Truth is real, Goodness is real, and Beauty is real. But we don't experience them in the abstract. We experience A truth, A good society, A beautiful piece of art, music or poetry. And this is where tradition must come in. We have an instinct in us that helps us recognize what is true, good, and beautiful, but it has to be developed; we need to be shown things that are true, good, and beautiful. And that process of education has to make sense to us, both in terms of explaining what it is that it true, good, beautiful about an object, and in connecting it with our everyday experience — it's harder for an American child to understand the beauty of, say, Japanese art, particularly if he doesn't know his own tradition.

You have to know your own tradition — the habits, beliefs, and practices that shape you, your family, your town, your parish, your workplace, etc. — in order to make sense of them. What happens if you ignore it all, or dismiss it as reactionary garbage? You still function, but at a very superficial level, accepting all kinds of prejudices handed to you by the mass media and the people who happen to be around you. Your life, like your society, becomes increasingly incoherent.

This, of course, is where we are right now. People get their culture the same place they get their food, news, and groceries — from the Big Box Mart, the mass produced purveyors of watered down garbage for television, news, education, and just about everything else. Now, some people will claim that this is all changing through the growth of "niche markets." But what you actually find is that people begin with Big Box Mart, be it TV, Wal-Mart, the political parties, or what have you, then choose one or two areas in which to become specialist consumers (but still consumers, rarely ever producers of anything cultural).

Sadly, the same kinds of bad, superficial habits that have taken over our lives in cultural issues have affected us at least as much in our religious lives. Liturgy, where it remains, is so watered down and banal as to be all but useless as spiritual exercise. Theology is reduced to "God wants you to be nice, especially to x, y, and z oppressed groups." And few even acknowledge that beauty should even be an issue for the faithful.

Alexis de Tocqueville strove mightily to save his nation from the cultural chaos into which it had descended in the decades after the French Revolution. That Revolution had overthrown utterly his nation's traditional society, leaving only the mechanisms of centralized power, which had been abused by a succession of destructive tyrants. Tocqueville commented that he at times despaired that his nation ever could reach a place of stability and peace. But he did know one thing: that stability and peace could not be had if people looked only to the moment, ignoring the fact that man is made for something more than animal pleasures. And to make our transcendent good real to us in a time of anti-traditional ideology, we have no choice but to look back beyond the time of destruction to reconnect with the deeper traditions of our people.

We must reconnect with the deeper traditions of our nation, in constitutionalism, in local communities, in an integrated vision of faith and public life, if our nation is to be culturally vibrant again. In the same way, we must reconnect with the springs of faith in our faith traditions. This means the Magisterium for the Catholic Church, along with the often conflicting traditions of various faith communities that for so long made the Church alive to its adherents, minimizing both flaccid nonconformity and clericalism; it also means a return to real liturgical art and practice. For other faiths the traditions are and must be different, but must be re-rooted if real growth is to come. For Protestantism it seems to me the answer would have to lie at least in part in a reinvigoration of place, of geographical localism as key to living a Godly life in community.
But I am no Protestant.

In general terms, it seems to me we have to remember that in seeking to live as we ought we need to look, not just to those who are generally viewed as having authority (which today generally means those who control the branch of Big Box Mart we happen to frequent) but rather look beyond those in power toward a higher authority, and also behind them to the long stretch of tradition that can point us in the right direction in finding our duties.