The Eagle: American Vision in Flight and our Uncancellable History

"With this, Menelaus left them, looking round him as keenly as an eagle, whose sight they say is keener than any other bird—however high he may be in the heavens, not a hare that runs can escape him by crouching under a bush or thicket, for he will swoop down upon it and make an end of it”. Homer, The Iliad.

Of the many bestial similies made by Homer in The Iliad, the eagle, a beast of the air, is recalled and described for its exceptional vision and ability to see its prey for miles, four to eight times the capacity of the human eye with 20/20 vision. There has been no more pressing a time then now to learn from the wisdom and foresight in the ancient symbol of the eagle beloved of the United States, synonymous with independence and the vision and foresight of that Declaration in 1776.

As we face a political 'tide of War' (Homer) within our own borders, what is emerging is a literary army of citizens of every political tribe, flocking to ideas and shared vision and in our bunkers of writing platforms: Symposium, Substack, Medium, Pluribus, Merion West and underground havens of free speech—we think, we write, we debate—under the radar of a pernicious media regimented and armed with propaganda. The notions and reflections on self-government hanging by the gape of renewed vision, greater than our combined collective and individual grievances, are on the American mind, pulsing in the veins of our rebellious heritage, a new National self-adjustment—a renewed freedom rests under the hallux talons of the Great Eagle.

A freedom, if we can keep it.

The symbol of the eagle has crowned just about every culture. The Native Americans elevated it to leadership, strength and vision. Aztec culture wrapped itself in its majestic feathers and it can be found on the coat of arms of the African nations of Namibia, South Africa and Zambia as a sign of hope and strength. Consider the double headed eagle, one looking East, the other West on the Russian Coat of Arms, its geographical and cultural axis of former Roman and Byzantine Empires. For the ancient Greeks it was a symbol of courage, strength and immortality, a messenger of Zeus who sent two eagles to establish the spiritual center for the Greek world: Oracle of Delphi.Their idea of sight was synonymous with prophecy.

For America, the eagle is a symbol of independence, determination, laser-eyed focus and a vision that fittingly produced powered Aviation by prompting two brothers to do the impossible. From humble beginnings as bicycle salesman and publishers, they soared the skies of progress—the event a cause for domestic rejoicing and a propeller for the future of commercial flying. It was the moment that defied Alexander Hamilton‘s prediction that anticipated the jealousy of Great Britain: “clipping the wings by which we might soar to a dangerous greatness”. (Hamilton, 1788)

History of our Republic

“Where there is no vision, the people perish” Proverbs 29:18.

The dictates of cancel culture would have us frame the Founding Fathers hegemonious authors when infact it was they who through the writing of the Declaration were overthrowing what they considered hegemony: King George III and British Parliament’s exploitation of our land and people. The more diverse we became as a Nation the more vindicated was their vision; the genius of our Constitution. The only threat to that vision will be when citizens relinquish their desire for self-governance, and embrace a disguised benevolent government:

the subjects of a despot, unlike citizens of a republic, do not enjoy any measure of self-government and the subjects of absolute rule lack the sort of freedom possessed by citizens under constitutional government. (Adler, 1952)

What is a Nation and who are we?

The founders would say that we are neither the children of antiquity or the daughters of Europe but our own persons: “Behold I am doing a new thing” Isaiah 43:19, our own prophecy. The American spirit was about getting out from the yoke of European superiority. We had the advantage of keeping a store house of her great philosophies and wisdom of the ages with a passion for making them new without having “suffered a blind veneration of antiquity, for customs or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own common sense” (Madison,1788)—Grit and an extravagant pragmatism their magna carta, Latin and Classics the drink they would not put down.

These self-made framers were nonetheless instructed at the bosom of a “European” classical education, an essential connection to our Western roots, combined with a biblical formation that would inspire enlightened self-interest—the Golden Rule. They were part of the Great Conversation, conversed with the greatest minds and sat at the nave of ancient Classics buttressed by the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The soul bearing psalms of David comforted them in uncertainty and the wisdom of King Solomon would council them in their leap of faith in "a government of the people, for the people, by the people”. (Lincoln,1863)

By the end of secondary school, most of the Founding Father’s would have digested Vergil, Horace, Justinian, Caesar, Tacitus, Lucretius, Phaedrus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato in their original Greek and Latin. Without this “European” classical education there would be no Constitution or Independence as they needed to learn the lessons of antiquity from ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, to medieval kingdoms in order to form a more perfect union and master the art of persuasion to achieve that Declaration. On a practical matter, our freedom depended on their ability to debate! What would that empire look like? They needed a plan, a unified vision. Would we honor our country’s original character?

