Bydan Free means Forever Free

LIONELL TRILLING

2012-01-10T21:03:00.001-08:00

By today's standards Lionel Trilling represents, perhaps, the tired old naive liberalism of the 1950's and early 1960's when liberalism was dominant in America. However, despite Trilling's excessive faith in liberalism he was a true exemplar of true liberal learning like his great contemporaries, Gilbert Highet, Mark Doren, Moses Hades, Allan Nevins and Jacques Barzun who amazingly is still with us at 100+.

Trilling was also almost entirely uncontaminated by PC thought, Affirmative Action multiculturalism which let's tell the truth elevates junk and mediocrity on a quota basis.

No wonder kids don't want to read. If I were a youth subject to today’s testing regime and today’s PC literature I think I would run away from school and certainly never darken the door of any university liberal arts department. Like the scholars in Fahrenheit 451 I would flee with my classics to some remote area to keep alive the flame of true culture and high literature.

I am a great reader but I avoid almost anything current that comes out of the Nobel system or PC liberal arts departments of our universities. Life is too short and there are such great classics. Most of our best writers, today are independent writers so it seems to me in this tarnished silver age we still have great non-fiction authors. But most contemporary poetry and fiction falls flat as far as I am concerned with a few exceptions such as Ian Pears. I don't think Ken Follett is really a first class writer but at his best he comes close to matching in consistent quality of output of Kipling,Stevenson,Bryce,MacDonald, Bronte,Trollope, Boswell, Gibbon,Twain, Theodore Roosevelt,Bret Hart, Wells, Dickens or Scott or Conan Doyle. I used to think George Orwell's fiction was uneven but now -re-reading Orwell it all seems like gold and of course he had his masterpieces too and his essays and letters are among the greatest ever written by anyone in any language. But just match any post 1950 English language author to Conan Doyle for example or Dickens or Shaw or even Austen, or French literature, Flaubert, Verne, Zola, Gautier,Hugo, Balzac and so forth. Then there is the great opus of Russian literature pre-1914 Tolstoy,Pushkin, Chekov, plus all the works of Solzhenitsyn, all the great romantic Spanish dramss of the 19th century (several made into operas by Verdi such as the Duque de Riva's Don Alvaro La Forza del Destino)followed by the great Spanish playwrights and poets of the first half of the 20th century, The Quintero brothers, Benevente, Garcia Lorca, Machado. Then there is German literature as well, Thomas Mann, Goethe, Heine,Mommsen, Niebuhr, Ranke. With men like Trilling or Gilbert Highet or Allan Nevins one always knew one was reading LITERATURE by people who knew their prose and poetry like modern Ciceros. The wide learning of a Trilling or Highet -men who were conversant with politics and history to a high degree plus classical and world literature or of an Allan Nevins whose vocabulary and literary allusions in his historical works show a man who knew his Gibbon, his Shakespeare, his Scott, his Dickents,his Twain, his Lincoln, his Theodore Roosevelt (yes TR was one of America's great prose writers and essayist equally a match to Winston Churchill and the superior author to Jefferson who was talented but relatively unoriginal and unproductive. As an original thinker and writer Jefferson is highly overrated -especially when one compares him to Theodore Roosevelt. We have no one like TR today nor Mark Twain either nor Robert Sherwood or even Hemingway at his best. Hemingway is a classic example of a modern author who just cannot sustain excellence. Hemingway, at his best (1926-1950) is very, very good and still highly accessible. But -and I have read almost all of his fiction, letters and prose- Hemingway is not consistently as great an author as Conrad or Dickents or even Conan Doyle. My chief criticism of modern autors is that they are careless writers who seem not to have read very much. Once I tried to stay abreast of "current literature" but I found so much of it to be squalid, turgid and mediocre with some exceptions as I have mentioned plus others such as Anthony Burgess. The great thing about Trilling was that Trilling was truly learned and truly had great taste at time when men could be discriminating in their tastes and judge work ONLY by its literary beauty, originality, and general merit. Today we relive Don Juan Manuel's tale -later retold as the Emperor's New Clothes- over and over. We pretend all people, all cultures all genders are absolutely equal in quality and in fact that PC works are what we must read because they are PC. Of course, multiculturalism and PC Affirmative Action authors and poet laureates are just one big lie just an exercise in propaganda. And as Orwell or Trilling would have told us, propaganda and lies make for the deadest literature of all. Trilling lived at time when a man could tell the truth and exalt in and know the limits of art. We are very glad to have him, still, as an untainted if somewhat overoptimistic old style liberal. One remembers when reading Trilling what is was like to when it made sense to be a (moderate) liberal because moderate liberals of the 1950's and early 1960's were manly, patriotic, proud of being American and part of what was then called Western Civilization. Most children today do not even know what Western Civilization is and in most places in the West -the USA probably being an exception- knowledge of the Bible is at its lowest since probably AD 200. I meet unbaptized and completely deracinated Russian, Spanish, Italian immigrants who have never heard of Noah, or the Psalms or Ecclesiastes, or Aaron or even Moses let alone Luke, Matthew, Paul etc. Men of the right often complain that immigrants from Latin American are destroying America because they are uneducated, have no values, do not share our culture etc.

We in America are very lucky that most Latin American immigrants DO NOT SHARE the non-culture of present day British or European immigrants. I work with Hispanic Youth groups and am amazed that most Hispanic youth 1) know and respect the Scriptures and Christian traditions 2) genuinely enjoy poetry and often recite it by heart 3) their songs and musical traditions are not (yet) completely divorced from their literary traditions and so at their best are surprisingly literate. I don't think it is all great by any means but at least it is not horrible post-modern aggressive noise like so much contemporary American popular music. Latin culture is actually (still) quite civilized in its music and manners.

