Josiah Royce.
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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) August 3, 2023: For our American experiment in democracy to succeed, we Americans have to be idealistic and faithful to the ideals and idealistic values embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in the U.S. Constitution and its by-laws and amendments.
When we fail to be idealistic about those ideals and idealistic values, we get Trump. The self-styled conservative columnist David Brooks insightfully discusses Trump and his fiercely loyal supporters in his article "What if We're the Bad Guys Here?" (dated August 3, 2023) in the New York Times:
Briefly, the "We" in "We're" refers to college-educated Americans who are the beneficiaries of "the modern meritocracy" because of our "academic achievement." Brooks says, among other things, "Trump's poll numbers are stronger against Biden now than at any time in 2020." Brooks also says, "In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent."
In any event, whatever merits the ideal of the meritocracy may have, I do not here consider it to be one of the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and its by-laws and amendments.
For further discussion of Trump, see Justin A. Frank's perceptive psychological profile of him in his book Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the [Now Former] President (Avery/ Penguin Random House, 2018).
Now, the prolific American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916; Ph.D. in philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, 1878) did not happen to advert explicitly to our American ideals and idealistic values, but he did explore the overall import of having and living by ideals and idealistic values in two of his books:
(1) The Philosophy of Loyalty (Macmillan, 1908; reprinted with an introduction by John J. McDermott, Vanderbilt University Press, 1995);
(2) The Problem of Christianity (Macmillan, 1913, two-volume edition; reprinted as a one-volume edition, with an introduction by John E. Smith, University of Chicago Press, 1968; the 1968 one-volume edition, with the introduction by Smith, was subsequently reprinted, with a foreword by Frank M. Oppenheim, S.J., by the Catholic University of America Press, 2001).
Briefly, Royce explores the process of a person's living in accord with his or her ideals. Royce refers to this process as loyalty (faithfulness to one's ideals).
Now, it strikes me that the historical Jesus lived a life of loyalty to the Kingdom of God that he proclaimed - before he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover festival.
For further discussion of the historical Jesus, see my 2022 9,000-word review essay "John Dominic Crossan on the Historical Jesus's 93 Original Sayings, and Walter J. Ong's Thought" that is available online through the University of Minnesota's digital conservancy:
https://hdl.handle.net/11299/226607
Now, speaking of loyalty, broadly conceived, the American Jesuit philosopher and theologian Frank M. Oppenheim (1925-2020; Ph.D. in philosophy, Saint Louis University, 1962) not only lived the life of a loyal Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, but also the life as a loyal student of Royce's prolific thought. Oppenheim's 1962 doctoral dissertation was titled Royce's Mature Idea of General Metaphysic. (Oppenheim's dissertation committee included five professors in SLU's distinguished department of philosophy: Leonard James Eslick, Chairman and Adviser; Vernon Joseph Bourke; James Daniel Collins; George Peter Klubertanz, S.J.; and Timothy John Cronin, S.J.)
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