Chaos, Renewal, and the Catskill Eagle

in Moby DickIshmael begins with the realization that life drives him into public space.

“Whenever it gets bad around your mouth, whenever it’s a wet November, I’ll explain how long it can be to the sea as soon as possible.”

His impulses are not only personal, but political. Private aspirations are bound by public life.

To ride a PEQuod is to enter the politics of hierarchy, risk, shared responsibility: miniature. Melville shows how freedom drives people into collective life where freedom collides with fate.

The Bible tells stories differently. Politics begins with a power play in Eden and ends with God’s politics. What began in the gardens reaches its peak in the city. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He did not say, “My kingdom is not of this earth.” “Your kingdom will come, and you will be done on earth like heaven.”

The Bible is equally true and has no tradition of being political. Early church councils were ingrained in politics. The smoke-filled room of Philadelphia does not weaken the integrity of the doctrine as much as it undermines the constitution. If anything, they show that truth and power are always intertwined. As all major doctrines show, what comes out through the struggle must be rethinked over time.

The founding of America came not from sudden inspiration in 1776, but from colonial debates about rights and expression that enabled freedom. America declared independence and gave it a lasting form in its constitution.

“The Problem,” constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar warns, “We’ve forgotten the story.” Without a shared narrative of independence and constitutional freedom, he argues that “our country is in deadly danger.”

Often I want
I was able to devote myself to and devote myself forever
To the truth we continue to come back and come back.
(Robert Frost)

Tradition cannot be dismissed. The only cure is to smuggle into another tradition, so to praise it for corruption or praise for progress. No one escapes tradition than they can join Ain Rand to be born alone.

Politics is inevitable. For those retreating to gardening or wealthy, Bürgenstock’s pose: even indifference as a style is part of it. To be human is to be political. Our lives atrophy without pushing and pulling each other. Every day, through choices and encounters, we reconstruct the world of politics. Without updates, politics will collapse, just like life.

Today, mistrust of institutions is common both on the left and right. The teenagers slam on the door but don’t leave, we stay and sul. With CS Lewis having a screw tape warning, the devil’s strategy is to keep the problem constantly “there” the system and never “there” in itself.

Reforms rely on institutions that expand participation and verify elite management. When citizens challenge authority, the nation flourishes. When power is monopolized, progress stalls. In his farewell speech, Washington warned against “destroying the very engines that allowed them to destroy the power of unning, ambitious, uncaused men and lifted them into unjust control.” The power of totalitarianism praises loyalty to capabilities.

Relief is the citizens, such as churches, charities, clubs, civic groups, and other citizens who form associations to accomplish what they cannot do on their own. Gathering together, they learn to cooperate, build trust, fulfill government accountability, and continue to live up to autonomy. The Society practices pluralism and is not declared.

New forces are changing political lives. Genomics left the laboratory for the public square. The very unstable concepts of race, justice, medicine and species in gene editing destroy the old left division and create strange alliances. For some, it promises fairness and health. For others it revives the fear of surveillance, discrimination, and eugenics. There are also artificial intelligence.

What is at risk is how much risk society accepts. People decide whether to bear uncertainty. Should policy makers restrain or speed up new developments? The conflict only becomes sharper as they multiply, including operations in Washington.

Democracy relies on renewal. Sheldon Warrin, one of America’s most keen observers of politics, came to us that it was a fleeting practice rather than a calm structure. You should do it.

I’ve done it before. You can do it again. As Melville wrote about Catskill Eagle:

It similarly dives into the blackest valleys, soaring from them again, becoming invisible in sunny spaces. And even if it flies forever within the valley, the valley is still on the mountains. So it’s not as miserable as it looks.

Notes and reading

• Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851). The closing quote is at the end of Chapter 96. Ishmael, whether fantasy, fantasy or despair, is induced from a trance induced by being wary of fires to escapism.

• Yes – John 18:36, Matthew 6:10.

• Tiro Shabbat, The second birth (2015). A political philosopher, Shabbat explores how politics is born not only institutions but in human fabrics.

• CS Lewis, Screw letters (1942).

• “The Power of Totalitarianism… Beyond the Capacity” – Donald Trump: “I value loyalty more than the brain. Politics (March 6, 2018). cf. Hannah Allend, The origin of totalitarianismPart 3/10 and fn. 65: Before the war, “Nazi policies were distinguished from Bolshevik measurements only as long as the Bolsheviks had not yet killed any of the top talent.”

• Sheldon Warrin, Democracy was established (2008). Warrin is an American political theorist and is known for his criticism of “inverted totalitarianism” and democracy as always vulnerable and fugitives.

• Akhil Reed Amar, “This is the story I tell,” Free Press (September 22, 2025). Amar is an American jurist from Yale, known for his expertise in the US Constitution.

• Hugh Hekro, About thinking institutional terms (2008). Hekro, an American political scientist, has urged a restoration of respect for the institution as a foundation of essential meaning, habits and trust in democracy. – Tokuville168-172.

• Robert Frost, “…the truth we’re coming back and continuing to come back.” Black cottage, in North of Boston (1914).

• Susan McWilliams, return (2014). “We can get in the way of global political theory by turning our gaze backwards.” – Tockville, 64-70. McWilliams is an associate professor of politics at Pomona College.

Shana Tova!

The truth is strangely true

Approx. 2 + 2 = 5