0131 The children of immigrant Englishmen and Germans and Dutch and Irish avoid the hanging theological commitment of Puritan covenant theology and the awkwardly two-faced acquisitional theology of the Virginian plantations owners by moving west.  The west does not fear the bottomless pit of total depravity (at least, not yet).  The west rewards folk for their own labor.  The west promises opportunities that do not much depend on one’s theological refinements.  The frontier depends on the person carrying a gun.

0132 Chapter 7 discusses movements within eighteenth-century Protestantism.  The Calvinist theology that once united the Puritan political faction against the Anglican political establishment in Britain, could not attain the systematic expositions of the Catholics nor comport with the slippery Anglican word-games that somehow justified owning African slaves.

0133 The pragmatic American brings his bag of cornmeal, his flask of whiskey and his gun out into the wilderness.  He makes a living hunting.  Maybe, he marries and puts down a farm. He is shiftless, so why should God extend His covenant?  The fellow may be baptized, but he is unelected.

Perhaps, the Bible allows that, if that believer has an experience of conversion, or if a man or a woman gains a personal relation with Jesus the Savior, then that would be enough.

The trick, of course, is that the covenant-election business offers a ticket to the justifications of the Old Testament, especially the one where Joshua could kill the Canaanites by declaring them less-than-human and taking their lands.

0134 Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729) starts a church and preaches a “half-way covenant”.   

Surely, the situation level of identity_3b must be changing as well.

The Eastern seaboard looks to Britain.  The western inland looks to walking into lands beyond New England.

0135 The mechanical philosophies of the 1600s bear fruit.  John Locke (1632-1704) writes An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.  The essay does not advocate a return to Thomistic Aristotelian scholasticism.  The essay extols ideas.  The theologian, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is intrigued.  How does one reconcile idealism and the Calvinist worldview?

0136 If ideas are the first elements of knowledge and if essence can be labeled, then labels constitute the furniture of our minds.

Do I see such furniture in the following figure?

0137 Ideating reality_3a is apparently the same as walking_3a.

This makes sense, in so far as walking_3a tends to follow established paths.

Plus, the Calvinism of the original Puritanism constitutes a well-appointed path.

0138 The Bible [furnishing] my mind_2a compares to the Bible [constitutes] us_2a.

0139 Does the potential of ‘applying Puritan labels’_1a somehow match ‘the gun’_1a?

The author offers a passage from a standard conventional American history of Jonathan Edwards.  Edward’s mental furniture accommodates the Calvinist theory of freedom of will (allowing election) as well as the total depravity of fallen humans (keying into covenant theology and predestination).  While the union of these two ideas (or labels) makes no sense to many, the house that Edwards builds does not stand against itself.

By grace alone_1b, scripture_2b magnifies these metaphysical potentials_1a.  In 1755, Edwards pens a treatise titled, “The Nature of True Virtue”, where the paths of election and total depravity intertwine in the person’s first ideation, which must be predestined, because no one knows what a baby ideates, except for God, of course.

0140 Chapter 8 discusses Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).

Rather than admitting that virtue arises from God’s covenant to a chosen few and from our election to choose God, Franklin devises a homespun program for moral self-improvement.

How enlightened!

0141 Years later, he concludes that he is a reasonable creature and that he is under no religious constraints not to… you know… construct his own “religion”.

T the term, “religion”, expands during the so-called “Western Enlightenment”.  At first, the label refers to Christian factions.  Then it broadens to all creeds.  Then, it broadens to what the native Americans are practicing as well as the metaphysical traditions of all those other people around the world.  Finally, the label broadens to sort of include what Benjamin Franklin is working on (but, not really).

0142 Does Jonathan Edwards favor esse_ce over essence?

Does Benjamin Franklin favor esse_ce over essence?

Or do both the following two content-level nested forms structure_3a the American identity_3b?

0143 One could say that, as far as mental furniture goes, the Bible_2am offers ideas and my own investigations_3am offer ideas as well.

Both are in the business of ideating reality_3a at around the time when the American Revolution plays out.  It makes me wonder about the literary character of the American founding documents.  Do they assume Puritan labels_1a?  Do they express a pragmatic guide_1a to forming a government under the conditions when anyone can formulate his own pragmatic guide to moral advancement_1a?

Why work so diligently to divide the federal government into three interdependent institutions, the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches, with the intent that each will hold the others in check?  Why attempt to retain sovereignty in the states?  The states will never unanimously agree to losing their sovereignties.

Will they?

Uh oh, see the March 2026 issue of Culture Wars Magazine.

0144 To me, its seems that the two potentials_1a, both contextualized by idealism_3a, have something in common.  This reflects the logics of firstness.  The logics of firstness are inclusive and allow contradictions.  Why?  The logic pertains to a monadic realness, where one can see only one side of something in the sea of possibility_1a at a time.  In the realm of firstness, Edward’s application of Puritan labels_1a to ideas_2a and Franklin’s application of his own conclusions_1a to ideas_2a may portray facets of a single ‘something’, a single ‘wilderness’ that demands some sort of precautionary mechanism, like a gun_1a.

