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As the class winds down, week 9 got me fired up a bit.  We talked about equality and hate crimes. 

The readings this week were historic in nature.  We started with A response to governor Stevens by Seattle, an Indian chief.  About the oppression toward his people.  Just one section of this writing stuck out to me.  When the chief took some of the responsibility for what happened and put it on ‘his young people.’

Youth is impulsive.  When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them.

Next we had to read the text from Martin Luther King, Junior’s, I Have a Dream speech.  This was the first time I actually read this speech from beginning to end. The one thing that stuck out to me was MLK’s message of real hope.  Not a hope contingent on government action but on personal action. 

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

Next we read Celebrity Bigots: Why We Need Them and What They Won’t Say by Richard Goldstein.  Now much of this is going on people like Eminem and Imus and their well known gaffs over the years.  But then the goes to his real point, homosexuality.  Making the following claim:

Gays are to America what Jews were to Europe a century ago.

What?  Are you kidding me?  Just stunning really. 

Then he sais this:

There isn’t a shred of evidence that homosexuals can be counseled into losing their same-sex desire.

In my assignment this week I said the following:

I agree, there isn't a shred of evidence, but a mountain of it.  There are entire ministries built upon homosexuals that were counseled into losing their same-sex desires.

You can claim otherwise, but the facts speak to what I say. 

Next we started covering equality of opportunity.  The question raised was, should we want equality under the law or equality of what we own?  I said equality under the law for two reasons.

1. You just can’t all of a sudden redistribute wealth.  Are the millionaires really going to spread the wealth to that level?  Would I be willing to?  The answer is no.
2. With number one in mind, equality under the law gives all people the same opportunity to make a good life of themselves. 

Then we touched on affirmative action.

These are two things that really get me fired up. Redistributing wealth and then awarding  contracts or jobs on things other than personal work and skills just violates my constitutional rights.  Just because I’m a male white guy, I shouldn’t a job or a government contract?  I just don’t see how that is justifiable.

Finally I had to read The Ballot or the Bullet, by Malcolm X.  Again another thing that I had never fully read before.    Here is what I said on my assignment in the class:

All I can say is WOW.  What a speech.  It would be easy to discredit his entire speech due to the anger in it, but the timing of the speech makes his anger understandable.  He was in a time when lynching's were somewhat common.  Wouldn't you be loud and angry? What I have loved about this class is the relevance to today.  There were two statements in his speech that stuck out to me, and I will close with them.

"In Washington, D.C., in the House of Representatives, there are 257 who are Democrats. Only 177 are Republican.  In the Senate there are 67 Democrats. Only 33 are Republicans.  The party that you backed controls two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate.  And still they can't keep their promise to you. 'Cause you're a chump."

"Why were they filibustering the civil rights legislation? Because the civil rights legislation is supposed to guarantee voting rights to Negroes in those states. And those senators from those states know that if the Negroes in those states can vote, those senators are down the drain."

Sound familiar?

[Initially Written 2.22.2009]

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Week 8 was focused on individual morals and responsibility. 

The first reading we had was Defining Deviancy Down by Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  The main focus being that to make the current cultural makeup seem OK we have to make it normal.  So no longer is children out of wedlock unheard of, but natural. 

One of the first quotes made in this was when Moynihan was quoting Kai T. Erikson and said:

to that extent the rate of deviation found in a community is at least in part a function of the size and complexity of its social control apparatus.

Basically saying if there are 1,000 prison cells then the deviancy accepted will match the level it takes to fill those 1,000 prison cells.

Then he went on to explain some of the ways in which deviancy has been defined down.

“In the great wave of moral deregulation that began in the mid-1960s, the poor and the insane were freed from the fetters of middle-class mores.” They might henceforth sleep in doorways as often as they chose. The problem of the homeless appeared, characteristically defined as persons who lacked “affordable housing.”

Now understand this is a very inflammatory statement in that not every homeless person is mentally ill.  But the author brings the point up that we, as a society, stopped really treating the mentally ill in the 60’s.  At some level this is a bit over simplification in that over the decades we have also found better ways to treat folks.

Then the writing went on to discuss the break down in family:

Thirty years ago, 1 in every 40 white children was born to an unmarried mother; today it is 1 in 5, according to Federal data. Among blacks, 2 of 3 children are born to an unmarried mother; 30 years ago the figure was 1 in 5.