America’s glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice. (John Quincy Adams, 1821)

From careful study of the ancient models and other forms of government, the Constitution was written leaving no stone unturned. The founders like the eagle searched high and low for the weaknesses that would fracture it. Hamilton’s realism and sober awareness of the nature of man set the corner stone of our Republic: the Constitution was not so much written for an ideal people as it was drafted as protection against the worst of character. Our form of government is perhaps the least utopic and yet has boasted the most domestic peace, until now.

The founders staged an exhaustive study of societies from Grecian Republics, confederate in nature, City States, its leagues and systems of governing. They swept the temples of monarchies, hierarchies, democracy’s and Scottish clanship to see if there were any good societies left to emulate as they took council from the pages of history from Plutarch to Grotius. They found that even the best models fell prey to men’s passions and desire to rule, aware that men will always seek power and power corrupts when left unrestrained.

From this mindful expedition a new Declaration was born but a well educated citizenry would be key to actuating those tenants of liberty. As far back as the 1830’s De Tocqueville praised the regular American for knowing the science of politics and being able to “distinguish...the obligations created by the laws of Congress from those created by the laws of his own State” and know the “limit of the...Federal Courts and those tribunals of the State". (De Tocqueville,1835)

Education Lost

That era would fade along with the dust bowl of the 1930’s. Our land of intellectual prosperity would fail to yield and we would fall into a great depression—the ‘Closing of the American mind’ (Bloom, 1987), the fallen Empire of our Education. The most tragic aftermath of a failed education system is that we left the articles and deliberations of our Nation unread:

To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized the West it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is leave them unread for a few generations. (Hutchins, Adler, 1952)

And this is what we did. We were not taught ancient languages or Classical texts or the Federalist Papers. Alexis de Tocqueville our fellow Patriot in the shaping of our Democracy, an admirer of our decentralized system is a stranger to most curriculums today, his own American prophecy realized before our eyes: “the tyranny of the majority, the soft despotism of modern equality" (De Tocqueville,1835). The Universities exchanged the academic disciplines of Philosophy handed down to us from the pure streams of Parnassus for watered down humanities, robbing our minds of critical thinking and the wisdom that even in error there is truth to be found—authentic Liberalism. We were left to feed on the crumbs of a corporatized pedagogy, learn history from imposters of Liberalism and accept a concept of patriotism that closer resembled a stuffed bald eagle made in China at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. It created a generation that lacks the zeal for big ideas and an ignorance of the freedoms attained. Those ‘enlightened’ professors replaced the delight of learning and the contemplation of truth with political ethnography and a despotic social justice, breeding ground for all the factions Hamilton predicted 233 years ago. Are we not greater than the total sum of our races, creeds, and religious denominations? “There is neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor free” Galations 3:28. We could have also turned to (Renan, 1882) for that:

man is a reasonable and moral being before he is penned up in this or that language, a member of this or that race, or a participant in this or that culture

Without revisiting the wisdom of the ages and the study of philosophy, the lines become murky as the rill of a brook clouded by clusters of heavy leaves, between the General Will and the Individual within a Community, Natural Rights; Right to Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and Individual Rights, those protected under constitutional amendments from interference from the government. We confuse Liberty with License; we are free to do what is right not to do harm. As a result, there has been a wave of confusion over Individual Rights vs the Common Good despite centuries of thought on the subject. The philosophy of the relationship between the two is embedded in our Constitution —that united self-interest. What an individual does to achieve personal happiness (that pursuit can only be good in its true sense of goodness) not happiness at the expense of someone else, is a force toward the common good because it is not coerced, it is voluntary and builds a habit in the private citizen to want that same good for another person. This kind of civic philantropia, is the badge of patriotism. On the other hand:

Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good (Washington,1778)

The State’s solution is in incentives and those are as numerous as people under the influence of human motivation. This is when a hidden moral code occasionally makes appearances as no legislative law can substitute for the general will of the soul, limited by the social contract. A perversion of the common good as seen in Socialist systems is the giving up of private property for the ‘common good', which is in violation of “required justice” (Hegel, 1820) as property is the outward act of the free person.

