Modern Wisdom from Ancient Minds
As far as beauty goes, what is so attractive about either the perfect Stepford wives’ look or the starved model appearance? From red-figure vase painting to Rubens, Western tastes have appreciated curves, not lines. Where did the new beauty profile come from that is abnormal and usually achieved only through surgery: 5’ 10” females, weighing 120 lbs., with micro-waists and huge breasts and rears, as if more than 1% of the population is born that way? Ovid also reminds us that, on occasion, a blemish can mesmerize the beholder, in the way perhaps Cleopatra’s ample nose incited Caesar and Antony. I used to find the actress Sandy Dennis’s uncorrected overbite appealing in the way I don’t find today’s oversized, bleached, spot-lighted, and perfectly capped choppers inviting. A mole for the Greeks should not be removed. The classics remind us that a small defect is no defect at all. Forty years ago, I once knew an undergraduate with a scar running across her chin, maybe six inches in length, and a few millimeters wide. It was hypnotic. And what happened to the classical emphases on voice, comportment, grace, and gesture as ingredients of beauty? Have they simply fallen by the wayside in our boobs/butt obsessed popular culture? Are there voice or posture classes anymore, or has it become all liposuction and implants?
Hoi Aristoi/Polloi
Admittedly, classical literature is aristocratic, at least in the sense that the well-read and learned had more money than those whom they often wrote about. But that said, it is striking how frequently over a thousand years of Greek and Latin masterpieces arise words like “mob” (ochlos) and “throng” (turba) to describe the herd-like desire for entitlements without worry as to how they were to be funded. Virgil (vulgus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur) and Horace (Odi profanum vulgus et arceo) would assume that even the Wall Street Journal is not read at Super Wal-Mart. (But be careful: at a local electric motor shop, the two Hispanic mechanics/owners once asked me how I would rate Peter Green’s Alexander the Great — and then cited four other biographies — while I was waiting to have a motor rewound.)
Alexis de Tocqueville put forth a thesis that American democracy had a chance because the small-scale entrepreneur (see above) and autonomous, self-reliant agrarian were not so prone to the Siren-calls of the European mob. He felt that we in American would not perhaps follow the model of the fourth-century Athenian dêmos or imperial Roman vulgus that flocked to the cities for the dole, and hated the wealthy the more they taxed them (don’t think Obama will be happy with just raising rates on “millionaires”) — as if the ability to pay high taxes was always proof of the ability to pay even more. Tocqueville derived that pessimistic view from Aristotle whose best democracy was a politeia — rule by owners of some property, who were largely agrarian and self-reliant, and did not expect subsidies from others. Classics, then, teach us to beware a situation when 47% of the population do not pay income taxes and nearly half of us receive federal and state subsidies. Perhaps we should go over the cliff so that the 53% all understand the burdens of higher taxes to subsidize the 47% who pay no income taxes. If we hike taxes on those who make over $1 million a year, then cannot we not insist that everyone pays at least $500 per year in federal income taxes — to appreciate that April 15 is not Christmas?
In that regard I now often think of Solon’s seisachtheia, the “shaking off” of debts by those small farmers of Attica burdened from having to pay 1/6th (or so scholars still believe) of their produce to their creditors — or the Messenian helots who were obligated to give ¼ to ½ of everything they produced to their Spartan overlord. Yet at this point, with a looming 40% federal tax rate, 12% California tax, returning payroll and higher Medicare taxes, and the new Obamacare hit, millions would prefer the oppressive take of classical serfdom to the present 55-60% of their income grabbed by the state. The new American helots, after all, will fork over sixty percent of their almond crops to the IRS, build six out of ten houses for their government, drive their trucks until July for Washington — and write thirty PJ weekly columns a year for Obama. The Tea Party might have been better named the Helot Party.
A happy and healthy New Year Mr. Victor Davis Hansen. I try to read every essay you place here. I have some fruit trees and grapes growing myself, on my little allotment. Not commercially just a hobby. I’ll bet a lot of your readers here have gardens and fruit trees. Agriculture gives you perspective. Who would not pray to God when he depends on a crop?
I live in the South of France. last year heavy rain destroyed my olive crop. However:
Veto Celebratio est
A very happy New Year Mr Hansen. The world would be a poorer place without you.
“And that is the point, is it not — to keep the ancient faith and so welcome rather than fear the popular anger of the age?”
Yes. Shame it must all burn, yet again, for the populous to relearn old lessons.
Well said Dr Hanson!
Taxing success while underwriting indolence insures only poverty for all!
Yet we now have a president whose every utterance seems to demonize anyone who dares earn more than their “fair share.”
President Obama did tell us that his mentors were Frank Marshall Davis and Rev Jeremiah Wright. With that in mind does anyone really think that our President has nothing but a deep loathing for anyone who is successful in American business.
What a joy to read that was. VDH’s writing is a reminder of why old-fashioned history and classical Literature programs are becoming scarce as colleges and universities transition to Creating New Mindsets with different values and beliefs instead of transmitting knowledge. There is such a source of wisdom in knowledge of the past and it is an impediment to today’s desires to simply reimagine a New Society. Without knowing enough to recognize what is likely to go wrong and that planned societies, especially founded on redistribution, have a poor track record.
Shakespeare has better insights on the timelessness of human nature than a sociology textbook. But that’s an impediment again if social engineering to remake human nature is the 21st century game plan.
I spend a great deal of time tracking tragic ideas trying to describe them in time to avert a potential catastrophe. When people ask how I can still joke about it, I always say it’s because I ground the knowledge I obtain in the context of history. It does make all the difference. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/comparing-the-real-common-core-to-notorious-authoritarian-social-engineering-disasters/ is how I took today’s poorly appreciated Common Core education reforms that are actually about changing values and beliefs to tolerate or even crave a collectivist society where the group comes first.
What a splendid lesson VDH just provided us of what happens when the autonomous individual ceases to have primacy or even legitimacy. Obama made a reference Sunday night that was little reported that implied that he saw it as government’s place to make sure every person has happiness and a purpose in their life. Really? Isn’t that government as infantilizing and overbearing on who is really in charge of day to day life? But without history, who can recognize the tyranny that has so often come from what sound superficially like good intentions?
It is quite amazing how frequently this President of ours [theirs] inserts himself into matters never or seldom before discussed by high office holders. It seems I hear his voice several times a day coming from a kitchen or an airport television as I read a book or a blog or scribble an occasional comment. I can’t recall Bush or even Clinton being so continually on stage.
Does he speak mostly of weighty matters of state? Often it seems to me he speaks of matters within a state that are or used to be only the business of a state, you know, one of the the United STATES. President/government, President/government…all day, all night.
But perhaps I’m wrong because I so strongly dislike Demunism.
He is the uninvited conversationalist. We all know the type: When you’re engaged in a conversation with someone, the uninvited overhears and butts in. You are then forced to listen to ridiculous assertions and statements redolent of some agenda.
When this happens to me I get filled with resolve and simply say, “Your participation was not only unnecessary, but also uninvited. I therefore offer you the opportunity to shut up. Otherwise, I will just talk over you and/or ignore you until you go away, which you are also invited to do. No one asked you, no one here is interested in what you have to say.
I pray for the day that SOMEone says that to captain skidmark. The looks of utter worship that come from the journalidiots is beyond discouraging. I want to address them myself and ask, “This? This is what you find interesting? This? This rehash of the 1960′s flaming tower of ignorance? This? This completely self-absorbed tool of a person who cannot think his way out of a wet paper sack? My GOD you are such a sucker!”
Or…it would be a golden day when some newsie simply confronted obama when he said something like, “Folks are saying that—”, and the newsie replies, “What ‘folks’, mr president? Who? When? Who said that?”