And yet there is little evidence that these facts are regarded as a calamity in municipal government. To the contrary, there is general acceptance of the situation as normal.

Richard T. Gill writes of “an accumulation of data showing that intact biological parent families offer children very large advantages compared to any other family or non-family structure one can imagine.

Then the article went on to discuss the effects in this in school.  The first quote defining the issue, the second quote is very telling.

The 1996 report Equality of Educational Opportunity by James S. Coleman and his associates established that the family background of students played a much stronger role in student achievement relative to variations in the ten (and still standard) measures of school quality.

For there is good money to be made out of bad schools.

This reading closed with a very interesting thought.  The thought being that things have to bottom out, they can’t continue to get worse can they?

Dawson wrote, adding that since the adverse effects had not diminished, they were “not based on stigmatization but rather on inherent problems in alternative family structures – alternative here meaning other than two-parent families.

Next we had to read Defining Deviancy Up by Charles Krauthammer. This reading went on the other way where good things needed to be seen as bad, and bad things as good.  Or as he put it.

The normal must be found to be deviant.

First he covered how the middle-class, two parent family has been made to be deviant.  Using a stat about child abuse.  I personally think that a better ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ example could have been used.  How the traditional family is degraded as being back in the 50’s.

Next he covered rape.  How traditional studies show 1 in 1000 women having been raped, where as a study by Mary Koss put that number at nearly 50% of women.  Why the discrepancy?  Because of what was defined as rape.  73% of the women Koss defined as being raped did not classify themselves as being raped.  As Krauthammer put it:

Date rape is only the most extreme example of deviancy redefined broadly enough to catch in its net a huge chunk of normal, everyday behavior.

Date rape is real.  But not everything some want to classify as date rape is rape.

Next he covered ‘thought crimes’.  Where normal actions or opinions were declared crimes because they fell against some protected group.  The obvious example he used is homosexuality.  Some of us feel that it is not natural and wrong, yet we get called bigots and in the worst cases, criminals.

It is clear that the family in America is struggling to keep a healthy identity, and I wonder if it will be dealt with before it is to late.  If its not already to late.

[Initially Written 2.15.2009]

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This week we covered the market, and how freedom relates to the results of the market and poverty. First I had to read John Locke: His Harmony Between Liberty and Virtue, by Donald J. Devine.  There were a few good snippets from this, but really on their own they are pretty hard to understand.  Though one snippet, which is proved a bit more through some of the writings:

Government remains limited in civil society because God gave man the ability, through work and reason, to subdue the earth and thereby improve his life by the use of private property.

Then this week we had to read Federalist No. 10 from the Federalist Papers.  I covered this in a previous writing, so I won’t cover it again.

Next we had to read another article from Donald J. Devine called, Adam Smith and the Problem of Justice in Capitalist Society. An early quote from this about the market is when he said:

if any system is to survive it must attempt to guarantee justice

The whole concept of these readings was to talk about what role government should play in a free market.  A few relevant quotes in this regard from this writing are (and I believe these actually come from Adam Smith):

But outside of the function of protecting from injury, every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interests in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

…

first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every other member of it. . ., and, thirdly, the duty of enacting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions.

Next we had to read Property in History from The Noblest Triumph by Tom Bethell.  This goes back to the quote from Devine above about the use of private property.

Tom shares two things to prove this point:

The World Bank made the case in its World Development Report (1992): “When people have open access to forests, pastureland, or fishing grounds they tend to over use them.

Next he shared of a point of view where people were given ownership of something:

This (banning the sale of ivory) was hazardous to the elephant. If a ban is successful, the animal is deprived of most of its economic value. Trying to preserve it by such methods is like trying to conserve cows by banning the consumption of beef. There are millions of cattle in the United States because they are profitable. Keeping elephants for the benefit of sightseers in protected parks may be a way of preserving hundreds, or perhaps a few thousand of them, but privatized elephants would be preserved in the millions. Indeed, the high value of the ivory is their life insurance policy. Allowing rural people to make money from elephants gives them a strong incentive to protect them from poachers.

Ownership of property has people take personal pride in it.

To wrap the week up we read Economic Policy and the Rule of Law from The Constitution of Liberty by F.A. Hayek and went over several charts that showed the relationship of freedom and prosperity.

