was cool that he might become the first Catholic president. My enchantment with JFK continued into my early teen years when I read his book Profiles in Courage.

Given our day of politicians being hyper-pressurized to conform to their party (Republican or Democratic), I decided to revisit this book about eight U. S. senators from over a span of two centuries. I remembered little of it but wondered what the stories might teach about a willingness to sacrifice one’s political career for principle and the common good. And I found some of what I expected.

When Senator John Quincy Adams supported the contested trade policy of the other party’s president (that is, of Jefferson who had defeated Adams’ own father!), “Simply because he had placed national interest before party and section, the Federalists had deserted him. Yes, he thought, I did not desert them, as they charge— it is they who have deserted me” (p. 30).

But then I also found sentences I tripped over. Kennedy wrote that radical, abolitionist Republicans made Reconstruction “a black nightmare the South never could forget.” (p. 139) Well, yes, the dozen years after the Civil War were a nightmare for most whites when northern troops enforced the Fifteenth Amendment so blacks could vote as full citizens. But was Kennedy really accepting a racist white viewpoint that this period was a disaster?

Apparently so. I was then bewildered to read, “No state suffered more from carpetbag rule than Mississippi.” Kennedy said that corruption was rampant and that taxes rose by a factor of fourteen under the state government elected in Reconstruction. “Vast areas of northern Mississippi lay in ruins” (p. 147).

Yet as historian Nicholas Lemann writes, “None of this is true.”

Only in recent decades has the fuller, more accurate story become better known of the systematic campaign to deny blacks the vote in the South after Reconstruction from 1877 to the mid-twentieth century. (See, for example, of Ken Wytsma’s The Myth of Equality, pp. 55-57.) Layer upon layer of requirements were (unequally) enforced to limit who could vote, limits “not based on race” which nonetheless somehow(!) dramatically reduced black but not white voting.

Kennedy also writes positively about even the staunchest and best-known pro-slavery Senator in U.S. history—John C. Calhoun—who, Kennedy tells us, nearly made the cut in his book as one of the Senate’s most courageous.

Given that Civil Rights is one of the chief pillars of Kennedy’s presidential legacy, what is going on? Several answers are possible.

One is that Kennedy was simply a man of his time, influenced by the northern and southern white desire to not rock the boat by dredging up all the unpleasantness of the past. Another (less courageous and more cynical) answer is that this book, published in 1956, was intended to broaden southern support for the presidential candidacy of a senator from Massachusetts in 1960.  

Kennedy was a complex person, and we should not judge him one dimensionally. We should also be generous enough to recognize that people can grow and change. Profiles in Courage likewise needs to be read more than one dimensionally.

One thing we can take away is this: we still need those most rare of political leaders—those courageous enough to stand against their party and even their own constituents in order to stand for the value of every human, the common good, and doing what is moral.

Ink-Stained Dreamers

As a lover of books and a lover of history, I found Adam Smyth’s The Book-Makers a delight. By zeroing in on a dozen and a half practitioners of the trade, Smyth gives us both a happy overview and fascinating stories of these often quirky individuals. My full review appears in the January-February 2025 edition of Christianity Today, which can also be found online. Here are a couple parts of the review that the editors left on the cutting room floor.

The chapter on an early bookbinder, William Wildgoose (yes, that really was his name) begins and ends with the tale of a wayward volume that was first housed in the famous Bodleian Library in Oxford, only to return unexpectedly three centuries later. In 1905 a young man comes in wanting advice on rebinding his ancient book. When the sub-librarian and assistant librarian inspect it closely—and then more closely!—they discover that this was once in the Bodleian’s collection, sold off as new printings became available. The book has been remarkably preserved through generations. And like someone who found a priceless pearl in a field, the Bodleian raises an enormous sum now equivalent to $300,000 to buy it back. The volume? Shakespeare’s First Folio, bound by William Wildgoose in 1623.

While zines go back a hundred years, Smyth features examples of the last few decades. The creators of these periodicals intentionally positioned them outside mainstream publishing in content and production values, often being photocopied and stapled. They knew that online existed, but they were committed to the tangibility, the physicality of their publications. They believed it provided a more multi-sensual experience that is not diluted by the digital.

Perhaps the author chose to highlight them for this very reason, as Smyth’s volume is in many ways a celebration of the physical book in all its dimensions.

Grateful for the Government?