No one ever does. I remember being taught a very valuable lesson that when quoting someone to get the attribute right or as close to right as I could. All the straw man arguments that this lazy good-for-nothing comes up with have never been challenged in an open forum. Not once.
Describing Obama as merely “lazy” is an understatement. I am currently reading a biography of President Polk by Robert Merry. Polk was a worker. He rarely left the White House, and generally regarded entertainments as a waste of his time. Instead, he worked every day and long days during his single term. The result was that he achieved every one of the major goals of his presidency, and the country was thereby enlarged and improved. Compared to Polk, Obama is detached and comatose.
Flag:”All the straw man arguments that this lazy good-for-nothing comes up with have never been challenged in an open forum. Not once.”
I especially savor it when he says something like, ‘All the experts have told us that…’ or ‘Every noted Economist agrees that…’
Can one even begin to get a picture of Economists of note across the university and commercial spectrum getting together in harmonious agreement on some especially controversial point? What I realy dislike about this man is that he speaks to the whole country as if it were full of the supreme idiots and sniveling lackeys who adore him.
Flag: ‘captain skid marks’. Hahaha. A navy man were you?
Pelosi, Reid, et al have the same problem with aging that Ted Kennedy did. Simply put, they refuse to accept the reality of their own mortality.
They have dreamed of Absolute Power their entire lives. Now that they essentially have it (when was the last time Nancy or Harry didn’tget everything they demand?), they find that they will not be able to enjoy an eternal rulership.
Previous generations of monarchs (and tyrants) dealt with this by having heirs. But the modern lot rejects even that, as that would mean having to give up power to somebody, which is anathema to their sense of their “true value”.
When they die (and they will, as all must), their endings will not be serene, or dignified.
Instead, they will be screaming as loudly as they can,
Which, in view of their opinion of religion, is ironic enough to actually be funny.
clear ether
eon
“Here lies a fallen god
His fall was not a small one,
We did but build his pedestal
a narrow and a tall one”
– Frank Herbert
Excellent. It sounds like FH was thinking of Piet Hein.
cheers
eon
Denial of death has evolved in humans for a reason.
It is not simply a willful illogic.
Existence is incomprehensible, so why should nonexistence be any more comprehensible?
Ipso facto, the gun might be pointed at everyone else’s head, but not at mine — surely.
To deny the denial of death is futile.
It’s why liberals seem to have a long view of politics, they believe that the goals will be achieved during their impossibly long lifetime.
Perhaps your best column to date, and that’s saying something.
Your father taught you well.
Great piece, Doc. I may not have the breadth of understanding you do, but I have found myself thinking similar thoughts.
There’s a reason people like William Ayers don’t want us studying history.
Well, they want us to study the history they’ve written!
Dr. Hanson, I especially enjoyed this column. I do have a question for you, not designed to challenge your thesis but to clarify my own understanding of Roman history. At the risk of over-simplifying, is it not true that after the Punic wars very many of the small Roman landowners were forced to sell their land because protracted and long-distance warfare prevented them from running their farms? And did not the senatorial class take advantage of the small farmers’ debt crisis to grab “public” land for themselves? I have always understood that the Gracchi brothers, whether or not their motives were pure, at least were addressing the problem of the shrinking middle class by means not so much of redistribution but of restoration.
Ah, yes, the Gracchi brothers,
inspiration for the old saying
‘No good deed goes unpunished’.
The theme is found often in Science Fiction,
along with Kornbluth’s ‘Final Solution’ to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
I recall a comment, but not its author, paraphrased:
It is no accident that so much of the Underclass and
the Progressive Elite live in large cities which are
surrounded by easily fortified ‘Ring Roads’.
‘Escape From New York’ while you still can.
Professor, When you bring up your experience about seeing fellow academics snowed by pretty girls and then dumped, it reminds me of one of the monster hits of the 80′s. It’s about the guy who sees her again.
He came from somewhere back in her long ago. The sentimental fool don’t see, tryin’ hard to recreate
what had yet to be created once in her life. She musters a smile for his nostalgic tale, never coming near what he wanted to say only to realize it never really was.
She had a place in his life. He never made her think twice.
As he rises to her apology, anybody else would surely know
he’s watching her go but what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away. What seems to be
is always better than nothing and nothing at all keeps sending him somewhere back in her long ago where he can still believe there’s a place in her life. Someday, somewhere, she will return.
There are, in the Christian Bible, debt holidays called a Jubliee and a distinct dislike for lending with interest. The dislike was sanctioned by death in the old testament and derision in the New Testament.
Lenders that really impact the system continue to lend when the prospects for payback in a normal situation would appear to be impossible. Yet the lending continues. One must ask oneself, why? It is because the lender relies upon the guns of the recipient, government, to force payment upon a populace that, had they been given an informed choice, would not have borrowed to begin with. In other words the lender is perfectly content with the risks knowing the government will reduce the taxpayer to poverty in order to continue to borrow from and pay to the lender. I have no pity on lenders who get shafted under these circumstances. The morality behind the lending by both the borrower and the lender is reprehensible.
yes, and the Bible also says, the borrower is a servant to the lender” I paraphrase it means the one with the $$$ is the one with power, or being in debt is bondage. Guess USA will find that out sooner rather than later. Inasmuch as other countries hold 5.5 trillions of our debt and government is selling USA out to our former enemies.
re: the year of Jubilee. I thought of that as I was reading the article. Back then though it was mostly if not all the time individual to individual I owe Tom 100 talents and Tom owes you fifty. The responsibility to obey the law was on the individual lender and the law came down from God through Moses. The slave or indentured servant served for seven years and then went free, unless he was happy in his present circumstance and so stayed on. It was not government mandating to the individual or to Maatercharge or Visa at the expense to the shareholder.
“Perhaps we should go over the cliff so that the 53% all understand the burdens of higher taxes to subsidize the 47% who pay no income taxes.”
A sensible proposition, Mr. Hanson, but so long as the “47%” never gain this understanding, the lesson isn’t learned by those most in need of learning it. Besides, the 53% already know the burdens of higher taxes to subsidize the 47%, and have done nothing to stop it. Quite to the contrary, they voted for more burdens. No, that isn’t a workable idea at all.
At the Republic’s founding, there was no 47/53%. Instead there was 100% who paid no income tax, and there was 100% who recieved no subsidies. As impossible as it is for the modern American to believe, the federal government operated without the income tax, and the nation prospered without subsidies, for more than a century. That things have gone so far astray is testament to the successes of the progressive movement over constitutional governance.
The modern progressive paradigm of “fairness” is defined as “tax the rich”, and has proved the winning hand for getting elected, so if you can’t beat ‘em, join em’. Since the president has revealed that he is more concerned with “fairness” than with a balanced federal budget, and his actions betray he has no concern for the enormous debt his presidency is piling up, I believe conservatives are missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring the nation closer to it’s original social contract. They need only make a strong case for the proposition that “if fairness is achieved by taxing the 2%, then fairness can also be achieved by not taxing the 98%.” I mean, what could be more “fair” than taxing JUST the rich? Why settle for 47/53% when we could just as easily make it 98/2%?
All that’s needed is for Congress to raise the income threshold for taxation from “the poverty line” to the “middle class line”. The “middle class line” has been variously defined as $250k/year, so if we raise the personal exemption to $250k/ year, then only those earning more, “the rich”, would be subject to income taxes. What could be more “fair” than that? More importantly, what politician would risk political suicide by opposing it?
…Republicans would be heroes to the 98% just for offering it….
At the time of the Republic’s founding there was no income tax, but there was an indirect excise tax on whiskey. Further, small producers were to pay ‘per gallon’ while large producers were to pay a fixed fee, often less than that of a smallish producer.
