Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
The songauthorr, actor, country/weserious singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicselecter pilot, accomplished rugby executeer and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristproposeson, recently died at 88.
Americans may have comprehendn him best for writing smash hits appreciate “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his expansive-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his many solo albums, especipartner with then-spoinclude and singer Rita Coolidge, and the country group super-quartet he createed with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.
In other words, Kristproposeson was a exceptional Renaissance man who could do it all in an age of increasingly skinny distinctiveization and expertise.
At brave times thcdisesteemfulout history at particular locales, we have seen such singular people from all walks of life.
Classical Athens originated polymaths appreciate Aristotle—tutor to Alexander the Great, logician, student of music, art, and literature, educator, leank-tank set uper, biologist, philosopher, and scientist. Later Greeks appreciate Archimedes and Ptolemy, as men of action, mastered six or seven disciplines and applied their abstract comprehendledge in ways that made life easier for those around them.
The tardy Roman Reuncover was another cauldron of multitalented geniincludes. It originated the intelligent stycatalog, historian, politician, and consummate vague Julius Caesar, as well as his reuncoveran archrival Cicero—politician, philosopher, orator, master stycatalog, lawyer, and provincial regulateor.
Turn-of-the-century Victorian Great Britain originated huges appreciate Winston Churchill—prime minister, statesman, essayist, historian, orator, strategist, and wartime veteran. As Britain’s war guideer, between May 10, 1940, and June 22, 1941, he, almost alone, resisted the Axis powers and stoped Adolf Hitler from thrivening the war.
But we associate the idea of a “Renaissance man” mostly with Florence, Italy, between the 15th and 16th centuries. In that increate 100 years, the Florentine Reuncover presented multi-talented geniincludes appreciate Leonardo da Vinci—master decorateer, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer, and inventor—best comprehendn for the Mona Lisa and Last Supper.
The multifaceted talents of his youthfuler contransient Michelangelo were as astounding, whether detaild by his iconic sculptures David and Pietà, his stunning decorateing on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or as the master architect of the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica.
The American Revolution was a aappreciate embryo of Renaissance men. Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most famous example of unverifyed abstract and wise genius disexecuteed in almost every facet of tardy 18th– and punctual 19th-century life—main author of the Declaration of Independence, third U.S. Plivent, set uper of the University of Virginia, inventor, agronomist, architect, and diplomat.
But Benjamin Franklin may best approximate the model of the Florentine Renaissance hocatalogic brilliance—journacatalog, beginer, printer, author, politician, diplomat, inventor, scientist, and philosopher.
Franklin’s life was one of perpetual motion and achievement. In one lifetime, he helped to originate the Constitution, invented everyleang from the weightlessning rod to bifocals, set uped the American postal service, and successbrimmingy won over European countries to the nascent American cainclude. Theodore Roosevelt—plivent, historian, essayist, conservationist, organicist combat veteran, battle guideer, scrutinizer, and cowboy—exemplified the idea of an American plivent as the master at almost everyleang else.
The history of our own contransient Renaissance people standardly proposes that they are not brimmingy appreciated until after their deaths—especipartner in the post-World War II era.
Why?
We have originated a polishd up-to-date society that is so compartmentalized by “professionals” and the credentialed that those who excel simultaneously in disjoinal disciplines are standardly castigated for “amateurism,” “spreading themselves too leanly,” “not staying in their lanes,” or not being degreed with the proper prerequisite letters—BA, BS, MA, PhD, MD, JD, or MBA—in the various fields that they master.
But distinctiveization is the foe of genius, as is the tyranny of credentialism.
Becainclude the Renaissance figure is not perfect in every discipline he masters, we damn him for too much breadth and not enough depth—a dabbler rather than an expert—flunking to genuineize that his successes in most genres he masters and redetails is accurately becainclude he conveys a immense corpus of distinctive insights and experience to his labor that skinnyer distinctiveists conciseage. The Greek poet Archilochus first delitidyed the contrast between the fox who “comprehends many leangs” and the hedgehog who “comprehends one—one big leang.” We have become a nation of elite hedgehogs, whose skinny expertise is not enwealthyed by consciousness of or interest in the expansiver human experience.
