From the May/Jun, 2025 issue of *Touchstone*

Quodlibet

Thoughts on Progress

by J. Douglas Johnson

There is a great line in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men when Sheriff Bell and his deputy arrive on the scene of a gangland slaying in the desert, from a drug deal gone bad. Looking at the dead bodies strewn about, the deputy says, “It’s a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?” And Sheriff Bell replies, “If it ain’t, it’ll do ’til the mess gets here.”

I think of this scene every time I pick up yet another article or book written since the nineteenth century that tries to explain how the country got into the civilizational and political mess of that time. How the myth of human progress continues to endure through it all really is a marvel. On the other hand, as C. S. Lewis pointed out in his essay, “The Funeral of a Great Myth,”however false that myth is, we can’t seem to get along without it. Politics in particular couldn’t function without it. How would politicians conduct their campaigns if everyone knew and accepted that things would pretty much stay the same or get worse?

Many of the books and articles explaining how we got into the mess we’re in are truly great. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville pointed a finger at French Enlightenment philosophers. And if it weren’t for Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences, I’m not sure I would even know the name William of Ockham.

But these erudite explanations miss something.

I grew up in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, which was then a most conservative town in conservative Cumberland County. My dad served on the Camp Hill Borough Council for many years, and for a while as its president.

One night, maybe forty or fifty years ago, he came home from a town meeting and said that eventually only women would be serving on the borough council.

“What makes you say that?” I droned. I took this as one of his many general gripes about women encroaching into fields where he wished they wouldn’t, and I wanted to see if he could explain what I regarded as unlikely (and anyway, so what if it were only women?). His answer was cogent, unforgettable, and never would have occurred to me.

Borough council has always been men and only men, and usually the same men. And here’s how our meetings go: We open a bottle of Dewer’s, we smoke cigars, and then we roll out maps of roads and sewers. We look at the budget and we figure out how much money we have to fix whatever needs fixing first. We tell a couple of stories, make a few jokes, and then go home. We don’t get paid, but it’s necessary work and we like our time together.

A couple of years ago, one of the guys died, and a woman ran unopposed and came on the council. That was the end of the scotch and cigars. She hadn’t complained, but these guys weren’t going to pull out a bottle and light up a cigar in front of a woman. We just stopped doing it. The next year, another guy who had served on borough council for I don’t know how long stepped down, and another woman took his place. That woman insisted on a stricter application of Robert’s Rules of Order, so, fine, that’s what we did.

This week another guy said he was stepping down after his term, and he’s really good, so I called him up and asked him why he wasn’t running again. He said he just didn’t enjoy it anymore.

“The women can do the job,” my dad told me, “and they spend money on parks and flowers, which the men don’t. But the camaraderie is gone, and men won’t stick around for long without it.”

J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.

Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Online
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

Give a Gift Subscription

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.