"When letters took a month by sea and the records of the United States government could be moved in a single wagon pulled by two horses, we had great statesmen."
"Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Monroe. These were men who were in love with principle, as if it were an art, which, in their practice, they made it," declares Mark Helprin of the Hudson Institute. "They studied empires that had fallen, for the sake of doing what was right in a small country that had barely risen, and were able to see things so clearly that they surpassed in greatness each and every one of the classical models that they had approached in awe."
In a speech published in a recent issue of Imprimis, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College, Helprin, a best-selling novelist, rues the passing of such statesmen. "Now," he laments, "when we desperately need their high qualities of thought, their patience for deliberation, and their unerring sense of balance, we have only what we have, which is a political class that in the main has abandoned the essential qualities of statesmanship, with the excuse that these are inappropriate to our age. They are wrong," Helprin insists. "Not only do they fail to honor the principles of statesmanship; they fail to recognize them, having failed to learn them."
Helprin believes that "the American people hunger for acts of integrity and courage. The American people hunger for a statesman magnetized by the truth, unwilling to give up his good name, uninterested in calculation only for the sake of victory, unable to put his interests before those of the nation. What this means in practical terms," he explains, "is no focus groups, no polls, no triangulation, no evasion, no broken promises, and no lies. These are the tools of the chameleon," says Helprin. "They are employed to cheat the American people of honest answers to direct questions. If the average politician, for fear that he may lose something, is incapable of even a genuine yes or no, how is he supposed to rise to the great occasions of state? How is he supposed to face a destructive and implacable enemy? How is he supposed to understand the rightful destiny of his country, and lead it there?"
Helprin explains that "statesmanship is not the appetite for power but . . . a holy calling of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice." He holds out hope that, when it is most needed, statesmanship will resurface in our nation. "Statesmanship is a quality that, though it may be betrayed, is always ready to be taken up again merely by honest subscription to its great themes," Helprin asserts. "Have confidence that even in idleness its strengths are growing," he advises, "for it is a providential gift given to us in times of need." Helprin predicts that the day will come when, "solely by the grace of God, the corrupt will be thrown down and the virtuous will rise up." We cannot know the day, of course, but let's pray it's soon.