0145 Here is a picture.

0146 Chapter 9 describes the Great Awakening (1734-1749).

When I look at the above potentials_1a, on the left, I see the agenda of elites, whether Puritan (Edwards) or Enlightenment (Franklin).  These positions are convertible, because both walk_3a the path of idealism_3a.

On the right, I see a dawning awareness that allowed the original Puritans to regard the forest wilderness as Satanic (on the outside of the colonies) and to see witches in the solitary ladies in Salem (on the inside of town).  This is the position driving the Great Awakening.

0147 The Great Awakening starts outside the coastal, European-facing townships, who still care about the doctrinal distinctions between Puritans (Massachusetts) and Anglicans (Virginia).  These outsiders ask questions.  Who cares about Protestant doctrinal distinctions?  Do they tell me how to live a moral life?  And, don’t tell me that I am supposed to come up with a moral life through my own reckoning.  I don’t have the book-learning for that.

Prior to the American Revolution, the Great Awakening sweeps through all the colonies.

Americans begin to wake up to an identity_3b that is based on a structure_3a that contextualizes what it means to own a gun_1a.

0148 The Bible_2am matters.  The Bible_2am inflows into us_2af, and calls us into a form_2af.  The Old Testament tells stories of war, conflict, and entering into a promised land.  When Nehemiah returns with his remnant, he builds a wall.  He carries arms.  The Bible_2am allows me_2af to carry a gun_1a for my own self-defense_1a in a world where kings are ruthless and uncivilized folk are occasional adversaries.  Americans wake up to walking_3a in faith_3b as one people_2bm, even though each one of us will stand before the Lord_2bf.  That is our covenant with God.  That is what we elect to do.

0149 Here is a diagram for the above statements.

This is a diagram of the Great Awakening.  Walking_3a gives structure_3a.  Faith_3b offers identity_3b.

0150 The student should read Chapters 9, 10 and 11.

0151 Why go to a tent-service to hear a preacher call me into the presence of the Lord?

Why let the spirit overcome me, when I all I want to do is walk with my Bible and my gun?

Sola fide_3b does not mean “without reason”.  It_3b means that I feel a responsibility to turn to the Lord.  The covenant that God offers me is like the covenant that God offers Abraham.  Yes, God makes a deal.  Take my offer, elect to follow me, and you will be free.  You will gain a land for your descendants.  You will stand for yourself.

Abraham walks in the path of the Lord.

He finds God’s blessing.  He becomes independent.

0152 Surely, the American identity_3b is no longer yoked to the Puritan identity_3b.

The structure_3a of the colonies has changed between the mid-1600s and the mid-1700s.

0153 Esse_ce precedes essence.

The potential of the ‘gun’_1a is virtually situated by the potential of ‘blessings and independence’_1b.

What do ‘blessings and independence’_1b imply?

Freedom_1b.

What does faith_3b suggest?

Responsibility_3b.

0154 Is the following a diagram of the American Identity achieved during the Great Awakening?

0155 The American people want to stand before the Lord.

They don’t want to stand before King George III, not anymore.

0156 The two-level interscope portrayed above constitutes a psychological earthquake, turning away from the familiarity of English sovereignty, but not towards utopian Enlightenment ideals.  It shakes both Puritanism and Anglicism, lightening up on Calvinism and no longer recognizing what Anglicanism pretends to be (the third way between Protestantism and Catholicism).

0157 Chapter 10 (on George Whitefield (1714-1771) and John Wesley (1703-1791)) and Chapter 11 (on how the Great Awakening leads to the American Revolution) complete Part 1.

0158 Part 1 addresses the rise of the American Identity.

Part 2 considers the fall.

0159 So, before leaving Part 1, allow me to restate my initial guess concerning the author’s model that puts American history and literature into perspective.  The guess relies on the title, Introduction and Chapter 4.

0160 The above figure comports with the author’s expression, “existence precedes essence”, writ large.

The esse_ce of the content level precedes (or calls forth) the essence of the situation level.

0161 When the author proclaims that existence precedes essence, he initially points to Aristotle’s thing.  Aristotle’s hylomorphe is matter_2am [substance] form_2af.

In Peirce’s philosophy, actuality₂ consists of two contiguous real elements.  On the content level, the two real elements parallel the real elements in Aristotle’s hylomorphe: matter_2am and form_2af.  The contiguity is labeled with a much-abused word, “substance”.  [Substance] can be either noun or verb.  In the above figure, [it] is rendered as a verb.