I Must Betray You offers a dramatic window into the repressive nightmare that was the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Set in late 1989, the novel follows the story of Christian, a seventeen-year-old student in Bucharest.

The plot seamlessly introduces us to how the web of government informers and surveillance warped every aspect of life—school, family, friendships, romance, groceries, jobs, health, prisons, punishment, and protests.

A neighbor of mine who was in eighth grade in Romania when the revolution occurred, told me that this book was eerily like the life he led–food shortages, government-sponsored violence, fear of informers everywhere, restrictions on travel, jobs, and education. Like Christian in the novel, my neighbor even marched with the protestors while army soldiers with loaded weapons watched.

Some people in this country say our government is so bad it would be better to throw it away and start over. After all, things couldn’t get any worse. If we are tempted this Independence Day to think that we live in bad times, this story reminds us to be grateful for what we have—for things could be worse, much worse.

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Image by Larry White from Pixabay

Why All this Hate?

Why is so much political vitriol spewed these days, not just from politicians and commentators but from ordinary people? Why is social media full of such extreme rhetoric? Why can’t we have a simple conversation anymore?

Yes, cable news and talk radio hosts have taken advantage of our situation. And yes, there are more than 50,000 Russian-linked social-media accounts fueling outrage by sending automated messages on both sides of issues. But these only feed on a pre-existing condition.

In the last few years I’ve read four books which all give the same answer. Interestingly, two books were by conservatives, one was by a liberal, and one was by an independent observer.

What did all these agree on? That the primary cause of all this contentiousness is not political differences. Rather it is loneliness.

In his book Them, Republican Senator Ben Sasse notes that since World War II single-person households have tripled to 26 percent. Rates of depression and addiction are increasing. At the same time, “Between 1975 and 1995, membership in social clubs and community organizations such as the PTA, Kiwanis, and Rotary plummeted. Same with labor union membership and regular church attendance” (p. 26). The trend continues with Covid exacerbating the situation. The causes are multiple but the result is what Sasse calls a Loneliness Epidemic.

Second, conservative commentator David Brooks made the same point in The Second Mountain. Brooks thinks our increasing isolation from one another has led us to gravitate toward twisted forms of connection. As Brooks says, tribalism is the evil twin of community. The first is defined by who is our foe. The second by who is our friend.

In a third book, Upheaval, Jared Diamond, a scientist and historian with a more liberal bent, likewise notes that a hundred years ago Americans were involved in book clubs, bridge clubs, church groups, community organizations, town meetings, unions, veteran’s associations and more. This fostered trust and reliance on each other.

Then radio, then TV, then video games, then the internet, and then smart phones increasingly kept people in their homes. As a result, “heavy TV viewers trust other people less, and join fewer voluntary organizations than do people who are not heavy TV viewers” (p. 352). In short, we are increasingly separated from each other, increasingly isolated.

The fourth book comes from independent author Jeffrey Bilbro who is editor of Front Porch Republic. He writes in Reading the Times, “As Robert Nisbet puts it in his classic study, The Quest for Community, an individual thus alienated ‘not only does not feel a part of the social order; he has lost interest in being a part of it.’ Loneliness has now become an epidemic in Western liberal democracies. And, apparently, being lonely is worse for some¬one’s health than being a smoker.” (p. 127)

We are homeless and so search, even yearn, for new types of community, which we are finding on line. “In other words, perhaps it is because we are lonely and detached from our places that we put such outsized importance on the news of the day” (p. 129).

What can we do about this? I’ll take that up in my next installment.
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Image by Grae Dickason from Pixabay

Our Strange New World

The world is a weird place. Have you ever wondered:

♦ Why do most people, even those in Africa and Asia, wear western-styled clothing?
♦ Why do people believe that reason and science are the only ways to sure knowledge while simultaneously believing that we should make decisions by following our hearts?
♦ Why was every country in the history of the world a third world country until the 1800s?
♦ Why is soccer (aka football) the world’s most popular sport?
♦ Why are there now only six countries in the world that say they aren’t democratic when 250 years ago none said they were?
♦ Even though the western world has largely cast aside Christianity, why do we still tend to embrace the distinctly Christian values of love, freedom, justice, and human dignity?

Andrew Wilson thinks he knows the answer. And that answer is 1776.