What can unite us again is language, the language of the Great Conversation that which the State has no benefit in pursuing as it finds no financial gain in 'leisure' as the Greeks coined it; enriching the mind and soul with universal truths and raising independent free thinkers. A Trivium movement has already taken flight in our country by individuals wanting to impart the lost tools of learning to raise a whole culture and our diversity in all its forms will be its proof--a rebuilt ‘shining city on a hill’. Its achievement will not come from novelty or from it being radical in nature but from the ancient canons of learning passed onto a new generation in the practice of virtue as our freedoms depend on it:

The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. —They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies. (Adams,1776)

The ultimate portal for American vision would be through the private diffused ownership of classical learning. That is the Parnassus of reform, the summit and home of the Greek muses, and the vision that might see us through our Dark Age; the hope that those mountain springs would reach the valley for everyone to draw and form habits of mind to their best ability. We might not all become geniuses but we must be made human.

The words of the Founding Fathers are as beneficial to us as the Greek Philosophers were to them. Without the ideals that were set before us by previous generations even those unattainable, we will continue to trade in our human longing for corporate personhood, a slave class, perpetually in debt. Without vision we will meet our own extinction by a global corporate government swooping down for our individual liberties. What remains more menacing, (all fabricated political oppositions aside) than a global government overt in its control, is its own legitimate belief that it is there for the good of humanity and be able to convince everyone the same—the divine rights of man subordinate to an altruistic regime. How it can deceive. Why are we surprised? Academia saw this coming for miles...it wrote its curriculums.

The shadow of the eagle flies closer to us than any other time in history, plucking our consciences back into being with an active memory restoring the ‘soul, a spiritual principal’(Renan,1882) and rationale for what it means to form a Nation and choose to live together. It guides us over the cliffs of shortsightedness and impoverished education. It carries us off as political refugees of our own country, its talons gripping the great divide of our discontent where the great sky does not sympathize but with the age old virtues of our beautiful Union, our social contract to one another, an uncancellable history—Her bloodshed plains stretch out like the hide of the buffalo, lasting immovable, fearfully beautiful and powerful, gnarled and rough with our unfettered American resolve that knows no distinction between race, creed or religious denomination—-there the eagle clasps a mangled olive branch of Freedom, Independence and Peace and buries it in the wheat fields of an old world, where it sits—guarding it.

As the days of political affiliation are waning and whether we find ourselves leaning to systems (Republican Party) vs goals (Democratic Party) it seems all so distant in the peripheral of so much anxiety, ideological confusion and a depleting domestic tranquility. If we only take the time to read about those who physically, spiritually and intellectually fought for the peaceful union of our Great Country, what we will find is passion, charity, tenderness, courage, brotherly love, compassion and all the virtues poured out by feather and ink. We might be humanized again by the passion and love in John Adam’s words:

My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. (Adams,1776)

What stands between us are memory and a keen eye. If we look around as Menelaus did as keenly as an eagle, we will see a Nation united in self-interest, clad with the red stripes that once set us free, and a Constitutional Republic that takes its cue from Montesquieu‘s assertion: “that a very extensive territory cannot be governed on the principles of freedom” (Montesquieu, 1748) that is--it cannot survive on freedom alone but dwells in the Ark of virtue.

Julia Caesar

Bibliography

1.Homer, The Iliad. The Great Books. Hutchins, Robert Maynard. Adler, Mortimer. The Great Conversation. Chicago, 1952. Translated by Samuel Butler

2. Hamilton, Alexander. Encyclopedia Britannica. Great Books. Hutchins, Robert Maynard. Adler, Mortimer. Benton,William.Chicago, 1952.The Federalist, 53.

3. Adler, Mortimer. Great Ideas Program, 996.

4. Madison. The Federalist, 56.

5. Lincoln, Abraham. Gettysburg Address,1863.

6. Adams. John, Quincy. Speech 1821.

7. De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, 1835. Bantam, New York, New York 2004.Translation Henry Reeve.p.190.

8. Bloom, Alan. The Closing of the American Mind. Simon & Schuster, Chicago,1987.

9. Hutchins, Robert Maynard. Adler, Mortimer. The Great Conversation. Chicago, 1952.

10. De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Ch 6.1835.

11. Renan, Ernest. What is a Nation?Lecture. 1882.

12. Washington, George. Letter on reforms to the Continental Army, written in January 1778 at Valley Forge.

13. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Right as a Thoery of Justice.1820.

14. Renan, Ernest. What is a Nation Lecture,1882.

15. Adams, John. Letter to Zabdiel Adams, "Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 4", memory.loc.gov. June 21, 1776.

16. Adams, John. Speech for Independence to the delegates of the Thirteen Colonies at the Continental Congress, 1776.

17. De Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède. Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws.

References:

1. Simmons, Tracy Lee. Climbing Parnassus. ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware. 2002.

2. Newman, Henry John. The Idea of the University. Longmen’s Green and CO London and NewYork 15 East 15th Street,1893.