0162 However, the author’s proclamation writ small is open to an expansion writ large.

Contemporary scholarship on Aristotle’s hylomorphe ends up generating the following sensible construction.  Aristotle’s hylomorphe_2a portrays a thing_2a which is also (for scientists, more or less) a little noumenon.  I call it “little” because the corresponding two-level interscope may be regarded as a “big” noumenon.

Here is a picture of the big noumenon.

The big noumenon contains the original little noumenon as the content-level actuality_2a.

0163 A comparison of the above sensible constructions allow the inquirer to visualize how the author’s model induces the reader to appreciate historical texts in terms of contemporary meanings, presences, and messages.

0164 Plus, a comparison permits an appreciation for the rise of American identity in the constellation of a co-opposition.  A co-opposition is a pair of terms where, when one serves as a normal context, the other tends to serve as the potential.

The normal context of responsibility_3b operates on the possibilities inherent in ‘freedom’_1b.

0165 Here is a picture of the American Identity at the time of the founding revolution.

0166 The inquirer must wonder.

Why doesn’t Jones present his argument with diagrams like this?

The author is practicing what this examination is displaying.

This examination shows a theoretical model within Jones’s argument.

This model is directly based on Thomism.  My diagrams follow the Thomist tradition after it passes through Peirce.  Peirce’s philosophy begins where Baroque scholasticism leaves off.

0167 The student should now read Chapters 12, 13, 15 and 17.

0168 Part 2 is titled, “The Romantic Rehabilitation of Nature”.

This part depicts a fall from the American Identity, where the esse_ce of the wilderness (or frontier or whatever else one might label “wilderness”) calls for changes in the essence of the Puritan’s, the Virginian’s and the Founding of the Nation’s sensible constructions.

0169 Chapter 12 tells the story of Daniel Boone (1734-1820), who relies on his rifle when he rescues his kidnapped daughter (and others).  The story adds to an impression that the rifle is key to the American identity.

But what does that mean?

Once again, here is the American Identity at the time when the United States achieved independence.

0170 The rifle allows Daniel Boone to take the law into his own hands.  Isn’t that what a sovereign does?  A sovereign accepts responsibility_3b.

0171 In contrast, the author discusses the Quakers, who were unwilling to carry guns, because carrying a gun signaled their… um… lack of virtue.  Quakers want to retain their property but are unwilling to defend it themselves.  However, they are willing to pay others to provide a defense, especially when the payment is under the table.

In other words, the Quakers signaled their virtue by refusing to carry the American symbol_1b of individual sovereignty_3b… that is… responsibility_3b.

0172 The Quakers are not the first to muddle innocence and not being responsible.  They testify to the American Identity by virtue of their exception from the rule.  Quakers were too “holy” to defend themselves in such an uncivilized manner.  Daniel Boone was born a Quaker.  He grew up to be a guide that led folk through the Appalachian Mountains to the interior of the continent.  He carried a gun.

0173 Chapter 13 covers the fictionalization of Daniel Boone, by James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851).  Cooper’s novel, The Last of the Mohicans, sold so many copies that Cooper could live off of the royalties.

0174 The hero of The Leatherstocking Tales is named Natty Bumppo.  Cooper writes a series of books, where this character develops.

When I look at the above figure, I suspect that Natty Bumppo does a lot of walking_3a in frontier lands.  He respects the Bible_2a, but is not book smart.  He does not have theology, whether covenantal or acquisitional.  He admires the wisdom in scriptures_2a, even though theologians are sometimes not so wise.  He carries a gun_1a.  A gun_1a gives him the freedom_1b to stand for himself_2b.  Bumppo is responsible_3b for himself.  He serves as a guide for others.

0175 In the 1820s, the essentialist Calvinist doctrine of total depravity proves worthless in the face of the esse_ce of the frontier.  Frontier folk had to take responsibility_3b.  That included carrying a gun_1a.  The gun_1a obviously belongs to the realm of actuality.  But here, the gun_1a stands in the realm of potential_1a, because it is just a tool.  Or is it a talisman to ward off evil?

0176 An if-then statement arose in the intellectual ferment of the early nineteenth century, “If carrying a gun somehow makes a person appear guilty, and if the Bible no longer makes sense in terms of covenantal and acquisitional theologies, then maybe we can follow the Virginians, not in owning slaves, but in extoling nature.”

0177 Here is that option.

Does this diagram subtly change the meaning of “us_2af” and “themselves_2bf“?

What else raises suspicions?

0178 Along the east coast, Americans were wealthy enough to travel to Europe.  Or should I say… “back to Europe”.  Mechanized ships facilitated transportation.  Many wanted to emulate the Europeans.  What were the Germans up to?  Oh yes, this must be the Age of Ideas.

0179 Chapter 15 tells of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who writes an essay on nature that hybridizes The Leatherstocking Tales and the pretensions of German Idealism.  For personal reasons, he resigns his Congregationalist ministry in order to travel in Europe.  There, he witnesses visual and auditory arts that the Calvinist revolution had… um… “reformed”.