In Remaking the World Wilson contends “that 1776, more than any other year in the last millennium, is the year that made us who we are” (p. 7). In that year we find not only the birth of democracy in the American Revolution, but also of globalization, the industrial revolution, the enlightenment, the dawn of romanticism, and the rise of our ex-Christian world.

The year 1776 saw the publication of Adam Smith’s seminal ode to capitalism (The Wealth of Nations) and of Edward Gibbon’s (Christianity was the cause of) The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That year James Watt installed the first steam engine in a commercial enterprise, and Rousseau began writing his landmark book on romanticism, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker.

But wait! There’s more!

And Wilson fills in his premise with impressive amounts of fascinating detail, vigorous synthesis, and penetrating insight. All the while he brings in contemporary illustrations from Hamilton and The Hunger Games to The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.

Yes, he overplays the point that 1776 was the critical year for everything—but not by much. His case for the importance of that decade and the late eighteenth century generally is extraordinary. More to the point, when it comes to why our world is the way it is, he exhibits vast and highly illuminating explanatory power.

Wilson closes with three Christian themes from the 1770s to help navigate the weird world that decade has bestowed on us.

Grace. We do not bear the impossible burden that our (enlightenment and romantic) world places on us of creating our own identity, status, and value. Rather, God shows his favor to us regardless of our accomplishments, intelligence, or wealth.

Freedom. Though Christians have often failed to live up to Jesus’ model of offering good news to the poor and liberty for the oppressed, we still have the opportunity to champion both. By the Spirit we can battle two opposite lies. On the one hand we can oppose the idol of materialistic (industrialized, affluent) success in the church in favor of spiritual flourishing. On the other hand, we can fight the gnostic heresy that the material world doesn’t matter by combating the lie that the physical lives of the poor and oppressed are not important.

Truth. Reality is not lodged in abstract, impersonal, scientifically verifiable principles. Rather truth is graciously personified in the Father, Son, and Spirit. Jesus, who was full of both grace and truth, again is our model. We dare not separate the two.

If you want to understand what’s going on in the world today and respond to it fruitfully, don’t follow the news. Instead read my “Book of the Year”—Remaking the World.

Being a True Patriot

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Original sin is not a popular notion. You sure won’t find Oprah supporting it. The idea that we are born with a tendency to do wrong, to be selfish, to ignore the common good is just downright unAmerican.

As McKenzie notes in We the Fallen People, “A New York Times poll found that 73 percent of Americans believed that humans are born good. A 2014 Lifeway survey found that two-thirds (67 percent) of respondents believe that ‘most people are by nature good’” [250-51].

Today we live in what Tom Wolfe called the “Me Generation” and what David Brooks labeled in The Road to Character as the age of “the Big Me.” Yet, contrary to popular opinion, our sinful nature is, as Chesterton once observed, the only Christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable.*

Admitting our flaws and weaknesses is the first step to improvement. That goes for us as individuals and as a country. As I’ve noted over several blog posts (beginning here), McKenzie makes the case that the Founders of America had a very different view of human makeup than we do today. They believed so strongly in our flawed natures that they structured the Constitution on this foundational idea to protect us from ourselves. McKenzie writes:

There’s nothing unpatriotic about acknowledging moral failures in our country’s past. G. K. Chesterton emphasized this truth over a century ago in his classic work Orthodoxy. In its essence, patriotism is less an expression of pride than a commitment to love a particular human community, and authentic love “is not blind,” Chesterton observed. “That is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound, the less it is blind.” Never for a minute accept the false dichotomy that pits patriotism against an honest acknowledgment of America’s failures and flaws. Because love binds rather than blinds, we are free to criticize our country without somehow betraying it. [259]

Living out a conviction of original sin will require that we confess the allure of power, acknowledge the danger of power, and work proactively to mitigate the abuse of power. If we accept the reality of original sin, we’ll know that the seductiveness of power is fueled by our self-interested nature. . . .

Heeding their [the Founders’] warning is complicated by two obstacles. First, in our heart of hearts we doubt that it really applies to us. Too much power may be dangerous in the hands of Nazis or Democrats or our teenage children, but we’re confident that we can be trusted. Second, we are blinded by our preoccupation with the present, unaware of how much the fall has left us short-sighted as well as selfish. [272]

It will require agreeing with the Framers that power is dangerous whoever wields it, not just when it is controlled by our political rivals. [279]

Criticizing the nation or the government is not disloyalty. Those from the right and the left do it all the time. True patriotism is love of country, celebrating what is good, and wanting what is best for all, but not blind loyalty. It is also admitting flaws in our past and in our present. Only then can we move from the good toward the better.