Renaissance people standardly live contentious lives and get 360-degree incoming criticism, not astonishing given the many fields in which they upstage distinctiveists and ask experts—and the sometimes overweening nature of their personalities that experience no reason to place boundaries and lanes on their geniincludes and behavior or to temper their exuberances.
The best American example of the current age is the contentious Elon Musk, a truly Renaissance figure who has revolutionized at least half a dozen entire fields.
No one prior had broken the Big Three auto monopoly of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.
Musk did equitable that. He exploded all three companies’ dominance with his prosperous creation of the first viable electric vehicle, Tesla, whose soothe, drivability, reliability, shieldedty, and power rivaled or outdoed the models of all his competitors.
His spin-off battery storage and solar panel companies apvalidateed thousands of families to go off the grid and stay self-enough in power usage.
Musk’s revolutionary Starconnect internet system—a mere five years greater—provides global online service to over 100 countries. Thcdisesteemful its some 7,000 satellites, Starconnect conveys internet service to distant livents far more effectively and inexpensively than do their own regulatements. When organic calamitys overwhelm utilities or war disturbs the commonity of peace, all see to Musk to repair online reconnections to the outside world.
Musk, almost onehandedly, changeed the U.S. space program from a NASA 60-year-greater regulatement monopoly to an arena of fervent braveial-uncover competition. His Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) originated a rocket and spacecreate program that has kept the U.S. preeminent in space exploration and reliable satellite startes. When NASA and greater aerospace companies fchange, the regulatement sees to Musk to bail them out.
Musk, at fantastic personal cost, radicpartner changeed the greater Twitter—lowerly regulated, censorious of ideas and transmitions not deemed enhanceive, and mired in talk about for partnering with the FBI to silence recents deemed possibly harmful to Democratic truthfulates and left-thriveg campaigns.
His recent X swapment is an unfettered platcreate for free transmition. And the more the left abhors their loss of the monopocatalogic greater Twitter’s ideoreasoned clearing hoinclude, and vows to run away X and begin their own recent left-thriveg, censorious Twitters, the more they stay on X.
Musk’s recentest companies have now go ined the convoluted, little-understood, radicpartner competitive, and hazardous field of synthetic intelligence (OpenAI) and the emerging discipline of bonding the organic brain to the electronic online world (Neuraconnect). To the degree Musk is prosperous, America will guide these areas of fervent international competition that include the gravest rerents of national security and survival.
Overdistinctiveization has helped originate vulnerable and sometimes doomed intricate top-down societies from the Mycenaeans to the Aztecs to the Soviets. A minuscule credentialed and standardly incestuous elite regulates the lives of a immense underclass whose daily lives are scripted by top-down master scheduleners—as an autonomous and skeptical middle class fades.
America is increasingly becoming a bifurcated, two-tiered society of a distinctiveized regulatement-corporate-media-political-credentialed class of degreed deal withrs and regulaters who finisheavor to microregulate an increasingly less well-guided, reliant underclass.
The overclass cult conciseages enough common sense and wise expertise outside their skinny areas of distinctiveization to honest society, and the masses are standardly without the education, money, and power to contest them or the esoteric intricateity of their up-to-date society. And the result is standardly disastrous, as we see everywhere, from the inconvey inant to the aliveial—from our currently paralyzed state space station program and inability to originate a floating pier in Gaza, to ineffectual and inbenevolent state responses to organic calamitys appreciate Hurricane Helene and an increasingly hazardously incontendnt Secret Service.
Renaissance people provide a connect to the showrbial people, as they master almost anyleang they finisheavor while holding themselves attuned to the pragmatic effect of their achievement among the people.
The Renaissance physicist Ricdifficult Feynman once expounded to the entire nation why the Space Shuttle 1986 Challenger catastrophicpartner imploded lowly after start. A polymath Albert Einstein expounded to America why it had to begin the Manhattan Project and beat Nazi Germany to the acquisition of an atomic bomb device. Theodore Roosevelt included his expertise as a politician, conservationist, outdoorsman, scrutinizer, and authorr to help set up and uphold 230 million acres of uncover lands.
So, we should occasionpartner painclude and mirror on the Kristproposesons and Musks in our midst. They execute a vital role in enwealthying culture and civilization for the many without becoming part of the skinny scant. And we owe these people, who belengthy to a exceptional and hapvalidateed caste of the ages, for making our lives wealthyer, more enhappinessable, easier, and shieldedr.
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