The Puritan colonists cultivated an ardent disgust of Catholic culture, especially those Baroque styles that made Catholic art so… um… simultaneously unworldly and worldly.

By “unworldly and worldly”, I mean the possibility of grace [inflows] nature_1b.

0180 Here is a picture of the civilization that Emerson, and other nineteenth-century Americans, were completely unprepared to encounter.

0181 The student should read Chapters 16, 23, 24, 28, 32 and 34.

0182 Where was I?

Here is where I left off.

0183 Before considering Nathaniel Hawthorne’s trips to Europe, allow me to note some adjustments that need to be made to the intellectual option for the 1820s-1860s, in light of the end of chapter 15.  The American Revolution called people to responsibility_3b.  The French Revolution’s slogan of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” called every man to do what the English and French royalty have been doing since Henry VIII.  Just add the qualifier, “of our undergarments” to the Parisian slogan to appreciate what shocked Emerson.

Hence one parenthetical adjustment on the content-level.

As the astute reader already noticed, ‘responsibility_1b‘ moves into the realm of potential when freedom_3b becomes the normal context.  That is the nature of co-oppositions.  When one is the normal context, the other stands as the potential.

Just as no one wants to carry a gun_1a because a virtue-signaler_3a will call him “guilty_1a“, no one wants to profess “responsibility_3b” because others will test his faith_1b.  Moving “responsibility” from the normal context_3b to potential_1b serves as a solution, of sorts.

Plus, a change in terminology provides cover.

Instead of “responsibility_1b“, the educated person says “practical reason_1b“.

0184 This accounts for the one adjustment on the situation-level.

Here is a picture of the revisions.

0185 Chapter 17 should be read in light of these two revisions.

When innocence_1a becomes universal, practical reason_1b becomes moral.

When nature_2am [unites] us_2af, then the people_2bm [stand for] themselves_2bf.

Humans are structured for walking_3a.  So, human identity_3b is found in the bounty and the blessings of freedom_3b.

Does this sound like a religion called, “Americanism”?

0186 What about religion in Europe?

After the Reformation, western Europe divides into Protestant (northern nations) and Catholic (southern nations).  The division comes after over a millennium of a common tradition, called “Christendom”.  Eastern Europe remains Orthodox.  Western and eastern Europe split into Catholic (west) and Orthodox (east) centuries earlier.  Surely, that is another story.

0187 As a result, the American whose identity_3b extols freedom_3b and whose structure_3a is idea-oriented_3a, finds the Europe identity_3b of sheep and shepherds_3b and of faith and Aristotelian reason_3b disorienting.

0188 Chapters 16, 23, 24, 28, 32 and 34 and tell the tale of Nathanial Hawthorne, his family, his writings and his life, in light of an encounter with Catholic Identity.

This is the identity that the Protestant Reformers (in Chapter 4) dismantled, much to chagrin of the author, Dr. Jones.

Indeed, the author is eloquent in these chapters, since this topic belongs to his field of technical expertise as a scholar of American literature.

0189 The Protestant theological construction… or “deconstruction” of Catholic Identity is not conducted for intellectual achievement.  Rather, it is promulgated because it removes a brake to sovereign “progress”.   After the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the sovereign determines which “religions” (Christian factions) are permitted in his realm.

The American Revolution counters this elevation of the sovereign over religion by requiring, by constitution, that the federal government cannot establish a religion.

Consequently, the American Constitution takes exception from one of the key provisions of the Westphalian compromise.

It makes me wonder, “Precisely what would be required in order to demonstrate that the American federal government qualifies as a ‘religion’?”

0190 I suppose that the answer depends on how one defines the word, “religion”.

0191 Perhaps, I may go back to the idea that Aristotle’s hylomorphe, as a little noumenon, accrues elements that constitute a big noumenon.  With that in mind, I may appreciate what Jones is not telling the reader because he presumes that the reader (somehow) already knows.

Here is a picture, once again.

Compare the previous two figures to one another and ask, “How do these big noumena account for Catholic art?”

0192 Imagine works of visual art portraying the stories of scripture to illiterate common folk in a way that the matter of the stories [are rendered in] the forms of painting and sculpture_2a.

That would be shocking enough to someone fixed on the written script of the Bible.

0193 Now imagine that these works of visual art_2a have the power_1b to express a principle of unity (as matter) in the architectural embodiment of a chapel or cathedral (as form)_2b.

That would be even more shocking in so far as we (humans) are disposed_1a to socially construct our identities_3b on the basis of transcendentals such as beauty_1a (the art itself), truth_1a (the stories themselves) and the innate impression_1a that grace inflows nature_1b.

0194 What E. Michael Jones presumes that we already know is discussed as an interlude in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”.

In a category-based treatment of the presence that underlies the word “religion”, a perspective-level stands above the situation-level within the so-called “society tier”.  This perspective-level belongs to a civilizational supra-sovereign religion (such as Christendom before the breakup).  The situation-level belongs to the sovereign. 

