Jack McPherson, ELP Strategic Development Manager
Hillsdale College graduate Trey Brock is an exceptional human being. A model student-athlete who mastered Hillsdale’s extraordinarily challenging curriculum while winning four letters in football for the Chargers, the Texas native not only endured brutal Michigan winters for four years, but excelled on the gridiron and earned respect and character as a record-setting wide receiver on teams that lost several hard fought games during his career.
Brock’s excellence and perseverance caught the eye of the Kansas City Chiefs, who invited him for a tryout – a remarkable accomplishment in and of itself for a Division II football player. He did not stay on with them long and become teammates with the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Harrison Butker because he was meant for better things. Now he is an immensely influential educator and leader in the highest senses, and in another high sense, the man is a vitalist, demonstrating in both word and deed how the movement of the body is a glory to its Creator, and a legitimate pathway to living the lives we are all meant to live.
You see, for Brock, none of the suffering he has endured in the classroom or on the field is any matter, because he knows that the Way of Wisdom and the Way of Beauty is the Way of Suffering—the via dolorosa pulchritudinis. Brock knows, as any real leader does—as Jesus knew and taught—that life is not about spiritual masochism, or getting all of one’s spiritual t’s crossed or i’s dotted. Rather, Brock shows us that the real experience of suffering is only a gift—a bridge of sorts—into greater glory, into greater Love. What Brock shows, and has written (hence my response), is that life is about self-gift, and that leaders in the world are called to a certain obedience to, and participation in, the moral realism of the world, such that they can, through utter gift of self, lead themselves and others to their sublime destiny.
“Every man is called by God to walk with fellow men towards eternal life,” Brock writes. “Leadership, therefore, has one purpose; that is, to be a beacon for those on this arduous pilgrimage.”
For Brock, leadership—which, in a sense, is to be done by those uniquely called—shares an everlasting principle with those whom shall follow. Trey calls it the principle of common sublime destiny of man: eternal life. Knowledge of and orientation toward the sublime destiny of man is the core part of the root out of which all leadership, especially political, must grow.
To further delve into this core, Trey delineates three basic principles, which I will spell out and comment upon below:
1. All men are created by God for the sake of union with Him in this life and the next.
2. This union comes about through man’s active participation in the natural and divine law, according to the limits of his faculties.
3. Though at once harmed by original sin, all men are called to participate in the restoration of their nature, and recovery unto their sublime destiny, with the help of Grace.
In the context of statesmanship (which this piece is ultimately about; please allow me to unearth the lede), man’s creation, obedience, and acquiescence, or, participation, unto his sublime destiny imply a real risk at hand in the measures levied in the political realm. It implies (very loudly, it seems to me) that one’s motives mustn’t alone be right, but so must one’s actions. In other words, this rootedness begs not only a working moral compass, but real, political effectiveness.
I have many young friends working in the current Trump Administration, on the Hill, and in relevant 501c3s. These days, they say to me, giddily, and wittily, “Jack, it turns out you can just do things”. This matters because, not long ago, it really did seem like elections didn’t matter anymore. They seem to not-matter only a little less, and my energetic friends are happy to be (quite) effective bureaucrats.
This is a welcome development to be sure, and the tactic of using the weapons and equipment left behind by former occupants need not only be a practice adopted by the Taliban. We (a very fractured We) can indeed do things. But to what end? And by what means?
Here is where I—a pseudo-intellectual, armed with verbosity and no civilian federal experience besides working for Jeff Sessions as he was being fire in 2018—bring in Trey Brock to help us clarify what is needful for rooted statesmen. His opinion on the matter, unadulterated, lies below:
“A modern-day leader needs to be orthodox, virtuous and creative, working in a negative manner to warn humanity about false shepherds and in a positive manner to guide humanity towards the truth that sets us free. Knowing the right teaching (orthodoxy) should be the first concern for prospective leaders. Living in accordance with the correct teachings (virtue) should be the second concern. And cultivating skill that persuasively communicate truth (creativity) should be the third concern. If a man has dedicated himself to these things, let him be known as a true beacon and a leader worth following.”
For Brock, this kind of leadership is best, because this kind of leadership is adequate to the human person. In the final analysis, therefore, the adequate statesman knows the Good, reliably does the Good, and effectively communicates to the public to do likewise, and how. The adequate statesmen is morally upstanding and politically effective, never separating the two, for subverting this form in any way ultimately subverts the sublime destiny of man. (Trey Brock’s original work can be seen here.)