In May 1975, after my first year of college, I found myself hired for the summer in the main library at Columbia University, surrounded by the hundreds of thousands of books that make this imposing building one of the most great centers of study and knowledge in the United States. Having no professional experience, I was charged by my head of department, Vera Carter, with a particularly non-pedagogical task: to inventory all the typewriters of the parent company, the Butler library as well as all of the many campus satellite libraries, each associated with a graduate school.
Armed with cards created by a distant predecessor, I set to work with an obvious lack of enthusiasm, my predilection being for books. Since my childhood, I love libraries and reading; in fact, my favorite library at Columbia was the one on the sixth floor of Butler, where future librarians were pursuing master’s degrees at the prestigious school of library management. What better place to study than among people trained in silence, such as Trappist monks?
I also found myself hanging out, among other places, in the magnificent library of the school of architecture, where I rummaged with fascination in the shelves filled with edifying tomes without bothering to locate or list the machines writing from administration offices, such a prosaic task. The consequence of my laziness and inattention was a humiliating failure: the unfinished inventory was a mess, and after two weeks Mrs. Carter summoned me to express her displeasure.
Now I had to pass in front of the big boss, the head of “general services”, to explain myself. My plea was useless. Martin Colverd, a Brit with the classic English academic accent, gave me the bad news: I was being fired for unsatisfactory work. However, Mr. Colverd had reserved an even harsher condemnation of my conduct: “If you really believe in Western civilization, you will understand that such tasks are essential to maintain it. »
Phew. In a way, one could say that Mr. Colverd had exceeded his duties with this frankly pompous statement. But not for me, because at the time, my mind was already really steeped in the Western tradition. Martin Colverd accused me of failing in my duty as a citizen, but worse than that was my failure as a parishioner in the church of the Western canon, so dominant among undergraduates at Columbia. This tradition weighs heavily and visibly on the entire university community.
Engraved on the neoclassical facade of the Butler Library are the names believed to be the most important in Greco-Roman philosophy and literature and those of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. To graduate, I was obliged to read texts by the vast majority of these eighteen authors — the fact that Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare and Voltaire were white males hardly mattered. importance to male and mostly white college students (until 1983, Columbia College was all-male), and we took it more or less seriously. The basic university program was almost sacred; if the Butler library (including its typewriters) was a pillar of this great civilizing program, according to Mr. Colverd, I was but a small nail.
Absurd metaphor? Today, the Western tradition is under siege from all sides, at least if we go back to its founding in ancient Greece and the city-state of Athens. The cultural and political ideal advocated by Colverd and my teachers assumed a common understanding of “freedom” and “democracy”—a consensus that no longer exists in the United States.
Patrick J. Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed, notes that “the foundational texts of the Western political tradition focused on how to contain the impulse…towards tyranny” and generally found themselves in agreement on the promotion of “virtue and self-rule” in order to curb “the tyrannical temptation”. Mr. Deneen writes that “the Greeks, above all, considered self-governance” to be essential for maintaining the “virtues of temperance, wisdom, moderation and justice”. However, for the great Greek minds, self-rule and self-governance went hand in hand—without a “continuity” between personal conduct and governmental conduct, a free and harmonious society could not function. Patrick J. Deneen aptly summarizes it thus: “Self-governance in the city was possible only if the virtue of self-governance governed the souls of the citizens. »
Let us reflect, therefore, on the behavior of Donald Trump in order to understand our civic and national crisis. Here is a man clearly unable to restrain his worst impulses, whether sexual, financial or tyrannical. Fortunately, he has neither the patience nor the concentration necessary to become a dictator. However, the former president is only a symptom of a deeper degradation in the body politic. The Greeks emphasized education as an antidote to tyranny—political and narcissistic. Lo and behold, more than 74 million voters cast their ballots in 2020 for a presidential candidate who was openly corrupt, thoughtless and illiterate when it came to the US Constitution.
Ultimately, I’m flattered by Martin Colverd’s review. It seems that he believed me capable of learning. And my fellow Trumpists? We can’t just fire them all.
John R. MacArthur is editor of Harper’s Magazine. His column returns at the beginning of each month.