That implies that the Reformation involves the sovereign-level casting aside the supra-sovereign level.

0195 The supra-sovereign_c level of the society_C tier contains an actuality_2cC that is the object that calls all into relation_2cC.  For Christians, this object_2cC contains the Triune God.  This Triune God occupies three elements of a nested form, the normal context₂, matter₂ and form₂.

But, that is not all.  Because this object_2cC belongs to the realm of actuality, it_2cC should contain two contiguous real elements.  One real element is a nested form expressing the Trinity.  The other real element contains… of all things… us.  We are images of God.  So, the contiguity between {Jesus (the Son) [interpellates] us}_2cf as form and {the Father [and] His Son}_2cm as matter must be a substance that... well… one cannot label with a spoken word.

However, one can feel that substance when receiving the Eucharist during a traditional Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral.

0196 Here is a picture of the object that brings all into relation_2cC in the most differentiated expression articulated in any civilization.

This perspective-level relational object_2cC accounts for why the Catholic disposition_1a senses that the sacraments_1a offer the structures_3a that have the power_1b to draw us into mystical union_1cfC with Jesus, the Son of the Father_2cfC.

0197 Now, the student should read chapters 18, 19, 20, 21 and 36.

0198 Although Jones does not articulate the object that brings all into relation_2cC, I suspect that it_2cC is why nineteenth century Americans find the arts and architecture of old Europe so evocative.

0199 Now, I want to add some caveats.

This relational object_2cC reaches full differentiation by the time that Europe celebrates 1000 A.D.  Yet, only now, after 2000 A.D., has scholastic philosophy developed a way to allow its depiction.

This relational object_2cC is an actuality, as befits Peirce’s category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  Most curiously, each real element consists of a nested form.  The contiguity, the substance, stands, in esse_ce, with Jesus (the Son of the Father and the Word of God), and in essence, with Jesus (the Son of Man and the Messiah of God’s chosen people).

0200 The Trinity appears in purple.

Mohammed’s revelation appears in green.

The Calvinist doctrine of covenant-election appears in red.

The radical individual is the form in red.

0201 Consequently, there is a lot to unwind.

So much so, that one’s structure_3a and identity_3b may consist of only a fragment of the relational object_2cC that calls all into being.

0203 What about those Catholic doctrines about the pope and Mary, mother of Jesus?

One must keep in mind that this relational object_2cC occupies the perspective level above sovereign decrees, laws and actions_2bC on the situation level.  Consequently, the pope is assumed_3cC to stand above any sovereign_3bC.  Also, Mary foundationally influences the potential of the object that brings all into relation_2cC because she is the mother of Jesus (as the Son of Man) as well as of God (Jesus as Son of the Father).

Theologically, Mary belongs to the potential of ‘consilience’_1cC.

Ironically, many contemporary Protestants accuse Catholics of an inversion of the co-opposition in the above figure.  They say that Mary_3c is assumed to be above any sovereign and that the pope_1c is supposed to be an agent of consilience_1c with respect to their “reformation”.

0204 Chapter 18 reports on a shift that occurs during the lifetime of American-born Orestes Brownson (1803-1876).  Orestes Brownson is a generation older that Henry Thoreau (1817-1862, the topic of Chapter 17), who ridiculed Calvinism in light of the identity_2b that he fashioned in his retreat to the shores of Walden Pond.

There is something “old school” in Orestes Brownson and “new school” in Henry Thoreau.

Consistent with the Quaker tradition of virtue-signaling one’s moral superiority by refusing to carry a gun, Thoreau embraces his self-aggrandizing innocence as an exemplar of Kant’s pure reason, which undergirds Kant’s practical reason.

0205 How elegant can an American intellectual get?

Here is a picture.

0206 Orestes Brownson grows up in the Calvinist tradition.  He decides that he wants to be a minister, but is unsure of which congregation to join.  According to Jones, there is not much to distinguish the various denominations at the time.  So, Brownson enters the Presbyterian Church at the age of 19.

What is the hitch?

Brownson finds Presbyterianism logically incoherent.

He concludes that reason must be a preamble to faith.

Does that sound like St. Anselm’s slogan, “Faith seeks understanding.”?

Maybe not exactly.

0207 Here is one of Brownson’s riddles.  Can the Presbyterians claim the right to break away from the Catholic Church and then deny Brownson the right to break away from the Presbyterians?

But, where would Brownson break to?

On one hand, it would have to be the Catholic Church.  On the other hand, it would have to be no church (which turns out to be Thoreau’s option).

0208  At 21 years old, Brownson changes from a supernaturalist to a rationalist and becomes a preacher of “Universalism”.  Unfortunately, universalism does not think much about scripture… er… the Bible, but other scriptures are fine, such as Scottish socialist Robert Owen’s and English political philosopher William Godwin’s book, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

Today, replace the word, “political” with the term, “social”.

