So how did George Washington persevere? As he acknowledged many times, he trusted “Providence.” George Washington had a silent ally to whom he regularly gave thanks, publicly and privately.

(…) For Washington, both the Bible and the writings of the ancients (especially military heroes) were storehouses of wisdom, and he studied each. When he ordered busts and portraits for the ornamentation of his parlors at Mount Vernon, he chose exemplars of the use of power from across the centuries: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick II of Prussia. He also hung prominently on the wall of his large dining room, the most public room at Mount Vernon, two key portraits: the Virgin Mary and St. John. He kept clearly in mind—and exemplified in his own speech and behavior—the dual message of the Bible: that men are capable of both brutishness and nobility.

Das ist beste aufklärerische Tradition. Aufklärung ist zwar immer insofern gegen die Religion gerichtet, als sie ihre unbedingte Autorität in allen Fragen des Seins nicht anzuerkennen bereit ist. Sie ist aber ebensowenig die Kehrseite des Atheismus. Nicht ohne Grund war der Deismus die vorherrschende Geisteshaltung in Bezug auf die Gottesfrage gerade vieler kontinentaleuropäischer Aufklärer. Auch der Rückgriff auf die Antike ist typisch für den Humanismus dieser Zeit. Numa steht Pate.

(…) There is some dispute concerning how religious most of America was during the years of the War of Independence. The shortage of clergymen and even churches was always severe along the paths of the westward migration. On the other hand, recent studies suggest that religious practice was more intense than previously thought. The “First Great Awakening,” a broad renewal of religious conviction, was slowly spreading through the colonies, even in the Anglican South, threatening the laws of religious establishment, for example, in Virginia.

Thus, it can be no surprise that at the first meeting of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, in September 1774, when news was received of the sudden outbreak of war in Boston, the very first motion on the floor was for a prayer to seek the guidance of Almighty God. Resistance immediately erupted—not because prayer was thought inappropriate, but because John Jay and others protested that they could not pray in the same terms as other people present (Anabaptists with Quakers, Congregationalists with Episcopalians, Unitarians with Presbyterians). Sam Adams settled the dispute by announcing loudly that he was no bigot and could pray along with any minister so long as he was a patriot.

(…) In Pennsylvania and New York, the primary meaning of liberty seemed to be freedom from central government—liberty meant, at the very least, minimal government. In part, this flowed from the Whig tradition of Britain, and its strong emphasis on commercial and market liberty. It was also fed by Adam Smith and other Scottish commonsense philosophers who, along with John Locke, saw in human nature a “system of natural liberty.”

Der amerikanische Weg der Aufklärung verläuft anders als in Kontinentaleuropa. »Virtue was a presupposition of the Constitution, but it did not appear in the document itself. Nor did religion.« schreibt Gertrude Himmelfarb über die amerikanische Verfassung. »Both were omitted for the same reason: because they were presumed to be rooted in the very nature of man and as such were reflected in the moeurs of the people and in the traditions and informal institutions of society.«

Benjamin Rush, einer der Unterzeichner der amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitserklärung, befand »The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without it there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.« Alexis de Tocqueville notierte in seinen Betrachtungen über die amerikanische Gesellschaft, dass in Frankreich der Geist der Religion und der Geist der Freiheit in direktem Gegensatz stünden, wohingegen in Amerika beide auf demselben Boden wüchsen. Die USA, das Land, in dem das Christentum am stärksten ist, ist daher zugleich »das aufgeklärteste und freieste«.

Deisten und Unitarier, britische Protestanten, Römisch-Katholiken, Evangelikale und Juden fochten für dieselbe republikanische Idee. Himmelfarb: »In seeking respite from the religious passions of the Old World, the Americans did not, like the French, turn against religion itself.« In der Vision einer »city upon a hill« trafen sich das christliche und das republikanische Amerika. Wichtig war, wie Tocqueville schrieb, nicht etwa, dass alle Bürger der einen wahren Religion angehörten, sondern überhaupt einer Religion. Das schliesst ein säkulares Staatsmodel keineswegs aus: »The separation of church and state, however interpreted, did not signify the separation of church and society. On the contrary, religion was all the more rooted in society because it was not prescribed or established by the government.«

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

Meanwhile, Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis wants to provide every school in Greece with former US Vice President Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth” and the film of the same name. While Gore believes the climate change to be an issue of “planetary emergency”, which Mr Karamanlis wants the younger generation to tackle, Klaus goes along with MIT Prof Richard Lindzen:

Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.

Strange times, indeed.

In time, much of Western thought eventually accepted the Hebraic approach over the Hellenistic submission to the edicts of nature. Indeed, Western democracy owes much of its moral vibrancy to the belief that every individual has the power to repudiate destiny, to fashion his own fate and that of his people, and to flout the edicts of the gods. For the Jews, it was the spirit of rebellion and change, preserved across the span of history, that enabled them later to return to their homeland and rebuild the Jewish state, defying the “gods” that had declared their people a relic, and their fate one of wandering the world in infamy. Judea may have fallen to Rome, but the legacy of R. Akiva continues to leave its mark throughout the world.

Rabbi Akiva was a proponent of the “Bar Kochba Revolt” against the Roman occupation. He argues that circumcision means rather repairing than damaging the human body. “In this instance, the raw material is the body; altering it, according to this explanation, is an act of fulfilling its human potential” says Hevroni and concludes: “Indeed, Western democracy owes much of its moral vibrancy to the belief that every individual has the power to repudiate destiny, to fashion his own fate and that of his people, and to flout the edicts of the gods.”

This reminds me to Thomas Cahills’ great book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels which gives a good background to this story and how the Jewish Civilization set up the cultural foundation of the Western World where the crucial experience was liberty.

שירי ליהוה כי־גאה גאה
סוס ורכבו רמה בים

(Ex 15,21b)