For those who enjoy being depressed or for our enemies abroad, I have bad news. America is still fundamentally sound and is not about to go away.
How do I know? This very traditional Christian is in Berkeley and is reminded that (all things considered) he has much more in common with the folks here than he does with our enemies abroad. The sinews that bind our nation still exist and are strong.
We love our Constitution, our freedoms, and our flag. Our civil religion may be weaker, but it is still very strong. Don’t underestimate us.
My family spends the best week of our summer each year with Phil and Kathie Johnson . . . and for the past couple of years this has meant spending the Fourth of July in Berkeley California.
Berkeley may be the most misunderstood city in America . . . at least amongst my friends. There image of the city is frozen in the sixties, but the sixties are almost fifty years ago. Berkeley radicals of that era are retiring not running things.
They imagine a dangerous place . . . or a weird place . . . but the good news is that Berkeley is fundamentally a university town (a world class university town). Universities are not radical places, but exciting ones. They need calm to operate with most of the ferment of the intellectual sort. Berkley students one sees (and it is the summer!) are very serious . . . since it is difficult to get into Berkeley and the intellectual program is quite demanding. For anyone who loves the life of the mind, the air of Berkeley is invigorating!
There is also an active Christian presence in the city . . .beginning (and certainly not ending) with the stalwart First Presbyterian Berkeley where Phil and Kathie attend. There is a subversive Orthodox book store . . . a Wesleyan study center and Westminster House where each summer Torrey students come for three weeks to learn in a major University hub. Who would not want to live with the families of Fred and Susan Sanders, Paul and Lisa Spears, and collection of other Torrey faculty while watching Shakespeare outdoors and combing the endless bookstores!
The city itself is charming.
Phil Johnson once commented that the result of Berkeley radicalism in the sixties was to carefully preserve the charm of Berkeley in the sixties. This is true. Berkeley still has the small city feel . . . with small shops and stores and McDonalds carefully hidden away (though doing booming business from what I can see).
Berkeley is also a great reminder of why being “green†can be conservative, Christian, and good. It is after the job of conservatives to conserve . . . and this includes the world in which we are stewards. Some of us act like the imperious steward of Gondor in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. We are stewards who do not remember that we will be called to give an account of our rule when the King returns. I for one hope not to have built dark Satanic mills all over this green and pleasant land!
Whatever their motives, the folk on the Berkeley city council have done as Tolkien (!) would have urged them to do as far as nature goes. They have kept as many parks as possible, tried to control pollution, and not
Of course during the summer the people who live and work here actually may out number college students at events, but it is always encouraging to me to go to the fireworks at the Berkeley marina. Families, looking like families have always looked at such things, munch hot dogs and little faces are painted . . . some of the booths are odd, but then this is a good reminder of freedom of speech and association on this day.
I saw no evidence that anyone was unhappy with the Constitution of 1789. There was no Marxism in the air . . . lots of red, white, and blue and very little discontent. Berkeley will not vote for my presidential candidate of choice (Romney!), but it will vote. And that is good news . . . because it means the civil order is fundamentally sound.
The War is unpopular all over California and if bumper stickers are any indication even more so here. But revolution is not in the air . . . and I attended an event on an old World War II transport ship that some brilliant folk are restoring that had ever bit of the “support our troops†feel as any in West Virginia.
Berkeley on the Fourth reminds me (and it should remind many of my friends) that if we have a choice between losing this round of the culture war or the real War on Terror we should opt for a short term defeat in the culture war.
Much of the left in the United States will go on letting us educate our own children, say what we please, and working hard to restore traditional values to the center of the nation. They have fundamentally accepted our ideas . . . the ideas of the Founding Fathers, the Declaration, and the Constitution of 1789.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to see a Clinton presidency (insert shudder here), but there are worse things. One of them would be the triumph of the bully boys in Tehran and the terrorists in Bagdad. They are a different kind of foe altogether . . . and though I think the Left in America is naïve and will harm our War against the bad guys . . . most Americans may not agree with me.
The left (or the Democratic Party) is a complex thing . . . and millions of members (especially in the African-American community) have traditional values and faith. I heard it with my own ears! Richard Dawkins would not have liked what he heard last night! Too much God and country still here in Berkeley . . . secularism is weak in the United States on the ground . . . even in left-of-center bastions where it should be strongest!
It is a disease of a few of the elite on the right and the left and it is radical secularism and radical Islam that I fear in this present age.
So I will work hard to persuade my fellow Americans that they are wrong . . . and that the War is essential, but I will not confuse that kind of “war†with the shooting war that must happen abroad. Berkeley on the Fourth reminds me that America still has some mileage in her yet!
