Wilfred Mark McClay

Time is a complex and elusive concept that has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Augine of Hippo famously struggled to define time, and modern-day philosophers continue to grapple with its nature. The American Heritage Dictionary defines time as a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in irreversible succession. However, this definition fails to capture the true essence of time. The concept of "real time" has become popular in our society, implying authenticity and immediacy. But what does it really mean to experience something in real time? And why do we prioritize live broadcasts over recorded or remembered events? Perhaps our understanding of time should reflect our internal experience rather than conforming to external standards. Aristotle defined time as the measure of motion, leaving room for various forms of measurement and human experience. In our fast-paced world, it is important to step back and reflect on the larger picture, rather than becoming consumed by the constant flow of real time. By embracing a deeper sense of time that incorporates memory, imagination, and historical consciousness, we can gain a more meaningful understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

McClay discusses the prevalent use of the word "like" as a filler in contemporary language, particularly among young people. He argues that this usage reflects a lack of confidence in language itself and a detachment from the full meaning of assertions. While some linguists view "like" as a modal marker of thought in motion, he contends that it is more akin to a compulsive verbal tic. The excessive use of "like" hinders precise expression and undermines the weight and responsibility of one's words. He emphasizes the importance of learning to use precise words without hesitation or qualification, as it reflects a resolution of self-knowledge and discipline. This quality of composure in speech can also foster composure in one's soul. He suggests that fostering this quality in public speech is crucial and can have a positive feedback effect. He highlights the need to reconsider the use of "like" and promote more precise and confident language.

McClay discusses the resistance to change in language by those who have a deep interest in words. While playfulness is not discouraged, there is a desire to protect the language and be cautious of new words and meanings. However, there are instances where new words are necessary to describe new things. The word "influencer" is used as an example, highlighting its use as a noun and the need for its creation despite personal dislike.

McClay asserts that students of Plato will remember Socrates's encounter with the young prodigy Theaetetus, who would become one of the most influential mathematicians of the ancient world. As Plato tells the story, Theaetetus became so enthralled with Socrates's dialectical riddles that he confessed himself "dizzy" with "wondering" whether these mysteries could ever be unraveled. To which Socrates responded with an approving pat on the head, "This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin." Yet the connection between the sense of wonder and the drive for knowledge has not stayed constant in subsequent years. Aquinas himself hinted that wonder might cease once the "causes of things were known." Some six centuries later, Max Weber followed up on that prediction, lamenting that the rationalizing spirit of modern life--one of the proudest of the West's intellectual achievements--had led to the "disenchantment of the world," a cold and forbidding view devoid of all shadows of mystery.

[...]I recognize the maddening imperfections of memory: its unreliability, its failures, its deceptions, its panderings, its whispering seductions, its stealthy editing of experience for personal benefit-and its penchant for cruel taunts, for hurling self-condemnations at us without warning, for keeping us awake at night as we cling to any distraction to avoid an encounter with the rebuke of our own recollections. Here I was at Johns Hopkins, an institution that prided itself on being the model of the modern research university in the United States, an institution dedicated not to the placid ideal of cultural conservation but to inquiry, to the remorseless supplanting of traditional learning with ever more incisive and disruptive scientific knowledge, including the relentless rethinking and reinterpretation of the past. What is described here is a very intimate memory-world, the Lebenswelt of a couple, "our tribe of two," against whose union the peeping-Tom intrusions of "reality"-the nattering, cynical voice declaring "he isn't that handsome, she isn't that pretty"-seem irrelevant, since they are not expressed in the wordless language that, Gioia tells us, is learned by heart. (Why is it that we say that memorized things are learned by heart, rather than by head?) Families, too, accumulate such lore, mental scrapbooks of sayings, stories, adages, puns, snatches of TV shows and song lyrics and advertising jingles, forming a household patois, also learned by heart, also generally inaccessible to outsiders, sometimes even spouses-in-law.

