0 comment Monday, November 10, 2014 | admin
Every Christmas and Easter, the liberal media run numerous stories attempting to cast doubt on the Bible or the existence of Jesus Christ; in other words, to attack Christianity.
Now it looks like Independence Day is to be an official occasion to disparage the Founding Fathers. I blogged about such attacks the other day, and it looks like the barrage continues with the ABC commentators saying that the Founding Fathers weren't gods, just 'guys who didn't let women vote' and didn't free the slaves.
Just for the record, I don't believe the Founding Fathers were gods either, nor am I likening them to Jesus Christ by my mention in the first paragraph of this post. The Founders were flawed human beings as all of us are. However, I won't fall into the trap of having to make disparaging comments about them because I want to display 'fairness' by conceding anything to the carping leftists. Why concede anything to them?
The Founding Fathers, flaws notwithstanding, were intelligent men, much more so than the great majority of 'Americans' today. They were head and shoulders above today's devious and ignorant 'leaders' and politicians. And this is true of the least of the Founding generation.
The Founding Fathers did not give the franchise to women. And so what? Why do people today, even on the ''right'', insist on judging the past by today's false standards? Why is feminism so honored by 'conservatives' today, and its claims treated as a given?
The Founding Fathers, some of them, thought slavery ought to be abolished, but they were, for the most part, practical men who knew that they could not suddenly emancipate great numbers of people who were not prepared for independent life, or full citizenship. Our Founders did believe that we needed a literate and informed populace in order for our system of government to work as it should, and for our society to function. Do these dreamers on the left (and the 'colorblind' right) not see how radical a move it would be to suddenly free a large number of people who had known only slavery? Even the 'forty acres and a mule' idea would not have done much to make the transition practical or wise.
Read the FReepers comments on the news story, and see them climb over each other to protest how most of our Founders really wanted to free the slaves. If they were informed they would know that even their idol, Honest Abe, did not believe such would be a wise move.
"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race" - Abraham Lincoln, Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.''
Jefferson thought that emancipation was inevitable but he saw the difficulty that would accompany the freeing of slaves. He likened the situation to 'having a wolf by the ears', wherein letting go would be a great danger, but holding on would prove impossible.
Most Republicans, like those self-styled conservatives at FR, would probably denounce Jefferson's analogy quoted above as ''racist.'' I would bet money that most FReepers would not be familiar with the Jefferson quotes above, nor even with Lincoln's statement. They have become persuaded, or persuaded themselves that liberal egalitarian principles are the standard by which everything must be judged. They have become defenders of feminism and racial Marxism. Next (and this is already beginning) they will claim that homosexual 'marriage' is actually a conservative principle, and that everyone should have a 'right' to marry a person, or persons, of their choosing, regardless.
The Marxists/liberals/progressives have tricked the so-called right in this country into defending the values that the left has given birth to, much like cowbirds leave their eggs in other species' nests to be nurtured by them.
The 'right' is under the spell of the left today, and is really nothing more than a pale shadow of the left, in most cases.
While the conventional right imagine themselves to be guardians of the Founding Fathers' principles, they really do not know the Founders, nor do they stand for what the Founding Fathers stood for.
One of the comments on the FReeper thread has Jefferson saying that 'homosexuality is a mental illness.' I had to laugh out loud at that. First off, the word 'homosexuality' was, I think, not even used in the 18th century. In the law, it was called 'buggery' which is the word they tended to use then. And as for 'mental illness', the 18th century knew no such concept, much less terminology; 'mental illness' wasn't invented until the 19th or 20th century, and we are the worse for it.
The Founders, to be sure, were no gods; nobody claims they were. But whatever you might label them -- and today's political labels belong to our time, not 1776 -- they were not egalitarians or cultural Marxists.
Now it looks like Independence Day is to be an official occasion to disparage the Founding Fathers. I blogged about such attacks the other day, and it looks like the barrage continues with the ABC commentators saying that the Founding Fathers weren't gods, just 'guys who didn't let women vote' and didn't free the slaves.
Just for the record, I don't believe the Founding Fathers were gods either, nor am I likening them to Jesus Christ by my mention in the first paragraph of this post. The Founders were flawed human beings as all of us are. However, I won't fall into the trap of having to make disparaging comments about them because I want to display 'fairness' by conceding anything to the carping leftists. Why concede anything to them?
The Founding Fathers, flaws notwithstanding, were intelligent men, much more so than the great majority of 'Americans' today. They were head and shoulders above today's devious and ignorant 'leaders' and politicians. And this is true of the least of the Founding generation.
The Founding Fathers did not give the franchise to women. And so what? Why do people today, even on the ''right'', insist on judging the past by today's false standards? Why is feminism so honored by 'conservatives' today, and its claims treated as a given?
The Founding Fathers, some of them, thought slavery ought to be abolished, but they were, for the most part, practical men who knew that they could not suddenly emancipate great numbers of people who were not prepared for independent life, or full citizenship. Our Founders did believe that we needed a literate and informed populace in order for our system of government to work as it should, and for our society to function. Do these dreamers on the left (and the 'colorblind' right) not see how radical a move it would be to suddenly free a large number of people who had known only slavery? Even the 'forty acres and a mule' idea would not have done much to make the transition practical or wise.
Read the FReepers comments on the news story, and see them climb over each other to protest how most of our Founders really wanted to free the slaves. If they were informed they would know that even their idol, Honest Abe, did not believe such would be a wise move.
"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race" - Abraham Lincoln, Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.''
Jefferson thought that emancipation was inevitable but he saw the difficulty that would accompany the freeing of slaves. He likened the situation to 'having a wolf by the ears', wherein letting go would be a great danger, but holding on would prove impossible.
Most Republicans, like those self-styled conservatives at FR, would probably denounce Jefferson's analogy quoted above as ''racist.'' I would bet money that most FReepers would not be familiar with the Jefferson quotes above, nor even with Lincoln's statement. They have become persuaded, or persuaded themselves that liberal egalitarian principles are the standard by which everything must be judged. They have become defenders of feminism and racial Marxism. Next (and this is already beginning) they will claim that homosexual 'marriage' is actually a conservative principle, and that everyone should have a 'right' to marry a person, or persons, of their choosing, regardless.
The Marxists/liberals/progressives have tricked the so-called right in this country into defending the values that the left has given birth to, much like cowbirds leave their eggs in other species' nests to be nurtured by them.
The 'right' is under the spell of the left today, and is really nothing more than a pale shadow of the left, in most cases.
While the conventional right imagine themselves to be guardians of the Founding Fathers' principles, they really do not know the Founders, nor do they stand for what the Founding Fathers stood for.
One of the comments on the FReeper thread has Jefferson saying that 'homosexuality is a mental illness.' I had to laugh out loud at that. First off, the word 'homosexuality' was, I think, not even used in the 18th century. In the law, it was called 'buggery' which is the word they tended to use then. And as for 'mental illness', the 18th century knew no such concept, much less terminology; 'mental illness' wasn't invented until the 19th or 20th century, and we are the worse for it.
The Founders, to be sure, were no gods; nobody claims they were. But whatever you might label them -- and today's political labels belong to our time, not 1776 -- they were not egalitarians or cultural Marxists.
Labels: American History, Colorblind Conservatives, Egalitarianism, Founding Fathers
0 comment Saturday, October 18, 2014 | admin
One of our 'Lighthouses in a foggy world': Samuel Adams, born September 27, 1722, in Boston, Massachusetts.He was a Revolutionary political leader and one of the most prolific writers on politics in his generation.
He was one of the organizers of the Boston Tea Party, a founder of the Sons of Liberty, and was one of the first voices to call for independence from Britain, one of the others being Patrick Henry.
He was a delegate to the Continental Congress between 1774 and 1781.
He was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence.
Quotes: A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy...While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader...If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.''
''How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"
''He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections."
Labels: American History, American Revolution, Birthdays, Founding Fathers
0 comment Friday, October 17, 2014 | admin
A ''British'' ''historian'', writing in Newsweek, tells us our Founding Fathers were flawed. As if we don't hear this kind of leftist jeering every day of the week in our media. And as if we don't have homegrown leftist professors galore belittling our ancestors, we have to import the likes of Schama to do this?
He makes sure to mention the old Jefferson canard:
''He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn�t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn�t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block.''
This 'historian' can't even be bothered to check out various sources, and instead smugly repeats these charges as if they are true. It's true, so they like to think, because other leftists and assorted malicious idiots with axes to grind repeat it endlessly.
Even many purported pro-Whites, WNs, and others, repeat this story as if it were proven fact. It is not.
And yes, I am not unbiased, being a Jefferson descendant. It just infuriates me that this one slander is given the status of near-gospel truth. I feel duty-bound to speak up against this thing.
But it isn't just his snide gossipy stories about Thomas Jefferson; it's the whole snarky article, from a man who is not an American, nor even our kin, sitting in judgment on us, and not even making an attempt at objectivity.
I am ready to say our Founding Fathers (including Jefferson) were flawed. Of course they were; they were human. But that does not mean that we drag their names through the mud and defame them as the inferiors of today's self-designated 'enlightened' ones.
It's more than obvious that today's politicians -- and history 'scholars' -- are pygmies compared to the generation of 1776. Look at the state of our world and our country, and compare with the Founding Fathers' era. The critics and character assassins, if they have any honesty, have to know that, even with the Founders' flaws, they were head and shoulders above these post-modern nonentities.
Schama would be equally annoying if he were sitting in London writing this stuff about us and our forefathers, but the fact that he is here as a guest in our country writing to us or about us in this fashion is especially egregious.
He makes sure to mention the old Jefferson canard:
''He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn�t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn�t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block.''
This 'historian' can't even be bothered to check out various sources, and instead smugly repeats these charges as if they are true. It's true, so they like to think, because other leftists and assorted malicious idiots with axes to grind repeat it endlessly.
Even many purported pro-Whites, WNs, and others, repeat this story as if it were proven fact. It is not.