A revolt sprang from resistance to that excise tax. General Lee (father of his more famous but more deluded son) led the forces which put down that insurrection.
The 16th amendment was not written to permit an income tax. Rather, it was written to permit tax on income from property, which the SCOTUS had previously decided was too close to a restricted direct tax, while income tax was an a less restricted indirect tax.
Seems to me that the sixteenth was written precisely for an income tax, and written percisely to countermand the prohibative requirements for a “direct tax” set forth in Art 1, sect 9, Don M. But if you’ll forgive the observation, your reply is kind of beside the point.
The point I’m trying to make is that, by exploiting the president’s paradym of “fairness”, republicans have an opportunity to repeal it for nearly 98% of taxpayers.
Do you think it might be an offer the Senate and White House couldn’t refuse?
Esteemed Professor:
You offer balm to my furrowed graymatter. There IS no time like the present to revisit the Classics, and draw solace and not small amusement from Herodotus, Lucan’s Civil War or the secrets of Apuleius.
One quibble, JFK versus Eisenhower. Eisenhower did, in fact, offer to support captive peoples in their efforts to shed Soviet domination and, it seems, Hungarians took him at his word. Indeed, in the Budapest war museum, hung above the diorama of the battle for Budapest are the portraits of the three great villains of November 1956: Khrushchev, Marshal Konev and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Not only are you well learned, Dr. Hanson, you display an extraordinary memory.
I’d like to update a couple of items that pertain to today’s politicians:
“How did it happen that those in government, with higher than private sector salaries, with access to free perks, with better than normal pensions and benefits, so often talk about the need for higher taxes without anyone replying that they were selfish in asking the worse off to subsidize…..” THEM?
And:
The idiosyncrasies between Obama and Hitler are numerous.
And the Republicans in office seem to be nothing more than token opponents, at the mercy and grace of the Democrat Party, to display superficial resistance to the relentless procession to a “new and improved socialism”, while partaking in the bounty of their benefactors.
“And the Republicans in office seem to be nothing more than token opponents, at the mercy and grace of the Democrat Party…”
To quote “Guy” from the movie “Galaxy Quest”, “I’m just jazzed to be on the show.”
There are a few republicans with courage but the ones who run the show are deeply entrenched in fear of being razzed by the cool kids. Goes all the way back to adolescence and most people have a similar fear.
Reagan did a great job of not only taking it, but of dishing it out as well in a good-humored and clever way. But cleverness in assessing human character has given way to just being a smart-ass like Reid, Pelosi et al. I really would like the opposition to just look at Reid and say, “Well, you can be as cranky an old fart as you might like but your ideas suck and they always have. You need to just go re-fill your stock of Ensure and leave the real business to clear-thinking people who can actually do things without the help of a walker.”
Sure, it’d infuriate the left but..it’d also be a blast.
It’s true, the classical Greek and Roman texts, along with the Bible are the moral, and even cognitive foundations of our western world. And they are full of wisdom and insight into the human condition in almost all of its aspects. Indeed, one of the reason’s I am a longtime fan of your work Professor (along with your brother-in-arms, Bruce Thornton who often posts at FrontPageMag), is your overall thesis that we in the west tend to prefer economic self-reliance and political independence and autonomy to collectivist and totalitarian forms of social organization. That since the Greeks, we have been able to reset, through various historical processes, when power became too centralized and too many citizens turned unproductive. We value our individual identities, and the company of free men and women too much it seems, to allow totalitarian forms to exist for too long…
The Greeks fought their own battles against totalitarianism and autocracy. Indeed those heroes who manned the oars at Salamis or arrayed their spears at Plataea defined the western struggle to be free – which has culminated in the U.S. Constitution, the greatest beacon of Liberty ever lit by man. That the mindless minions of totalitarian and bureaucratic collectivism are now ranged against it is therefore no surprise, and would not surprise Themistocles, Aeschylus or Thucydides either. They are following the predictable pattern of the fearful, the resentful and the power hungry (those who have been enslaved by their reptilian brains). But alas, I think even Pericles and Sophocles would be taken aback by the scale, scope and nature of the new globe-spanning, totalitarian empire that is emerging, and perplexed over how to confront it.
That Obama and his inner circle are hard core Marxist-Leninists is pretty well established now. Gramsci, Marcuse, Alinsky and Cloward-Piven among others converted this ideology into practical steps and Obama mastered these teachings in his youth. But he is no longer an ideological purist, rather, to enable his bid for the presidency, he has adapted his expertise to serve other masters: The global imperialists. Indeed it would appear that the international Left, spanning from Latin America to the U.S. and Europe to portions of the Africa and central Asia is now entirely in the service of global financiers bent on imposing a kind of world kleptocracy. Their relationship to Russia and China is unclear, though I imagine they are working on some sort of power sharing deal, at least not now.
It seems that Obama and the democratic party are getting their marching orders, at least in part from outside interests. These interests appear to be manipulating markets on a global scale to create instability, which gives them political access and control within key nations and economic sectors. They appear to be stage-managing wars and coups in the middle-east by channelling existing rivalries and movements, in order to erect a new Jihad driven Caliphate to act as a foil against western power, and gain total control of the oil economy. They are working hard to undermine, and ultimately destroy the U.S. Military, which is the final guarantor of freedom in the world today. Above all else, this appears to be their number one objective, since everything becomes possible for them once that obstacle is done away with.
The Greeks would be familiar with these methods of concentrating power and assuming control of economic conduits. And even the formation of the UN, and the efforts to transform it into an instrument of control over the world’s financial, monetary, energy, food, communications and medical sectors, and thus indenture the world’s populations would not come as a total surprise to Plato or Aristotle. After all, it was Thucydides who taught us that there are usually many layers to human motivations, and that historical developments are not always what they seem.
That state capitalists and state socialists have joined hands in a marriage of convenience would not surprise the Greeks; if Athens and Sparta were able to unite towards a common end, then anyone can do it. And that they are now experimenting with totalitarian and police state methods in the US and elsewhere would not seem alien to Alexander, who well knew the power of propaganda, terror of various kinds, and the cult of personality. Today’s “infotainment” media echo and reinforce scientifically targeted signals, appealing to people’s unconscious resentments, greed, lust and tribal instincts. Microchips in our credit cards and cell phones monitor our behavior and track our movements. Political correctness is used to control thought and dialog, and to identify possible dissenters… these might dazzle the ancients at first, but their underlying logic would be clear to an autocrat like Alexander. And so would Obama’s desire to disarm the population.
But even Plato and Aristotle, and the great Thucydides himself may pause if asked: Can we plan effectively for the long term if we ignore this constant in human affairs – there is an instinctive, unconscious force in that seeks to amalgamate ever larger groups and sublimate individual identities, bending them to serve the mindless purpose of the monolithic group. The leaders we choose (or allow to emerge) are often just manifestations of this force. The Founders, benefiting from the historical perspective afforded them by Xenophon and Plutarch and Cicero saw this, and sought to guard against it. But as corruption sets in, this force coalesces and begins to impose its will. As individuals start to feel themselves powerless, they turn to the comfort and power of the over-mind.
Perhaps some sort of world empire is in our future, and it may not necessarily be a bad thing. Our technological progress has reached the point of “explosive disorientation” to quote Frank Herbert. Is it unreasonable to postulate that nanotechnology, genetic engineering, nuclear proliferation, automated weapons systems etc. may represent lethal developments for our species? Do world bodies need to be created to control or at least channel these emerging fields? And if so, how do we guarantee that they in turn do not become focal points for totalitarian power? So far we as a people have failed to come to grips with these questions, and so the collectivists and autocrats are doing it for us.