The quotes from this kind of speak for themselves, so I will throw some down here:

Freedom of economic activity had meant freedom under the law, not the absence of all government action.

To Adam Smith and his immediate successors the enforcement of the ordinary rules of common law would certainly not have appeared as government interference; nor would they ordinarily have applied this term to an alteration of these rules or the passing of a new rule by the legislature so long as it was intended to apply equally to all people for an indefinite period of time.

In other words, it is the character rather than the volume of government activity that is important.

But those who pursue distributive justice will in practice find themselves obstructed at every move by the rule of law.

In essence… a free market isn’t fully free, but fully equal by the same rules.  And those rules need to have a great character to not infringe on the free market to greatly.

Next we went over several graphs that were a bit stunning in nature.  It becomes quite obvious that the more freedom a country allows the more prosperity it has.  Actually all of the graphs came from this website for 2005, though you can flip through the years to see the difference.  Then we went through some charts from the Heritage Foundation.  Which I will admit, I’ve never heard of but while looking at their site now I am very impressed.

So I’ll call that a week.

[Initially Written 2.14.2009]

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Week six ask three questions.  What is community, what is government and is there individual responsibility to either?  I’ll start with my readings from Western Vision and American Values.

I guess I wasn’t really ‘into’ this weeks readings.  We started off talking about The kinds of leaders you could have one that was directed by God, one that was a bad leader looking out for self, on that was a good leader looking out for the greater community.  Being a class about ‘the west’ we studied George Washington.  Specifically a letter from Thomas Jefferson, The Character of George Washington.  I found a few of the quotes interesting:

He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt,

His temper was naturally irritable

On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect,

Next we had to read about another kind of leader, Marin Luther King, Jr.  Specifically his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I really enjoyed one quote from this:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

So a light week of a recap.  I just wasn’t into this week, so my notes and recollections of it are not strong.

[Initially Written 2.14.2009]

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Week five has two main topics, slavery and women’s rights.  Slavery had some interesting conversations.  Some people made the claim that slavery was wrong because Christianity says it is.  I really hated having to correct that statement over and over again.  You see slavery isn’t like polygamy, in that polygamy isn’t really addressed in the new testament.  Slavery is.  Slavery is never condemned.  The mistreatment of slaves is condemned, which would have still condemned the vast majority of American slavery, but the ownership of slaves is not.  Slaves are actually told to be content in their Early situation.  This is one of those things I wish was different, but its not.

Enough of that, as I will cover it more later, lets get onto a review of the readings.

First up to read was Present and Future Condition of the Negroes from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.  An interesting quote from this came near the end when he said, 36 years before the Civil War:

Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the South to maintain slavery, they will not always succeed. Slavery, which is now confined to a single tract of the civilized earth, which is attacked by Christianity as unjust, and by political economy as prejudicial; and which is now contrasted with democratic liberties and the information of our age, cannot survive. By the choice of the master, or by the will of the slave, it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected to ensure. If liberty be refused to the negroes of the South, they will in the end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given they will abuse it ere long.

Next we had to read What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July by Fredrick Douglass.  Fredrick Douglass was a former slave who fought for freedom of all slaves.    Most of what he wrote was very standard for what you’d expect.  Then he turned his frustration on the church.  I thought he was a bit unfair on the church considering my opening statements.  However I do understand his frustration as he said that if Christianity means acceptance of slavery then “For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Devines.” I do understand his frustration, but this seems to be a bit unfair to men and women who were just trying to follow God to the best of their ability.  We can’t expect that they all knew the things we now know about the abuses in slavery.  These were farm communities that didn’t have the internet, the phone, or television.  They just went on what they were taught.  But again, I understand (and largely agree) why he said what he said.  Just in hindsight, a bit unfair.

Next it was reading Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address.  The best quote from it, is well known.  When talking about both sides of the civil war he said:

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

Then it was onto reading about women’s rights. Let me be clear… I just don’t understand.  In an election year where Sarah Palin was the only reason a large part of the Republican base voted for him.  In an election year when Hillary Clinton came within a hair of being the democratic Presidential nominee (and minus some democratic stupidness regarding Florida and Michigan… she would have been).  In an environment where the secretary of state over the past 8 years + has been a women, I don’t get it.  Some will point to the fact that men make more money than women as the reason.  But to me that has less to do with sex and more to do with the fact that men are generally more aggressive in asking for raises and reviews.  Then you take into account the part time women who focus more on child bearing than the work force and you see the income levels separate.    So this was just something I didn’t understand.

