What Is History? Part 24
A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. —John Adams
Honest history is one of the many casualties of the ethnic spoils competition that now dominates American society. —Clyde Wilson
Blood will tell. —proverbial wisdom
There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. —Adam Smith
It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. —Proverbial wisdom
If the ass does speak, it will most certainly be bilingual. —Ferrol Sams
Things are not as they are; they are as they seem to me. —attributed to Nietzsche
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
—Tennyson
The death of an old person is like the burning of a library. —proverbial
The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue. . . . —John Adams
The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true; they are the worst conceivable. . . . —John Adams
The nativists have already lost irrevocably. —New York Times, Feb. 2009
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"Things are not as they are; they are as they seem to me."
One more example of Nietzsche presaging the coming era.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
The death of an old person is like the burning of a library. —proverbial
Yes, but some libraries are very small.
What would the left do without tags such as "nativist," "isolationist," "racist," "facist," "right-wing," etc.? Maybe they would have to use arguments with facts and logic.
Small though some libraries are, Mr. Ridenour, they may contain priceless nuggets of wisdom that should not be lost.
Dr. Wilson,I truly love it when you do this. Keep'em comin'! Here are a few for you in return:
"Truth is strong enough to stand alone; only lies need a government to support them."--George Orwell
"Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience."--Blaise Pascal
"Ultimatum:In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions."--Ambrose Bierce
"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself."--Albert Camus.
#3: Small though some libraries are, Mr. Ridenour, they may contain priceless nuggets of wisdom that should not be lost.
Nolo contendere.
Belloc has said that the modern age is characterized by "the victory of quantity over quality." All of us, infected by modernism, fall into that sin, as I just did.
I admit it; I'm a recovering modernist.
Balancing the truth that quality trumps mere quantity is the adage, "There's no fool like an old fool."
As evidence I submit the aging leftists; Woody Allen and his late movies, like the degenerate Deconstructing Harry. His infantile skepticism was cute in his youth, but his wheel spinning throughout the decades, his droning on and on concerning the same issues that most of us solved by only a small amount of thoughtful reflection and a little life experience, has become a truly pathetic spectacle––something unbearable to watch but difficult to turn away from: like a train wreck in slow motion.
The leftist/subjectivist radicalism of the aging perverts and distorts beyond recognition even the little of their "intellectual" content worth knowing.
As Will Rogers said, "It ain't what people don't know that hurts them, it's what they know that just ain't so."
Extending that thought, one could say, "that which they "know" that ain't so ruins the little they know that is so."
"The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true; they are the worst conceivable. . . ." —John Adams
An interesting double-edged quote, especially coupled with the other quotes of Adams' included here. In a way, this last quote of Adams' rings purely, if by accident: On the whole, the American people get the government they deserve.
If I could add this gem from Alexis de Tocqueville: "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
#6
On the whole, the American people get the government they deserve.
This is true, but not absolutely true. For sure, the more we become a Mega-democracy and the less a Republic, the more true it is.
I am very open to correction on this, in fact desirous of correction, for I wish it weren't true, in a way. But it is my opinion that it is a mistake to blame the on-going massive incompetence, malice, thievery, and anti-constitutional behavior of Federal Government on the voting public, or the insect-like politicians that infect its halls of Federal power. They're only doing what has been permitted them––not so much by the people, but by the states in which the people reside.
As I see it, the leaders of the states, in all their houses of government, have basically rolled over and died, and no voice is raised in any of the state houses to object to the behavior of the Feds that legislate one encroachment after another upon the sovereignty of the states and liberty of the people.
IF the feckless leaders of the states, even a small number of them, were to ban together, set forth a common formal objection and stand firm, I believe you would see something remarkable; you would see the Feds back down like a bully in a school yard. IF the states were to be like Gandolf on the stone bridge, striking his rod down at a point, and defiantly saying to the Federal Balrock, "You shall go no further", I believe the Feds would back down, with one caveat: these states would have to be, in the majority, NOT southern states. (If they were only southern states it would merely unleash another round of Reconstructionism and Federal brutality for all the world to see––Of course, the only objections to the abuses nightly chronicled on evening TV news the world over would come from outside of America; once again the Feds would expose their hypocritical, self-righteousness in respect to human rights for all the world to see).
No, you would have to have states that actually have some rights left; states is it not politically correct and nationally acceptable to abuse, mock, ridicule, misrepresent and pillage.