For my own part I still believe that a small, highly motivated alliance of like minded powers (The US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, Poland, Israel and India as an example) committed to mutual support come what may, and coherent, coordinated policy in these and other areas is our best option; though we have shown ourselves to be an unreliable ally lately, and that will have to be remedied!
Western Civilization is on the precipice, it is being destroyed by design, it’s enemy is a hybrid cabal of international leftists and capitalists who show signs of psychotic dis-association with the flow of normative western thought and history. They may represent the single greatest threat that humanity has ever confronted. Given the kind of control they seek, and their underlying attitude towards human freedom and life, if they do achieve their objective it is only a matter of time before they become genocidal. The one thing that can save us is the spirit of those yeoman Greeks of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., and the Spirit of 1776.
Don’t Tread On Me.
The trouble is, Gylippus, that even in places such as this, if you postulate that there was not an election but rather a coup d’etat in the fall of 2008, people practically run from you. Only the sort of cabal you describe could have manipulated the World economy the way it was manipulated in the summer and fall of 2008. I think Soros is a kind of manager/front man. I think some big foundations provided some of the financing. But I think most of the money came from sovereign wealth from the Middle East. What I can’t figure out is what they want other than the elimination of the US as a power capable of unilateral action, something they’ve already pretty much achieved, the re-establishment of the Caliphate, and the elimination of Israel. They are on the verge of accomplishing the latter two. Then, who knows, but I don’t expect them to peacefully cede power in ’16 or allow the Congress to function meaningfully again so long as they remain in power. We’ve in essence been ruled by a dictatorship since Comrade Obama’s hand came off The Bible, though as long as the Democrats controlled the Congress they maintained the charade. They haven’t even bother with a charade since the ’10 elections.
Both the 2008 and 2012 GOP primaries were rigged to come up with the weakest presidential nominee. Ever since we switched over to electronic voting, hacking an election is child’s play.
Actually, it’s more likely that after eight years of putting up with “that redneck cowboy from Texas”, the Old Boy Network of northeastern liberals in the GOP headshed got back to doing business the “traditional” way. That is, looking around the room at their fellow “wise heads” and saying, “OK, whose turn is it to run for President this time?”
Win or lose, the OBN retains control of the Party. You may notice that after the ’72 loss to Nixon, the Democrats purged McGovern’s supporters from their ranks, and got blindsided by Carter in ’76. (See Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail 1972 by Hunter S. Thompson.)
After this loss, the RNC is already blaming the Tea Partiers for their loss, and purging them. Same dynamic as ’72, just with the two parties trading roles. In each case, the Old Guard (northeastern and liberal in both cases) is willing to trade their opponents “Four More Years” in exchange for retaining control of their own party apparatus.
Yes, the GOP’s “Old Boys” would have been happy if Romney had won. But they’re not all broken up about him losing. Not as long as control of The Party remains their exclusive property. With no lip from those upstarts who say anti-American things like “you can’t keep spending more than you take in.”
To the Republican and Democratic leadership, that’s just… wrong. And borders on treason, in their minds.
Not treason to the country. Treason to them.
clear ether
eon
In addition to the points you mention, they seem to want to impose a kind of world feudal aristocracy and to control future technological development. They want to redistribute the wealth of the west, while skimming the lions share for themselves, and reduce most of us to a laboring class of serfs without hope of economic mobility or even free thought. In other words they are completely insane, and there is ultimately no real logic or reason to what they are doing. They seem to be doing it because they can, because it amuses them, and because they are filled only with monstrous nihilism. In other words they are psychopaths, not fully human (incapable of empathy) and therefore their vision of utopia is ultimately, well, post-human.
I’ve read George Soros’ first money came from narco- banks.
“Perhaps some sort of world empire is in our future, and it may not necessarily be a bad thing.”
General Gylippus:
You have displayed erudition, and nicely summarized the global conspiracy that is taking shape that really shouldn’t be any surprise to anyone, especially a student of history or the humanities.
However, to say that a world empire might have some positive consequences is, in my mind, rather naive, and is either a sign of apathy or political wavering on your part. This dormant cabal seeking to expand into an open regime vying for global domination will not be harmonious or participatory; it will be an agent of force and misery, of cunning and blood, either through active deeds or strategic neglect or a mixture of both. They do not believe in God; they worship their reflections, and will surely turn on each other at some point as the stakes get higher and the spoils become fatter. If Westerners believe and understand the Bible, then they would awaken to the awful situation they would be in, were they to submit themselves to a regime of global masters. Surely the Devil is the author of such a work.
To clarify: I oppose with all my being the Empire of Lies that is being built by this cabal of treacherous sewer scum. And indeed it has the markings of the Beast all over it. But the destructive potential of our rapidly advancing technology may compel us towards a kind of enforcable regime of global checks and balances. If so, do we cede this structure to the world’s kleptocrats and dictators, or do we who love Liberty and believe in the individual take the reins? Or perhaps it is indeed best to let the world drift towards the next crisis. We humans seem hard-wired to thrive the most when we are under survival pressures! If our technology pushes us towards a global order, then it should be a consensual one, not one built on demagoguery and deception as that would certainly turn totalitarian. As I said, I would prefer abandoning the UN and NATO in favor of a lean and mean US led hegemony capable of taking on all comers, but first we need to overcome these treasonous Dems.
Serva fidem; Professor Hansen you have made that very clear. I was very fortuante to have had a classical education albeit a hard scrabble one. Growing up in a blue collar working class neighborhood I was blessed with a Catholic school education given by underpaid and humble priests who instructed me in the glories of Cicero and Vergil; later I continued my classics at Catholic University in Washington DC. Unfortunately the Americanized Catholics decided to drop Latin and classics from their universities and schools, now they are just like the rest of the pagani. I still try to keep my Latin up and the little Greek I know also. These languages still make more sense to me that the current bastard American English which is spoken by the so called educated elite.
Gaudete in novo anno.
Out of two high schools so far, we’ve had Latin offered in both; one was a public school, one Catholic. It’s available at the local university (public), and Google tells me graduate degrees in Greek and Latin are still available at CUA. (In our family, the two kids who took four years of high school Latin scored in the mid-700s on their verbal SATs, while the one who took French scored only in the mid-600s. So the rest of them are taking Latin.)
My Catholic high school offered just two years of Latin, and beginning in year two, you also had to take a modern language – French, Spanish or German.
There has been a small revival of Latin in Catholic schools. More and more of the schools that dropped it in the last generation are restoring at least a two year sequence. Of perhaps more significance is the “Christian Classical” school movement, which not only embraces the teaching of Latin but the whole classical trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric as the foundation for K-12 curriculum.
There is some light shining in the darkness.
My grandmother had the ten grades of six or eight months a year that passed for public education in Georgia at the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries. She then had the two year “Normal School” education to become a certificated teacher. She could rattle off long passages of Caesar’s Gallic Wars in Latin and spout all sorts of Latin maxims and proverbs. (Thought I know now that her Anglicized pronuciation was terrible – more like so-called “legal Latin” today.) She could read Greek and even a little Hebrew. She could rattle off from memory the Geometry theorums that drove me nuts. And of course she had committed to memory all sorts of poems, snatches of Shakespeare, the KJ Bible, etc. Even in her 80s her math was impeccable up through the College Algebra level but she had no Trig or Calculus. She had almost no science as we understood science in the ’60s, before leftist agendae and grant-seeking took over. She was a “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” fundamentalist Christian, so not only did she not know much science, she didn’t accept much of what little she knew.
In any event, she always told me that if I couldn’t speak, read, and write Latin and at least read Greek I would always be a barbarian. Unfortunately, she was right.
But some girls still are taught grace and balance, quiet voices and gentle gestures. They live in the South.