And yes, I am not unbiased, being a Jefferson descendant. It just infuriates me that this one slander is given the status of near-gospel truth. I feel duty-bound to speak up against this thing.
But it isn't just his snide gossipy stories about Thomas Jefferson; it's the whole snarky article, from a man who is not an American, nor even our kin, sitting in judgment on us, and not even making an attempt at objectivity.
I am ready to say our Founding Fathers (including Jefferson) were flawed. Of course they were; they were human. But that does not mean that we drag their names through the mud and defame them as the inferiors of today's self-designated 'enlightened' ones.
It's more than obvious that today's politicians -- and history 'scholars' -- are pygmies compared to the generation of 1776. Look at the state of our world and our country, and compare with the Founding Fathers' era. The critics and character assassins, if they have any honesty, have to know that, even with the Founders' flaws, they were head and shoulders above these post-modern nonentities.
Schama would be equally annoying if he were sitting in London writing this stuff about us and our forefathers, but the fact that he is here as a guest in our country writing to us or about us in this fashion is especially egregious.
Labels: American History, Founding Fathers, Leftist Bigotry, Thomas Jefferson
0 comment Thursday, October 9, 2014 | admin
As all Americans know, today is the real birthday of George Washington, our first president, though his birthday has been crowded off the calendar as a separate celebration and replaced with 'Presidents Day.'Today, in light of current events, the following poem seems all the more poignant.
The Vow of Washington
John Greenleaf Whittier
The sword was sheathed: In April's sun
Lay green the fields by Freedom won;
And severed sections, weary of debates,
Joined hands at last and were United States.
O City sitting by the Sea!
How proud the day that dawned on thee,
When the new era, long desired, began
And, in its need, the hour had found the man!
One thought the cannon salvos spoke,
The resonant bell-tower's vibrant stroke,
The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing halls,
And prayer and hymn borne heavenward from Saint Paul's!
How felt the land in every part
The strong throb of a nation's heart,
As its great leader gave, with reverent awe,
His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law!
That pledge the heavens above him heard,
That vow the sleep of centuries stirred;
In world-wide wonder listening peoples bent
Their gaze on Freedom's great experiment.
Could it succeed? Of honor sold
And hopes deceived all history told.
Above the wrecks that strewed the mournful past,
Was the long dream of ages true at last?
Thank God! The people's choice was just,
The one man equal to his trust,
Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good,
Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude!
His rule of justice, order, peace,
Made possible the world's release;
Taught prince and serf that power is but a trust.
And rule alone, which serves the ruled, is just.
That Freedom generous is, but strong
In hate of fraud and selfish wrong,
Pretence that turns her holy truth to lies,
And lawless license masking in her guise.
Land of his love! With one glad voice
Let thy great sisterhood rejoice;
A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set,
And, God be praised, we are one nation yet.
And still we trust the years to be
Shall prove his hope was destiny,
Leaving our flag, with all its added stars,
Unrent by faction and unstained by wars.
Lo! Where with patient toil he nursed
And trained the new-set plant at first,
The widening branches of a stately tree
Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea.
And in its broad and sheltering shade,
Sitting with none to make afraid,
Were we now silent, through each mighty limb,
The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him.''
Labels: American History, Birthdays, Founding Fathers
0 comment Tuesday, September 16, 2014 | admin
A few words from Daniel Webster on Pride of Ancestry:
"It is a noble faculty of nature which enables us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with what is distant in place or time; and looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments.
We live in the past by a knowledge of its history, and in the future by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an association with our ancestors; by contemplating their example and studying their character; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by accompanying them in their toils; by sympathizing in their sufferings, and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs -- we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to belong to their age. We become their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like manner, by running along the line of future time; by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are coming after us; by attempting something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their regard when we shall sleep with the fathers -- we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow compass of our earthly existence.
As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb which, amidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings with which his goodness has peopled the infinite of space; so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested or connected with our whole race through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last with the consummation of all things earthly at the throne of God.
There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry which nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and groveling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which is departed; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and even in its sentiments, it may be actively operating on the happiness of those that come after it.
Poetry is found to have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry only because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true philosophy and morality. It deals with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this state of being is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what sympathy with ourselves; and when it carries us forward, also, and shows us the long-continued result of all the good we do in the prosperity of those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with sentiments which belong to us as human beings."
Labels: American History, Ancestry, Filial Piety, Founding Fathers, Traditionalism
0 comment Thursday, September 11, 2014 | admin
''Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.''
The above words were written by George Bancroft, who was a historian, diplomat, and a New England transcendentalist. He was also called 'the father of American History.'
My previous post had to do with the question of whether the 'average' citizen is capable of the demands of participating in the political process of our republic. It may be that because our population has been so dumbed-down and distracted, 'the people possess no authority', in Bancroft's terminology, although he intended another meaning by his words.
Bancroft, like others in his intellectual and social circles, had what I would consider an inordinately high opinion of human perfectibility. I wonder if he were able to time travel, as we discussed the other day, and visit 21st century America, if he would have such a high opinion?
Over at the Nolan Chart, EJ Moosa notes that debate is a lost art in our society.
What are we afraid of? Why are our debates so short? Why are we afraid to debate others on topics of importance? Why do freedom seekers seem to want to stifle debate at the first chance they get? Our presidential debates are not really debates. They are question and answer sessions. The candidates do not go toe to toe, and debate the underlying principles of their beliefs. Those that watch the debates do not have the patience to listen to such a dialog. Either that or they are not really interested unless what they hear reinforced what they already believe. This does not accomplish much.
[...]
Our forefathers debated for weeks and months on issues. Yet here we are and we must be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. A five minute discussion and we have had enough.
Why are we afraid of debate? Is it because we must know what we believe to defend what we believe? That we must have absolute principles behind our statements?
We are told that we should not discuss religion, sex or politics with friends. Yet, are those three topics not the most significant in our lives?''
[Emphasis mine]
That last paragraph is something I've said many times over the course of my life -- or at least regarding religion and politics, although Moosa and I would probably find little political or philosophical common ground apart from support for Ron Paul. But we can agree that debate is a lost and dying art.
When it comes to our presidential 'debates', I've lamented here on this blog how they are not debates in any sense of the word, being scripted and staged, and containing few exchanges of any substance, much less formal arguments and rebuttals. But to 21st century, short-attention-span Americans, these 'debates' and what passes for discourse seem good enough.
We may think this is a trifling matter, but I don't believe that we can have any kind of real participatory government, or an informed electorate, without real debate. And in order to have that, we would need to undertake the monumental task of educating the public from the ground up. Our public schools are meant for indoctrination and socialization only, and seem to actively discourage critical, independent thought. And they do not teach young people logic and analytical thinking, or rhetoric. They seem to purposely turn out young people with little capacity for deep thought or any kind of disciplined use of the mind.
But there is something other than poor education and attention deficit disorder that plays into this phenomenon. It has to do with personality traits or social habits.
Americans somehow seem to confuse argument with personal quarreling. Some people do not perceive any difference between a spirited debate about ideas or events, and a barroom brawl, finding both equally unseemly. Some people are quite willing to enter into a spirited debate or discussion and yet they cannot keep it on a detached and objective level, but must turn it into a personal attack. We see this last phenomenon a lot on the Internet; I suspect many of the attackers and trolls on the Internet may be polite people in the real world, who feel their inhibitions loosened in the anonymous world of the Internet. So we have two extremes: people who shy away from all debate and disagreement, even when it is of a very civilized kind, and people who are eager to turn a polite debate into a slanging match and a donnybrook.
We need to be re-educated on how to have a civilized but frank discussion of ideas and issues. We seem to have lost the art of it, if we ever possessed it.
Albert Jay Nock quoted Goethe as saying that the test of civilization is conversation. In The Right Thing, Nock said:
American life has long been fair game for the observer.
[...] So much, in fact, has been written about the way we live, how we occupy ourselves, how we fill up our leisure, the things we do and leave undone, the things we are likely to do and likely to leave undone, that I for one would never ask for another word on such matters from anybody. As a good American, I try to keep up with what is written about us, but it has become rather a dull business and I probably miss some of it now and then, so I cannot say that no observer has ever made a serious study of our conversation. In all I have read, however, very little has been made of the significance of the things we choose to talk about and our ways of talking about them. Yet I am sure that Goethe's method would give a better measure of our civilization than any other, and that it would pay any observer to look into it. For my own part, ever since I stumbled on Goethe's observation --- now more than twenty years ago --- I have followed that method in many lands. I have studied conversation more closely than any other social phenomenon, picking up from it all the impressions and inferences I could, and I have always found that I got as good results as did those whose critical apparatus was more elaborate. At least, when I read what these critics say about such people as I know, especially my own, they seem to tell me little with which I was not already acquainted
[...]
[T]he most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play of ideas as I used to encounter years ago. It would seem that my countrymen no longer have the ideas and imagination they formerly had, or that they care less for them, or that for some reason they are diffident about them and do not like to bring them out. When I first remarked this phenomenon I thought it might be an illusion of advancing age, since I have come to years when the past takes on an unnaturally attractive colour. But as time went on the fact became unmistakable and I began to take notice accordingly.''
Nock remarks that Americans don't like to explore a subject in depth, or to hear a range of opinions; there is a pressure to agree.
It is a mark of maturity to differentiate easily and naturally between personal or social opposition and intellectual opposition. Everyone has noticed how readily children transfer their dislike of an opinion to the person who holds it, and how quick they are to take umbrage at a person who speaks in an unfamiliar mode or even with an unfamiliar accent.''
Nock notes the pressure to conform to popular opinion. I think this is especially strong in our society.
Surely this tendency has to translate into bad news for the success of our political system. A democratic republic relies on an informed and civic-minded citizenry, and an open and fair and thoughtful discussion of important issues. Do we have either of these on any scale in America, or anywhere in the Western world these days?