Of course, Adams favoured and contributed to the imperial presidency and the imperial judiciary that have deprived the people of the (peaceful) means to secure their liberty. As Jefferson and friends pointed out, the people are a lot less dangerous to freedom than their would-be superiors.
Mr. Holt @ 4
“'Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.'–Blaise Pascal"
The radical Puritans, the Transcendentalists, the secularized Puritans and simply far too many folk of modernity believe in their own innocence, having rejected the fall and its consequences. Such people find it easy to look down on others and to assume their own moral superiority which leads to a pride and hubris that manifests itself in wars of "emancipation," in wars to "make the world safe for democracy" and "wars to protect the innocent," whoever the "innocent" might be. The same leads to social revolution with a massive transfer of wealth from those who produce it (the guilty) to those who desire it (the victims). With high-minded conscience they rape, plunder and kill.
The first critical question is who "the people " are. The current American "people" who put the juvenile Obama in office are far more dangerous to freedom than their obvious superiors-superiors like you Clyde Wilson.Bosh...give me some real elitism over this disgusting Obamocracy.And don't even try to argue Obama is some closet elitist...this is the return of the New Deal...a failed despotism by losers,for losers and of losers.
Or maybe by bankers, for bankers, and of bankers.
On Adams and virtue: Words change meaning over time. "Virtue" in the late 18th century meant, "manly attention to the (public) good." Now, when it isn't used as a sneer, it means something like "sappy old fashioned morality." When Adams said that republics were based on and dependent on virtue, he meant exactly that men had to learn their duties at home and apply them in the public vocation to which they were called. He was much the moral superior of both Hamilton and Jefferson.
Actually, if the ass does speak it most certainly will be elected.
Of course, it depends on what "the people" refers to. Members of a natural self-sufficient society created by Providence, culture, history, and Christianity? Or creatures and dependants of government? The problem is, the U.S. today doesn't know or care about the diffedrence.
Things are not as they are; they are as they seem to me.
If Nietzsche did say this I wonder what the context was? The meaning completely changes if the tone is sarcastic. Would it not be a mocking of the narcissism that presages Existentialism?
Reminds me another phrase attributed to him at the time he was tottering on the edge of insanity in Turin:
"Ho, my good man, are we happy yet? I am the god who has made this caricature."
The nativists have already lost irrevocably ...
No thanks to their relentless undercutting of everything decent about the United States.
@1 Tom
Yes, but some libraries are very small.
Before he died, Ray Bradbury saw a librarian throwing out a bunch of books. When he asked her why, she replied, "to make more room for videos, and books on the occult."
Bradbury was quoted in Chronicles, "with today's librarians, who needs firemen?"
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
—Tennyson"
This reminded me of the first verse of a poem written by my old classics professor about Hemmingway:
Papa was no hero,
What he had was dare
A confidence of zero
multiplied by fear.
Mr. Gervaise, I would guess that, under your analysis, George Washington, among others, was guilty of "relentless undercutting of everything decent about the United States" for wishing the United States of America to retain the British source of the majority of its people.
@19 Derek
I didn't clarify, but since that quote was from the Ochs/Sulzberger owned New York Times, I was specifically referring to that horrble fish-wrapper's incessant undercutting of America, and their attacks on morality and decency as well.
But about George Washington, it must be remembered that almost a third of the anglos peaceably living in North America at that time did not favor any sort of civil war against King George or his army. Once independence was won, those people were exiled and many had to live in England, which they did not consider to be their home. Washington as president would also be forced into a mini-civil war over taxation on whiskey. How ironic!
@ #5
"It ain't what ya don't know that hurts ya. What really puts a hurtin' on ya is what ya knows for sure, that just ain't so."
-- Uncle Remus
Thanks for the explanatory reply, Mr. Gervaise. And I agree that the New York Times has been an enemy of the historic American nation for decades. I will not be saddened by the demise of the Ochs-Sulzberger regime. Unfortunately, a Murdoch New York Times is not much of an improvement. Bill Kristol as Editor-in-Chief of the Times is a frightening nightmare indeed.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
—Tennyson
Ah, Tennyson in support of nihilism, making a non-statement, intended only to tear down without any thing common and positive to replace it; born of English skepticism and contempt for the Religious truth than made England and Europe what it had been; the loss of which has caused Europe to lose its identity and made it kowtow to its historical enemy, Islam.
Here Tennyson puts himself in the category of those who prefer the amorphous vagueness of modern subjectivism to the positive clarity of the mystical, historical and eschatological truths plainly stated in the great Christian creeds.
