Differences
How much better off the American people would be if they could learn the difference between:
investors and speculators
the Constitution ratified by the people of the States and the one promulgated by federal judges
education and training
necessary taxation and an oppressive burden
national defense and foreign interventionism
law enforcement and war
justifiable borrowing and destructive, irresponsible debt
entertainment and moral debasement
celebrity and worth
status and wisdom
status and virtue
affirmative action and equal treatment under the law
a citizen and a non-citizen
a guest and an invader
a "conservative" and a conservative
public life informed by Christianity and politicized churchmen
And especially the American people would profit if they learned not to believe that politics is the realm of doing good. Politics is the realm of vanity, greed, lust, deception, and force.
I am not holding my breath.
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Great points, one and all. If I had to choose one, I'd wish the American people could grasp the difference between national defense and foreign interventionism. Without our mindless support of the war industry and its associated bureaucracy, most if not all of the other evils you target would vanish.
Seriously: taxes, the worship of state power, multiculturalism -- they all flow from DC's pursuit of world democratic revolution.
"American people would profit if they learned not to believe that politics is the realm of doing good. Politics is the realm of vanity, greed, lust, deception, and force."
Thank you Dr. Wilson, for saying what others fear to say but once upon a time, everybody knew ---Oh, 'Tis true 'Tis true!!!
A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.
XIII. When I was one-and-twenty
WHEN I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies 5
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again, 10
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty, 15
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
Americans also have a hard time determining the difference between Budweiser and beer. Another would be the difference between patriotism and nationalism.
An excellent post.
Everybody knows the difference, they just don't act like it.
Expained here: http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2009/06/08/your-future-as-a-terrorist/
"the staggeringly powerful force of conformity that is a major component of the American national character. Our two greatest foreign observers—Tocqueville in the 19th century and Solzhenitsyn in the 20th—were both struck by the herd tendencies of American thought and the rareness of individuality, the near universal craving for respectability within the mass."
Perhaps the Icelandic vikings will show us the way in their upcoming referendum about sticking it to "London bankers." Talk about guests and invaders!
rt.com/About_Us/Programmes/Keiser_Report/2010-01-14/538270.html
How about the difference between "normal" and "abnormal" ?
I especially like your fourth example: education and training. That's straight from Albert J Nock! Another Nockian example would be: homo sapiens and human beings.
A great post Professor Wilson. It seems you are correct to not hold your breath. What that the masses would start with distinguishing between right and wrong or between good and bad...or even acknowledging that a distinction as such exists.
In all fairness to the people (I really dislike the abstract, Marxist term ‘masses’), they have been spoon-fed a world view from birth, reinforced by the media, schools, and the social engineering of the federal government with its groups of pseudo-intellectuals. Further, they have been convinced that this world view is part and parcel to being a patriotic American. Indeed, many can become quite violent when truth and reality are brought to their attention. Most, in their state sponsored ignorance, would probably consider the views of Jefferson radical and anti-American. As Marion Montgomery pointed out, the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. are two sides of the same coin, both afflicted with the same disease..
Celebrity and Worth, I immediately thought of Beyonce Knowles and Lady Gagme. How about Voluntary Compliance and Servitude.
#10 MAP As Marion Montgomery pointed out, the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. are two sides of the same coin, both afflicted with the same disease..
Lincoln and Stalin both saved their Union's
MAP,
I will say that the need to use the word 'masses' is lamentable but not necessarily because I consider it inaccurate in terms of differentiating group-thinking conformists as versus individuals that comprise a people.
The Trinity and Allah.
The "masses" are what we become when we buy into the lie of the anti-culture that we can be "autonomous" individuals, outfitted with a suit of abstract rights and protected by the abstract corporation known as the Hobbesian state. That state with a monopoly on coercion and the ability to define the limits of its own power actively placates our desire to pursue our own whims, compulsions and desires and actively assists us of the masses by deconstructing, destroying or marginalizing God, the family, the Church and the local commonwealths, i.e. the order of being, in which we have our meaningful being. However, rather than the end product of this process being autonomous individuals as Promethean selves, we find ourselves to be alien, estranged and shriveled selves - a collective mass to be manipulated into cannon fodder or into consumer fodder.
Communism, like all of the "isms" has stolen and usurped the word "communion" which is sacred and which in Christ is the goal, i.e. to be in true and eternal communion with the Living God and with one another in family. In fact, "communion" not stolen and usurped is the opposite of "collective," i.e. the mass or masses. In communion with God and His created order, having lost my "self" I am become "self" at its most noble. In the "collective," that "self," created in the image of God and seeking His face, is utterly lost. One become Michael Jackson, Brittany Spears, this Miss Johnson who just died, a "rich" executive prancing down Madison Avenue or a drug addict struggling though the streets of Detroit. A world of Goloms in the service of Sauron and his ring.