The Steel Magnolias, Mistresses of Manipulation, exemplars
of the self-indulgence of themselves and their children
which has been the downfall of civilizations since the
time of the ancient Greeks…and Spartans.
being a steel Magnolia, Sir, you give us way to much credit… really, overthrowing entire civilizations? My, my! I know where I stand in the next civil war!
what on earth are you talking about? Southerners ARE the Spartans of America. My mother and my father, both my grandfathers, various uncles, from the founding of America, on down to today were in the military. Can you say that?
Grandmothers, great-aunts, aunts all ran auxilaries. My dad invited a military recruiter to my 17th birthday party. Not even most guys can say that.
Most military bases are named after Southerners. Most generals have a drawl. Ann Coulter can give you chapter and verse. I’ve never had to think about it in aggregate, I just have think about how people move in relation to VA hospitals for war damage mitigation.
I’m not in b/c I failed the physical. Three times. Most people quit after one, or don’t even try.
If civilization fails, it’s because of repulsive, gormless, squalid, dishonorable, indecent d*mn Yankees.
And they’re just born and bred to be a decoration on a rich man’s arm …
The first words my grandmother, a true Southern matriarch, said to the woman who became Wife v.1.0 were, “You a Yankee, ain’tcha?” Later she took me aside to say, “Boy, that girl is common!” She wasn’t “common” as my grandmother used the term; her family was far better off than we and she could be quite polished when the ocassion demanded, but she definitely wasn’t “Southern” and therefore couldn’t be a “lady” in my grandmother’s eyes.
Wife v.2.0 is Southern and very pretty, but not the professionally pretty “Dixie Dahlin’” type. Her father was an industrial engineer so she’d spent a good bit of time in The North and had moved around a good bit so she wasn’t on the pedestal that so many Southern women are placed on, especially those who’ve remained close to their roots.
I see some of the women that I went to high school with at class reunions or my infrequent visits and some of them have maintained themselves well and some have let time have its ravages without interference, but the ones that were the beauty queens, majorettes, and cheerleaders now almost fifty years ago still think that people should just gasp and stare when they walk in the room. I’m happy to leave women like that to their fat frat boy husbands. I swear I’m one of only two or three of the men in my HS graduating class within 50 pounds of a normal, healthy weight.
While I’m thinking about it- okay, so they are foolish in their old age. But seriously- what’s wrong with cheerleaders, grid-iron gods, dance-squad types thinking they are amazing and worthwhile? it has been a backwards, agricultural region- conquered! occupied! under military rule! and it found a way to use crepe paper and cheap crystal fakery to make its young feel like Greek gods and goddesses.
Any other region with that history- agricultural, conquered, ravaged- those people stay bitter and inward-looking and angry. Talk to anyone from that other region- they all think the capital of whatever brutal empire took over is the best place in the world. Why not think you are queen of a town? Ride around sitting on the trunk of a late-model convertible, holding roses, wearing a rhinestone crown, wearing a dress, waving at the town on founder’s day? Why not? Why think watching the Rose Bowl Parade far away is the heighth of sophistication? Why not have your local one meaning more to you?
For that matter, Beaumont, Texas, in the midst of a drought, figured out Homecoming Mums. google ‘em. They make every girl decorated as a Hindu bull. It’s a big, cheap flower, ribbons to excess, and trinkets. Yet that makes a girl feel exactly –worshipped. why not like it? Girls face a life of heartbreak and work, possibly. Why not let them have a moment in the sun, in their youth? The Greeks farmed and lived on vegetables. They had their youth in the sunshine. We still love them for that.
okay, I’ll grant that one of the funniest things on the planet to watch is two or three viperous Southern matriarchs maneuvering. Three different clans with three different superiorities…. it’s great training for negotiating in Afghanistan, I’m pretty sure.
OY!
Since Southern women were, you know, in the SOUTH, which, you know, like, LOST A WAR, maybe that whole manipulation to control the world bit is, like, you know, a bit of Northern Aggression Projection? Utterly tacky and repulsive predatory Northern women run around publicly debating running for President, between excusing their hound-dog spouses, lying, forging data, stuff like that.
What is so wrong about learning to walk around with a book on your head? I had to learn with a styrofoam cup of ice. My daughter has book practice. She’s only seven.
I had to have acrylic nails clamped on for a week to learn to gesture. I learned it from a Canadian burlesque dancer. My dad had a law practice based on sleazy Bourbon Street workers. He brought coaches home- including drag queens. It still bugs me when I see a woman dressed up in a beautiful gown walking around like a football linebacker- talk about a waste of velvet and lipstick.
I schlep around now- I’m a housewife, but it really startles my friends when I pull up, stand up, and change into what I was supposed to be all the time. I like it better, it feels better, but it comes off as off-putting in this neighborhood. And to my husband, but he loves it in his daughter. Men are strange. He thinks she’s magic.
Southern women also are gracious- they say hello and introduce well, and find the best to say about everyone. What’s not to love? It’s like being wrapped in sugar-cookie dough.
Of course they know more than they let on. That’s called diplomatic- we pay diplomats well. Their husbands don’t have to worry about a graceless fool ruining his life. He can have a good life. She gets paid in a good life.
And gardens? And books? and having the sense to call a writer on stupidity?
what’s this about lazy? Crocheting on white thread? That means most Southerners have lace in their house in the level of fineness of European aristocrats. I have stuff from my grandmother that could easily be displayed by the Victoria and Albert museum. That’s from people who don’t have much in their houses. Maybe the most valuable thing in my great-grandmother’s house was her Jerusalem Bible. Possibly her button press, or 70 year old sewing machine. And her suits and dresses, made by hand for her daughter. Her daughter, my grandmother, kept me in hand-sewn dresses. They were amazing, and she thought they were rags, since they weren’t as fine as her mothers. Her mother had lived through the Depression as a housewife, with chickens, and sewing clothes.
They could have been hapless, helpless, squalid. Instead they were elegant, fine, neat, precise, ambitious in a good way.
Graduate high school, get a decent job, hold tight on your money, or start a business, work 50+ hours a week. That gets you to a million dollars. I’m not seeing how that’s a horrible thing to wish for. It’s basically asking for a guy who has his act together. He’s not showing up with the million in hand, necessarily- he’s just got the wherewithal to earn it over a lifetime.
Besides, there are millionaires in the south. It’s got manufacturing, oil and energy production, computers, shipping. I keep reading about hapless well-mannered, well- employed guys in the North not getting a chance. We’ve got cotillion, and charity balls. That guy has a chance to marry a girl who thinks he hung the moon.
Add in the military and the churches, mostly protestant…What’s not to love?
Your elegant post brought to mind the last time I was addressed in public by a lady, which, is extremely rare in my experience of late.
I was proceeding through a security checkpoint and she initiated conversation by remarking about the hat I was wearing to keep the sun off. She was with her husband and small boy in a stroller.
We had a nice conversation and we each said where we were from, her being from Mississippi, and I from Florida.
She had a pleasant southern touch to her speech, which seems to be disappearing from the American landscape.
I remember hearing it quite frequently in my youth in the Carolina’s, Georgia, and Alabama.
Only once did I ever encounter a southern drawl that seemed so overdone it was repulsive, and it was in the airport in Honolulu. And thankfully it was a business associate from South Carolina that I only had to spend an hour with.
Nice one, Victor.
VDH asks, “Are there voice or posture classes anymore, or has it become all liposuction and implants?”
I live about 30 miles away from Dr. Hanson’s farm, and I recently turned off my car radio in disgust when I heard one of our local stations advertising a “medical spa” where you can “buy one syringe, get one free” for the holidays. Or maybe it was the commercial touting the breast implants so you can look good for the holiday parties–either way, it erased any good will I was feeling from the Christmas music we had been listening to. I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking those are normal ideals, but they are bombarded with those kinds of things at every turn. We saw my 101 year-old grandmother this past weekend, and she has–naturally–aged infinitely better than Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden.
who died quietly a few months before 101, beautiful, despite all her infirmities
I’ve actually heard someone I considered otherwise intelligent comparing the Tea Party to the Gracchi. I couldn’t see it then, and still can’t see it. The modern left seem closer to them than the Tea Partiers.