Nock wrote that the extension of the franchise has been detrimental to the character of politics and to the type of person who enters public service:
...One must also remark with interest that in a republic every extension of the franchise has been accompanied by a deterioration in the character of politics and in the personnel of the public service; and this, too, is by hypothesis what one would look for. When England extended its franchise in the last century, Mr. Mill asked pathetically how it was possible to produce great men in a country where the test of a great mind was agreement with the opinions of small minds; and one can easily paraphrase this saying to suit the terms of our hypothesis.
Allowing everything in reason for other contributing causes, there is at least a striking coincidence in the fact that the American public service, all over the land, became fully twofold more irresponsible, unscrupulous, and scandalously wasteful almost at the moment when the electorate was practically doubled by the extension of the suffrage to women.
[...] On its political side, the eighteenth-century doctrine of republicanism, on which the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution are based, turns out to be utterly false and mischievous. This doctrine assumes that if the mass-men take control of politics, if sovereignty be lodged in "the people" and exercised directly by them, they will in time work out a true commonwealth, a political order established on principles of justice, as set forth in the Rights of Man. The ground of this assumption, obviously, is that the mass-man is human, and therefore capable of a degree of development competent for this purpose; and indeed, if this be true, the doctrine is probably sound enough, the only postulate being that of practically unlimited time.''
And now we return to the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, who was quoted in the blog excerpt I posted yesterday:
At the time our republic was established, Alexander Hamilton was one of many who were strongly against this doctrine [of republicanism]. He objected to the experiment of putting sovereignty in the hands of the mass-man, and he expressed himself about it in terms that are curiously anticipatory of the idea that we are discussing. "The people," he said, "are a great beast." Now, if the anthropologists should decide that Hamilton was right about this, if the mass-man be literally and actually not human, if he be essentially incapable of any such degree of development as our eighteenth-century political theory presupposes, then surely republicanism is about the worst system that could be devised, even for the mass-man himself; for, in practice, instead of promoting any such limited development as the mass-man, in common with the other more teachable and imitative forms of animal life, is capable of making, it seems bound to reflect the very lowest common denominator of the mass-man's intelligence and character, and its tendency must be continuously to depress that denominator ever farther.
Thus instead of improving and elevating the mass-man by means of political experience, republicanism serves merely to degrade him. This appears to be what we see taking place. The candidate for political favor is sedulously careful to approach the mass-man on a plane of intelligence and character which is never above that of the mass-man's ordinary self. It is a commonplace of republican politics that he not only does so, but must do so.
The issues and policies that he presents must be such only as are adjustable to a potential majority in a mass-electorate endowed with an unlimited franchise. Thus every republican campaign reminds one of nothing so much as the scene described by Plato, where a huge, sluggish, obscene monster is surrounded by people who are assiduously flattering it, pretending to understand its noises, and in every imaginable way courting its good-will. Hence, by a selective process almost automatic, the political organization of a republican society is bound to be in control of the mass-man who is gifted merely with a low type of sagacity somewhat in excess of his fellow-creatures; whereby he is able to exploit their lack of intelligence, their vagrant attention, their superficial spirit, their hot and cold fits, their superstitions, their tendency always to run to the short-time point of view�and worst of all, their occasional good impulses, their occasional good faith, their boundless credulity, their weak hopes and weaker fears.
All this is extremely bad for the mass-man. What it does in the long run is to snarl up his society in a terrific tangle, wherein he is utterly helpless. Not only the financial genius of Hamilton but also the transcendent philosophical genius of Hegel foresaw this consequence. Hegel said, at the outset of republicanism, that it would culminate in an unexampled catastrophe; for, when all comes to all, republicanism puts upon the mass-man a burden of responsibility which he is not only unable to bear, but wholly incapable even of comprehending. This view has been inconclusively debated ever since the end of the seventeenth century, and its satisfactory conclusion on a priori grounds now seems as remote as it was then. In our own history we find John Adams on one side of the question, saying that the political struggles of the mass-man, left to his own devices, could end only in "a change of impostors." On the other side we are confronted by the great name of Mr. Jefferson, who believed that the mass-man was indefinitely improvable, that he was capable of learning by political experience, and of learning fast enough to enable him to hold his society together in some sort of working order while he was learning more.''
Nock calls our attention to the stark contrast in opinion between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in their views on the perfectibility of man. On the one hand, Hamilton's rather cynical (or is it realistic?) view, as opposed to Jefferson's more sanguine one. Also on the sanguine side was the assessment of George Bancroft, the transcendentalist historian I quoted at the beginning of this entry. Which view is the correct one?
In an 1835 speech, The People in Art, Government, and Religion, Bancroft said
...the best government rests on the people and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority; because the munificent Author of our being has conferred the gifts of mind upon every member of the human race without distinction of outward circumstances. Whatever of other possessions may be engrossed, the mind asserts its own independence. Lands, estates, the produce of mines, the prolific abundance of the seas, may be usurped by a privileged class. Avarice, assuming the form of ambitious power, may grasp realm after realm, subdue continents, compass the earth in its schemes of aggrandizement, and sigh after worlds, but mind eludes the power of appropriation; it exists only in its own individuality; it is a property which can not be confiscated and can not be torn away. It laughs at chance; it bursts from imprisonment; it defies monopoly. A government of equal rights must, therefore, rest upon mind, not wealth, not brute force; some of the moral intelligence of the community should rule the State. Prescription can no more assume to be a valid plea for political injustice; society studies to eradicate established abuses and to bring social institutions and laws into harmony with moral right; not dismayed by the natural and necessary imperfections of all human effort, and not giving way to despair because every hope does not at once ripen into fruit.
[...]
The world can advance only through the culture of the moral and intellectual powers of the people. To accomplish this end by means of the people themselves is the highest purpose of government. If it be the duty of the individual to strive after a perfection like the perfection of God, how much more ought a nation to be the image of duty. The common mind is the true Parian marble fit to be wrought into the likeness to a God. The duty of America is to secure the culture and the happiness of the masses by their reliance on themselves.
[...]
It is the uniform tendency of the popular element to elevate and bless humanity. The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force: in other words, the measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.
[...]
It is alone by infusing great principles into the common mind that revolutions in human society are brought about. They never have been, they never can be effected by superior individual excellence. The age of the Antonines is the age of the greatest glory of the Roman Empire. Men distinguished by every accomplishment of culture and science for a century in succession possessed undisputed sway over more than one hundred millions of men, until, at last, in the person of Marcus Aurelius, philosophy herself seemed to mount the throne. And did she stay the downward tendencies of the Roman Empire? Did she infuse new elements of life into the decaying constitution? Did she commence one great beneficent reform? Not one permanent amelioration was effected. Philosophy was clothed with absolute power; and yet absolute power accomplished nothing for humanity. It could accomplish nothing. Had it been possible, Aurelius would have wrought a change. Society can be regenerated, the human race can be advanced, only by moral principles diffused through the multitude.
[...]
The irresistible tendency of the human race is therefore to advancement, for absolute power has never succeeded and can never succeed in suppressing a single truth. An idea once revealed may find its admission into every living breast and live there. Like God, it becomes immortal and omnipresent. The movement of the species is upward, irresistibly upward. The individual is often lost; providence never disowns the race. No principle once promulgated has ever been forgotten. No "timely tramp" of a despot�s foot ever trod out one idea. The world can not retrograde; the dark ages can not return. Dynasties perish, seeds are buried, nations have been victims to error, martyrs for right; humanity has always been on the advance, gaining maturity, universality, and power.
No truth can perish, no truth can pass away; the flame is undying, tho generations disappear. Wherever moral truth has struck into being, humanity claims and guards the greatest bequest. Each generation gathers together imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light alike radiant with immortality.''
[Emphasis mine]
There is a degree of truth, I think, in Bancroft's words, but I think his philosophical beliefs inclined him to think somewhat too highly of the perfectibility of the human being. History does not seem to bear out his belief that 'humanity has always been on the advance.' Too often, for the human race, it's one step forward and several steps back, just as I observed yesterday of certain individuals I've encountered. In a way, they typify the human race. Just as when we congratulate ourselves that humanity 'gets it', and we think we are on the way to solving the riddles of the human condition, we see a retrograde movement of the human race. We seem, as a species, to have to keep reinventing the wheel, where our moral and societal development is concerned.
Nock noted that the efforts of the political and social reformers hinged on the question of whether Man is perfectible, or even substantially improvable. If he is, then the pollyannas and the utopian reformers must keep on trying to perfect humanity. If he is not perfectible or even substantially capable of improving or 'evolving' then we had better scale back our hopes for do-gooding projects and government interventions. So this question is central to our politics.
But such questions are never considered, much less discussed by the reformers; we go blithely on assuming that we can continue our endless efforts to improve human nature, despite the observable lack of progress in that area.
Meanwhile, our public discussion is centered on the trivial and the superficial, our discourse deteriorates, and we are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. In Nock's words,
The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.
It can be taken for granted, I suppose, that man has certain fundamental instincts which must find some kind of collective expression in the society in which he lives. The first and fundamental one is the instinct of expansion, the instinct for continuous improvement in material well-being and economic security. Then there is the instinct of intellect and knowledge, the instinct of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. Man has always been more or less consciously working towards a state of society which should give collective expression to these instincts. If society does not give expression to them, he is dissatisfied and finds life irksome, because every unused or unanswered instinct becomes a source of uneasiness and keeps on nagging and festering within him until he does something about it.
