Every movement needs high-flown rhetoric, and trad rightwingery can’t be any different. Inspired by what seems voguish I’ve put together a few phrases for my own “I have a dream” speech. Additions are welcome.
I dream of an America that is a normal country.
I dream of an America that is not an all-purpose fantasy, or a team, business, political movement or religion, but a country and people and their habits and ways to love, support and complete.
I dream of an America with normal human relations and aspirations.
I dream of an America in which every child is born into a family with a father, mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, and into a way of life that makes sense and reaches out to the infinite.
I dream of an America whose principles make sense.
I dream of an America in which idealism is not sordid, tolerance not bigoted, freedom not forced, equality not snobbish, diversity not oppressive, and expertise not mindless.
I dream of an America that makes the normal and human and not the commercial, bureaucratic or technological the standard. I dream of an America in which education cultivates ordinary habits and feelings and opens the way to higher things, and does not try to suppress or replace them with inhuman artifice.
Incidentally, does anyone know when “dream” rhetoric first caught on? “I have a dream” became famous in 1963, and the phrase “the American Dream” first appeared in 1931, but there may be other landmarks. The whole way of speaking seems anti-republican and even somewhat irrationalist to me. It’s not at all sober. Still, you go with the flow, so while I’m at it I might as well put forward an initial snippet for a heartfelt I dream of a church speech:
I dream of a church without programs, middle management, professionals or experts, just traditions, teachings, sacraments and the faithful.
I’ll probably add to both these as time goes by.
I would say to draft the
I would say to draft the help of Deogolwulf, a latter-day G.C. Lichtenberg, though he might be too eloquent for American ears.
I dream of an America where a man of good comportment and character is as a paragon to the people, ennobling them with his grace. [Americans used to look to the upper classes for guidance and inspiration.]
I dream of an America where women render true their distinction as the fairer sex.
[I read in a book on body language that the average pitch of a woman has fallen since the 50s/60s. A great many women today are disconcertingly unfeminine, and a great many men boorish and tasteless. Perhaps everybody is too ‘manly,’ at least in a plebeian way.]
I dream of an America that eschews both the avid admiration of sodomy and its practictioners, as well as the embrace of the boorish and uncouth. [I dream of an America where men of taste and charm are appreciated, not taken for sodomites.]
I dream of an America where high culture reclaims its prominence and presence in the mind of the nation.
I dream of an America where the pursuit of health is practiced but minimized, and not taken as the purpose for living.
Something’s needed on those points
One of the worst things about the present situation is its formlessness, and the absence of worthwhile models of how to be a man and how to be a woman. In the schools any such model would be illegal and even unconstitutional.
Rem tene, verba sequentur.
My tradish dream.
I dream of an America in which my great great…… grandchildren will look like me.
I dream of an America in which my posterity will remember who and what they come from.
I dream of an America where the peoples/folkways who founded this country are honored rather than the subject of late-night tv talk show jokes.
I dream of an America in which these dreams are considered normal rather than extremist.
More dreams.
Mr. Culbreath’s high-minded and truthful “I dream” post made me want to qualify mine. I want what I want but not at the expense of decency and not for the price of remaining in a culturally barbaric society.
Understood, Bruce. I took
Understood, Bruce. I took your original point in that context.
I dream of an America whose
I dream of an America whose citizens don’t pretend that truth doesn’t matter.
I dream of an America where the public practice of Catholicism is not considered foreign, exotic, or threatening.
I dream of an America where conservatives do not consider freedom to be the highest good.
I dream of an America where liberals do not consider equality to be the highest good.
I dream of an America where most men can make a family wage at most jobs.
I dream of an America where most men are able to work within a ten minute commute from home.
I dream of an America where the tallest building in most cities is not a bank, but a church.
I dream of an America where most Americans can hear the Angelus bells from their living rooms.
I dream of an America where large extended families are considered normal.
I dream of an America where large extended families tend to live in the same city or region for multiple generations.
I dream of an America without the ubiquitous moral pollution of television and popular culture.
I dream of an America where I no longer have to worry about my children reading the magazine covers displayed in the supermarket checkout line,
I dream of an America that is not so overwhelmed with immigration that it no longer desires to be hospitable to immigrants.
I dream of an America where every city and region has a unique and meaningful cultural identity.
I dream of an America whose citizens live closer to the land, where every home has a garden, and where most food consumed by most Americans is grown locally.
I dream of an America where it is normal to see mothers and children walking about town on a weekday morning.
I dream of an America where it is normal to see priests, monks, and nuns in full habit in public places.
Another dream
I dream of an America whose mothers, wives and daughters desire to be “pretty” rather than “hot.”
Undoing
It seems to me that to achieve many of these stated dreams would require undoing the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps you would all be happier joining an Anabaptist sect rather than practicing Catholicism.