I noticed an attractive man in the coffee shop the other day. He was about 50. There was a pretty woman, nicely dressed and wearing makeup sitting there. Early 40′s I guess. Beside her was a young woman, dressed in sweats and no makeup. As he left the shop, I saw him eyeing the younger woman, not the attractive older one. Yes, aging is wonderful, as long as you are not female.
There’s a lot more to it than that! Assuming the guy has been around the block a few times, the first thing after the once over that every man alive gives to every woman he sees was a look at that ring finger for a “collision avoidance device” and also a hint of the opening bid if there is one. If she’s wearing a ring and looking interested and interesting, she’s a married player and dangerous. If she’s not wearing a ring, the odds are pretty good that there are somebody else’s kids and a bad attitude to go with the nice looks. Young, pretty, and single women are just that; young, pretty, and single.
Thank goodness for the Kindle. I get to read so much for absolutely free. I am reading Livy’s books on the history of Rome and the issues with debt is unclear to me and does not seem to conform to the modern issue.
From what I’ve read and far from really understand the debt seems to fall according to an equal rate across the commons and they can be individually imprisoned if not meeting it. It seems closer to a tax of some kind or some centralized input towards improving property. The patricians seem to administrate it and have first cut at the land (although it seems to be primarily for administrative purposes in order to distribute it). Land and taxes seem to go to the patricians first and then to the commons. The patricians have some sort of religious significance that gives them an advantage but certainly not meant to be total preference as citizens. All are soldiers and acquit themselves militarily incredibly well with the patricians leading the way in battle.
The Romans do not seem to be fair masters. Their allies and even colonies are constantly revolting. The commons are never happy and unlike today do not seem to have access to easy credit (from what I could tell). The commons also were enlisted in military service and had to pay the interest even when away from farms and businesses. The idea that the commons were voting themselves wealth doesn’t seem to hold although the tribunes themselves were using those schemes and even patricians would do it when elected tribunes.
I think the message is not about credit but that democracy doesn’t really work even when it seems too. It is a constant band-aid and changes rhetoric not underlying behaviors.
Very nice post Professor, thank you.
As to the “joys” of getting older as relates to physical labor or exercise: I can relate. Have you noticed, Sir, that the joints in old age develop a mind of their own? Each one periodically has a “senior moment” where they forget both their purpose and the fact that they belong to a larger whole. Why, the very same week that my favorite NFL QB, the newly-celebrated “RGIII” sprained his knee when a 300 lbs. tackle fell on his leg, my knee “sprained itself” for no particular reason whatsoever. Sigh . . . :-)
Regarding “ancient minds”:
One of the most destructive conceits of modern times is that we have evolved into an entirely different human in only a few generations or something. In reality we are still no more Homo Sapiens Sapiens than the guys who painted up the caves in Lascaux.
Actually, a good argument can be made that the reverse is happening. Read “Human Accomplishment” by Charles Murray. How many of us could survive in a cave, or even on the Frontier in the 18th or 19th century? How many of us could memorize an entire book, as was common before the printing press? I am in awe of people like Johannes Kepler, who calculated the elliptical motion of planets in 1609. No computers, no calculators, and only simple telescopes.
We do many neat things today, thanks to our advanced technology. But how many of us could approach the level of Kepler or Issac Newton, much less compose something comparable to Beethoven’s 9th?
The Bard, don’t forget the Bard!
”Hell is empty, and all the devils are here”
Let’s see a modern write that! Hm, but i just did write that –what’s wrong here? Oh yes, i mean ‘write it for the first time’. hm, but wait, that’s impossible. think, man, think! ok ok got it: Let’s see a modern write something like that!
Less, way less. Search [ otzie's tool kit ]
The gene pool-improving Mother Nature having lately and temporarily become de-fanged.
I wrote more than I thought I had about Liberty Valance. Here is the link to Part One.
I’m not Sophocles, nor am I John Wayne. Watch out for foul language about Obama.
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/10/us-presidential-election-2012-who-would.html
That was a great essay, sir –thank you for it –i’ll never again think of that movie the same way –and a good change, upward.
Tocqueville letter-
It is true that the world seems to me to fall more and more short of the greatness which once filled my imagination. We are not, however, responsible for its faults or its vices, and for people who have only a short time to spend at the play, the piece is interesting enough.
The subtext of those Catalinian platforms, of course, is that someone else was culpable for having enough money in the first place (rather than prudence, character, dutifulness, etc.) to pay what he had borrowed — and therefore as atonement should pay for others who were defrauded by the system.
“According to the doctrine of modern liberalism, success in and of itself is proof positive of some kind of chicanery and likely bigotry.”
Evan Sayet speaking at The Heritage Foundation
Whatever character is, it was not Susan Rice’s recent…
None of these people who are prominent/running things in DC these days has “character”.
They of course think they do, but they’re dead wrong.
to an atavistic way of life, a zero sum existence, kill or be killed, or submit to captivity and suffer its ritual bloodlettings of human sacrifice. barack hussein obama, an america-hating racist black supremacist and a murderous far-leftist thug, is now the up-and-coming bloodthirsty maniac of this new atavistic age. teaming up with his genocidal islamic cousins, he looks to obliterate, once and for all (since he has america firmly within his grasp), the one and only country and people still stubbornly standing in his way, Israel.
yet my rabbi, as do most of the congregation, adores him.
Biblical, ain’t it. Golden Calf.
he’s not the guy where you holler “aHA!” when you walk in and catch him in bed with your wife –he’s the guy who hollers “aHA!” when he walks in and catches YOU in bed with your wife.
A salubrious reminder:
0-25 Youth
26-50 Middle age
51-end Old age
i dont see nothin so damn salubrious about it
There is far too much emphasis placed upon simple physical beauty. Eros is in the mind. A woman of a certain age is almost always preferable to a callow, mindless piece of eye candy.
Baggage is also an issue with older folk, both male and female. It is how one handles ones baggage that is important.
In the end it is one’s attitude and experience and willingness to give of oneself that creates joy, whatever the age. We learn through experience.
Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus!
There is far too much emphasis placed upon simple physical beauty.
Esp. for girls in America, some going under the knife before their bodies are even fully developed.
Something amiss and lacking in modern American culture (you think?) that we’ve gravitated in this direction.
Artificial boobs often look like grapefruit, just sitting there on the chest :)
Naturally aged faces are more interesting than the stretched ones.
Excellent! It was a real pleasure to read this article. I’d like to add one final phrase :
“Quo usque tandem abutere, Obama, patientia nostra?”
Cicero
One nit to pick, if you don’t know what is so attractive about Alessandra Ambroiso…then, yeah, you’re too old. Or, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I do like beholding her. Personally, I love the obsession with fitness and lean muscle over belly fat, but that’s just me…and millions and millions of other men.
Like I said, little nit. Good article, otherwise.
I think being born as a human being is a grace, because it’s hard to imagine popping out as a form of life lower in the Being scale, even a “wise” and “faithful” dog, and being able to become Enlightened.
Yes, beneath all the classical or non-classical word strings, every One is never other than living in wonder—what the fluck just happened: as soon as “you” complete the Big Split from It All, say around the age of 2 or 3, and “you” recognize “others” “out there”, and assume “you” are “in here”, with “here” being the bound body, enveloped with an ever changing epidermis.
Living a long or a short life isn’t the point, and neither is being pretty or ugly or in between.