Now an update to this topic.  Since my original writing and this update, Barack Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  The main provision of this act is that it extends the time frame one can sue in.  Initially it was ruled that you can sue from six months past the initial decisions.  Honestly that’s a bit of hogwash.  It does take more than six months to discover stuff like this.  So now it is six months past the last time you were affected by this decision.  I’m OK with that. 

But I don’t think this will help because I think true sexual discrimination based pay is a very limited event today.  I’ve just not seen any women ‘held down’ on the job in my entire working life (1995 till now).  And since 1995 I have had many female bosses (one of whom was a ‘out’ lesbian).  So I don’t think it will help.  And while I don’t agree with their final conclusions the San Francisco Chronicle exposed the facts (which I pointed to in a prior paragraph) well:

It's a familiar fact that women working full time earn 78 cents for every $1 earned by men. But this wage differential looks very different for women with and without children.

Single women with no children working full time make 96 cents for every $1 earned by a similarly situated man.

A married woman with children working full time earns only 69 cents for every $1 earned by her male counterpart.

And a single mother working full time earns 58 cents on every $1 earned by a married man with children.

Finally we had to read Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  It was an interesting read, this is what many use to justify their, “only what I think matters” attitude in life. 

All of the quotes build on each other.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, –that is genius.

…

Trust thyself:

…

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

…

I suppose no man can violate his nature.

You see, nothing matters outside of one persons thoughts.  To me this is the ultimate arrogance.  How can you be so sure of yourself that you don’t rely on anything else for wisdom? 

I’ll close with the ‘best’ quote from this reading that again shows what is ultimately wrong with the thinking of this world.

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.

[Initially Written 1.27.2009]
[Updated 2.8.2009]

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Out of this twelve week course, if you only read one post in its entirety make this the one.  I am going to start with my readings from Western Vision and American Values as it contains the meat of the readings, In Defense of the West just offers some opinion and consolidation of each weeks readings.

We had to read The Declaration of Independence.  Some would argue that this country is a Godless country, to me this document is plenty enough to repudiate that.  The first two paragraphs reference God, not once but twice.  Then the closing section appeals to the ‘Supreme Judge of the World’.  To ignore that is just re-writing history to satisfy man’s desire. 

Next we covered the U.S. Constitution.  The first part of that was reading some of the Federalist Papers.  The Federalist Papers were documents written and given to the states as justification for the contents of the Constitution so they would ratify it.  Some of the statements in this document are stunning to what the intention of the US government was supposed to be like, especially in comparison to today’s climate.

Federalist Number 10 went over some of the concerns of previous governments and how to correct this.  Some had shown great concern and were worried “that our governments ware too  unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties”.  Sound familiar?  Then there was an attempt to discuss factions and how to cure them.  The three tiered government of ours was supposed to provide checks and balances against each other, but what we have ended up with was the two party system where they only balance each other if they are in fact ran by the other party. 

A good quote from the Federalist Number 10 not only applies to government but corporations and organizations (like churches) as well.  We see many organizations that form a way of doing business based on the current leaders and the expectation that all leaders will be good.

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good.  Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

We can’t expect ‘good leaders’ to be in place to do the right thing.  It just won’t happen forever, there will eventually be a failure in the chain of command.

However that was not the best quote from the Federalist number 10.  Think of this in regards to today’s current bent on socialism, understanding that this was meant to explain why governments (local and national) were to be separated as they were:

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source.  A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

WOW.  Two things we know now that they didn’t know then.  TV and the internet.  Bad ideas, like bailouts and abortion can in fact spread from a city to a county to a state to a country.  Just look at the items used to show why our separation of government was designed the way it was.  We do all of those things now and more.

Next we read Federalist Number 51. It seemed to stay away from editorializing and just stated the facts for the separation of the various aspects of government.  Two relevant quotes:

To what expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate the defect must be supplied by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.

…………

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Again, our current two party system has kind of broke this.  We read a few other of the Federalist papers, but I didn’t highlight anything of note.  However I’m sure that has to do with me being a slacker than it does lack of content in those documents.  Then we had to read the Constitution. What is amazing about this document is how much of it we have really changed in significant ways.  The Constitution of today is not the constitution of their day.  In some ways that is a good thing, in other ways it is not.  This then led into the Bill of Rights, probably still one of the best documents ever put together.  Its amazing how parts of it have sustained themselves over the 200 + Years.

