“The mystic chords of memory”
In early May I wrote a column titled “Communities of memory,” in which I quoted late American sociologist Robert Bellah (1927–2013) who wrote that “healthy nations must be ‘communities of memory.’” This week I want to continue with the theme of memory and its importance to Macedonia’s continuance, both as a nation-state, and a people.
“The mystic chords of memory” is a key part of the last paragraph from the first inaugural address by America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, as he took the oath of office of the presidency on March 4, 1861 on the steps of the US Capitol Building and before his fellow citizens, members of congress, and others. It is vital to know the context in which he spoke: The Confederate States of America had been proclaimed just two months earlier with seven states seceding to form it, so in his inaugural address, Lincoln was speaking particularly to those Americans in this rump state. His use of “the mystic chords of memory” was an appeal, a harkening back to the very foundations of the Republic and the memories of what brought Americans together in the very first place.
Memory.
American conservative writer George Will, in his magnus opus, “The Conservative Sensibility,” writes “…the memory of a nation needs attending to; it does not nurture and transmit itself. It must be transmitted; it must be taught.”
Will, again, and lightly adapted for a Macedonian audience: Macedonian society “needs to take seriously the unending political task of recapturing the past through the cultivation of memories. Nations are naturally forgetful, and democracy makes them more so.” Will writes about this being a “political task” in the context that a nation must provide its children and youth with public education and in this specific area, education on and about history. Think about that the next time you read about Macedonian and Bulgarian academicians getting together to “adjust” Macedonian schoolbooks and textbooks, especially those on history.
Progressives the world over, like former US president Barack Obama, and Macedonia’s current foreign minister, Nikola Dimitrov, enjoy employing the phrase “the right side of history.” From this they mean that the direction, the trajectory of history, is something which can be known, and that this direction can be identified by a certain group of erudite people (people such as Obama and Dimitrov). Furthermore, if this class of people know the direction of history, then they will employ all means necessary to keep a society on track and in that direction and that all other attempts to derail their work is an attack on their historical march forward. This, in essence, is what Dimitrov and his class of people in government (enabled by certain Western progressives), have done and are currently doing to Macedonia.
All of this is nonsense — platitudes about the “right side of history” are merely rhetorical devices designed to shut down debate.
For Dimitrov, and in order to keep Macedonia on the “right side of history,” and “onwards and upwards” as he is very fond of saying and Tweeting, anything that might keep Macedonia “held back,” in his eyes, must be shattered. This would include the historical past, and in particular Macedonia’s past. As Dimitrov attempts to engineer a particular and peculiar future, Macedonia’s patrimony — its very bonds with the past — must be broken.
And the Bulgarian Government knows that Dimitrov believes this, which is why they will take advantage of Macedonia, especially when certain Macedonians apparently enjoy being taken advantage of, for whatever reasons. And in depriving Macedonia of its past (through revisions of history or denial of its language) Bulgaria will engineer a very different, a very Bulgarian, shall we say, future.
Biographer Timothy Sandefur writes that “History is a shared tradition about one’s origins and the glorification of the achievements of ancestors, which gives one a sense of purpose and a role in the progress of the world. History can generate pride and solidarity among a people.” If history can “generate pride and solidarity among a people,” as Sandefur notes, then what happens when a people forget their history? Ronald Knox (1888–1957), a Catholic chaplain at Oxford University and noted author, wrote “You do not believe what your grandfathers believed, and have no reason to hope that your grandsons will believe what you do.” Commenting on that truism, Will writes “No community can passively accept that proposition unless it is reconciled to passing away, or — much the same — being transformed beyond recognition in every generation.” Will Macedonians reconcile themselves to seeing their country pass away or transformed beyond recognition?
Finally, and on the subject of our purpose in life, Will writes that patriotism “presupposes a purpose beyond, a purpose sometimes higher than, that of the individual.” American constitutional scholar Walter Berns writes that “…patriots are citizens who love their country simply because it is their country,” and that patriotism is “a sentiment or state of mind, an awareness of sharing an identity with others.”
A purpose beyond our own selves, a shared sense of identity, and the “mystic chords of memory”: these three things, shored up through both education in the classroom, and stories told around the lunch table in the kitchen or dining room are then, to me at least, some of the keys to strengthening Macedonia’s identity. And strengthening Macedonia’s identity in turn strengthens Macedonia’s physical security; internally as it relates to threats from within, and externally, because a people who are united in the big things — the need for a Macedonian state with its own history, memory, identity, heritage, culture, language and much else — will be much more difficult to disrupt or even destroy.
(See here, here, and here for past columns on the subject of memory).
