The Progressive Breach Of American Covenantalism

In my former life, I was an electrical engineer, and semiconductor test programming engineer. I worked in semiconductor manufacturing management for many years after that and eventually moved into the semi-retirement world of classroom instruction, handsomely compensated to impart my experiential wisdom to the eager young recent-grad mushminds of the new generation. Smarter than me in many ways, because I didn't take the classes they took, I understood that my calling was to help them make better all the things they would soon enough confront rather than being a pompous ass about anything I already knew they would eventually learn themselves.

My post-secondary educational path led me through tech school rather than high-dollar Ivy League 4-year programs, notorious for teaching things having very little to do with the actual jobs people will be expected to perform upon graduation. Accordingly, I had to work my way up the ladder, "going the long way around," as some say, and making that 30-plus year Journey feel more like a hundred and thirty years. Looking back on it now, and looking at the entitled and self-absorbed attitudes of these two generations that proceeded from mine, it's quite clear just how poorly today's University programs prepare these young men and women for the demands inherent in the expectation of our society that they become decent, responsible, productive and contributing members of society and good stewards in their respective fields of study and expertise.

Over the span of the adult education stretch of my career, more than 1,000 individuals came and went in my various classrooms; some were the high-dollar engineers I mentioned, but many more had jobs ranging from production workers to equipment repair technicians, production floor supervisors, and even a collection of senior management groups whose job it was to oversee the various departments involved in fabricating, packaging, testing, and shipping semiconductor products. And with the many thousands of hours of my time spent preparing, traveling, talking, listening, and giving guidance and aid to students over those years, I can assure you I got back from them far more than I gave.

Retired now, with more than a decade in my rearview since I taught my last class, I've had a great deal of time to reflect on the various elements of my career. As such, I can say with certainty that, however much more money I might have earned as an engineer, being a teacher was far and away the most fulfilling and rewarding stretch of my adult professional life. I am reminded of ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi, and a quote attributed to him, on the matter of teaching which suggested that "the best of all teachers is the one who helps people so that eventually they don't need him." I would add to this observation that the same holds true for good parents, honest politicians, and effective Civic leaders within society.

But therein lies the rub; the numbers of good, honest, and effective people are rapidly dwindling or have gone "underground," so to speak. Many have, incredibly, been demonized, vilified, and silenced by anarchic and radical progressive ideologies in recent years for simply trying to answer their respective callings to do right by the people around them in their local communities. Like most of the other animal species with whom we share space on this planet, homo sapiens are -by nature- social animals and are driven to seek out and commune with others of our kind. The most obvious reason for this satisfies the survival imperatives of security and reproduction, but it is also the means by which we share not only resources but knowledge, wisdom, and experience.

Embedded in this dynamic is the idea of "teaching" and "learning" for the general purpose of sharing information. In our book, we described it this way:

"Some of us teach, and some of us learn, and all of us improve, hopefully, our "human condition" while at least trying to help others improve theirs."

When we think about teaching and learning we visualize tedious classrooms where someone is prattling on about any given subject expecting us to learn everything we need to know just by listening to what they tell us about it. This approach is the primary method used in the K through 12 education system; saying the same things over and over again, adding layers of complexity as the years go by, theoretically reinforcing this through various forms of homework and worksheets (and the inevitable pop quiz and written exam). This approach relies heavily on repetition as the means by which children retain information, but does not work as well in adult education classrooms.

However effective that might be in the younger grades, it does not work on the average adult sitting in those classrooms because they, or their bosses, hade for them to be there and expect improved performance once the training is complete.

Nuancing a phrase from a person I had never heard of until I started putting this essay together, for my purposes here, I suggest that what I have described could be considered an "educational Covenant", and propose that- in the simplest terms- this is merely an agreement or understanding between parties that have come together and agreed to collaborate in order to achieve a specified goal or outcome. Clearly, such a thing cannot occur in public schools because the student and teachers alike are compelled to participate. It can also be said that compulsion exists in post-secondary education because students are paying to be there and so, too, are teachers being paid.

During the process of developing this essay, my writing partner-in-crime, Vassar Bushmills, shared with me a link to a video in which a person named OS Guinness delivered a presentation titled "The Greatest Enemy of Freedom is Freedom -- Exodus and the Paradox of Freedom" (link)

A little over an hour long, this presentation offers stunning insights into human nature and the inherently fallible constructs of relationships we establish between each other and, collectively, with the governing systems and bodies we allow ourselves to be subjected to. The word he uses to describe these systems of human interaction is "Covenantalism," and, similar to my earlier description of the "educational covenant", He suggests that there are practically limitless numbers and forms of covenants all around us in our everyday lives. But unlike the compulsory educational covenant, the governmental Covenant struck in America between the founding Fathers and "we, the people" is one uniquely grounded in the idea that, through mutual guarded trust, the people would consent to be governed so long as the system of governance served the people.

As I listened to his presentation, I was struck by the similarities between Guinness' historical review of covenants between societies and kings, and with each other alongside the analysis discussed at great length in our book "Unwashed Philosophy: A User's Guide To Our Imperfect Union" which placed a similar emphasis on the time between the 1950s and the present day.