Moreover, human society, to be permanently satisfactory, must not only express them all in due balance, proportion, and harmony. If too much stress be laid on any one, the harmony is interrupted, uneasiness and dissatisfaction arise, and, if the interruption persists. disintegration sets in. The fall of nations, the decay and disappearance of whole civilizations, can be finally interpreted in terms of the satisfaction of these instincts. Looking at the life of existing nations, one can put one's finger on those instincts which are being collectively overdone at the expense of the others. In one nation the instinct of expansion and the instinct of intellect and knowledge are relatively over-developed; in another, the instinct of beauty; in another, the instinct of manners; and so on. The term symphonic, which is so often sentimentally applied to the ideal life of society, is really descriptive; for the tendency of mankind from the beginning has been towards a functional blending and harmony among these instincts, precisely like that among the choirs of an orchestra. It would seem then that the quality of life in any society means the degree of development attained by this tendency. The more of these instincts that are satisfied, and the more delicate the harmony of their interplay, the higher and richer is the quality of life in that society; and it is the lower and poorer according as it satisfies fewer of these instincts and permits disharmony in their interplay.''
It would appear that we in America and probably in the West in general have developed the instinct for expansion almost to the exclusion of the other instincts, such as that for religion and morals, intellect and knowledge, and beauty.
And as ideas and ideals as well as emotions, that make us individuals, Nock observed that we are thus less individuated and more conformist. This, although he did not spell it out, would seem to make us inclined towards a mass society, which does not brook much dissension. There is a pressure toward consensus; peer pressure often shapes ideas and ideals and emotions, thus depleting our individuality in what should be the most individualized areas.
To bring this down to the mundane level of our present political campaign, we see the people stampeding, or being stampeded, towards candidates who seem to be the poorest of fits for the expressed wishes of the people: in an era in which many people mobilized to fight amnesty, we get three pro-amnesty candidates. In an era in which most people seem to be disillusioned with if not staunchly opposed to the Iraq War, we get three candidates who will pursue more war. How is this happening? Are the elections rigged? Or are people just being caught up in the bandwagon effect, and passively acquiescing in what is being presented to them as an inevitability, with which they had better get on board?
I think there is much of the latter, and it is no surprise in a society which thinks debate and argument is rude, a society in which people who differ from majority opinion are ridiculed as 'kooks' (Ron Paul and his supporters), that people are willing to be herded toward a comfortable consensus, in which everybody splits the difference though nobody really gets what they want.
I can't help but think that this is not what our forefathers had in mind when they conceived of our system.
How can we extricate ourselves from this situation? Or can we? Does the fault lie in our stars or in ourselves?
I think the very first thing that must happen, if there is any hope at all, is that we have to reinstate free speech, plain talk, and common sense. We have to re-learn, or learn for the first time in some cases, how to think logically and dispassionately, and we have to be able to debate and discuss and talk among ourselves in a civilized way about the urgent issues of our time. This is the absolute first step.
This would be the first step to 'possessing authority' and thus the first step toward obtaining respect for our rights as the people.
Forum comments here.
The above words were written by George Bancroft, who was a historian, diplomat, and a New England transcendentalist. He was also called 'the father of American History.'
My previous post had to do with the question of whether the 'average' citizen is capable of the demands of participating in the political process of our republic. It may be that because our population has been so dumbed-down and distracted, 'the people possess no authority', in Bancroft's terminology, although he intended another meaning by his words.
Bancroft, like others in his intellectual and social circles, had what I would consider an inordinately high opinion of human perfectibility. I wonder if he were able to time travel, as we discussed the other day, and visit 21st century America, if he would have such a high opinion?
Over at the Nolan Chart, EJ Moosa notes that debate is a lost art in our society.
What are we afraid of? Why are our debates so short? Why are we afraid to debate others on topics of importance? Why do freedom seekers seem to want to stifle debate at the first chance they get? Our presidential debates are not really debates. They are question and answer sessions. The candidates do not go toe to toe, and debate the underlying principles of their beliefs. Those that watch the debates do not have the patience to listen to such a dialog. Either that or they are not really interested unless what they hear reinforced what they already believe. This does not accomplish much.
[...]
Our forefathers debated for weeks and months on issues. Yet here we are and we must be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. A five minute discussion and we have had enough.
Why are we afraid of debate? Is it because we must know what we believe to defend what we believe? That we must have absolute principles behind our statements?
We are told that we should not discuss religion, sex or politics with friends. Yet, are those three topics not the most significant in our lives?''
[Emphasis mine]
That last paragraph is something I've said many times over the course of my life -- or at least regarding religion and politics, although Moosa and I would probably find little political or philosophical common ground apart from support for Ron Paul. But we can agree that debate is a lost and dying art.
When it comes to our presidential 'debates', I've lamented here on this blog how they are not debates in any sense of the word, being scripted and staged, and containing few exchanges of any substance, much less formal arguments and rebuttals. But to 21st century, short-attention-span Americans, these 'debates' and what passes for discourse seem good enough.
We may think this is a trifling matter, but I don't believe that we can have any kind of real participatory government, or an informed electorate, without real debate. And in order to have that, we would need to undertake the monumental task of educating the public from the ground up. Our public schools are meant for indoctrination and socialization only, and seem to actively discourage critical, independent thought. And they do not teach young people logic and analytical thinking, or rhetoric. They seem to purposely turn out young people with little capacity for deep thought or any kind of disciplined use of the mind.
But there is something other than poor education and attention deficit disorder that plays into this phenomenon. It has to do with personality traits or social habits.
Americans somehow seem to confuse argument with personal quarreling. Some people do not perceive any difference between a spirited debate about ideas or events, and a barroom brawl, finding both equally unseemly. Some people are quite willing to enter into a spirited debate or discussion and yet they cannot keep it on a detached and objective level, but must turn it into a personal attack. We see this last phenomenon a lot on the Internet; I suspect many of the attackers and trolls on the Internet may be polite people in the real world, who feel their inhibitions loosened in the anonymous world of the Internet. So we have two extremes: people who shy away from all debate and disagreement, even when it is of a very civilized kind, and people who are eager to turn a polite debate into a slanging match and a donnybrook.
We need to be re-educated on how to have a civilized but frank discussion of ideas and issues. We seem to have lost the art of it, if we ever possessed it.
Albert Jay Nock quoted Goethe as saying that the test of civilization is conversation. In The Right Thing, Nock said:
American life has long been fair game for the observer.
[...] So much, in fact, has been written about the way we live, how we occupy ourselves, how we fill up our leisure, the things we do and leave undone, the things we are likely to do and likely to leave undone, that I for one would never ask for another word on such matters from anybody. As a good American, I try to keep up with what is written about us, but it has become rather a dull business and I probably miss some of it now and then, so I cannot say that no observer has ever made a serious study of our conversation. In all I have read, however, very little has been made of the significance of the things we choose to talk about and our ways of talking about them. Yet I am sure that Goethe's method would give a better measure of our civilization than any other, and that it would pay any observer to look into it. For my own part, ever since I stumbled on Goethe's observation --- now more than twenty years ago --- I have followed that method in many lands. I have studied conversation more closely than any other social phenomenon, picking up from it all the impressions and inferences I could, and I have always found that I got as good results as did those whose critical apparatus was more elaborate. At least, when I read what these critics say about such people as I know, especially my own, they seem to tell me little with which I was not already acquainted
[...]
[T]he most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play of ideas as I used to encounter years ago. It would seem that my countrymen no longer have the ideas and imagination they formerly had, or that they care less for them, or that for some reason they are diffident about them and do not like to bring them out. When I first remarked this phenomenon I thought it might be an illusion of advancing age, since I have come to years when the past takes on an unnaturally attractive colour. But as time went on the fact became unmistakable and I began to take notice accordingly.''
Nock remarks that Americans don't like to explore a subject in depth, or to hear a range of opinions; there is a pressure to agree.
It is a mark of maturity to differentiate easily and naturally between personal or social opposition and intellectual opposition. Everyone has noticed how readily children transfer their dislike of an opinion to the person who holds it, and how quick they are to take umbrage at a person who speaks in an unfamiliar mode or even with an unfamiliar accent.''
Nock notes the pressure to conform to popular opinion. I think this is especially strong in our society.
Surely this tendency has to translate into bad news for the success of our political system. A democratic republic relies on an informed and civic-minded citizenry, and an open and fair and thoughtful discussion of important issues. Do we have either of these on any scale in America, or anywhere in the Western world these days?
Nock wrote that the extension of the franchise has been detrimental to the character of politics and to the type of person who enters public service:
...One must also remark with interest that in a republic every extension of the franchise has been accompanied by a deterioration in the character of politics and in the personnel of the public service; and this, too, is by hypothesis what one would look for. When England extended its franchise in the last century, Mr. Mill asked pathetically how it was possible to produce great men in a country where the test of a great mind was agreement with the opinions of small minds; and one can easily paraphrase this saying to suit the terms of our hypothesis.
Allowing everything in reason for other contributing causes, there is at least a striking coincidence in the fact that the American public service, all over the land, became fully twofold more irresponsible, unscrupulous, and scandalously wasteful almost at the moment when the electorate was practically doubled by the extension of the suffrage to women.
[...] On its political side, the eighteenth-century doctrine of republicanism, on which the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution are based, turns out to be utterly false and mischievous. This doctrine assumes that if the mass-men take control of politics, if sovereignty be lodged in "the people" and exercised directly by them, they will in time work out a true commonwealth, a political order established on principles of justice, as set forth in the Rights of Man. The ground of this assumption, obviously, is that the mass-man is human, and therefore capable of a degree of development competent for this purpose; and indeed, if this be true, the doctrine is probably sound enough, the only postulate being that of practically unlimited time.''
And now we return to the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, who was quoted in the blog excerpt I posted yesterday:
At the time our republic was established, Alexander Hamilton was one of many who were strongly against this doctrine [of republicanism]. He objected to the experiment of putting sovereignty in the hands of the mass-man, and he expressed himself about it in terms that are curiously anticipatory of the idea that we are discussing. "The people," he said, "are a great beast." Now, if the anthropologists should decide that Hamilton was right about this, if the mass-man be literally and actually not human, if he be essentially incapable of any such degree of development as our eighteenth-century political theory presupposes, then surely republicanism is about the worst system that could be devised, even for the mass-man himself; for, in practice, instead of promoting any such limited development as the mass-man, in common with the other more teachable and imitative forms of animal life, is capable of making, it seems bound to reflect the very lowest common denominator of the mass-man's intelligence and character, and its tendency must be continuously to depress that denominator ever farther.
