Restoring a 230 Year Old Home

Fire of Liberty

Victor Davis Hanson has a good column out today that presents an observation about how the current generation is faring compared to what past generations have done in this country. To further his point, Hanson uses his current home and the home of five other generations as a metaphor to life in this country. I think Hanson put it best when he noted:

But the greatest difference is that those first four generations who lived and died in this house shared a certain tragic vision of man's limitations. Perhaps they lost too many crops before harvest. Or they grew to assume that optimistic weather reports and upbeat cooperative newsletters were hardly to be trusted as "intelligence." They considered the choices in their many wars only between bad or worse, and that the Americans who fought them did not have to be perfect to still be good.

Now this relic of a house has a TV dish on the roof and automatic garage doors. Yet otherwise it must look about the same as when someone, whom I seem to know but never saw, built it right after the Civil War. But while we can still recognize it as the familiar solid house of old, I wonder whether it would say the same of us now inside.

Maybe more people need to take a look at their community, family, and self and reflect on how we can reach the same heights and strengths that past generations achieved all those years ago. I'm game on promoting the "first principles" of Russell Kirk and the ideas of Professor Hanson, I just hope there's a silent majority out their willing to fill the void and prevent a further turn away from the wise counsel of our ancestors.