Early Morning After Storm at Sea, Winslow Homer; 1902

IN AN essay at The Orthosphere, “What is the America that traditionalists love?” Alan Roebuck writes that it is reasonable and good to love America despite her decline:

If America is ours, if we belong to her, then we must love her regardless of whether or not she is great. Love is not the same as approval; we are not obliged to approve of all that America is and does. But if we really are connected to America then there is no doubt about our duty to love our own people. And conversely, if America is not ours, if the situation has grown so bad that we really are no longer of America, then we owe her no more than the common courtesy we owe all people made in God’s image.

So do we still belong to America? Or has she become a different nation, one to whom we do not belong?

This question cannot be answered by airtight logic and a knock-down-drag-out argument. What we speak of here is real, but it is not known by mathematical or scientific reasoning. It is a spiritual and transcendent reality, and therefore it is known primarily by intuition rather than by syllogistic reasoning. But note that intuition—the mind’s ability to know a truth by immediately grasping it rather than by a process of logical deduction—always forms in response to what we observe. These observations are the evidence that induces intuitive knowledge under the right conditions. And logic can play the crucial role of removing false ideas and placing proper evidence before the mind, so that it can know.

I recommend the entire essay.

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