April 03, 2014
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Back in the dear old 1950s, when Western Civilization reached its zenith, Edward R. Murrow ran a regular radio spot titled This I Believe, to which persons both eminent and obscure contributed brief spoken essays on the title topic. You can hear Murrow’s original introduction to the series on YouTube.
The series fired off a micro-genre of books and broadcast programs on the same pattern. This micro-genre resurfaced most recently on National Public Radio, with a subsequent series of books.
Murrow’s show may also have inspired the pop song I Believe, written soon afterward. The cover version by an Irish group, The Bachelors, seemed to play continuously on British radio and TV in the early 1960s, interrupted only by the weather reports.
I thought I”d have a go at this theme, as much for my own benefit as for readers” (no offense). Writing is an excellent way to clarify your own thoughts. So … What do I believe in?
The individual person. The strangeness, the quirkiness, the infinite variety even of normal human persons seems very wonderful to me. I am strongly hostile to attempts to make us uniform. Let a hundred flowers bloom.
Liberty. With all the missteps and false trails, with all the frustrations and sorrows, nothing is sweeter than finding your own way through adult life, free of coercion, with no one but yourself to blame for the negatives. That’s the precondition for human flourishing.
Liberty of course comes in different flavors. Historian David Hackett Fischer identifies four liberty traditions just in the U.S.A.: ordered liberty (Puritans), hegemonic liberty (Virginia), reciprocal liberty (Quakers), and natural liberty (the frontier). Mine’s a natural.
Private life. For some people the public sphere is where the satisfactions are, and private life comes second. Think of Meryl Streep’s marriage falling apart in The Devil Wears Prada. I”ve known some of this type, and history shows many.
I”m the opposite type. Ninety-five percent of my happiness comes from family and friends. News stories like this one make me shudder with horror.
Population genetics. Throughout the history of our species, most humans have mated with neighboring humans. The result is a patchwork of local, mostly-inbred populations, each with a distinctive statistical profile on genetically-influenced traits. That includes traits of behavior, intelligence, and personality.
To say “I believe in population genetics” is a bit like saying “I believe in arithmetic.” Of course this is the case! And of course the differences are statistical, with much overlap and many mutts.
The nation-state. World government seems to me a stupidly preposterous idea, a recipe for tyranny. Most of what globalist organizations do is evil. I”ll make a few exceptions for things like the WHO, but they”d add up to no more than a small fraction of the total. Most globalism is anti-human.
A modestly sized, fairly compact region under a single political system offers the best opportunity for human flourishing as I”ve described it above. And while modest size, geographic compactness, and political unity are necessary, I don”t believe they are sufficient. Yes, I believe in …