Thus instead of improving and elevating the mass-man by means of political experience, republicanism serves merely to degrade him. This appears to be what we see taking place. The candidate for political favor is sedulously careful to approach the mass-man on a plane of intelligence and character which is never above that of the mass-man's ordinary self. It is a commonplace of republican politics that he not only does so, but must do so.
The issues and policies that he presents must be such only as are adjustable to a potential majority in a mass-electorate endowed with an unlimited franchise. Thus every republican campaign reminds one of nothing so much as the scene described by Plato, where a huge, sluggish, obscene monster is surrounded by people who are assiduously flattering it, pretending to understand its noises, and in every imaginable way courting its good-will. Hence, by a selective process almost automatic, the political organization of a republican society is bound to be in control of the mass-man who is gifted merely with a low type of sagacity somewhat in excess of his fellow-creatures; whereby he is able to exploit their lack of intelligence, their vagrant attention, their superficial spirit, their hot and cold fits, their superstitions, their tendency always to run to the short-time point of view�and worst of all, their occasional good impulses, their occasional good faith, their boundless credulity, their weak hopes and weaker fears.
All this is extremely bad for the mass-man. What it does in the long run is to snarl up his society in a terrific tangle, wherein he is utterly helpless. Not only the financial genius of Hamilton but also the transcendent philosophical genius of Hegel foresaw this consequence. Hegel said, at the outset of republicanism, that it would culminate in an unexampled catastrophe; for, when all comes to all, republicanism puts upon the mass-man a burden of responsibility which he is not only unable to bear, but wholly incapable even of comprehending. This view has been inconclusively debated ever since the end of the seventeenth century, and its satisfactory conclusion on a priori grounds now seems as remote as it was then. In our own history we find John Adams on one side of the question, saying that the political struggles of the mass-man, left to his own devices, could end only in "a change of impostors." On the other side we are confronted by the great name of Mr. Jefferson, who believed that the mass-man was indefinitely improvable, that he was capable of learning by political experience, and of learning fast enough to enable him to hold his society together in some sort of working order while he was learning more.''
Nock calls our attention to the stark contrast in opinion between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in their views on the perfectibility of man. On the one hand, Hamilton's rather cynical (or is it realistic?) view, as opposed to Jefferson's more sanguine one. Also on the sanguine side was the assessment of George Bancroft, the transcendentalist historian I quoted at the beginning of this entry. Which view is the correct one?
In an 1835 speech, The People in Art, Government, and Religion, Bancroft said
...the best government rests on the people and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority; because the munificent Author of our being has conferred the gifts of mind upon every member of the human race without distinction of outward circumstances. Whatever of other possessions may be engrossed, the mind asserts its own independence. Lands, estates, the produce of mines, the prolific abundance of the seas, may be usurped by a privileged class. Avarice, assuming the form of ambitious power, may grasp realm after realm, subdue continents, compass the earth in its schemes of aggrandizement, and sigh after worlds, but mind eludes the power of appropriation; it exists only in its own individuality; it is a property which can not be confiscated and can not be torn away. It laughs at chance; it bursts from imprisonment; it defies monopoly. A government of equal rights must, therefore, rest upon mind, not wealth, not brute force; some of the moral intelligence of the community should rule the State. Prescription can no more assume to be a valid plea for political injustice; society studies to eradicate established abuses and to bring social institutions and laws into harmony with moral right; not dismayed by the natural and necessary imperfections of all human effort, and not giving way to despair because every hope does not at once ripen into fruit.
[...]
The world can advance only through the culture of the moral and intellectual powers of the people. To accomplish this end by means of the people themselves is the highest purpose of government. If it be the duty of the individual to strive after a perfection like the perfection of God, how much more ought a nation to be the image of duty. The common mind is the true Parian marble fit to be wrought into the likeness to a God. The duty of America is to secure the culture and the happiness of the masses by their reliance on themselves.
[...]
It is the uniform tendency of the popular element to elevate and bless humanity. The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force: in other words, the measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.
[...]
It is alone by infusing great principles into the common mind that revolutions in human society are brought about. They never have been, they never can be effected by superior individual excellence. The age of the Antonines is the age of the greatest glory of the Roman Empire. Men distinguished by every accomplishment of culture and science for a century in succession possessed undisputed sway over more than one hundred millions of men, until, at last, in the person of Marcus Aurelius, philosophy herself seemed to mount the throne. And did she stay the downward tendencies of the Roman Empire? Did she infuse new elements of life into the decaying constitution? Did she commence one great beneficent reform? Not one permanent amelioration was effected. Philosophy was clothed with absolute power; and yet absolute power accomplished nothing for humanity. It could accomplish nothing. Had it been possible, Aurelius would have wrought a change. Society can be regenerated, the human race can be advanced, only by moral principles diffused through the multitude.
[...]
The irresistible tendency of the human race is therefore to advancement, for absolute power has never succeeded and can never succeed in suppressing a single truth. An idea once revealed may find its admission into every living breast and live there. Like God, it becomes immortal and omnipresent. The movement of the species is upward, irresistibly upward. The individual is often lost; providence never disowns the race. No principle once promulgated has ever been forgotten. No "timely tramp" of a despot�s foot ever trod out one idea. The world can not retrograde; the dark ages can not return. Dynasties perish, seeds are buried, nations have been victims to error, martyrs for right; humanity has always been on the advance, gaining maturity, universality, and power.
No truth can perish, no truth can pass away; the flame is undying, tho generations disappear. Wherever moral truth has struck into being, humanity claims and guards the greatest bequest. Each generation gathers together imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light alike radiant with immortality.''
[Emphasis mine]
There is a degree of truth, I think, in Bancroft's words, but I think his philosophical beliefs inclined him to think somewhat too highly of the perfectibility of the human being. History does not seem to bear out his belief that 'humanity has always been on the advance.' Too often, for the human race, it's one step forward and several steps back, just as I observed yesterday of certain individuals I've encountered. In a way, they typify the human race. Just as when we congratulate ourselves that humanity 'gets it', and we think we are on the way to solving the riddles of the human condition, we see a retrograde movement of the human race. We seem, as a species, to have to keep reinventing the wheel, where our moral and societal development is concerned.
Nock noted that the efforts of the political and social reformers hinged on the question of whether Man is perfectible, or even substantially improvable. If he is, then the pollyannas and the utopian reformers must keep on trying to perfect humanity. If he is not perfectible or even substantially capable of improving or 'evolving' then we had better scale back our hopes for do-gooding projects and government interventions. So this question is central to our politics.
But such questions are never considered, much less discussed by the reformers; we go blithely on assuming that we can continue our endless efforts to improve human nature, despite the observable lack of progress in that area.
Meanwhile, our public discussion is centered on the trivial and the superficial, our discourse deteriorates, and we are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. In Nock's words,
The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.
It can be taken for granted, I suppose, that man has certain fundamental instincts which must find some kind of collective expression in the society in which he lives. The first and fundamental one is the instinct of expansion, the instinct for continuous improvement in material well-being and economic security. Then there is the instinct of intellect and knowledge, the instinct of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. Man has always been more or less consciously working towards a state of society which should give collective expression to these instincts. If society does not give expression to them, he is dissatisfied and finds life irksome, because every unused or unanswered instinct becomes a source of uneasiness and keeps on nagging and festering within him until he does something about it.
Moreover, human society, to be permanently satisfactory, must not only express them all in due balance, proportion, and harmony. If too much stress be laid on any one, the harmony is interrupted, uneasiness and dissatisfaction arise, and, if the interruption persists. disintegration sets in. The fall of nations, the decay and disappearance of whole civilizations, can be finally interpreted in terms of the satisfaction of these instincts. Looking at the life of existing nations, one can put one's finger on those instincts which are being collectively overdone at the expense of the others. In one nation the instinct of expansion and the instinct of intellect and knowledge are relatively over-developed; in another, the instinct of beauty; in another, the instinct of manners; and so on. The term symphonic, which is so often sentimentally applied to the ideal life of society, is really descriptive; for the tendency of mankind from the beginning has been towards a functional blending and harmony among these instincts, precisely like that among the choirs of an orchestra. It would seem then that the quality of life in any society means the degree of development attained by this tendency. The more of these instincts that are satisfied, and the more delicate the harmony of their interplay, the higher and richer is the quality of life in that society; and it is the lower and poorer according as it satisfies fewer of these instincts and permits disharmony in their interplay.''
It would appear that we in America and probably in the West in general have developed the instinct for expansion almost to the exclusion of the other instincts, such as that for religion and morals, intellect and knowledge, and beauty.
And as ideas and ideals as well as emotions, that make us individuals, Nock observed that we are thus less individuated and more conformist. This, although he did not spell it out, would seem to make us inclined towards a mass society, which does not brook much dissension. There is a pressure toward consensus; peer pressure often shapes ideas and ideals and emotions, thus depleting our individuality in what should be the most individualized areas.
To bring this down to the mundane level of our present political campaign, we see the people stampeding, or being stampeded, towards candidates who seem to be the poorest of fits for the expressed wishes of the people: in an era in which many people mobilized to fight amnesty, we get three pro-amnesty candidates. In an era in which most people seem to be disillusioned with if not staunchly opposed to the Iraq War, we get three candidates who will pursue more war. How is this happening? Are the elections rigged? Or are people just being caught up in the bandwagon effect, and passively acquiescing in what is being presented to them as an inevitability, with which they had better get on board?
I think there is much of the latter, and it is no surprise in a society which thinks debate and argument is rude, a society in which people who differ from majority opinion are ridiculed as 'kooks' (Ron Paul and his supporters), that people are willing to be herded toward a comfortable consensus, in which everybody splits the difference though nobody really gets what they want.