We then came to our final two readings, both by Alexis de Tocqueville who was stunned and in awe of the US government and way of life. If he were writing this document in modern times he wouldn’t be able to say much of what he said.  The first reading was, Townships and Municipal Bodies from Democracy in America. He saw towns not rely on the government to do things but rely on each other.  As he said:

In no country in the world do the citizens make such exertions for the common weal: and I am acquainted with no people which has established schools as numerous and as efficacious, places of public worship better suited to the wants of the inhabitants, or roads kept in better repair.

He then compared parts of Europe to the US:

In certain countries of Europe the natives consider themselves as a kind of settlers, indifferent to the fate of the spot upon which they live.  The greatest changes are effected without their concurrence, and (unless chance may have apprised them of the event) without their knowledge; nay more, the citizen is unconcerned as to the condition of his village, the police of his street, the repairs of the church or of the parsonage; for he looks upon all these things as unconnected with himself, and as the property of a powerful stranger who he calls the Government.  … instead of trying to avert the peril, he will fold his arms, and wait until the nation comes to his assistance.

Then he makes a few statements about the citizen of the United States due to how the individual and not the government made America work:

He takes pride in the glory of his nation; he boasts of its success, to which he conceives himself to have contributed; and he rejoices in the general prosperity by which he profits.

……………

Undoubtedly he is often less successful than the State might have been in his position; but in the end, the sum of these private undertakings far exceeds all that the Government could have done.

Finally he sums up his experience:

I witnessed the spontaneous formation of committees for the pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime in a certain county. In Europe a criminal is an unhappy being who is struggling for his life against the ministers of justice, whilst the population is merely a spectator of the conflict: in America he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him.

Next we had to read, Associations in Civic Life from Democracy in America. I highlighted a few sections in this reading but will only mark one of those here.  It was some prophetic words about how the government will take on a broader role, and that isn’t a good thing.

It is easy to foresee that the time is drawing near when man will be less and less able to produce, of himself alone, the commonest necessaries of life. The task of the governing power will therefore perpetually increase, and its very efforts will extend it every day. The more it stands in the place of associations, the more will individuals, losing the notion of combining together, require its assistance: these are causes and effects which unceasingly engender each other.

There were things that made the United States great for 200 years, and we started losing those great things decades ago.  The result is socialism.  The result is a group of citizens who no longer take ownership of their countries well being.  This was a very good week of learning for me.

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This week we covered two thing, one is the role other historical societies affected the founding of the United States, the other was about how Science works and its role in the founding of the United States.

The readings this week started off with what I see is wrong with our education system as a whole.  Some want creation taught, some don’t want it taught.  I actually want a happy medium. DISCUSSION.  But lets talk about the readings first.

Had to read an excerpt from, “The Scientific Reception System, from The Velikovsky Affair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism” 

Velikovsky you see had some radical scientific opinions in 1966.  Like Venus was hot, the earth’s rotation is affected by sun spot activity, species destruction was more from crisis events rather than evolution… you know all those things we know as fact today!  However his thoughts were so out there, that the scientific community wouldn’t even give him the chance to discuss his views.  The rest of the scientific community closed him out.

The readings went over the ‘rules’ of being a scientist.  How things come from ‘thought’ to ‘fact’.  Velikovsky tried to go through this process,  yet was told to go away.  To me this is where it relates to my Christian tradition.  If the creationist are idiots, then let them go through the process (which includes plenty of chance for rebuttal).  However as Ben Steins movie, Expelled: No intelligence Allowed, there is no allowance for even the discussion.  Now sure, some will scoff at this about how silly creationism is.  But what about global warming?  The same thing is happening there.  If you are a scientist against global warming, you are ridiculed.  We need to stop allowing scientist to crush conversation.  They’ve been proven wrong before and they will be proven wrong again, and again, and again, and again.

Next we started talking about the influence of the Greek society on the United States.  A few of thing things from them that helped make us… us, from Who Killed Homer? by Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath.

* The free exchange of news.
* Rational inquiry about the physical and material world.
* Pursuit of knowledge.

