Former President Donald Trump did a live interview last night with Elon Musk on X. Though the event was plagued with technical difficulties, more than one million people listened to their wide-ranging conversation on immigration, inflation, education, and the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life. The interview was part of Musk’s $160 million push to win eight hundred thousand voters in battleground states for Mr. Trump.
Amid the political fervor of our day, here’s a different approach: Omena, a small town in northern Michigan, just elected a horse as their mayor. This is news because the office has only been held by a dog in the past, except for one time when a cat won the election.
One resident explained their political culture: “All politics are stupid. But at least we’re having fun with it, and we’re still friends at the end of the day.”
“The equal of every one of you”
Omena’s political disclaimer notwithstanding, America was birthed by a brilliant political process that declared our independence and forged our republic. And it was nearly destroyed by a subversive political process that failed our ideals and threatened our nation.
In The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, acclaimed historian Erik Larson tells the gripping story of events and people that led to our nation’s bloodiest conflict. In brief, the South saw the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as the end of slavery and resolved to secede from the Union in response. For example, the Charlotte Mercury urged that if Mr. Lincoln won, every slaveholding state should secede immediately.
It’s hard for us to understand today how fervently some in the South defended the institution of slavery. Going back to our beginnings, some tragically viewed Africans and indigenous Americans as inherently inferior races. With regard to the latter, the settlement of their land by Europeans was seen as a step toward their education and cultural advancement. With regard to the former, many claimed that they were better off enslaved to Europeans and white colonists.
For example, James Clement Furman, a prominent Baptist minister and first president of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, published an open paper on November 22, 1860, that encapsulated the South’s great fear if slavery were to be abolished: “Then every negro in South Carolina and every other Southern State will be his own master; nay, more than that, will be the equal of every one of you.”
Larson quotes an Atlanta newspaper that similarly warned before the Civil War: “We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of the South who does not boldly declare that he or she believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing.”
“Hope to the world for all future time”
By contrast, many in the North saw Mr. Lincoln’s election over more strident abolitionists as a step toward moderation and away from civil war. As Larson writes, “At no time had he threatened to abolish slavery or emancipate the millions of enslaved men and women who populated the plantations of the South.”
However, many secession advocates in the South claimed just the opposite. As a result, in the few Southern states where his name was included on the ballot, he garnered few votes. In Virginia, he received just over 1 percent; Kentucky, the state of his birth, gave him less than 1 percent.
Nonetheless, Mr. Lincoln was elected our sixteenth president and soon began making his way to Washington, DC, for his inauguration. Along the way, he stopped in Philadelphia, where our Declaration of Independence was signed.
There he identified the promise that “all should have an equal chance” (his emphasis) as “the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” According to Mr. Lincoln, this sentiment “gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.”
Less than six weeks after his inauguration, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Civil War was on.
“Sojourners and exiles”
The declaration that “all men are created equal” does indeed give “hope to the world for all future time.” It sounds the death knell to communism, monarchy, autocracy, theocracy, and all other forms of political oppression. But the underlying forces that threatened it in the run-up to the Civil War are still with us.
What Nietzsche called the “will to power” is still the foundational drive of fallen humanity. We seek to be our own god (Genesis 3:5) by asserting our superiority and authority over others on the basis of their race, gender, economic status, or a multitude of other factors.
This “will” does not die when we trust in Christ. On the contrary, we must choose every day to submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). If we do not, it’s because we still seek to be our own god, to use God and others as a means to our ends.
Here’s the way forward:
“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11).
Let’s take these steps today:
- Claim the fact that we are God’s “beloved,” loved unconditionally by our Father. We are free to serve others whether or not they serve us because our personal worth is guaranteed by our Lord.
- Live as “sojourners and exiles” passing through this temporary world on the way to our heavenly home. Use temporal means to serve eternal souls.
- Choose to “abstain from the passions of the flesh” by remembering that they “wage war against [our] soul” and always cost us more than they pay.
When we make these steps our lifestyle, we defeat the “will to power” and point the way to a politics of commonality, community, and unity.
Is there a greater imperative in our broken culture today?
Tuesday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“The measure of love is to love without measuring.” —St. Augustine
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