I can't help but think that this is not what our forefathers had in mind when they conceived of our system.
How can we extricate ourselves from this situation? Or can we? Does the fault lie in our stars or in ourselves?
I think the very first thing that must happen, if there is any hope at all, is that we have to reinstate free speech, plain talk, and common sense. We have to re-learn, or learn for the first time in some cases, how to think logically and dispassionately, and we have to be able to debate and discuss and talk among ourselves in a civilized way about the urgent issues of our time. This is the absolute first step.
This would be the first step to 'possessing authority' and thus the first step toward obtaining respect for our rights as the people.
Forum comments here.
Labels: Democracy, Elections, Founding Fathers, Government, Politics, Presidential Debates, Societal Decay
0 comment Tuesday, August 26, 2014 | admin
If the quote which is the title of this post is not recognizable to my readers, it's from the dialogue in the Frank Capra film classic, 'Meet John Doe.' In one memorable scene, 'Connell', as played by James Gleason, says these words to the 'John Doe' character:Connell: Yessir. I'm a sucker for this country. I'm a sucker for the Star Spangled Banner�and I'm a sucker for this country.
I like what we got here! I like it! A guy can say what he wants -- and do what he wants -- without having a bayonet shoved through his belly.
Now that's all right, isn't it?
You betcha. All right. And we don't want anybody coming around and changing it, do we?
...No sir. No sir. And when they do, I get mad! I get b-boiling mad. And right now, John, I'm sizzling!
...I get mad for a lot of other guys besides myself--I get mad for a guy named Washington! And a guy named Jefferson--and Lincoln. Lighthouses, John! Lighthouses in a foggy world! You know what I mean?''
I suppose these words are always meaningful to me, because, like Connell, I am a sucker for this country, and like Connell, I get mad -- boiling mad -- at the idea of anybody changing it. Right now, of course, people are trying to change this country in various ways, and they are doing so without the consent of the people of this country.
And like Connell, I, too, get mad for a lot of other guys, for those Founding Fathers, and all the generations who went before us. But the Founding Fathers and all the good and great men who preceded us are 'lighthouses' in a fogbound world, beacons to those lost and adrift.
I hope there are some words here that ring true to some of my readers, or which provide some food for thought or some illumination.
"[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them." - 'Candidus', (Benjamin Austin) in the Boston Gazette, January 20, 1772
"When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil."- Thomas Jefferson
"It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." - Patrick Henry
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it...Where do you stand Citizen?" - Judge Learned Hand (1961)
''People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those, who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous, more or less.'' Edmund Burke
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
''What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the power of kings and princes.'' - Samuel Adams
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry
"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable." - Thomas Jefferson
"There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing." - Daniel Webster
"In spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or of the present aspect of affairs, do I despair the future? The truth is this: the march of Providence is so slow, our desires so impatient, the work of progress is so immense, and our means of aiding it so feeble, the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope." - Robert E. Lee
I like to end on a note of hope, so I will conclude with Lee's encouraging phrases.
Labels: American History, Founding Fathers, Quotations
0 comment Thursday, August 21, 2014 | admin
Recently I discovered the blog called A True Progressive. Blogger Jemison Thorsby's choice of a blog name is from this quote by C.S. Lewis, (which I've used in the past here on this blog)"
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
That is exactly the kind of progressive approach we need now, more than ever before.
In this blog entry, Thorsby diagnoses what is wrong with our system, in the context of the present political situation.
One of our biggest challenges is we recognize symptoms of a problem but not the systemic issues that cause them. We have a sense we are overtaxed/over-regulated yet ill-served by government, but we don�t ask how we got here. Frustrated, people tend to fall into two camps. One shrugs, says we live in the best of all possible worlds, and accepts the flaws and flubs as the price of doing business. The other rages against the machine, wanting to tear down the system and start fresh (ah, the tonic of youth known as revolution!).
There is another way, however. We are so indoctrinated with the idea of "progress" we have a bias against the past. If yesterday�s gadgets and gizmos were inferior, and people harbored silly ideas like segregation, the past has nothing to teach us, right? This arrogance-of-the-now cuts us off from generations of lessons learned through hard knocks, as we throw out babies with the bathwater.''
[Emphasis mine]
These two paragraphs cut right to the heart of it, especially the second one, above. Thorsby is making a point that I have often tried to make here: the 'arrogance-of-the-now', the idea which seems to pervade our society, the idea that the past is worse than irrelevant. The past is one long dark age, only redeemed by the liberal revolution of the 1960s. The implication is always that our forefathers were benighted, backward, moral deficients. We are the first people, we post-moderns, to have seen the light. "Nothing like us ever was."
In a series delineating the history of conservatism, Fred Hutchison wrote an article called 'What went wrong? The bad seeds sowed from Bacon to Kant'. In it, Hutchison describes this mindset, tracing it back some centuries.
He is mostly discussing science in this piece, but the attitude he describes permeates Western culture generally.
Francis Bacon (1561�1626) laid the indispensable empirical foundations of Western science, enabling science to become the glory of European culture. He also introduced a handful of logical fallacies in which many Western scientists still believe.
Bacon was the father of Western skepticism. He greatly damaged Western culture by providing philosophical grounds for brushing aside the cultural and intellectual heritage of the West.
[...]
Bacon proposed that we should cancel all the knowledge of the past and start from scratch, using a method for acquiring knowledge that he would teach us. We should expunge from our minds of all preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions, theories, and old knowledge. He claimed that all knowledge brought forward from the past is tainted and should be expurgated.
This alone should have made Francis Bacon public enemy number one to all conservatives from that day forward. However, Bacon's contribution to the empirical foundation of modern science was so great that he has generally escaped the censure of future generations. Yet, even Bacon's most important contributions were laced with fallacies. The man who would cure all our old fallacies was a great sower of new fallacies and new myths.
Western culture after 1800 A.D. declined in direct proportion to the extent to which Western man cut himself off from his cultural past. Those who were most persuaded by Bacon and his philosophical heirs went the furthest in cutting themselves off from the Western cultural heritage. Great thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Diderot, and Hume were among Bacon's heirs and gave weight and momentum to his program of cutting us off from the past and building a new world on the ashes.''
[Emphasis mine]
In another article in the series, Hutchison elaborates on how the traditionalism that led to the Renaissance is at odds with progressivism, historicism, and multiculturalism:
a) Progressivism looks upon the cultural past with contempt, lionizes the mediocrities of our present day, and idealizes an unknown future.
b) Historicism values only the present culture and finds cultural history and traditional morality irrelevant to the needs and values of the present moment.
c) Multiculturalism demeans the works of "dead white European males," and exalts contemporary works that are chosen for praise with no regard for innate merit, but valued solely on whether the works are authentic expressions of favored cultures.''
And in this piece, relating the history of the 'five kinds of conservatism', Hutchison names those five kinds as:
1) Traditionalism, 2) Christian Conservatism, 3) Natural Law Conservatism, 4) Neoconservatism, and 5) Libertarianism.
And he says:
Looking back is the way forward
The seminal ideal of Western Traditionalism in the ancient world was the belief in a golden age of the mythical past. Societies that had glorious visions of their cultural past tried to recover and preserve as much of it as possible. They wanted to conserve precious old cultural treasures and hence were called conservatives. Tradition was valued as a means of embracing the wisdom and blessings of the past and preserving the culture from decay.
Liberals have long argued that looking back to the past blocks "progress." This essay's walk through history indicates that where culture is concerned, almost the opposite is true. Every cultural renaissance we shall encounter in Part 1, was inspired by "backward-looking" conservative ideals. My counterintuitive hypothesis is that for the cultural improvement of a society, looking back is often the way forward.''
I think this is a crucial point. We are so accustomed to hearing that 'we can never go backward', 'you can't turn the clock back' and 'people who look to the past are reactionaries' -- that last being considered a slur rather than a neutral descriptive word.
But what is the good of conserving when there is little left, after the liberal demolitionists have had their way, that is worth conserving? We have to be able to acknowledge that we are on the wrong road, and that it is necessary to correct our course, and seemingly 'go backward' if we want to truly go forward. It's either backward or downward.
Conservatives these days are rather like the comic figure of the man who is hopelessly lost on an unfamiliar road, but who is too proud or arrogant to stop and ask for directions, or better yet, to consult a map and follow the known way home. There are some men who are more afraid of looking inept or admitting to being lost than they are of finding themselves out of gas on a remote road, far from their destination.
And we do have the maps provided by our forebears; they left us a wonderful set of maps to guide us through life; a whole set of traditions, a record of experiences, a body of knowledge and wisdom, that is Western culture. We in America are doubly blessed in that we have our own set of maps in our Founding documents. And we are too proud or too obtuse to rely on those maps, preferring to blunder down dangerous side-roads toward our doom on our own foolish initiative.
This arrogance and self-willed stubbornness is a profoundly un-conservative attitude; it doesn't get much more un-conservative than this. As long as we continue to disregard and look down our noses at our forefathers, at all those who went before us, we will never be able to get ourselves back on the right track; we will continue to wander off into uncharted territory without a compass. To be really 'conservative', to conserve the republic our Founding Fathers created for their posterity (that's us), we have to find our way back to the trail they blazed for us. Trying to be 'conservative' while disregarding the past and treating this present order of thing as not only inevitable but worth preserving, will only lead us further astray. We've got to find our way back before night falls.
To return to Jemison Thorsby's post,
The quote from which this blog draws its name refers to "progressive" as sometimes being the person who backtracks to the point he began down the wrong road. To me, America started down that road almost immediately after its birth.''
Thorsby describes how the original desire of the Founders to minimize and distribute power in a balanced way has been thwarted by those who destroyed the barriers between the branches of government. Now there is little to impede the will of those who have got control of this hypertrophied state power, and the people have been shut out of the process. Many of us wonder why 'our government' seems to have gone rogue and to be operating not only independently of our will, but in direct violation of our will.
