The Art of Restoring the American Imagination

Aristotle taught that good deeds begin with beautiful images. A healthy American republic requires a steady supply of good deeds, great and small. So, it stands to reason, America needs a great store of beautiful images designed to help us maintain our way of life and preserve equal justice, liberty, and law. 

In a recent Friday Forum, Dr. Matthew Mehan, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Government at Hillsdale College, spoke on what must be done to refresh the “storehouse” of the American imagination. His talk drew from his beautifully illustrated, semiquincentennial celebratory work, The American Book of Fables.  

In compiling his new work, a “400-page monster” featuring 13 original oil paintings, 40 watercolors and 150 pen and ink drawings, Mehan criss-crossed the country to discover what were the “stories and images in the storehouse…the pantry of [the American] mind” of the founding and pre-founding generations? 

As his book aptly demonstrates, the American imagination was richly stocked with images “that could be easily pulled upon, drawn upon, to ‘cook’ our next deed, our next speech, our next decision.” Mehan used the example of a pictorial children’s primer from 1722 to show how children’s minds were shaped from an early age to think about commonly held religious themes, like life and death, and about societal values of hard work, honesty and morality. These embedded images shaped the character of the nation. 

Refreshing America’s “republican” imagination is vital work today. “If your pantry is full, but everything is stale and in the back and not ready at hand, then your dish is going to be weak, and your choices poor,” he said. 

In addition to remembering what inspired and guided us in the past, Americans also need “quick hand-held versions of complicated principles of law, liberty, self government, charity, service, self-restraint.” These are the ingredients of self-government – “the kinds of things you need to live well in free society, in a complex extended republic like our own.”

Mehan encouraged policymakers to refresh and deepen their moral imagination by pondering things about America that we cherish together. These shared “public loves” include national parks or the U.S. Capitol, but others are conceptual like “natural rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the laws of the country, the constitutional order, the federal system.” Shared public loves are vital to national unity. 

Thank you, Dr. Mehan, for reminding us that our American imagination matters because it shapes our country’s thoughts and actions. We must keep our imaginations alive and active, remembering not only the stories and images, but the lessons, morals, and principles to which they point.