0209 At 29 years old, Brownson is a Unitarian minister, which allows him to put humanity in the place of God.

Then, he attends some lectures by Theodore Parker (1810-1860), who had written several essays on the doctrines of the Catholic Church.

0210 At 39, Orestes Brownson has remarkable respect as an American writer.  He talks to everyone.  He knows artists and intellects of the day.  He notes that there is a secret dissatisfaction with the continuous divisions occurring in the Protestant tradition.  Jones discusses the multiplication of sects following the demise of Calvinism in America.

At 41, Brownson approaches the Irish bishop of Boston, and says that he wants to become a Catholic.

0211 Chapter 19 discusses the irony.

Irony?

Two types of Catholics immigrate to America in the first half of the 1800s, German and Irish.  The Germans immediately begin to blend in with other Americans.  The Irish congregate in big Northeastern cities, such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, because – to them – America is England writ large.  And, the English are never up to any good when it comes to the Irish.

0212 For three centuries, Protestant England runs roughshod over Catholic Ireland.  The Irish cling to their peasantry and religion as styles of resistance.

0213 So, imagine a convert from educated Boston, having left the Transcendental Synagogue for Roman Catholicism, moving to New York, the diocese of Bishop John Hughes, in order to aid the conversion of… what?… Irish to Protestants or Protestants to Irish peasantries?  Can I substitute the word “Americans” for “Protestants”?

What a trap.

Jones writes, “Brownson was too Catholic for the Yankees and to American for the Catholics.”

That is, the Irish Catholics.

0214 At 53, Orestes Brownson gives a commencement address at Fordham University.  Then, the bishop of New York, criticizes him for being too American.

0232 Why would John Calvin (1509-1564) have advocated for the Catholic Church to condemn “Americanism”?

What happened after the Catholic Church condemned Martin Luther (1483-1546)?

Being condemned can be good for business.

0233 Chapter 22 raises a question about two contending options for American identity_3b during the second half of the 1800s.

The Northern abolitionists unite against the lack of virtue of the Southern plantation owners.

The Northern transcendentalists unite against the undisclosed transcendental that is implicated by the gun.

Finally, the literary classes of America cannot wrap their heads around how such beautiful European art_1a can come from a civilization that lacks modern expertise_3b and wallows in superstition_2b and Dark-Age philosophy_2b.

0234 Here is a comparison.

Surely, adopting one normal context entails rejecting the other.

0235 The irony is that ethnic Catholics develop a hybrid identity, under an “ethnic-American” label.  So do clergy.  As a result, Americanism covertly identifies with the abolitionists (who are against the lack of virtue of others), the transcendentalists (who signal their lack of guilt by not owning guns), and the literary classes of America (who have faith in practical reason and marvel at how these Catholic ignoramuses could have produced such magnificent art).

0236 Chapter 25 starts with artistic license, so to speak.

During the War of 1860-1864, if a soldier in the Connecticut regiment goes on holiday, then he can use a handy manual, The Gentleman’s Guide, to the arts of New York City.

While there, the soldier can subscribe to mail order pornography, thus giving new meaning to the term “first-class mail”.

0237 The abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) is the son of one of the last great Puritan ministers in America, Lyman Beecher (1775-1863).  Jones tells the story.  The son moves west, first from Connecticut to Ohio.  Here, he composes articles repudiating Catholicism.  Then, he moves to the real west, Indiana.  He begins to preach in the Methodist style.  He learns to speak like Emerson, while using different words.

Emerson says, “Self-reliance.”  Henry Beecher says, “The great law of Liberty.”

0238 Then, Beecher receives an offer to become pastor of a church in Brooklyn.

He accepts the offer and adopts a theatrical slogan.

Salvation comes from love, rather than obedience to the law.

0239 In the 1850s, gold from California arrives in New York.  60% of New York’s population is born in another land.  New York is cosmopolitan.  New York already offers ideal subject matter for a gentleman’s guide.

Beecher’s practical experience out west_1b inspires him to make freedom the cornerstone of his ministry_3b.

Freedom for what?

Well, he may have picked up a copy of The Gentleman’s Guide.

0240 Here is a picture of my associations.

0241 In Chapter 26, the author tells what happens next.

That story ends around the year 1867.

0242 Chapter 27 tells the story of Mark Twain (1835-1910), who arrives in New York shortly after the birth of… um… someone related to Henry Beecher.

“Mark Twain” is a technical term used by steamboat operators on the Mississippi River.

Mark Twain is the label for a man of the west, at ease with the ribald humor of Americans, as well as their Civil War-related moral decline.

Does Henry Beecher hire Mark Twain to be his publicity agent?

0243 Mark Twain takes a European vacation on a tour that Beecher arranges, but does not attend.

The tour takes him through some of the most beautiful cities in Europe.

