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The Long Voyage Home

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mwkruse
in

New York Times: The Long Voyage Home (David Brooks)

Republicans generally like Westerns. They generally admire John Wayne-style heroes who are rugged, individualistic and brave. They like leaders — from Goldwater to Reagan to Bush to Palin — who play up their Western heritage. Republicans like the way Westerns seem to celebrate their core themes — freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity.

But the greatest of all Western directors, John Ford, actually used Westerns to tell a different story. Ford’s movies didn’t really celebrate the rugged individual. They celebrated civic order.

For example, in Ford’s 1946 movie, “My Darling Clementine,” Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp, the marshal who tamed Tombstone. But the movie isn’t really about the gunfight and the lone bravery of a heroic man. It’s about how decent people build a town. Much of the movie is about how the townsfolk put up a church, hire a teacher, enjoy Shakespeare, get a surgeon and work to improve their manners.

The movie, in other words, is really about religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community. In Ford’s movie, as in real life, the story of Western settlement is the story of community-building. Instead of celebrating untrammeled freedom and the lone pioneer, Ford’s movies dwell affectionately on the social customs that Americans cherish — the gatherings at the local barbershop and the church social, the gossip with the cop and the bartender and the hotel clerk.

Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order. …

Preach it brother Brooks.

Comments

5 responses to “The Long Voyage Home”

  1. ceemac Avatar
    ceemac

    The great challenge is keeping community and civic order in the right balance. To much emphasis on order can stifle the devlopment of authentic community. A polite society is not automatically a community.
    I think we stuggle with this tension all the time in the context of our presbyteries.
    Did you ever read the book “The Lost City” about the rise and demise of 3 sections of Chicago?
    I recall a line like this: You can have unlimted choice or you can have community. But you cannot have both.
    Don’t recall the author but I think he was part of that group of folks called “Communitarians” that gathered a lot of ink circa 1995.

    Reply
  2. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Not familiar with Lost City. I looked it up at Amazon.
    I think both conservatism and liberalism are alternative means to the same end: Personal autonomy. One wants it through utter independence and the other through government subsidy and enforcement.
    There other options besides the self-made individual and a society run by a national government. The intermediary institutions between individuals and government are the key.

    Reply
  3. Peter+ Avatar
    Peter+

    Both Neo-Calvinism and Catholic Social Teaching lift up the need for intermediary institutions. I think your ideas (and what Brook’s scratches at here) resonate with those systems.

    Reply
  4. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Don’t know that I’m Neo-Calvinist but I do think there is a bit of Kuyper running in my veins. 🙂

    Reply
  5. John Avatar
    John

    The evidence re the rottenness now at the core of the GOP is that Russ Limbaugh is now championed as the authentic voice of “conservatism” in the USA—poor fellow your country.
    Me-thinks that Wendell Berry has always articulated and lived a truly conservative voice in modern USA politics and culture.
    His philosophy was essentially an extension an a variation on the Small Is Beautiful philosophy espoused by E F Schumacher back in the 70’s and 80’s, before the big is better technocratic “realists” took over with the encouragement of Thatcher and Reagan.
    The conservative world-view that Berry espouses can be found via this marvellous magazine.
    http://www.orionmagazine.org
    That of E F Schumacher
    http://www.resurgence.org
    Small Is Beautiful being the only school wherein a truly humanising culture can be cultivated, and flourish.

    Reply

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