We need to be the kind of 'progressives' who are willing to recognize that we are lost and heading in the wrong direction, who are then willing to turn back and find the good paths, as in Jeremiah's words:
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.''
Conservatism should be synonymous with 'asking for the old paths, the good way', but unfortunately for us and for our Republic, it no longer is. The very name 'conservatism' has been so corrupted as to be devoid of meaning these days; maybe we who really are seeking the old paths, the known, tried-and-true ways, should name ourselves something more meaningful.
Forum comments here.
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
That is exactly the kind of progressive approach we need now, more than ever before.
In this blog entry, Thorsby diagnoses what is wrong with our system, in the context of the present political situation.
One of our biggest challenges is we recognize symptoms of a problem but not the systemic issues that cause them. We have a sense we are overtaxed/over-regulated yet ill-served by government, but we don�t ask how we got here. Frustrated, people tend to fall into two camps. One shrugs, says we live in the best of all possible worlds, and accepts the flaws and flubs as the price of doing business. The other rages against the machine, wanting to tear down the system and start fresh (ah, the tonic of youth known as revolution!).
There is another way, however. We are so indoctrinated with the idea of "progress" we have a bias against the past. If yesterday�s gadgets and gizmos were inferior, and people harbored silly ideas like segregation, the past has nothing to teach us, right? This arrogance-of-the-now cuts us off from generations of lessons learned through hard knocks, as we throw out babies with the bathwater.''
[Emphasis mine]
These two paragraphs cut right to the heart of it, especially the second one, above. Thorsby is making a point that I have often tried to make here: the 'arrogance-of-the-now', the idea which seems to pervade our society, the idea that the past is worse than irrelevant. The past is one long dark age, only redeemed by the liberal revolution of the 1960s. The implication is always that our forefathers were benighted, backward, moral deficients. We are the first people, we post-moderns, to have seen the light. "Nothing like us ever was."
In a series delineating the history of conservatism, Fred Hutchison wrote an article called 'What went wrong? The bad seeds sowed from Bacon to Kant'. In it, Hutchison describes this mindset, tracing it back some centuries.
He is mostly discussing science in this piece, but the attitude he describes permeates Western culture generally.
Francis Bacon (1561�1626) laid the indispensable empirical foundations of Western science, enabling science to become the glory of European culture. He also introduced a handful of logical fallacies in which many Western scientists still believe.
Bacon was the father of Western skepticism. He greatly damaged Western culture by providing philosophical grounds for brushing aside the cultural and intellectual heritage of the West.
[...]
Bacon proposed that we should cancel all the knowledge of the past and start from scratch, using a method for acquiring knowledge that he would teach us. We should expunge from our minds of all preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions, theories, and old knowledge. He claimed that all knowledge brought forward from the past is tainted and should be expurgated.
This alone should have made Francis Bacon public enemy number one to all conservatives from that day forward. However, Bacon's contribution to the empirical foundation of modern science was so great that he has generally escaped the censure of future generations. Yet, even Bacon's most important contributions were laced with fallacies. The man who would cure all our old fallacies was a great sower of new fallacies and new myths.
Western culture after 1800 A.D. declined in direct proportion to the extent to which Western man cut himself off from his cultural past. Those who were most persuaded by Bacon and his philosophical heirs went the furthest in cutting themselves off from the Western cultural heritage. Great thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Diderot, and Hume were among Bacon's heirs and gave weight and momentum to his program of cutting us off from the past and building a new world on the ashes.''
[Emphasis mine]
In another article in the series, Hutchison elaborates on how the traditionalism that led to the Renaissance is at odds with progressivism, historicism, and multiculturalism:
a) Progressivism looks upon the cultural past with contempt, lionizes the mediocrities of our present day, and idealizes an unknown future.
b) Historicism values only the present culture and finds cultural history and traditional morality irrelevant to the needs and values of the present moment.
c) Multiculturalism demeans the works of "dead white European males," and exalts contemporary works that are chosen for praise with no regard for innate merit, but valued solely on whether the works are authentic expressions of favored cultures.''
And in this piece, relating the history of the 'five kinds of conservatism', Hutchison names those five kinds as:
1) Traditionalism, 2) Christian Conservatism, 3) Natural Law Conservatism, 4) Neoconservatism, and 5) Libertarianism.
And he says:
Looking back is the way forward
The seminal ideal of Western Traditionalism in the ancient world was the belief in a golden age of the mythical past. Societies that had glorious visions of their cultural past tried to recover and preserve as much of it as possible. They wanted to conserve precious old cultural treasures and hence were called conservatives. Tradition was valued as a means of embracing the wisdom and blessings of the past and preserving the culture from decay.
Liberals have long argued that looking back to the past blocks "progress." This essay's walk through history indicates that where culture is concerned, almost the opposite is true. Every cultural renaissance we shall encounter in Part 1, was inspired by "backward-looking" conservative ideals. My counterintuitive hypothesis is that for the cultural improvement of a society, looking back is often the way forward.''
I think this is a crucial point. We are so accustomed to hearing that 'we can never go backward', 'you can't turn the clock back' and 'people who look to the past are reactionaries' -- that last being considered a slur rather than a neutral descriptive word.
But what is the good of conserving when there is little left, after the liberal demolitionists have had their way, that is worth conserving? We have to be able to acknowledge that we are on the wrong road, and that it is necessary to correct our course, and seemingly 'go backward' if we want to truly go forward. It's either backward or downward.
Conservatives these days are rather like the comic figure of the man who is hopelessly lost on an unfamiliar road, but who is too proud or arrogant to stop and ask for directions, or better yet, to consult a map and follow the known way home. There are some men who are more afraid of looking inept or admitting to being lost than they are of finding themselves out of gas on a remote road, far from their destination.
And we do have the maps provided by our forebears; they left us a wonderful set of maps to guide us through life; a whole set of traditions, a record of experiences, a body of knowledge and wisdom, that is Western culture. We in America are doubly blessed in that we have our own set of maps in our Founding documents. And we are too proud or too obtuse to rely on those maps, preferring to blunder down dangerous side-roads toward our doom on our own foolish initiative.
This arrogance and self-willed stubbornness is a profoundly un-conservative attitude; it doesn't get much more un-conservative than this. As long as we continue to disregard and look down our noses at our forefathers, at all those who went before us, we will never be able to get ourselves back on the right track; we will continue to wander off into uncharted territory without a compass. To be really 'conservative', to conserve the republic our Founding Fathers created for their posterity (that's us), we have to find our way back to the trail they blazed for us. Trying to be 'conservative' while disregarding the past and treating this present order of thing as not only inevitable but worth preserving, will only lead us further astray. We've got to find our way back before night falls.
To return to Jemison Thorsby's post,
The quote from which this blog draws its name refers to "progressive" as sometimes being the person who backtracks to the point he began down the wrong road. To me, America started down that road almost immediately after its birth.''
Thorsby describes how the original desire of the Founders to minimize and distribute power in a balanced way has been thwarted by those who destroyed the barriers between the branches of government. Now there is little to impede the will of those who have got control of this hypertrophied state power, and the people have been shut out of the process. Many of us wonder why 'our government' seems to have gone rogue and to be operating not only independently of our will, but in direct violation of our will.
We need to be the kind of 'progressives' who are willing to recognize that we are lost and heading in the wrong direction, who are then willing to turn back and find the good paths, as in Jeremiah's words:
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.''
Conservatism should be synonymous with 'asking for the old paths, the good way', but unfortunately for us and for our Republic, it no longer is. The very name 'conservatism' has been so corrupted as to be devoid of meaning these days; maybe we who really are seeking the old paths, the known, tried-and-true ways, should name ourselves something more meaningful.
Forum comments here.
Labels: Conservative Principles, Founding Fathers, Western Civilization
0 comment Wednesday, August 20, 2014 | admin
The photo above encapsulates the situation in our country, the erstwhile 'United States of America,' in 2011. The picture shows the statue of George Washington in Columbia, SC, hidden by a box during an NAACP rally.The NAACP put a box around the statue so as not to 'offend' attendees of the rally.
I've often said that the impostor 'America' of today is not the country of which Washington was the revered father. MLK is the father (or as somebody (perhaps James Edwards) put it, the 'baby daddy' of today's 'America.' The picture attests to that fact. Washington is being (or has been) deposed and another put in his place. How long before the statue is pulled down, making it more or less official?
Meanwhile, in the various comments around the internet on this event, there are any number of self-professed conservatives claiming MLK as a 'conservative' and exalting him as one who would never dishonor George Washington or engage in divisive rhetoric. This is so far off from reality that I am seriously starting to wonder if people are not literally being brainwashed to repeat the party line.
Some of you may remember the movie The Manchurian Candidate, specifically the original classic movie, (not the PC remake) in which the mention of the name Raymond Shaw elicits the rote line in response: ''Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.''
If you remember that movie, you know that the people who recited that line had been conditioned to repeat it. I wonder if these conservatives have been subjected to similar manipulation to repeat the saccharine twaddle they repeat, praising MLK. I mean this seriously. I know we often say people are brainwashed by the media or the educational system, but we say it metaphorically, to indicate how certain ideas are inculcated into people at every turn. But I haven't usually intended it to be taken literally, until lately, as I see more people reacting like Pavlov's dogs, not thinking for themselves, repeating rote phrases and shibboleths.
It's really disheartening to see and hear people from the South falling under the sway of this kind of thing.
Any 'old Americans' who still remain are truly a shrinking remnant.
Labels: American History, Cultural Marxism, Founding Fathers, Old America
0 comment Saturday, July 19, 2014 | admin
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
"Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles
remain sound, there is no danger."
"Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper
use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong
alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave."
Labels: American History, Birthdays, Founding Fathers
0 comment Friday, June 27, 2014 | admin
More ''lighthouses in a foggy world'', with some wisdom on these subjects.