He uses his notebooks to write The Innocents Abroad.

0244 Chapter 29 concerns a verdict.

Who is guilty?  Who is found innocent?

0245 The student should read Chapter 30, 31 and 33.

0246  Eight years after Mark Twain publishes Innocents Abroad, Henry James (1843-1916) publishes The American.

0247 The year is 1877.

One author represents the attitude of the west, which is still the frontier.  The other author expresses the attitudes of the east, which looks across the ocean… or is it the Jordan River?… at the civilization that Americans left behind.

0248 In Chapter 30, Jones discusses Henry James’s novel in detail.

In Chapter 31, Jones turns his attention to Henry Adams (1838-1918), the Old Man of the East, who is not Henry James.  The switch of focus is a little disorienting, because both men are named “Henry”.

0249 But, the year is still 1877.

In this year, federal troops withdraw from the South, ending Reconstruction.  The new post-war era is to be called, “Redemption”.  Three decades later, the war itself would get a new label, “the Civil War”.  It is amazing what a change in labels can accomplish.

In this year of 1877, the American labor movement surfaces with a surprising railroad strike.

In this year, a descendent of President John Quincy Adams, Henry Adams, resigns from his professorship at Harvard, disappointed that his dream of a unique American Mandarin class had not come to fruition.  If he had only lived another half of a century.  Once science encourages the birth of “expertise”, Henry Adam’s dream becomes a reality.

He must have known what was coming, because he writes an autobiography that is published right after his death and after the conclusion of the so-called “First World War”.

Jones tells the story of unfortunate Henry.

0250 The War of Southern Rebellion and the War of Northern Aggression derails the American experiment, as well as Henry Adam’s career as a public intellectual.  Even his professorship at Harvard does not seem to give him a lift.

0251 Chapter 33 covers what happens to Henry Adam’s wife, and how Henry spends his end of days.

At this juncture, I would like to mention an American philosopher whose life (more or less) overlaps with Henry Adams.  This philosopher is Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914).  Charles is the son of a Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University.  Tremendous intellectual ferment occurs during the latter half of the nineteenth century.  Very little of that turmoil influences the westward expansion of the Re-united United States or the migration of Catholic Europeans to the East Coast (Italians join the incoming Irish and Germans).

Peirce does not concern himself with Protestant or Catholic concerns.  Rather, like Henry Adams, he recognizes that everyone is talking as if science is the key to all knowledge worth knowing.  The century-long contests between Catholic and Protestant doctrines are no longer relevant, since science surpasses both.  Unlike Henry Adams, he reads the Baroque scholastic, Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), then arrives at the same definition of sign-relation as John Poinsot (1589-1644).

So, while Henry Adams ends his days writing paeans (in effect, aesthetic travel guides) to Catholic European tourist destinations, Peirce wrestles with the causalities inherent in sign-relations.  The diagrams in this examination are products of Peirce’s postmodern reclamation of Baroque scholastic thought.

0252 The student should read chapters 35, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 41.

Keep in mind the following two-level interscope.

0253 Chapter 35 discusses Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), who serves as president at the turn of the century (1901-1909).  His presidency starts with the assassination of William McKinley. At the time, Roosevelt is Vice President.

Bullets are in the air during this time.  Lakota leader Sitting Bull (dies 1890), New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy (1890), Lamatta Chief White Bird (1892), US Chicago Representative Carter Harrison Sr (1893), President of France Marie Francois Sadi Carnot (1894), King Umberto in Italy (1900), and so on.

0254 Thoreau’s option reaches a nice optimum, with the people_2bm remaining Protestant as they take the form of democracy_2bf.   The people_2bm amend the Constitution, now that the states are reunited and… um… redeemed.  Americans are still walking_3a to settle the frontier, but now they can take trains out west.  Some Americans are driving automobiles. Some are taking mechanized passenger ships back to Europe, for “vacation”.

So, walking_3a stands in for what Thoreau does, that is, ideating reality_3a.

Here is a picture of Thoreau’s option, as the western frontier comes to a close.

Notice that ‘pure reason (innocence)’_1a occupies the same slot as ‘gun’_1a.  By not carrying a gun_1a, one signals one’s virtue_2am (and the nature_2am that unites us).  By deploring people who carry guns, one denounces their lack of virtue_2am.

What does this imply?

When the people_2bm [stand for] themselves_2bf, the selves_2af that the people_2bm stand for are the virtuous ones_2af, not the ones who carry guns.

If that makes sense, then you might be a candidate to become an expert.

0255 Teddy Roosevelt promotes sports and sportsmanship.  Democracy is so successful that Protestant people_2bm will be supplanted by our nation_2bm.  Plus, our nation_2bm stands for “a muscular Christianity_2bf“.  Muscular Christianity_2bf virtually situates our attitudes_2af in the normal context of winning_3a arising from the potential of ‘fair play’_1a.

