The American Spirit by Edwin J. Feulner

Author:Edwin J. Feulner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2012-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER 13

Idealistic Realism

The test of an ideal or rather of an idealist, is the power to hold to it and get one’s inspiration from it under difficulties. When one is comfortable and well off, it is easy to talk high.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Realism

The actress Bette Davis once said, “Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.” Many Americans live in a fantasy world. They believe things that are obviously not true and that they usually know, on some level, to be false. To resolve this cognitive dissonance, they convince themselves that assertion is proof.

The Founding Fathers were thoroughly knowledgeable about human nature and took it into account in their discussions and deliberations. The Declaration of Independence is the embodiment of our ideals. It insisted that “all Men are created equal” decades before the Civil War that would make the concept possible and almost two centuries before the civil rights movement that would make it a reality.

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The Constitution is one of the ultimate expressions of American realism. When its architects emerged with it at the end of the Constitutional Convention, the document was referred to as the “Miracle in Philadelphia.” America’s Founders knew that people generally act in their own interests. They seek personal advantage and are self-oriented and ambitious. It is the way of the world and can be seen in everything from poker to politics. The Constitution sought to control those impulses through a series of checks and balances, so no person or faction could seize complete power.

Assessing the circumstances in which you find yourself and honestly evaluating the options available to you are good business, no matter what your business. They are also smart.

Being a realist means, quite simply, that you acknowledge reality. Novelist Philip K. Dick once described reality as “that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Reality does not go away, as much as we might sometimes like it to. Those who can face reality have a better chance of shaping it into something they would like it to resemble.

Being Honest with Yourself

We’ve already covered the importance of being honest with others, but honesty with oneself is equally important, if not more so. If people cannot admit the truth to themselves, they are certainly incapable of conveying it to others.

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“The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” That is the wisdom of Winston Churchill, and like so many of his observations, it stands the test of time. If you cannot admit the truth to yourself, your actions based on your inner lies will bring you no credit. And if you deliberately set out to deceive others, you will by no means escape suffering. In the words of philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, “[W]hile lying is often harmful to other people, it is more often harmful to ourselves, for its effects are soul-destroying.”1

Every human being should strive to become what Benjamin Ferguson called Abraham Lincoln: “the noblest work of God—an honest man.

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