Never underestimate the hatred of the modern British patriot for the Catholic faith. The loathing runs deep. For instance, it kept Lewis from conversion, even after he had embraced the vast amount of Catholic orthodoxy he continued to cling tenaciously to the church of England, even while it was systematically rejecting the central mysteries of the Faith; the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and Virgin birth.
Today, nothing remains of substance in the Anglican Communion; it's just a mass of modern psychologism and DISHONEST doubt.
English hatred of the faith kept Belloc from the teaching position he deserved more than any other in his age. But, my opinion is that the universities' loss worked out to the benefit of Chesterton and those like my self, who have profited greatly from Belloc's writing; writing he may never have done isolated as a Don in Cambridge or Oxford.
His personal irascibility and lion-like advocacy of truth almost insured he would never last there anyway. His poem "Lines To a Don" provide us ample evidence of that. Truth has never been a welcome presence in the modern university. It cannot even be hinted at without outrage from the propagandizing and thoroughly propagandized professoriate; witness the recent and conspicuous casualty of Larry Summers.
"To speak of the people is in truth to speak of a beast,mad, mistaken,perplexed,without taste,discernment,or stability."-Francesco Guicciardini
"You may laugh at those who are always talking of liberty...For if these men thought their fortunes would be mended under a tyranny,they would rush to it post-haste.With almost all men regard for their own interest prevails..."-Francesco Guicciardini
Ducunt volentem fata,nolentem trahunt
(And that aint no donkey talkin' thar neither)
It is a terrible mistake, not only aesthetic but spiritual and moral to reduce poets to the puny dimensions of political ideologues or religious polemics. Tennyson was what he was and did his best to say what he thought he knew. His ideas were often quite mistaken, but his imagination was Christian and his versification Vergilian. It is a waste of time to attack him for not being Chesterton, a writer of a far more limited range and talent. If Mr. Ridenour's approach is followed, we may as well write off several centuries of English literature, and then what are we left with, Father Brown?
Don't let the bastards wear you down.
Noli nothis permittere te terere, or more popularly "non illegitimi carborundum."
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. - C.S. Lewis
After Dr Wilson's post about the virtuous Nathaniel Macon, I'd taken a rather dim view of John Adams. I'm surprised to see his better quotes posted here. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
@28
ref. John Adams
Even a blind hog can find an acorn....sometimes.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
—Tennyson
Perhaps I'm wrong in my view of Tennyson. It's true I don't know his motives for saying what he says, and in that respect, what I wrote was certainly presumptuous.
It's true his imagination was Christian. Everyone's was at that time. Even if you did not believe the revelation you used its rich images to communicate because everyone was familiar with the Bible and the primary doctrines of the Church. Look at Lincoln and how effectively he used Christian images and Scripture. No one can say his imagination was not Christian, but many have cast great doubt on his faith in Christ and embrace of the central mysteries of the Faith.
It's true I don't know Tennyson's motives for saying this, but I do know something about common sense. For instance, I know creeds don't have faith, people do. And to compare the subjective faith of a person with the objective statements of faith in a formal creed is not to compare apples and oranges, but cabbages and moon rocks; it is absurd.
All that is left beyond that is insinuation.
Since the statement, like any modern statement, is vague, I ask, what is the purpose of the statement? Surely it was not part of his most noble output! Was it meant to discredit those who forged the great creeds? If so he should speak of them directly and not their creed.
Does it mean he has found the modern doubter more honestly sincere and, therefore, to be more respected than those who forged the great creeds and those who believe them now?
One thing is clear; he assumes one thing to be superior to another, one faith to be superior to another––in fact, the "faith of the doubter" to be superior to what? Those who believe in the great Creeds?––or half the creeds; and if only half, which half?
That's not what he says, but that's the only thing I can see that makes sense.
I await superior analysis of content and motive.
Finally, I had no intention of discrediting that vast body of English literature that does not conform to the strictures of Catholic creedal orthodoxy; only isolated statements that seem openly hostile to their content and those who believe it.
Tennyson may have a superior literary output than Chesterton, but Chesterton clearly possessed the superior understanding of the great Creeds and their richness. Of the men's comparative output I'm clearly unqualified to say, but I'll take the content of the Everlasting Man or Orthodoxy over this isolated statement any day. At least it does not elevate doubt to the status of a Faith and pronounce it superior to the ancient ones–––or half of them anyway, though which creeds and which half remains unclear. But perhaps it's unfair to ask for clarity from such a great poet.