Author Topic: Western Civilization  (Read 13840 times)

Crafty_Dog

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WT: Classical Education for Preserving Constitution
« Reply #50 on: November 24, 2021, 03:24:35 AM »
Classical education critical for preserving Constitution

By Joseph Wysocki

Editor’s note: This is one in a series examining the Constitution and Federalist Papers in today’s America.

The Constitution sometimes seems out of sync with the spirit of our times. This is troubling for those of us who value individual rights, federalism and institutional safeguards against tyranny.

There are many causes for this, including warped understandings of the nature of a written constitution, general civic illiteracy and the increasing influence of progressive and Marxist ideas in our educational system. Noble efforts have been made on a number of fronts to remedy these problems. The Federalist Society, for example, has done tremendous work in responding to a hostile legal environment by educating and promoting “originalist” judges. Other associations, university centers and schools have responded by launching major civics education initiatives. Such efforts have kept American constitutionalism alive despite indifference or outright hostility toward it.

Yet those measures do not respond to the core of the threat. Many observers realize that these measures are dams against a rising tide of opinions that view the Constitution as at best irrelevant and at worst pernicious. “If it be true that all governments rest on opinion” as James Madison observes in Federalist No. 49, we ought to be worried.

The good (and bad) news is that the problem is actually not all that new. Perhaps the greatest observer of the American regime, Alexis de Tocqueville, observed in 1831 that the Federalists, that is those in favor of ratifying the Constitution, “struggled against the irresistible inclination of their century and their country.”

This is surely an odd observation. The document that is at the heart of our political creed was countercultural? Despite this, he maintained that “the coming of the Federalists to power [was] one of the most fortunate events that accompanied the birth of the great American Union.” In other words, the ratification of the Constitution was a stroke of luck.

The brilliant minds of Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, particular problems experienced under the Articles of Confederation, and the shrewd politicking of Federalists in state ratifying conventions were able to overcome the adversities that the time and the tides presented them.

Part of the challenge, as Tocqueville repeatedly tells us elsewhere, is that democratic peoples “scorn forms.” We dislike formalities, distinctions, established procedures and the detailed keeping of things in their proper place. Such things smack of aristocracy and are seen as threats to equality. They also tend to place barriers in the way of the desires of quickmoving majorities in a democracy. Technology and other historical factors have increased our “scorn of forms” and make preserving the Constitution that much more difficult. It is the lasting and underlying problem that makes it seem like the Constitution is always fighting uphill.

The reason for this is that the Constitution is filled with such barrier-creating “forms” such as the limited enumerated powers of the national government, varying term lengths and selection methods designed to shape behaviors in the different branches of government, and checks and balances. We therefore find ourselves in the difficult position of being suspicious of the very things that protect us from what Madison refers to in Federalist No. 10 as the “mischiefs” of potentially tyrannical majority factions.

Think about recent political movements to revisit the composition of the Senate or to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court.

This is not simply a point of historical or philosophic interest. For just as the “fortunate” victory of the Federalists in 1788 brought our Constitution into being, we are experiencing another fortunate movement that can provide the necessary remedy to our scorn of forms.

The good news is that there is currently a broad and energetic revival in “classical” primary education (K-12) going on in the United States. Classical education habituates students to forms. Its emphasis on the “trivium” (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy) reinforce structure, precision and the careful use of language. It also encourages the recitation of metered poetry.

In this way students are able to experience forms as part of something beautiful and, consequently, come to love forms. Of course, the purpose of such an education is not primarily a civic one, but creating and nurturing lasting public opinion that favors the Constitution is impossible without it.

To put it more bluntly, widespread classical education is the necessary condition for successful civic education.

This movement has arisen primarily as a response to a deep need in civil society, not through government action. Charter schools, Christian academies, parochial schools and homeschooling families are all part of it. Perhaps the best example can be seen in the Great Hearts Academies, a network of classical charter schools in Arizona and Texas enrolling more than 22,000 students last year. Organizations such as the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE) and the CiRCE Institute, dedicated to helping schools and parents transition to a classical model, are booming. There is even a classical alternative to the SAT and the ACT developed by the Classic Learning Test (CLT).

However, for the movement to continue to thrive, it needs political support. This growing emphasis on classical education is the most important political fight for those who wish to preserve the Constitution. It must be carried on in a number of ways.

If such an education is to have the remedial and salutary effect hoped for, it must be accessible to those who cannot afford private education. School choice policies such as vouchers must be promoted. Classical public charter schools must be created and funded wherever possible. Parents must “vote with their feet” by choosing classical schools for their children.

At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a lady he knew what form of government the convention had produced. “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it,” he responded. The work of classical education does not provide a quick remedy for our republic, but in the long run, it may be the only way we can keep it.