It’s always all about WAKING UP!
What else does the ever-true hubris-nemesis metric mean?
Even just going along and ferociously trying to avoid all kinds of trouble, like being a moderation fanatic, say, doesn’t cut it—permeating each separate one’s ongoing awareness is the fact that they will die! Most people accept the “bargain”, which is that they will fulfill the conventional “laws” by working, to keep order, and thereby “get to” play their nervous system, to in effect pluck it as a pleasurable “string”, with eating thrills, sexual bliss, and don’t forget the mental ecstasies, such as higher math, or power playing, such as Obama in high dudgeon.
What “hubris-nemesis” translates into is:
Observe, understand, and transcend. O.U.T.
Yes, USE imminent death as an ally, because the Absolute Truth is that living a human life is never fulfilling, so the only escape is to Transcend it all! In Consciousness. As Consciousness.
Which Is what “you” ARE, in Truth.
If you’re beaten up enough, and experiencing the NEEDED crisis, or already have passed through it, I recommend getting radical, as in “going for the root”. Return to what you were, before your mother and father were born.
Before!!!
It is STILL clinging, to revel in ancestor worship, as if your dead mother and father were any more Enlightened than you, or most living people today, even if they lived a more “noble” life—conventionally.
Oh, how much does humanity need to accept the revolution in Consciousness wrought by the Madhyamika Buddhism master, Nagarjuna, circa 150 A.D.!
We, in the West, idolize Copernicus, and accept his Revolution that changed science for the Truthful better.
Just so, someday, if humanity doesn’t collapse in an Atlantis-like hubris-led way, maybe in a thousand years, Nagarjuna will be as revered as Copernicus.
In the meantime, the MEAN TIME of Obama hubris, though, get ready for massive events that will be impossible to miss.
First stage—OBSERVATION!
Second stage, UNDERSTANDING.
Third stage, TRANSCENDING is but a gleam in the “eye” of It All, as of 2012.
Enlightenment.
Your last paragraph and concluding sentence are the best stuff you’ve written in quite a while, Dr. Hanson. Many thanks to you. :-)
Or, as TS Eliot wrote in the Four Quartets, coming around to the place we started out and “knowing it” for the first time. (paraphrased)
(the reward for hanging in there.)
…each separate one’s ongoing awareness is the fact that they will die!
Good news on that front :)
Nice article –though ”you have a soul” sounds a little like a Frenchman trying to call someone an a-hole in English.
Quid is dixit!
“One of the great, though inadvertent gifts of the Obama administration has been to remind us that the Rhodes Scholarship, the Harvard Law degree, the Stanford PhD, the Princeton BA mean, well, nothing much at all, if not perhaps a suspicion that a lot of intellectual branding and grandstanding came at the expense of two years on a tuna boat, or a year picking apples, or four summers at Starbucks, of anything to remind the young genius that he was not so smart after all, and that character is not created by getting an award or being stamped by an unworldly elite institution.”
Or, to quote Reynolds, “credentialed not educated”.
The education industry in its current form has accomplished the greatest marketing coup in the history of our species. In less than two generations, they have convinced nearly every mommy in the U.S. that:
1. Their kids will be starved losers unless they get a college degree
2. A mommy who does not send all her kids to college is a failure as a parent and her other mommy peers are within their rights to savagely mock her and her status
3. Whatever the cost of college – even a quarter million or more – it is an absolutely necessary expense despite the fact that the experience is largely no longer about learning, but is mostly about warehousing young workers to artificially affect the unemployment rate as well as provide the means of Gramscian indoctrination.
Think that description is extreme?
Consider the little gem of “study abroad”, which has come to be little more than an expensive means of presenting the undergraduate with exposure to Potemkin socialism. Thirty years ago this was a rare thing reserved for special, highly talented students who truly could not get the learning locally. Now, it is mostly just a lark. Who, precisely, does this benefit? The Gramscians, the staff and professors, the mommy who gets to brag about her little precious and her “time” abroad. Not the student, and not the society.
Victim group studies? What do they add to our society, in real terms? As well as other majors like public policy, media studies, etc?
What is the percentage of young people nowadays who are encouraged to work in a low paying blue collar job whilst attending college, especially on break, vs even 25 years ago? My anecdotal experience is that is has dropped, a lot.
As the professor points out, doing that sort of work produces its own rewards that cannot be measured in cash, or degrees. I’ve done commercial fishing, ag work, restaurant work, and other things on the path to where I am now. Along the way I picked up a doctorate and have owned a successful small business for nearly a quarter century now. The knowledge from the education was only available from the academy. The knowledge from the real work I was doing at the same time was similarly only available from that source. Without the latter, I can tell you that the former would have been for nought.
Along with my Stanford PHD, I have relined brakes, mounted tires, and cleaned restrooms at an auto supply store; harvested peas in Oregon; and thawed permafrost in an Alaskan gold mine. Although I would not discount the value of the first, the latter three were in many ways equally valuable for many reasons, not the least of which was a life-long immunity to the hypocrisies of an intellectual class that proclaims its solidarity with the workers, but who, with very rare exceptions, have never actually done any manual work.
In this connection, I recall with pleasure Mr. Hanson’s account, in his “Ripples of War” of Socrates experience as a Hoplite at the Battle of Delium. Not for him to isolate himself from the experience of the ordinary citizen of Athens.
Thanks for another great column. A new column by you in NRO or PJ always top my daily reading list. I didn’t benefit from either taking Latin or a classical education (aeronautical engineering) but I enjoy and appreciate your drawing the parallels between ancient history and today. I use them often in my discussions on America’s decline and that it is a repeat of history anyone should recognize. One thing I find is that intelligent columns always make for interesting and intelligent comments.
Pardon my over-long addition… but it is perhaps in the spirit of what our Professor has written… adding a touch of ribald.
Ants at the Picnic
By Robert Winkler Burke
Book #6 of In That Day Teachings
12/09/09 http://www.inthatdayteachings.com
We’re ants at the picnic,
And you had better care,
Believe that we exist!
And you’ll think and beware.
Last Sunday was a big picnic,
Of a white-coat, broadcast preacher: big shot!
He’s a big megillah, he is,
A thousand people and his family turned out!
So did we, ants at the picnic,
Big shot: unafraid,
Of being a fraud found out,
Oh, the time we made!
They gorged on turkey,
They gorged on ham,
But for desert: watch out,
For ants with: I AM!
They had pies and cakes on a table,
Circling four candles square at the glorious center,
In the middle of all: a bowl,
Of whipped cream, with pewter spoon to render.
We ants went into action,
Right there on the spot!
We moved the pewter handle,
Above candle hot!
Big megillah, white-coat preacher,
Was first in line for pie,
He lusted after whipped cream,
And held the handle high.
Then his face went red and scorned,
And he threw the ladle away!
He screamed out, MY HAND is burned!
My love life is ruined today!
There was a hush: silence was,
In the crowd,
Then Suzie stepped forward,
To speak loud.
Though I am but an assistant,
To our great pastor, a married man,
By my lips what he said is wrong,
I have loved him as much as I can!
So then all eyes turned to Mrs. Pastor,
A large woman with unkind eyes,
She said, This picnic is now over!
A thing ants and man surmised.
You would have thought it was a race,
To get out of there,
The church then fumigated the place,
But we didn’t care.
We moved on to the next picnic,
Always something new,
To expose what some think their God,
Never somehow knew.
We’re ants at the picnic,
Exposing hubris,
Pride thinks: there is no God,
Humility: is!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Victor David Hansen.