William Gillmore Simmns, on 03 May 1970, in the midst of Reconstruction, got off his death bed to deliver to the Charleston County Agricultural and Horticultural Association a lecture entitled “The Sense of the Beautiful.”
There, Simms, in a different historical and intellectual context, uses the concept of "training" in the positive. Training is therein understood to mean the process of building character in a child by instilling in him the virtues necessary for good character, and Simms compares that process to the loving pruning of a young plant. In it, he compares a child to a tender plant, guiding its growth to enhance the garden in which the plant has its being. Of course, this is not the purview of the public apparatus which we call public "education." For Simms, it is the duty of parents, the Church and the other local commonwealths.
"Kalos kai agathos" or "mens sana in corpore sano" versus pedestrian 21 century intellectualism, sports and "beautiful people"
A good post. I would add one for our friends who say they are conservative.
Big military vs. small government.
Secure borders and Homeland Security
Jesus Christ and Mohammad.
Farming versus Agra-business
Country folks living country ways versus urbanites and suburbanites quartered in rural settings
Supper time versus masticating
Communing with the Living God and His Ecclesia in the sanctuary on the Lord's Day versus associating with those of fervent emotions in a "worship center."
Real money versus the fiat/counterfeit stuff now in circulation
An excellent piece Dr. Wilson.
Anti-Semitism and opposing American military intervention in the Middle East
"the Constitution ratified by the people of the States and the one promulgated by federal judges"...........I thought I knew American history fairly well until I read Albert Jay Nock's biography of Thomas Jefferson. It is Nock's convincing thesis that the US constitution was engineered by those northern interests who desired a strong central government and the integration of capital and government at the expense of the producing class (very similar to today's situation). Unfortunately, Jefferson was in France during the constitutional convention and it is probably a tragedy of history that he was not present during the debates. Although he reluctantly serves as Washington's Sec of State during his first term he recognized from the onset that a Faustian bargain had been struck that shifted the government structural emphasis from the original republican ideals to the marriage of capital, a captured federal judiciary, continued British influence (capital and foreign policy) and a strong central government. However, even the brilliant Jefferson - nor Hamilton for that matter - could ever imagine the current monstrosity of the federal government that oppresses us and the rest of the world. Finishing the biography, I realized that in all my years of education that I had never read the original Articles of Confederation...........and this was not an oversight but a deliberate act of omission on the part of educators.
#23. Mr. Patrick. Actually, the Jeffersonians thought that with the 9th and 10th amendments, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions affirming State nullification, and the vanquishing of the Federalist party in the 1800 elections, that the Union had been preserved on a proper republican basis. As John Randolph and John Taylor, and eventually Jefferson himself, soon learned, however, the Yankee agenda was relentless and unscrupulous. Nevertheless, it was held somewhat in check until Father Abraham rose to power on a sea of blood.
Dr. Wilson, do you see at all in John Adams a positive, healthy conservative balance against the quasi-Jacobin tendencies of some of the more radical republicans?
No. Among other things, he became a Unitarian. As John Taylor of Caroline showed exhaustively, Adams was no conservative, but was trying to create a "balanced" government made up of artificial classes---a Puritan revolutionary project. For example, he promoted the ludicrous idea that the House and Senate would check each other. And he sought the destruction of the real Constitution by abetting the federal judges' sneaking of common law into the written Constitution.
Thank you Dr. Wilson. Could you point me to where I might find Taylor making that argument?
One of my complaints with Russel Kirk (The Conservative Mind)was that he gave hardly passing mention of the Agrarians/Fugitives, while devoting almost an entire chapter to trying to prove John Adams a conservative, despite Adams' Unitarianism, his belief in Progress, and his belief in the prefectabilty of man.
Taylor's CONSTRUCTION CONSTRUED and INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLES AND TENDENCIES OF CERTAIN PUBLIC MEASURES.
Russell was very eclectic in THE CONSERVATIVE MIND, perhaps a little too much so, as MAP points out. However, of course, he began his works with his book on Randolph of Roanoke. Late in his career he wrote that at least half of all important American conservative books were Southern, and welcomed Southern works in The Library of Conservative Literature that he edited. He particularly admired Calhoun and Donald Davidson.
I should have emphasized that my only problem with Kirk was within this one book. His book 'Randolph of Roanoke' was an excellent and scholarly work. Kirk's contributions to 'conservative' thought in general were profound. We owe him much.
Thank you again, Dr. Wilson.