Liberty, equality, fraternity -- and democracy:
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people... Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice."
-- John Adams
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes. Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws." - Noah Webster, History of the United States
"The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five." - Goethe
''If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?" - Herbert Spencer, The New Toryism, 1884
"I could see how 'democracy' might do very well in a society of saints and sages led by an Alfred or an Antoninus Pius. Short of that, I was unable to see how it could come to anything but an ad-hocracy of mass-men led by a sagacious knave. The collective capacity for bringing forth any other outcome seemed simply not there. To my ideas the incident of Aristides and the Athenian mass-man was perfectly exhibitory of 'democracy' in practice. Socrates could not have got votes enough out of the Athenian mass-men to be worth counting, but Eubulus easily could, and did, wangle enough to keep himself in office as long as the corrupt fabric of the Athenian State held together. As against a Jesus, the historic choice of the mass-man goes regularly to some Barabbas." - Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs
"A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot." - Plato, The Republic, VIII
"Democracy arose from men thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal in all respects." - Aristotle, Politics
"A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments." - Aristotle, Rhetoric
"If there were a nation of gods they would be governed democratically, but so perfect a government is not suitable to men.'' - Rousseau, Du contrat social, III
"Equality may exist only among slaves." - Aristotle
"Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: 'Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.� - Alexis de Tocqueville
"Political equality is against nature. Social equality is against nature. Economic equality is against nature. The idea of equality is subversive of order.'' - Edmund Burke
''There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people.'' - Thomas Jefferson
"It is inequality that gives enlargement to religion, to intellect, to energy, to virtue, to love and to wealth. Equality of intellect stabilizes mediocrity. Equality of wealth makes all men poor. Equality of religion destroys all creeds. Equality of energy renders all men sluggards. Equality of virtue suspends all men without the gates of Heaven. Equality of love stultifies every manly passion, destroys every family altar and mongrelizes the races of men. Equality homogenizes so that cream does not rise to the top. It puts the eagle in the hen house so that he may no longer soar." - R. Carter Pittman
"The acceptance of democracy by all European nations is deadly for the proper governorship, freedom, law, order, respect of authority and religion, and at the end will lead to chaos, out of which will appear the worldwide tyranny" - The Duke of Northumberland
"Democracy does not exist for a long time - it wastes, exhausts and destroys itself. There was never a democracy that didn't kill itself" Samuel Adams
"The American form of government is the republic. The true freedom does not exist either under despotism or excesses of democracy" Alexander Hamilton
"Democracy always leads to conflicts and instability, but never provides for the security of the citizens or their property. Usually it is very short at life, and very bloody at death" -- James Madison
"Between republic and democracy there is the same difference as between order and chaos" - John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
"Democracy is the rule of mobs, tempted by newspaper editors" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
''Enforced fraternity destroys liberty.'' - Frederic Bastiat
Labels: Democracy, Egalitarianism, Equality, Founding Fathers, Politics, Quotations
0 comment Tuesday, May 27, 2014 | admin
Here's a very fine piece by Larry L. Beane II which I found over at LewRockwell.com. It's titled ''The Founders Knew Latin'', which indeed they did. Latin, up until perhaps the middle of the 2oth century was considered part of a well-rounded basic education, and the Founding Fathers were steeped in it. As the article points out, many of the concepts of the Constitution are contained in Latin phrases like 'E Pluribus Unum', which we may remember, Al Gore mistranslated as ''Out of one, many.'' His faulty translation, turning the meaning of the phrase on its head, may have been a Freudian slip, as today most of the important principles of the Founders have likewise been inverted.
The Latin motto "e pluribus unum" also captures the plural nature of the Union. It was never meant to be collapsed and rolled into into "one nation." This is even evident in common grammatical usage, for while the architects of the Union were still living, the singular verb "is" was not paired up with the plural subject "United States." But within decades, the federal government became increasingly heavy-handed with the states. The struggle between the forces of centralization and decentralization intensified between 1830 and 1861, when political compromises failed, and the Union fell into disunion. Seven states of the deep south had seceded and formed a new federation, acting on what is often called the "compact theory" of the American union of 1789. This approach to the Constitution holds that the states are sovereign, and that the Union is a "compact" between them. The compact theory holds that unless power is delegated to the federal government, that power remains reserved to the states or to the people � a concept written directly into the Constitution itself as the Tenth Amendment. A clear and concise overview of the compact theory and its historical implications, past and present, can be found in chapters three and four of Thomas Woods's Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. In spite of the Tenth Amendment and the intent of the founders, by the 1860s, those who opposed secession and who ultimately annexed the seceded states by raw military force were denying the compact theory, and offered instead its diametric opposite: the "nationalist theory." Though this theory had been around for decades, it was a minority view without teeth until Lincoln and his associates put it into force by force. This alternative view saw the Union as "one nation" that gave birth to the states and not vice versa � though one will hunt in vain for the words "nation" and "national" used to describe the Union in the Constitution itself.
Please click over and read the whole thing. It's a very good exposition of what is at stake in the renewed call for state sovereignty and the focus on the Tenth Amendment.
And hopefully We The People, Deo vindice, will once more see the Union as a federation in light of the compact written to limit government and defend our God-given rights, instead of continuing in our ignorance to be bullied, tricked, and manipulated into accepting the great lie of the expansive and boundless "one nation, indivisible" that must be worshiped and obeyed as a god. Maybe we are ready to join the founders and say unambiguously, "Satis est!"
Satis est, indeed.
The Latin motto "e pluribus unum" also captures the plural nature of the Union. It was never meant to be collapsed and rolled into into "one nation." This is even evident in common grammatical usage, for while the architects of the Union were still living, the singular verb "is" was not paired up with the plural subject "United States." But within decades, the federal government became increasingly heavy-handed with the states. The struggle between the forces of centralization and decentralization intensified between 1830 and 1861, when political compromises failed, and the Union fell into disunion. Seven states of the deep south had seceded and formed a new federation, acting on what is often called the "compact theory" of the American union of 1789. This approach to the Constitution holds that the states are sovereign, and that the Union is a "compact" between them. The compact theory holds that unless power is delegated to the federal government, that power remains reserved to the states or to the people � a concept written directly into the Constitution itself as the Tenth Amendment. A clear and concise overview of the compact theory and its historical implications, past and present, can be found in chapters three and four of Thomas Woods's Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. In spite of the Tenth Amendment and the intent of the founders, by the 1860s, those who opposed secession and who ultimately annexed the seceded states by raw military force were denying the compact theory, and offered instead its diametric opposite: the "nationalist theory." Though this theory had been around for decades, it was a minority view without teeth until Lincoln and his associates put it into force by force. This alternative view saw the Union as "one nation" that gave birth to the states and not vice versa � though one will hunt in vain for the words "nation" and "national" used to describe the Union in the Constitution itself.
Please click over and read the whole thing. It's a very good exposition of what is at stake in the renewed call for state sovereignty and the focus on the Tenth Amendment.
And hopefully We The People, Deo vindice, will once more see the Union as a federation in light of the compact written to limit government and defend our God-given rights, instead of continuing in our ignorance to be bullied, tricked, and manipulated into accepting the great lie of the expansive and boundless "one nation, indivisible" that must be worshiped and obeyed as a god. Maybe we are ready to join the founders and say unambiguously, "Satis est!"
Satis est, indeed.
Labels: Constitution, Founding Fathers, Nullification, State Sovereignty, StateS Rights, Tenth Amendment, War Between The States
0 comment Sunday, April 27, 2014 | admin
Before this day is gone, I want to take a moment to remember Patrick Henry, who was born on this day in 1736, in Hanover Co., Virginia. Patrick Henry is known to most of us for his firebrand speeches during the pre-Revolutionary period; he is sometimes called 'the Voice of the Revolution.' During his lifetime he was a lawyer, a member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia, and later, the first governor of the state of Virginia, where he served five terms.
At the website of the Red Hill National Memorial, which commemorates Patrick Henry, this quote is prominently featured: "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past." It's a bit of wisdom that might well be heeded by those in power in our country now, but to our shame, Patrick Henry and all the great men of his generation are neglected and their memories dishonored by the 'leaders' of our time, as they not only work assiduously but frantically to erase the America which was shaped by men like Patrick Henry.
Henry's best known speech, from March 1775, just before armed clashes broke out between the British and the colonists, contains the immortal phrase, 'give me liberty, or give me death.'' :
The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms�Let it come. I repeat, Sir, Let it come�Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!��
Another quote:
...Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the Holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battle for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave...''
This article by Ryan McMaken at LewRockwell.com makes the case that Henry was something of a maverick and a dissenter among his revolutionary peers; he boycotted the Constitutional Convention of 1787 because he feared the consolidation of power and the eventual growth of an American empire.
If we admit this consolidated government, it will be because we like a great splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, a navy, and a number of things: When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, Sir, was then the primary object�But now, Sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country to a powerful and mighty empire."
Was he wrong? It seems as if his words were prophetic. But oddly, towards the end of his life, when he ran for the Virginia Legislature, he ran as a Federalist, to the dismay of his former supporters. Did he have a change of heart as to his former reservations about a strong federal government?
It's a little-known fact that Henry left a message for posterity, to be read after his death:
Near his last will, Patrick Henry left a small envelope sealed with wax. Inside was a single sheet of paper on which he had copied his Resolutions against the Stamp Act. On the back, Patrick Henry left a message that he knew could only be read after his death. It began with a short history of his Resolutions against the Stamp Act, which had "spread throughout America with astonishing Quickness." As a result, the colonies were united in their "Resistance to British Taxation," and won "the War which finally separated the two Countries and gave Independence to ours."
Whether America�s independence "will prove a Blessing or a Curse," Henry continued in his message to posterity, "will depend on the Use our people make of the Blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary Character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a Nation. Reader! whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy Sphere, practice Virtue thyself, and encourage it in others. P. HENRY"
Labels: American History, American Revolution, Founding Fathers