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*G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908; repr., New York: Image Books, 2001), 8-9, noted in We the Fallen People, p. 70.

Image by Clarence Alford from Pixabay

The Perils of Religion and Politics

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Should religion and politics mix? Many today decry the involvement of “evangelicals” while others hail their impact. Religion has always had an influence. But are there better ways and worse ways to do it?

In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his classic Democracy in America that the clergy wielded extraordinary and positive influence in the country. How did they do it? Counterintuitively, they succeeded precisely because they deliberately distanced themselves from political parties.

As Robert Tracy McKenzie, in his landmark book, We the Fallen People, summarizes it,

It is by keeping all political parties at arms’ length, Tocqueville concludes, that America’s religious leaders have helped to make religion “the first of America’s political institutions.” By eschewing power, they have grown in influence. But note that this influence is indirect. “Religion in the United States never intervenes directly in government,” Tocqueville explains. “One cannot say” that it “influences the laws or the specifics of political opinion.” What it does is influence American mores, and it influences mores because “Christianity maintains more actual power over souls in America than anywhere else.” (p. 239)

McKenzie highlights Tocqueville’s exceptionally clear explanation of why direct identification with a party is so problematic for Christians, though really for any religion. This French aristocrat and nominal Christian shows a clearer understanding of the priority that the gospel should have over politics than many today.

American clergy in the 1830s recognized what so many contemporary Christian leaders have forgotten—namely, that political influence always comes at a cost to the church. When Christians ally themselves with a particular political leader or party, the church “increases its power over some but gives up hope of reigning over all.” The reason for this [writes Tocqueville] is straightforward: “Religion cannot share the material might of those who govern without incurring some of the hatred they inspire.” (p. 239)

I have friends, and perhaps you do as well, who have turned their backs on Christianity because they so disagree with the current policies and actions of the Republican party. Since they see so many Christians aligned with that party and its candidates, they reject Christianity too.

While those of us who are committed Christians are clearly called to support the causes of justice, this should not be at the cost of bearing witness to the kingdom. Indeed, many conservative Christians claim that the most important thing they can do is spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet they seem quite willing to sacrifice that on the altar of political power.

In a recent article Tim Keller echoes this sentiment:

In a polarized environment, white evangelicals’ strong identification with one party and one presidential candidate has produced deep and hostile reactions from the 50% of the country opposed to this political platform. And, in general, the 50% that it has alienated is younger and more multi-ethnic. Many fundamentalists consider this a victory, rather than a defeat. My informal perception is that many conservative Protestants voted for Donald Trump, but did so with far less enthusiasm or approval than fundamentalist Christians. But in any case, the identification of conservative religion with the political Right is now very strong in the public mind, and is a turn-off [to the Christian faith] to a large percentage of the populace.

Let me be clear. The reverse can and has happened. Some churches have been so identified with left-leaning politics that they also alienate half the population to the faith.

The separation of church and state is not just a good idea for the state. It’s good for the church too. One of the reasons the church in Europe has become so weak in recent centuries is that many countries have a state-sponsored religion. Two centuries ago Tocqueville saw that this practice generates disdain for the religion associated with detested political structures. Maintaining separation gives the church more influence in society morally and spiritually.

Should the church exercise public moral leadership? Yes. Work for justice and social reform? Yes. Become identified corporately with one party or candidate? No.

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Image by alila1 from Pixabay

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of We the Fallen People from the Publisher. My opinions are my own.

Why a Flawed Democracy Worked

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What has made democracy in America work despite its drawbacks?

One weakness Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his classic Democracy in America sounds all too familiar today. In the 1830s he saw that the most noble and qualified people were seldom elected. Instead those who won office often bowed to the lower impulses of the electorate rather than courageously doing what was right in the face of public opinion.

Another problem he spotted is also eerily familiar. Elected officials regularly offered simplistic answers which cannot hold in the face of complex problems. “An idea that is clear and precise even though false,” Tocqueville observed, “will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true and complex” (p. 194). That is so whether the ideas come from the right or the left.

Why then, he wondered, did democracy still work in America? One reason he gave is geography. The country was so vast and open while the government was so small that it could not easily involve itself with the citizenry. In addition there is so much cultivatable land that the average citizen could prosper, adding stability to the country and the government.