Then as they went over the Greek culture they went over a difference between us and them.  We today try to find the good in all situations.  We try to rationalize the Islamic world.  They said the following:

No ancient Greek would today believe that the Islamic world, with a bit more patience, will learn the advantages of our democracy

Next we went over Rome’s influence on the USA.  This is an influence I’ve always known.  This is pretty well known, and the comparisons are pretty similar. 

Next we went over the Christian influence on the USA.  If anybody really believes that this country had no expectation to have a highly Christian influence by the vast majority of our founding fathers, they are fooling themselves at best.  Lying at worst.  But a few of the things that were said by Robert Royal in “Who Put the West in Western Civilization?”:

* America’s expanse West was largely driven by the missionary fervor in Christianity. 
* “It took the Christian church to shift social mores both among the elites and throughout the general population.  Along with homosexuality, the ancient practices of suicide, infanticide, and slavery slowly diminished in the West.”

Then it covered the reaction to the American’s to the Indians.  Americans are looked down upon due to our pushing of the American Indian from ‘their land’.  This is what he said (emphasis mine):

When we think of Indians today, our view of them as weak, essentially benign group of peoples badly treated for centuries, colors our historical judgment.  But the peoples and cultures of the New World before the spread of European influence differed widely from one another and did not always display characteristics that anyone would wish to defend today.  Despite the special-pleading by defenders of Native Americans, cannibalism existed without a doubt among the Aztecs, Guaranf, Iroquois, Caribs, and several other tribes.  Pedro Fernades Sardinha (Sardine), the unfortunately named first bishop of what is now Bahia, Brazil, for example, was eaten by the Caete, a local tribe. Human sacrifice was practiced by the high cultures and several groups not so developed. Slavery and torture were widespread from the Southern Cone to the Pacific Northwest. Cultural difference between Europeans and native Americans made mutual understanding difficult and made encounters bloody.  But if these cultures had been left alone and were still intact today, most of us would think that humanity and reason required intervention, for good Western reasons.  It is only ignorance – of history and anthropology – that permits a sentimental view of people who have, without question, been badly treated.

It is against this background that we must view the modern history of the West.

Well we’ll call it a post for this week.  99% of you have stopped reading by now anyways :-).

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The class overall started off with a bang when you consider some of the readings in Week 2.  Really started to concern me that this class would not be an honest, unbiased discussion of the topic at hand but a slow… you should believe this way kind of class, pushing the liberal agenda. 

Lets first go over my readings in, In Defense of the West.

An initial quote from Devine said the following:

But common-sense answers like hope, persistence, prayer, work, adjustment, self-reliance, and perseverance do not satisfy many inquiring minds, as new questions are raised constantly.

But aren’t new questions raised regardless? 

Then when commenting on a Socrates writing Devine said:

Socrates used the example of the ideal of the real rose, its essence, verses the corruptible reality that we see.  This comparison shows no existing rose is rose, all the ones we see show some signs of underdevelopment or corruption; only the idea of it is rose, perfect, true, essential.

Here is the thing.  A deformed rose… IS STILL A ROSE! We were told to take the writings this week and compare them to our tradition and how it is either for or against our tradition.  So I made the point, that the church as flawed as it is. IS STILL THE CHURCH.

Next we covered some clips from Plato’s book, The Republic.  The part that was taken from this was Plato’s ideal society. 

So The Republic also planned state arrangement of marriages, communal sharing of spouses, state rearing of children without parents even knowing their offspring, communal sharing of property under control of the state, rearing all children for war and sacrifice for the state, exposing deformed or sickly children to their deaths so they are not a burden to the state nor on creative individuals, allowing slavery (except not of fellow Greeks) and rule by a philosopher king rather than by the people.

I can’t imagine anybody would be happy with this.

Now I’ll cover some of the readings in Western Vision and American Values that I didn’t cover already.

A snippet that speaks for itself was from The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This “progress” is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening.

Now the ‘best’ writing is last. 

It is by Kristine M. Baber and Colleen I. Murray, called A Postmodern Feminist Approach. 

This writing is what I think is the biggest problem with modern society. 

Problem number one:

Postmodern theorists take the position that all theory is socially constructed and reject the claim of modernists that only rational, abstract thought and scientific methodology can lead to valid knowledge.