• Professor Joseph Wysocki is the dean of the Honors College and is an associate professor of Government and Political Philosophy. The Honors College provides students a unique combination of a four-year “great books” curriculum and the ability to develop professionally through a variety of academic majors

Crafty_Dog

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American Citizenship and Its Decline
« Reply #51 on: January 04, 2022, 02:25:50 AM »
https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/american-citizenship-and-its-decline

edited to add:  Just donated $100 to Hillsdale and will be getting a hardcover of the VDH book in return.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2022, 01:33:48 PM by Crafty_Dog »

G M

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The burdens of freedom
« Reply #52 on: January 04, 2022, 12:17:00 PM »

G M

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G M

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The Unicultural edge
« Reply #54 on: February 10, 2022, 07:33:02 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #55 on: February 10, 2022, 08:45:31 AM »
Interesting read.


G M

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G M

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You are here
« Reply #59 on: March 21, 2022, 04:31:20 PM »

G M

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National Assisted Suicide
« Reply #60 on: March 22, 2022, 12:42:29 PM »

G M

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This is where we are now
« Reply #61 on: March 28, 2022, 08:15:07 AM »

ccp

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #62 on: March 30, 2022, 12:47:28 PM »
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/sports-betting-gambling-casinos-card-rooms-00020319

between this and marijuana

we continue to spiral down the toilet into the drain

not quite in the street or in the river yet
but heading there


G M

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Western Civilization's collapse
« Reply #63 on: June 01, 2022, 08:02:34 PM »



ccp

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #66 on: June 29, 2022, 08:22:41 PM »

G M

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G M

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Not good people
« Reply #68 on: July 19, 2022, 08:47:07 AM »

ccp

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #69 on: July 19, 2022, 09:54:58 AM »
looks like the store clerk simply fainted after speaking to them

also shows how totally stupid the crooks

are

they are on camera
and leave prints

OTOH they know nothing will happen to them....




G M

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Visa allowed CP to be purchased with it's card
« Reply #72 on: July 31, 2022, 09:28:49 PM »
https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/pornhub-visa-child-pornography-court-ruling-1235330052/

In a setback for Visa in a case alleging the payment processor is liable for the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek, a federal judge ruled that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa knowingly facilitated the criminal activity.

On Friday, July 29, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California issued a decision in the Fleites v. MindGeek case, denying Visa’s motion to dismiss the claim it violated California’s Unfair Competition Law — which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business acts and practices — by processing payments for child porn. (A copy of the decision is available at this link.)

In the ruling, Carney held that the plaintiff “adequately alleged” that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with MindGeek to monetize child pornography. Specifically, he wrote, “Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized child porn”; that there was a “criminal agreement to financially benefit from child porn that can be inferred from [Visa’s] decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount of child porn”; and that “the court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn” by “knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime.”

“When MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that goal despite knowledge of MindGeek’s monetization of child porn, it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like plaintiff will suffer the harms that plaintiff alleges,” Carney wrote.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #73 on: August 01, 2022, 06:02:44 AM »
Assumptions of basic civil order being shattered , , ,

I'm thinking stabbing a tire or two or shooting the radiator might be an option , , ,

G M

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #74 on: August 03, 2022, 12:05:35 PM »
People in suits, in boardrooms with corporate legal and risk management decided, hey it's another profit center...


Assumptions of basic civil order being shattered , , ,

I'm thinking stabbing a tire or two or shooting the radiator might be an option , , ,

G M

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It Has To Crash
« Reply #75 on: August 03, 2022, 12:06:09 PM »
It Has To Crash

T.L. Davis
22 hr ago

One might get the feeling that America is being out classed by Russia and China. While they rise, America drifts, floundering on a sea of greenness and wokism, effectively bound at the wrists from executing any self-defense. The supposedly “elected” officials, are doing everything they can to run the United States into the ground at the behest of its enemies.

Ukraine is nothing but an extended money laundering event, the ties back to politicians not even denied, but open for any investigation, however slight and unmotivated.

When the greater share of politicians in any government do not serve the people or the stated principles of that government, either they are individually treasonous, or the government itself has fallen to them. Since the U.S. has seen no charges of treason brought, despite the voluminous evidence of it on every level, from district attorneys to secretaries of state taking money from individuals who have sworn to destroy America and revel in their hatred of the nation, without criminal charges being brought or even discussed at a serious level, it’s clear that the nation has fallen to its enemies.