For context, Guinness observed that "Exodus is the master story of western freedom, certainly in the English-speaking world. Exodus is the story behind the English Revolution and the story behind the American Revolution but not the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, or the Chinese Revolution. They are much closer to Frederick Nietzsche, who, in his book"On the Genealogy of Morality", calls Exodus the slave revolt in morality, and he wants to overcome the power of the herd and replace it with the power of the hero." The important takeaway from this proposition, proven consistently throughout the history of humankind, is that relying on external forces (government) for personal safety, security, and survival is inherently flawed and ultimately self-destructive. That humankind, throughout its existence, consistently cycles itself through the innate desire for freedom and the desperate cries for leadership exemplifies the paradoxical nature of our species and, likewise explains the continued dynastic rise and fall of societies throughout our history.

Paraphrasing here..."The first is organic society, linked together by blood and kinship, such as a Scottish Clan or African tribe. The second, and most powerful, is the hierarchical society, linked by force and conquest, such as a kingdom or Empire. The third type is covenantal, linked by a freely chosen binding agreement between the people." Offering an additional layer of complexity, he suggests that there are yet another three societal considerations; First, covenantal is a matter of freely chosen consent. The second is a morally binding pledge. Third and most important, it is a reciprocal responsibility of all for all, implicitly the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself."

It is my assertion here that, for all the post-secondary education received by today's political and civic leaders, a great many of them have determined that the only way to make America better is to burn it to the ground and rebuild it anew in their own image. In large part driven by their ideological rejection of history and their idealistic embrace of a provably failed theoretical governing system, they are too lazy and too vain to recognize that reaching their goal will seal their own fate. For all the efforts to erase inconvenient truths about America's past, or invent alternate realities about its history, no amount of combining the powers of the monarchy (presidency) and the aristocracy (congress and the elite class) can erase the generational training and education of the people as it has been passed down to their descendants. Certainly not over the course of the next three generations yet to come at least. Covenantalism, after all, isn't just cast up and down the hierarchical range of society, it is spread across and throughout individual members of society.

The premise upon which America's Covenantalism is based derives from her citizens' understanding and embrace of Biblical history, regardless of any allegiance to a specific religious denomination; the Bible tells us there was a covenant between God and Adam, God and Noah, God and Abraham, a renewed Covenant between God and Moses, and yet one more between Jesus and Mankind. One need not commit themselves, individually, to the veracity of these assertions, but it is nonetheless true that these ideas informed the Founding Fathers and the decisions they made about how the government would serve the people and the people would likewise sustain the government. In other words, by freely chosen consent, in a morally binding pledge, swearing an oath to reciprocal responsibility, a nation was conceived and borne of a covenant between her people.

Already tattered and frayed, The American Covenant first began to tear itself into pieces with the election of Barack Obama. It didn't happen overnight, and no one man - King, Emperor, or President - can destroy a Nation or its Societal constructs, at least not without help. I'm reminded of my grandmother, who always said that no president was any better than the people he surrounded himself with, and this proved to be critically true with President Obama. His arrival in the Oval Office brought with it a dramatically divergent view of America and the nearly two and a half centuries that preceded his election.

His background as a community organizer, where the focus was on perceived injustices and ways the community could be helped to rise up against the government in demand of change, informed what would become his policy imperatives upon becoming president. That he grew up in a "radical" liberal environment and grew to admire people like Karl Marx, America-hating Reverend Wright, Che Guevara, Abbie Hoffman, or even Saul Alinsky, only further informed what he would do with America should he ever become president.

It comes as no surprise, then, that by the time Obama left office, America was more divided than it had been since the Civil War and the reconstruction and, what I like to call, the "Reformation of American Democracy". I don't use this term lightly but am compelled to point out that even while Lincoln rid us of the stain of slavery on our history, he inadvertently added the new stain which would grow to become the iron-fisted rule of the federal government Leviathan we are being subjected to today.

I recently came across a quote suggesting that empires and dynasties have an average shelf life of about 250 years. America finds herself at that crossroad as of this writing. Much of our founding government and the Covenant struck between it and her people, is rapidly being displaced by one fueled by division and distrust, hastily being rebuilt on the foundations of dishonesty and the evolving malevolence working on cutting the ties once holding us together. The covenant we freely chose to morally bind us together, promising each other the reciprocal responsibility of "all for all" and "loving our neighbor as ourselves", is under attack.

Where the Reformation of the Church was a response to its corruption, the Reformation of American democracy intends a head-on collision with the people in whose name the Constitutional Covenant was struck, designed to re-establish the very corruption it promised to prevent.

Failure to defend against this will bring to our doorsteps all three so-called "corruptions" together simultaneously; tyranny, oligarchy, and MOB rule. Regardless of how many of us are still standing when the smoke clears, America will find itself on the ash pile of history, and it will be centuries before the ideas of free will, self-determination, and human rights will be able to rise again.