You see, even solid facts… are no longer facts.  As referenced by my image above.  This ‘man’ was pregnant and got a lot of press.  The only problem is that this ‘man’ was in fact a WOMAN!  A ‘transgender’… basically a women who decided she was a man and so it was?  But with the teachings from people like this, even solid fact is no longer fact.  Just stuns me that we as a society have fallen this far.

Their whole thought process is that sexuality is not determined by how you are born, but how you feel.  But they contradict themselves when they say:

A pluralist approach does not mean total relativism, however.  We are not advocating taking a value-free position, where anything goes and where all sexual experiences and activities are acceptable.  ………… For example, although we may take a position that acknowledges pluralism, we would oppose adults’ having sexual contact with children even if children “consent.”

It is either, how your feel, or it is how it is.

I’ll end with a quote that I think sums up the problems with modern society best.

A keystone of a feminist postmodern perspective is the rejection of a unitary truth or knowledge.

-See all writings in this series-

Week one was pretty basic.  Basically introduced the course by defining traditions that define America.  Had to pick one myself, of course I picked Christianity.

My readings in, In Defense of the West, started off pretty strong.  One of the opening statements by Devine was about the Muslim fundamentalists that attacked the united states on 9/11.  The battle cry about attacking Iraq is that WMD's were not found.  But I think Devine says something interesting (understand this was written soon after 9/11).  "In a real sense, it was their values that were the critical weapon."

Fundamental Muslims don't need weapons to cause mass destruction.

An early point Devine made about Christianity is that traditionally it has been seen that the state is a thread to the church, and traditionally if you look at it... he is right.  However what has happened in America today is that the church is seen as a threat to the state, which confuses me a bit since the Bible calls us to obey the government rulers over you, as long as they are not in direct contradiction of a Biblical teaching.

Finally chapter one is wrapped up with a few thoughts on the Muslim faith, where three points are made.

* "Most Muslims are non-violent. Because the Quran makes the state holy, however, Islam cannot easily allow non-Muslims to become citizens even under more tolerant regimes and remain true to its doctrine."

* "Islam had the most difficulty living in peace with its neighbors."

* "A religions revival has taken place across the Islamic world, and it is not clear what will be the consequences."

Next I had to do my readings in Western Vision and American Values. I won't cover all the readings of this week, just the ones I want to comment on.

First I had to read, We Are All Related (1992), by Eagle Man which covered the Indian tradition in America. One thing I found interesting in this reading was the following quote:

The way to end wars in this day and age is to do like the Indian: put the chiefs and their sons on the front lines.

Imagine how things would be if we went back to the way war was a few hundred years ago and put our commander in chief in the battle, and expected 'their' commander in chief to do the same. 

Next I had to read Tribal Wisdom by David Maybury-Lewis.  Two quotes are of interest here.

Modern society is intensely secular. - Yeah... kind of sad.

United States, whose whole history is a determination to avoid despotism, allows more internal chaos than most other industrial nations. It values individual freedom to the point of allowing private citizens to own arsenals of weapons and puts up with a rate of interpersonal violence that would be considered catastrophic in other countries.

I remember during some of the worst moments of the Iraq war it being said that Detroit was more dangerous than Baghdad. 

The next reading I will profile is from Mere Christianity by C.S. Leis.  The key quote I took from this reading was, "God created things which had free will.... free to be good it is also free to be bad."  The crux of the faith is also a big struggle of it.

The last reading I will comment on is Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  This reading was one that defined a lot of the class for many of the fellow students.  The whole thought that, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

A few more relevant quotes:

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution the only wrong what is against it.
--
I suppose no man can violate his nature.

To me this is just unbelievably arrogant that a man, a fallible man can think that they are the source of all wisdom about what is right and wrong. 

This was a sample of the readings from week one.  A very vast array of readings this week, that touched on many different issues. 

As some of you know I have been going for my Bachelor's degree.  The school I went to, Bellevue University, required a 12 Credit hour course they called the signature series.

This was a GREAT course to take.  It focused on Western Vision and American Values.   It covered many aspects of what makes America, America.  I am going to start a series of post reviewing some of the things I've learned in this course.  Be warned, it is a HUGE course with a lot of stuff learned over 12 weeks.  I may ramble at times, or post some semi-coherent thoughts.  It was the best $3,000 I've ever spent for school.

One thing to note, this series was put together shortly after the 9/11 attack.  You'll be stunned at  how much stuff was said over the history of the United States that is still relevant today.

-See all writings in this series-