That they continue to claim authority to pass laws and charge taxes under the very guise of the government they have overthrown is a marvel of illogical conclusions only arrived at through the cognitive dissonance of the masses. But that is everywhere in society, masks, the vaxx, child sex trafficking and kindergarten grooming events. It’s there, open and publicized, yet no charges are filed, no cases brought. As if it isn’t happening.

I’ve thought any number of things might be the trigger that set everything else into motion and these events have taken place with no particular backlash. Gun confiscation disguised as Red Flag laws have been passed, ruled unconstitutional and passed again in the face of that ruling. Roe v Wade was overturned to much wailing and whining, but no particular direct action other than an assassination attempt on a Supreme Court justice, for which the Department of Justice found no basis for protecting these justices or even enforcing the laws against protests directed at them personally. It shrugged off that responsibility. Children have been assaulted first by mask mandates in school, forced vaccinations of a deadly chemical experiment, sexually groomed and exploited before the news organizations while they cheer it on and nod in agreement. Children are being targeted for psychological torture, stripping them of their biological identities and subjecting them to bullying tactics to take puberty blockers.

Honestly, if none of that is going to trigger a righteous backlash, is hunger, lack of heat or cooling, lack of fuel or electricity? What on earth are the people of this nation waiting for? This isn’t some super secret conspiracy, it’s out there in the public view, openly advocated by the clearly deranged “leaders.”

It’s not that all of the harm is done merely to conservatives, the liberals are suffering more than anyone, because they accept it as the cost of moving forward. In a case of rape, it’s not the fact of it that is the harm done to the woman, but the fact that she can’t get an abortion afterward that’s the crime. They’re told that rape is a common problem associated with mass immigration, an evil that must be tolerated in order to progress to get past some vague threat of the white male-dominated culture.

The recognition of the impossibility of a fix to this condition causes a degree of complacency. If all the evils have been exposed and the evildoers celebrated, what is there left for logical people to do, but to eagerly await the apocalypse?

It all has to come crashing down, every effort made by government officials is to encourage that collapse. They’ve resorted to denying the definition of a recession which has long been understood as two consecutive quarters of negative growth of GDP. Now, it’s determined by employment rates and the benefits of inflation. Why? To continue the catastrophic decline of society until it can finally crash.

I’m personally amazed that the structure of this nation could be so thoroughly assaulted and not yet result in internal conflict. It truly boggles the mind, but leaves one with a sense that catastrophe is the only possible cure.

All the while, those awake know that there is a back room deal taking place, that the nation is being sold out from within, willingly serving it up to its enemies for cash and other considerations. Even if someone, somewhere cared more about the nation than the weight of gold in their pockets, the couldn’t stop it, the termites of the administrative state would block them, stymie any effort.

It has to crash. The question is, do patriots have the will and the determination to step into that void and exert their power to reset the republic? Or, has the republic done all that it could in providing an epoch of freedom, a momentary pause in totalitarianism, but ultimately too weak to project that further than a couple of hundred years before it all goes back to normal?

G M

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ccp

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #77 on: August 07, 2022, 08:46:50 AM »
looks like the 22 cal bolt double action rifles I shot with in the 60s early 70s

now it is AR 15s


G M

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #78 on: August 07, 2022, 08:49:05 AM »
looks like the 22 cal bolt double action rifles I shot with in the 60s early 70s

now it is AR 15s

Do AR 15s have magic powers that make people into killers?



G M

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Anarcho-Tyranny on a global scale
« Reply #82 on: August 23, 2022, 12:10:30 PM »
https://summit.news/2022/08/23/please-make-it-stop/

Not accidental.

Anyone notice anything about the demographics of the UK looters?

G M

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Aldous Huxley saw this coming
« Reply #83 on: August 23, 2022, 06:08:36 PM »
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

Aldous Huxley

G M

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NYC doing well
« Reply #84 on: August 29, 2022, 10:17:21 PM »
https://twitter.com/Antman0704/status/1563857578727297024

In case you were wondering, the elderly and handicapped white guy they ran over died.

No big deal.

White lives don't matter.

G M

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Chicago isn't just for murders
« Reply #85 on: August 30, 2022, 05:05:02 PM »

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Crafty_Dog

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Brownstone: A world on fire
« Reply #92 on: September 14, 2022, 02:17:36 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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G M

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BPS on the loss of trust in institutions-collapse of society
« Reply #97 on: October 24, 2022, 10:29:57 PM »
Deleted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT3KbzbS_oM

Undeleted.

If this is gone, so am I.



« Last Edit: February 24, 2023, 10:55:02 PM by G M »


Crafty_Dog

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Re: Western Civilization
« Reply #99 on: February 17, 2023, 02:44:30 PM »
Yes.

It will be hard to distinguish the collapse of competence and low grade sabotage by the fifth column elements among the six million illegals.