There is something extremely satisfying about shooting an old firearm. You can feel the history when you squeeze the trigger and glean a sense of what it might have been like when the gun was fired in anger. Old firearms, for this reason, are a unique treasure. The Colt 1911, in particular, served as the primary sidearm for the U.S. Army beginning during the First World War and is still used in some American special forces units. Its service life has seen the development of the United States into a global super-power. The John Browning design is, perhaps, the quintessential American pistol after the Colt Single Action Army.
In the first chapter of The Ridiculous Man, police detective Paul Brown opts to arm himself with the historic sidearm to the chagrin of his progress-minded superior. Paul’s choice is symbolic of both the inefficiencies that plagued the past and the history to which the weapon harkens.
Five years ago, the rejection of the past could have been written of as a current trend. Today, however, it is virtually an accepted fact that the past is a place full of morons who are to be broadly condemned as racist with little to nothing to contribute to the wisdom of the modern American. When this trend was in full swing, it took the form of removing statues and reminders of historical people and events. While it was billed as the compassionate means of dealing with effects of a troubled past on the marginalized members of contemporary society it could often more accurately be described as an erasure of the real and honest virtues embodied by the historical figures who had been embraced and accepted as good, if flawed, men only a decade or two earlier. In truth, men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are not today condemned by a significant percentage of Americans for their ownership of slaves—the most fervent abolitionists at the time slavery actually existed in America looked to them as men of virtue, marred by the same result of original sin as all men—but because their virtues, not vices, are no longer in favor. Those who today write off Jefferson also write off the Declaration of Independence and the society of yeoman farmers Jefferson wished Americans would be. Instead, they prefer a nation of urbanites who own no property and depend on the government and large corporations focused in the cities for their wellbeing. Those who reject Washington also reject the stoic virtues he embodied and the Constitution—the creation of which he presided over and defended as president. Instead, they pursue hedonic pleasure and unconstrained government capable of enabling their self-indulgences. These men are removed because contemporary Americans cannot bear the shame of failing to match the admirable characteristics of their forefathers. They cannot tolerate viewing the symbols of virtues they have been incapable of cultivating.
The shunning of the past can, therefore, be seen as a lack of courage to compete with it. Instead of discussing the goodness of the great men of history and opining on ways to surpass that goodness, we prefer to insult and deride them. There is a tendency in this age to proclaim our own morality by deriding previous ages as evil. We strawman the past in attempt to avoid having to defeat it outright in a test of character. Of course, it is not that previous generations were flawless, but they were not inherently any more flawed than men and women of today. Their temptations were different and so their sins were different. It is precisely because inordinately good men in 1865 passed the 13th Amendment that ordinary men in subsequent years did not succumb to the temptation to own human beings. Unlike men and women today who might claim the moral high ground, the inordinately good of 1865 did not disparage Jefferson for writing against slavery while owning slaves, but instead embraced him for writing against slavery and themselves worked to end slavery. They counted the gains of their predecessors and improved on them, just as their predecessors did with those who came before them.
This embracing of, for the means of improving on, the wisdom of ages past is healthy tradition, or, as G.K. Chesterton described it, the “democracy of the dead.” In Orthodoxy, Chesterton argued, “tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” Those who decry rule by the “privileged” should not simultaneously advocate the sole rule of those privileged enough to be alive. The thoughts and actions of the dead are directly responsible for the world of the living. Modernity cannot cast the past out with the trash and expect to leave the world in a coherent state. To reject the dead is to start from scratch—and only hubris suggests an ability to make wholesale improvements. Failure is the far more likely result.
Traditions make people who they are. They provide identity. It is no great surprise then, that a people, such as ours, that has rejected tradition is lost in the world. Many Americans struggle to find meaning in their lives, and, in attempt to fill the void, align with one of a seemingly infinite number of identity groups beginning with the alphabet soup of the sexuality spectrum going so far, in many cases, as to identify themselves on the basis of ailments they have—both physical and mental. In each case, there is an attempt to use personal attributes that demands nothing of the individual to take the place of traditions that oblige inconvenient virtue. Just as in the case of Paul’s superior disdaining the use of a 1911 for both its inefficiency and the past it represents, so too our nation’s rejection of tradition is tied up with a sort of obsession with efficiency.
From the standpoint of delivering short-term pleasures and wealth, tradition tends to be horribly inefficient. This presents a real issue for Americans who, for the last half-century, have regarded themselves as conservative—the individuals who, justifiably, want both economic prosperity and traditional values. There is a point at which the traditions necessary to bind people together and provide meaning has to be purchased at the cost of economic efficiency and the comforts it delivers. In Paul’s case, it means an older heavier firearm with half the magazine capacity of its modern counterpart.
We have reached a time when just such a tradeoff is necessary. We can no longer just accept and adopt the most efficient products, systems, and ideas. The time has come to count the votes of the dead and reject a form of progress without a destination. The American people need to feel history in each of their actions and imagine the great pains taken by their ancestors to create a society that has allowed them to live well. Our job is to recognize the virtues that created a nation out of independent, competing, colonists and bring those virtues to fruition in a more moral future. These, the values and traditions of Christendom, which were so valuable to our predecessors, must be unholstered and brought to bear on a culture crumbling under the weight of its own unguided progress.
Frank J. Connor is the author of The Ridiculous Man and The Progressive Reports. He is a former journalist at Fox News and worked as an analyst at a prominent bond rating agency. Frank graduated from Villanova University in 2019, where he earned a degree in economics and wrote his first book. After years of discernment, he responded to a call to the Catholic priesthood and entered the Order of Saint Augustine in the summer of 2021 where he is currently in formation.