A second reason was the Constitution with its brilliant collection of checks and balances (discussed in a previous post here).

Third were the country’s mores. Mores is a squishy term, but Robert Tracy McKenzie in his own exceptional book, We the Fallen People helpfully summarizes it and Tocqueville as a whole. Mores are “the common beliefs and values that shaped the ways that whites in Jacksonian America interacted with each other and their government” (p. 228).

Tocqueville labeled one such key belief as “self-interest, properly understood” united with Christian ideals. “The first trained them to believe that their short-term desires could betray their long-term self-interest. The second [Christian ideals] warned them that what they had the power to do was not always morally proper to do.

“What unified these seemingly disparate dispositions is that they both inculcated what Tocqueville calls ‘habits of restraint.’ In essence, both their religious beliefs and their commitment to ‘self-interest, properly understood’ conditioned Americans to question the wisdom of their natural impulses. To the degree that they did so, they discouraged a supremely self-confident and all-powerful majority from becoming agents of tyranny” (p. 229).

Americans lived by “enlightened” self-interest. It’s a big question whether we still do so now. Not only do children today rarely exhibit the virtue of delayed gratification; adults have trouble as well. Credit card debt is just one case in point. Concern for our economic well-being now can overwhelm long-term considerations for the Social Security system, the national debt, the environment, the country’s infrastructure, immigration, and more.

The appeal of both long-term self-interest and religion have diminished in recent decades. In the next post in this series we will consider how religion might have a more beneficial role in society.

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Image by Mustafa Kücük – v. Gruenewaldt from Pixabay

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of We the Fallen People from the Publisher. My opinions are my own.

Where We Are All Above Average

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You’ve seen the surveys. Most people think they are more friendly, more intelligent, more honest than average—an obvious impossibility.

We have a hard time seeing ourselves objectively. We are just too close, and too likely to accentuate our virtues and minimize our weaknesses. It’s true of groups (sometimes called ethnocentrism) as well as individuals. How can we then get an accurate view? An outside assessment can help.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic Democracy in America gave Americans just that. Writing after his extended visit and intense investigation into Jacksonian America in the 1830s, Tocqueville admired Americans for their freedom and hard work but was cautious of their overly congratulatory view of themselves. In this caution, Tocqueville’s thinking lined up with the Framers of the Constitution (see here).

People are and always will be a combination of “good instincts” and “wicked inclinations.” We are not getting better and better every day in every way. Human nature with its flaws and strengths has remained constant for thousands of years. (Are we more advanced, more civilized now than five thousand years ago? With 160 million or more killed for political reasons in the twentieth century, it is hard to argue it is so.)

Individuals embody this mix of traits as much as groups. Power, therefore, always carries dangers, regardless of whether a group or an individual wields it.

As Robert Tracy McKenzie summaries this in his outstanding, wide-ranging book We the Fallen People, “Power is always a threat to liberty and justice. This probably seems obvious under a monarchy or dictatorship, but Tocqueville is warning us that it holds no less true for a democracy” (p. 204).

Examples abound in American history including the forceable removal of thousands of Cherokees from Georgia under Jackson’s administration. Tocqueville didn’t think we should do away with democracy because of such problems. Democracy has many blessings. But we do ourselves a disservice when we fail to openly acknowledge that tyranny of the majority has happened here and that it can happen again. Therefore, we must always be on our guard—even from those we agree with who can also exercise that tyranny.

Tocqueville’s own family history made him sharply aware of this dynamic. Five of his relatives were guillotined (along with thousands of others) by the passions of a democratic majority in the French Revolution forty years before, and his parents were traumatized by the events for the rest of their lives.

Tocqueville viewed democracy in America with clear-eyed realism. He knew that both “Indians and Negroes suffer the effects of tyranny.” So while he did not have unalloyed faith in democracy, he nonetheless did have hope for it (despite his family’s history).

He saw its benefits at least among the white population, a diverse group by European standards. This country of immigrants was “a society compounded of all the nations of the world. People each having a language, a belief, different opinions: in a word, a society lacking roots, memories, prejudices, habits, common ideas, a national character” (p. 220). Yet in his view they were freer and more prosperous than any such population in Europe.

What made democracy in America work despite its drawbacks? That is the topic of the next post in this series.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of We the Fallen People from the Publisher. My opinions are my own.