The Light and Envy of the World
Family leaders are challenged by the now and the next. We draw insight, strength and confidence from historical role models. The Gaelic clans of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland sustained their families, fortunes and way of life for greater than 1,000 years in a world of rampant violence and aggression. The Chiefs were responsible for the future of their clans, and foremost among the Chiefs’ time-tested imperatives were safety and provision; secured by practical self-reliance and self-sufficiency. The Highlanders were world renowned swordsmen and the reality of lethality focuses the mind.
The Clans were an anachronism: the defining character of Scotland as the world’s first Christian nation state consecrated by Columba in 574, and in December 1745 during the Jacobite rising, at Derby, England, 130 miles from taking London, the capital of the greatest military power in the world. And yet, over the long centuries the Clans remained almost wholly a mystery to the outside world. For millennia they preferred and perpetuated their ancient habits of life, independence and love of freedom, being especially suspicious of and resistant to the grasping Kings of State and Bishops of Church. Responsible to and for themselves, the Clans were self-reliant and self-sufficient indeed.
An honest reading of history shows that beyond the Clans, it is Christianity that first respected life, championed individual freedom and equality and embraced personal responsibility. Those values melded conspicuously with Clan culture and exercised over centuries, resulted in the unprecedented achievement of the creation of the United States of America; our political, economic and religious freedoms established in our systems of government and economy – our Constitutional Democratic Republic and Free Market Capitalism.
Love of life, freedom, equality and responsibility led to progress and producivity and thrift led to wealth. This is the Light and Envy of the World, the diligent application of Christian values over time. American success born of Christian faith is why people the world over want to come to America, create American successes in their own lands, siphon American surplus or subvert American exceptionalism to their own ends. Just as it was Christianity’s “values and cultural tools” that created freedom, equality, progress, wealth and charity, it is only Christianity’s “values and cultural tools” that can sustain our Way of Life and replicate these cherished accomplishments elsewhere.
At the core is the private morality born of Christian faith that guides people into God-honoring choices and life styles. This is the private virtue spoken of by our Founding Fathers. Private virtue is necessary in the citizenry so that they may conduct themselves with public virtue – advancing the needs of the community before their self-interest. We have too many examples of abuse in government, commerce and religion, those taking unjust and selfish personal advantage of our freedoms.
This is why it is no use “nation building” or dreaming of “exporting democracy” among non-Christians – they lack the necessary values and cultural tools to succeed. The examples are painfully obvious. There are oceans of human misery in China, India, Russia, Africa, South and Central America and the Middle East. They all desire the freedom, health and wealth of America. But to reasonably aspire to American success, they must acknowledge and acquire the critical success carrying element – Christianity. Christianity is the prime mover of civilizational progress, real Christian faith, not religious ritual or power structures.
Scotus
Photo: Dieppe, 14 July 1905: Night, John Duncan Ferguson, National Galleries of Scotland