Here is a diagram.

0256 Notice how ‘fair play (our lack of guilt)’_1a occupies the same slot for ‘gun’_1a in the original American identity.  Teddy Roosevelt is known for his “gunboat diplomacy”.  So, guns have not really left the realm of possibility_1a.  Rather, ‘the gun as a talisman for some opaque transcendental that is too terrifying consider’ retains its charisma, since guns are employed for assassinations by criminals (1890, maybe 1893), anarchists (1894, 1900, 1901, 1914) and agents of the state (1890, 1892).

So, what is the point?

‘Guns’_1a have no place in ‘fair play’_1a.  At the same time, ‘guns’_1a serve as indicators for a lack of fair play_1a, so to speak.  The use of ‘guns’_1a defies practical reason_1b in a nation_2bm that stands for Christianity_2bf in the normal context of expertise_3b.

0257 Chapter 37 discusses an example of how expertise_3b develops at the turn of the century.  The artisan is eclipsed by the industrial designer.

0258 Chapter 38 discusses the closing of the American frontier in the popular (or… rather, the literary class’s) imagination.  A key event is the Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893.  Jones reports on a speech by Frederick Jackson Turner at this spectacular “World Fair”.  He announces that frontier opportunities had come to a close.

According to Jones, Theodore Roosevelt personifies a new American identity, characterized by the above diagram.  Situation-level matter_2bm veils the federal government, as a centralizing state, beneath the tapestry of nationalism_2bm.   Our nationalism_2bm stands for a strenuous Christianity_2bf in the normal context of expertise_3b and arising from the potential of practical (that is, “not religious” reason)_1a.  Protestant Christians_2bf virtually situate the sportsmanship_2am that trains healthy attitudes_2af.

0259 At the same time, Protestant Christians_2bf increasingly become wage slaves to a managerial class_3b(1b) working for oligarchs_2c, such as the Mellons, the Rockefellers and the corporations that they own.

0260 Part 2 (The Rehabilitation of “Nature”) leads to Part 3 (The Return of the Satanic Wilderness).

The first wilderness stretches out from the fortress edge of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The second wilderness stretches to the north (Canada), the south (Mexico and Central and South America), the east (across the Atlantic to Europe and the Middle East) and west (across the Pacific to the Far East).

That sounds like an empire to me.

The second “wilderness” is tamed by the American empire.

0261 Chapter 39 discusses the writer, Jack London (1876-1916).  London comes to age in San Francisco.   He reads European authors of the day.  He circulates in Bohemian circles.  His novel, Sea Wolf (1904), serves as a witness to Darwinism replacing Calvinism as the hidden grammar of the nascent American empire.

I wonder, “Where have I seen the term, ‘hidden grammar’, before?’

Oh, it_2a labeled the contiguity in the content-level actuality_2a.

I wonder, “Can I adjust Teddy Roosevelt’s revision to embrace Darwinism?”

This serves as a good template for reflecting on the author’s review of Sea Wolf.

0262 Chapter 40 discusses the writer Ernest Hemmingway (1899-1961), who was born in Oak Park, Illinois.  That is a nice suburb of Chicago.

Henry Adams dies in 1918, when the First World War ends.  Adams’s autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams comes on market.  At the same time, Hemmingway is recovering from wounds that he received while driving an ambulance in the First World War.  After the war, he makes his way to Paris, where he meets Ezra Pound and other literary figures of the so-called “Lost Generation”.

0263 Jones sets the scene by discussing the birth of modern art.  “Modern art” involves a clever and subversive re-definition of the term “visual arts”, from decorative to… well… transgressive.

I suppose this indicates that neither Protestantism, nor nationalism nor Darwinism are adequate to appreciate the end of the world as everyone knew it.

Oh, I meant to say “the First World War”.

0264 What is left?

Science, of course.  Modern expertise_3b carries a certain righteousness_3b, as well as certain freedoms_3b.  Modern reason_1b accesses opportunities_1b that practical reason_1b does not.  For example, consider the logics of modern finance, quantum mechanics,  industrial-production, and mass-marketing.  All these fields develop in the interwar period, along with the ideologies of Marxism and Fascism.

0265 What do these ideologies have in common?

They both rely on modern experts_3b operating of opportunities_1b.

Of course, their subversions_2bm are um… “value neutral”_1bf.

0266 Here is how I associate Hemingway’s “Lost Generation” approach to Jack London’s revision.

0267 Chapter 41 covers William Falkner (1897-1962), who writes a novella titled, “The Bear”.

This portion of Jones’s book looks back at the American identity and wonders, “How have we sold our identity?”

0268 It seems that Americans sold their identity_3b for a bowl of porridge.

Or something like that.

Americans pass from sola fide_3b, sola sciptura_2b and sola gratia_1b to the following nested forms, as well as everything in between.

0269 The student should read Chapters 43, 44, 46 and 47.