Loveliness

Mrs. du Toit has written an intelligent and laudable essay titled Something to Live and Die For. She discusses the history of Freedom (and its uses—“Freedom, as a stand alone concept, isn’t worth a hill of beans.”) and Art and above all, something she calls lovliness.

Here's an excerpt from near the end:

In order to love America, America must be lovely… and in order to keep it lovely, we must be able to recognize, value, and appreciate lovliness.  We must know it.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it is not a jaundiced nor an uneducated eye.  We are not born educated and sophisticated, full of ideals, honor, and character.  We have to learn it and earn it, each given the choice to do so or remain among the rabble of the peasantry.

The Founders risked it all so that we could build great cities, advance the arts and sciences, and come to be a society of one class, all educated intellectuals.  They told us of this by planning a great city, with a world-class architect, to make a shinning city on a hill.  They demonstrated it in their letters, their own homes, and in their attire and gentility.  They demonstrated it in big and small ways, such as drawing a collection for Samuel Adams to attend the Constitutional Convention in fine attire, rather than his threadbare suit.  Grandeur, beauty, class, grace, and manners were as important to the Founders as honor and freedom.  They are a package deal.  They believed, and were willing to live or die, so that others could achieve those great ideals.  They were an assorted collection of Renaissance Men, in the model of all who gave us the Enlightenment.  They knew and understood that they were its stewards and rather than keep it close and privileged, they wished for all to share in it… all that could see and appreciate its loveliness.

But some people do not want that and, unfortunately, there exists among us men who are not up to the task.  They choose to exercise their freedom on the side of vulgarity, of utility, and money-getting, regardless of the value.  They improve their abode but not themselves.  They care not a whit about what is lovely, as long as it’s utilitarian and/or cheap.  They care little or not at all for their fellows, nor the mark they leave behind, as long as they get and others give to them.  They care little about what they do.  That is the essence of ugliness.  They call themselves free men.... free to do as they please, regardless of the consequences.

If we, as conservatives, cannot laud beauty and shun ugliness… if we are not able nor willing to discriminate against ugliness, ignorance, or the simpleton by risking a supposed encroachment on another’s freedom to choose badly, then we will lose.  If we cannot champion the arts, language, and culture and both appreciate and understand it, then our stewardship of our civilization has ended.  We have consciously and callously handed it to the other side or dropped the baton entirely.

Our civilization will be lost to those who at least pay lip service to loveliness.  Our cities, our great institutions, are full of those on the ideological left with the ideaological[sic] right locked in our houses or scattered into the woods… and when a young mind is given the choice between the ugly emptiness, selfishness, and simplisme of the right, or the elegant pseudo-sophistication of the left, what do you think they will choose?  They will choose lovliness, in whatever guise it is offered.

We must take back these institutions, but not destroy them as Rousseau or those who copycat his ideas have tried to do.  No, we must become the intelligentsia again, and worship at the alter of loveliness.  We must once again put value on a liberal arts education and not mock it.  We must become it.

Or we, and all that the Enlightenment and the Founders gave us, shall perish from the earth.

There is no risk of Barbarians at the gates when we are nothing more than Barbarians ourselves.  We must choose better and exercise a wholesome discretion in favor of beauty, in all things. 

That, and only that, is something worth living and dying for.

Deeply thought-invoking, no? It's something of serendipity that I happen to read this today (I'd had it up on a Firefox saved session for the last week or so, but only had the time to read it today) considering the topic of my last post.