The glory of American order

As Americans celebrate yet another Independence Day, we must consider again what makes America possible, and what makes America great. Russell Kirk, one of the most insightful interpreters of American peril and promise, once observed that order is a necessary prerequisite to liberty. Without order, liberty is impossible, and the only liberty that can survive over time is an ordered liberty—which means liberty grounded in something substantial.

As Kirk argued, “To protest against the existence of order is to protest against well-being, justice, freedom, and prosperity.” The good things that come as American promises must rest on something solid and cannot survive on their own. The American order, and the American achievement of ordered liberty, were established upon an order of truth, principle, virtue, reason, morality, and self-government. Those who founded this nation understood this order full well, and they understood the fragility of the nation if the foundation of American order were to be subverted, forgotten, or even weakened.

The tradition of American order reaches back to Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, directed and inspired by prophets and teachers and statesmen. Americans are the inheritors of an unprecedented experiment in ordered liberty that has now reached 250 years, but faces unprecedented challenges.

Modern Americans often misinterpret, not only Independence Day, but independence itself. The way many Americans tell the story claims that Americans sought to break with Britain and King George III through some act of national exuberance or libertarian utopianism. The founders of the nation did, as a matter of fact, declare a break with Britain. But the break they declared was not the undoing of one civilization and the founding of something breathtakingly new. The American dream of independence came only out of the frustration colonial Americans had experienced while trying to get the British king to offer relief from unfair taxation, imposed by Parliament.

Eventually, the Americans came to see themselves as a new nation, and they came to that conclusion only after, in their view, King George III had abdicated his rightful role on their behalf. At the same time, the new Americans were determined to improve upon the British political system and to create a new political order of the ages.

And yet, the American order is more rightly seen as a natural improvement on the British order. Eventually, the new order would eclipse the old. Even before July 4, 1776, some statesmen in Britain had come to the conclusion that American independence was inevitable. For one thing, America could (and did) become a transcontinental nation, possessing what appeared to be limitless abundance, resources, and strategic strength. Even at the time, Britain was an island nation that could support only a fraction of the population and power America could achieve. Though its independence was hard won, and the new nation faced unprecedented challenges, this new order seemed to be driven by limitless promise.

Now, 250 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, the American order faces new challenges. At this point, the great danger to the American order is not external, though hostile powers do threaten. The real danger to the American order comes from within. The danger of decadence looms large and the arrogance of overreach, so tempting to great powers, is always close at hand.

But the greatest danger to American order is not produced by our fractious politics. No, this danger has produced our political perils. The greatest danger to the American order is the subversion of order itself. We are living in an age of unparalleled moral peril. Furthermore, we are living in a time of radical moral experimentation and a clash of toxic ideologies. Add to these perils the truth that many Americans living today do not even value order or acknowledge truth. Millions of Americans seem to believe that we can destroy America’s ordered liberty and replace it with disordered liberty—which is precisely what many people living today want and demand.

As Kirk noted, “To live within a just order is to live within a pattern that has beauty. The individual finds purpose within an order, and security—whether it is the order of the soul or the order of the community. Without order, indeed the life of man is poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Those are stern and necessary words of warning. American liberty will not survive if it is severed from truth, principle, morality, and respect. Those were virtues that came to life in the Declaration of Independence and, just a few years later, in the Constitution. For the vast majority of Americans of the founding era, those virtues were deeply and explicitly rooted in the Christian faith. The rights claimed by the Americans were those endowed by our Creator. They were not merely the creation of political theorists backed up with a colonial militia.

This Fourth of July, we must pray and work for a new national commitment to the distinctively American achievement of ordered liberty. If such a recovery happens, it will come only as a result of the retrieval of American principles that rest upon truth. The 250th anniversary of America’s foundational act, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, should bring this nation great joy, prompt earnest prayer, and inspire national recommitment. America’s Christians should be at the forefront of efforts to achieve this recovery, for we must understand how rare it is that such a nation should even exist, much less exist for a quarter of a millennium.

Happy Independence Day—and may God bless and preserve the United States of America. May the glory of America’s ordered liberty be lasting, and not a fading glory.