In honor of the anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787, AEI’s Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies division marked Constitution Day with a lecture by Wilfred M. McClay (Hillsdale College). McClay’s lecture was the 10th in a series named for distinguished AEI scholar Walter Berns. Introduction Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest-reigning monarch in British history, having easily surpassed the formidable 63-year rule of Queen Victoria and continuing to add to her record numbers at the time of this writing, in the summer of 2021. Her achievement has been widely celebrated in the American news media, partly because we Americans seem to feel a great fondness for Elizabeth and an enduring fascination with the British royal family. Just why is that? This seems like rather strange behavior for a country that came into being through a revolution against one of Elizabeth’s predecessors. Not to mention being a country whose Constitution—the 234th anniversary of which we celebrate in 2021—incorporated the principle that “no title of nobility” would be granted by the United States and that every state in the Union was to have a “republican” form of government—meaning: No kings and queens allowed. There are probably more elements to that puzzle than there is space in these remarks. But surely part of the answer lies in the durable bonds that still link our two nations, in the form of shared language, customs, laws, and culture. Our country may have been born in rebellion, but our Constitution’s form and contents are deeply indebted to the British precedents and influences that shaped it, especially following the long and often bloody struggles for power during the 17th century culminating in the constitutional arrangements established in the Glorious Revolution. More generally, the “special relationship” between our two nations has proved deep and enduring, despite our occasional differences. There can be no doubt about it; we Americans have a rooting interest in the Queen’s well-being. But something else is at work too. The Queen’s most important role in her own country is an impersonal one, her office as a disinterested and trans-partisan symbol of the United Kingdom (and the Commonwealth). Elizabeth performs that role with superlative grace and is arguably the single most compelling symbol of political stability and unity in today’s world. Despite all the changes and fissures that have afflicted British society since her reign began in 1952, including a radical transformation of the nation’s international status and its demographic makeup, not to mention the endless foibles of the royal family, her matronly but commanding presence reassures her people—and those of us who care about them—that the essential things will carry on, year in and year out. Whether that essential British core will survive the British nation’s eventual loss of this extraordinary woman is anyone’s guess, but the odds are high that the monarchy she sought to preserve will endure so long as a reasonably coherent British nation also endures. There is something enviable in that. We Americans often feel the absence of such unifying personal symbols in our own contentious nation, and many of us yearn for them—especially at the present moment, when so much in our national life seems to be fiercely contested and when the presidency itself, no matter who occupies that office, seems more often to be an avenue of division rather than a symbol of abiding unity. Seeming to lack the symbols of unity, we fear that we may be losing the thing itself. It is not an unjustified fear. But in fact we do not lack for unifying symbols, if we are willing to avail ourselves of them. Ever since George Washington gallantly refused the office of monarch, we have been on a different path—a path on which our commitment to impersonal laws and impartial procedures overrides our commitment to any one man or woman as our symbolic head. For us it is a document, our Constitution, that plays the role of democratic monarch and thereby serves as the chief and most durable symbol of our national unity and our commitment to one another as one nation. That is not all the Constitution does, of course. It is first and foremost a legal document, a written expression of the supreme law of the land, establishing the fundamental structure of the national government, broadly delineating its relationship to the state governments, and explicitly protecting certain individual and collective rights against the power of the national government. As such, it is not in any obvious way an equivalent to a monarch. And like most legal documents, it also is a rather dry affair. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution contains, apart from its Preamble, almost no stirring language proclaiming the sweeping idealism of its claims. But its symbolic function is nevertheless an absolutely crucial part of what it has been for us. We have lived under its authority for the entire span of our nation’s history, apart from a brief prelude under the Articles of Confederation.1 Hence, our national identity is difficult to conceive apart from it. To do so would mean entry into utterly uncharted waters. By contrast, the French have over the centuries cycled through a multitude of regimes—monarchies, republics, and empires—and yet French identity has never been reliant for its existence on any particular form of government. We think of the United States as a young country, and perhaps we are right to do so. But the established life of the American nation has not existed apart from its Constitution, which happens also to be the world’s oldest constitution. Hence it is especially proper at a time of such intense contention in our national life that we pause to remember and reflect on the meaning of that fact. Read the full report. Notes 1. The question of exactly when the Constitution became the law of the land is surprisingly complex. An excellent and fairly dispositive treatment of the matter is found in Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman, “When Did the Constitution Become Law?,” Notre Dame Law Review 77, no. 1 (2001), https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol77/iss1/1/.

The work of cultural criticism never ends. A hundred years ago, Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's vice president, proclaimed that "what this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." But who would say that now? Times have changed, tobacco has become an evil weed, and anyway, what the country needs now is a really good four-letter word. No, I'm not talking about love, although that would be a decent guess, since love is highly desirable and always in short supply. I'm talking about the primordial human need for the genuinely dirty word, or, better yet, a few of them, a finite but reliable stock of good old-fashioned profanities--racy, pungent, transgressive, maybe even a bit radioactive. Words that can shock, provoke, even lead to a barroom brawl.