I have no problem paying “my fair share.” However, I do not want to pay Two Billion US Dollars every year to Egypt. I do not want Hillary Clinton pledging Two Billion dollars to a “climate change” conference in South America. I do not want millions of US Dollars spent every hour in Afghanastan and Iraq. I could go on and on about how much money we are sending/spending OUTSIDE the US – yet when our lovely elected officials talk about “cutting spending” it is ALWAYS about what is spent INSIDE the US! Why should my Medicare benefits be reduced because of US Dollars we are sending to Burma to assist them on their road to democracy?!!!!!
Do you think for one minute that John Kerry understands he works FOR the citizens of the United States? John McCain? Obama? ANY of our esteemed elected officials?
You speak blasphemy, although accurately.
In a just world, ‘electrified’ officials. Old Sparky. The Juiceinater. Old Open Circuit, Yearning for Closure. A Switch in Time Save Ninnies. Never send to know for whom the smell toasts, it toasts for thee.
There are too many grammar glitches in this (“classical literature is THE one of THE”?)–even for a blog post. To say ‘from Solon to Mimnermus’ implies a chronology that is dubious at best given the evidence. As for classical literature on aging, it would seem to me that even a brief discussion of it needs to include mention of Sappho, especially the relatively newly discovered 58b. As for Latin authors, although very late, Maximianus is a must read on ancient attitudes to aging.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,…..
One of your classics, Victor.
Dear Prof. Hanson,
Thanks for this excellent guide to Classic knowledge. A year or two ago, I wrote to ask you for a student’s Starter Reader list. This article, and all of your earlier writing, suggest a rich path for the dedicated seeker of classic writers and works.
Thank you.
TY again, Dr. Hanson, for your unique blend of knowledge, wisdom, and writing ability. Your column encourages me that all is not lost. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family. God Bless You for all you do.
While I’m thinking about it, the South is good for guys, too.
Hunting Seasons (plural): ducks, deer, squirrels. I’m probably leaving stuff out- oh, rattlesnake roundups. Big game ranches with exotic big species, so no African mosquitoes, yes Cape Buffalo.
It takes $11 to register a small business in Texas. It’s a one page application. There are accountants who specialize in helping micro-businesses grow to big businesses. There is no state income tax. There is sales tax, and property tax. Buy a small place, or live in a small town, and save your money. There are investment funds for each region, including high-tech regional funds.
Mardi Gras. Big city, and small town. One to three months of heavy drinking and red meat. Women flashing you for tawdry plastic bead necklaces, if you’re in New Orleans.
Big alcohol in the North leads to gangs, Kennedys, and St Valentines’ Day massacres. Distilled alcohol in the south leads to NASCAR and Jessica Simpson in hot-pants.
Notice how everyone Northern thinks snake-handling fundamentalists are icky, retrograde, awful people? And then they come down, attend a service, talk to the pastor, and get saved? Works that way for fundamentalist Baptists, fundamentalist Evangelicals, fundamentalist Pentecostals? Maybe there’s something to it? j a jacobs lives on snark, and yet he was near persuaded, too.
Fishing. with cotton-mouth poisonous snakes. and alligators. Bass-fishing. and trout. and who knows what else? Shrimp boats. Nobody makes fun of you if that’s how you pay for school.
Oil rigs. Oil refineries. Railroads. Highway construction. Again, they need innovators.
I think the Northeast had innovation at the turn of the 20th century. And then they regulated everything so that no one else could succeed. So there are trustafarians, and doctors and dentists, but no industrialists? Am I right? So there’s a lot of stifled innovation, and a lot of frustrated, beaten-down middle-management types? While the South and Southwest didn’t get anything going until air-conditioning, so it’s still in a building up phase?
I mean, nobody move to Houston for the weather, or the view. Or Oklahoma City. Or Little Rock. They move because they can make a fortune by building a great company. And, most of the successful ones aren’t “pee in the peasants’ faces” types of places, like luxury palaces in New York. They’re, like, Chik-fil-a, or Hobby Lobby, or Wal-mart, or gaskets for gasoline dispensers, or regulator valves on pumping stations, or railroad equipment. or Dell computers. Kind of like Virginia Postrel’s bit- we aren’t sending plutocrats to the moon, but life is better for ordinary people. Well, these are companies for ordinary people.
and, well, yes, southern wives. the ones I know think their pot-bellied, acne-pitted, balding guy in a golf-shirt and slacks is Brad Pitt+ Juiius Ceasar+ Einstein.
The preachers talk about submission- she thinks about you, and lets you win every argument, and you think about her, and cosset her. It works, if both parties agree. My grandmother had a marriage like that. I never, ever, ever saw them fight. They didn’t. Ever. I’m actually kind of stuck when my husband tries to be modern and open and direct. WTF? Have you ever seen a psychologist with a happy, long-lasting marriage? Me, neither.
And gravy. biscuits. grilling year round, if you like. fresh corn. okra. shrimp. beef in Texas is cheaper than chicken.
To me, the answer is simple. Unless you’re desperate, it’s too damned hot! You have made the case that some good things can come from desperation, but fortunately, I’m not THAT desperate. ;-) Living in the Northeast, just not in the cities, works fine…. as long as you have a decent job.
“Big alcohol in the North leads to gangs, Kennedys, and St Valentines’ Day massacres.”
The most sublime summation of Prohibition I have ever seen — and to lump “Kennedys” between gangs and the St. Valentines Day massacre as if it/they were just another horror.
Pithy, delightful, and historically accurate. I wish I had written that little gem of a sentence myself. Kudos!
“One of the great though inadvertent gifts of the Obama Administration has been to remind us that the Rhodes Scholarship, Harvard Law degree, Stanford PhD, and Princeton BA may mean nothing at all but a suspicion of … intellectual grandstanding …or of anything to remind the young genius that he is not so smart after all and … that character is not created by … an unworldly elite institution”.
What a classy way to restate a number of moral tales as Sleeping Beauty, Emperor’s New Clothes, and of course Pied Piper and Red Riding Hood.
A treat.
Better add Hansel and Gretel. Not sure about Goldilocks. But those breadcrumbs in H & G –oh, i knew at four years old THAT was not going to work out well. They were trading food for security, which if it was going to work, then needn’t to’ve been done at all, if you think about the the trading partner rather than the trade.
“…the good man — whether Ajax or Socrates — should expect — perhaps even welcome? — the disdain of the crowd, and usually will not win acclaim or receive what he deserves in this life. (Achilles finally came to accept that.)”
And for that matter, the good nation among the wicked. The U.S. spends billions on AIDS in Africa, countless billions on foreign aid of all kind, not to mention helping the Somalian Muslims, the Balkan Muslims, the Kurds and various other Muslims, and we still get cra**ped on. Go figure.
And at what point does the good man, the good nation, or the good man who is the citizen of the good nation, say, “Screw you!” There is only so much money for these useless, filthy and degraded ingrates — at home and abroad.
I went from 55 to 105 in one year. I’m still trying to figure out what happened –and that was a set of teeth ago. Somebody said if you don’t want to wear your store teeth, just keep ‘em in your drawers. So i did for a couple years, but kee-rist it was uncomfortable. Finally asked if that was what they meant, and found out they meant drawer, and life has been oh, oodles better since
I think in 50 years the market and technology will have erased the brick and mortar college experience for the vast Number of college graduates. ever since Obama’s election I feel less of a desire to read conservative blogs like Hanson’s and to listen to Rush. although they are right, the war is over and the mob has won, until the market itself acts as nemesis to bring down the paper walls of Liberalism. The market will pulverize academia, the ridiculous military spending, entitlements, Obamacare and shrink governments. To oppose the MSM is noble, but I have my own garden to tend. Bye.
“The new American helots, after all, will fork over sixty percent of their almond crops to the IRS, build six out of ten houses for their government, drive their trucks until July for Washington — and write thirty PJ weekly columns a year for Obama.”
If only he read them!