The reason it is, I believe, is because they still consider themselves to be part of Christendom and value their language and ancient culture heritage. Latin Americans still have a deep sense of the sacred and a knowledge that there is such a thing as truth and right and wrong. English-speaking peoples and many Western Europeans seem to have lost all interest in their heritage, their religion and hope for the future hence their inability to man up and even have the children necessary to guarantee a future for their languages and nations. I cannot help but think so many "permanent" nations of today will merely be geographic or historical expressions by the 22nd century. That sort of knowledge and wisdom is something that would have intrigued Trilling and he would have been interested in that because he was not under any illusion that he was living one great summit of Western Civilization but was merely a small part of its great story.

Trilling always had the confidence to believe in himself, in America, in democracy, in Lockean tolerance in Western Civilization. Reading Trilling today reminds of a time when most Americans even intellectuals believed in America and in the old verities with a feeling of genuine optimism for America's future. Their optimism like Trilling's was based largely on an edifice of the truth mixed with some mild polite ficitons (such as that someday we would achieve merely by merit true equality for all). Today we are wiser. We know all Americans are equal but some are more equal than others.

Today we know there ARE HEREDITARY CASTES and TITLES OF NOBLITY that grant some persons preference and privilege part of the creeping unconstitutionality of our Bold State with its Liberal Elites and activist judges.

President Obama is a perfect example of a PC Affirmative Action brat whose entire political, intellectual, academic life is essentially an exaggeration and a lie based on a life of constant preference and a comfortable, easy rise via mediocrity, gut courses, inflated grades (what WERE his grades???) ghost writers and rapid promotion via Affirmative Action.

One always knows one is in the presences of an Affirmative Action Brat when he or she boasts “I have never applied for a job in my life; I have constantly been recruited.” No wonder people like Mr. Obama really believe they are God’s gift to the earth and the greatest thing to happen since Isaac Newton or at least A.J. Cronin or Booker T. Washington.

In their vanity they think they are truly great, historically great.

But in reality they are great in the way Lord Corwallis was great.

Corwallis, of course, at least KNEW he bought his commission and in his moments of candor gloried in the preference his status as primogenitor in an Anglican world governed by Test Acts .

That is what the “Protestant Cause” meant to people like Cornwallis: wealth and preference usually without any pretence of merit only class privilege. That was the “Old Affirmative Action” for “White Anglo Saxon Males” (chiefly of course first born sons and heirs –no bastards or Irish need apply)

The Affirmative Action Brats of today –in literature, business and politics- of which Mr. Obama is most splendid example of what is, now, probably a permanent hereditary “title” of nobility –meaning people like Obama get preference based on the theory that there was discrimination in the past which has to be made good today and “forever more”.

Which means true excellence and merit in America is dead or dying in many fields of endeavor especially literature but also in business, government, finance, law, medicine. Obamacare, if it endures will probably be the end of the American era of dominance in medical technology and developments. Gradually our obsession with “fairness” , a “level playing field” (instead of a “square deal” for all), and racial and gender quotas will destroy and stifle our cultural life and our industrial productivity. More and more the mediocre and the non-producers will gobble up the best jobs and the most financial aid while taxing and discriminated against the productive and truly creative elements of American society.

Soon all insurances and all our medical programs as well as our schools and universities will be run by clones of Mr and Mrs. Obama. Big Brother would be less of a threat to human freedom than such an insidious lie as what is being foisted on Americans today. In fact, the growing Bold State is, perhaps, a stealth form of leveling and Socialism that will one day wipe out families, private lives, private religion and even free thought and speech.

Not a boot in the face of humanity forever but vapid teleprompter speeches on autoplay forever and a pauperized general public whose paper dollars will blow away in the wind like so many Weimar marks and whose happiness and confidence will be slowly crushed by confiscatory taxation and a debt load that can never be paid only repudiated and defaulted on until we in America are poorer and more miserable than Argentina or Weimar Germany.

Mr. Obama is no Hitler nor a Stalin; no he is more like helpless and hapless the president of a Banana Republic or Honorius a Roman emperor who enjoyed dreaming and reigning and partying but had not the slightest idea how even to defend or pay for a single legion or a single villa. Trilling would have understood what I am getting at and where I am coming from. He too would have been astonished that our first Black president was not a Frederick Douglas or even a Ralph Bunche or a Martin Luther King but someone more akin to Reconstruction Era politicians, Haitian presidents of old or even Boss Tweed.

Of course that is not fair to Boss Tweed. The Solyndra bankruptcy and the total losses of the Obama administration will probably dwarf anything Boss Tweed ever did.

The Imaginative Conservative: Beauty and the Beholder

2011-12-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Imaginative Conservative: Beauty and the Beholder: by John Willson Beauty, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. Ambrose Bierce My Imprimis arrived to...

Bydan Free means Forever Free: CAPTAIN DICK DONALD PORTEOUS NE OBLIVISCARIS

2011-12-25T16:42:00.000-08:00

Bydan Free means Forever Free: CAPTAIN DICK DONALD PORTEOUS NE OBLIVISCARIS: lorne(at)btinternet(dot)com

FOR SOME PEOPLE MARRIAGE IS A WORD (essay on fidelity)

2011-11-12T15:27:00.000-08:00

3rd Mar Div: LAVA DOGS

For some people marriage is a word and for others a sacrament but for many it is a sentence!!! May your bonds be light, friend, and may you both delight in the sacrament of marriage and all the Four Loves this encompasses. If you have that the loves Hugh Heffner partakes in are small and silly by comparison.
Eros, as I am sure you know is just the icing on the cake; it is sweet but it is not nourishing by itself. Friendship is warmth and comfort and joy. In fact, I think I have had more comfort and joy from my dogs than from most women -except of course Mrs. Munro. Happy is the man with a good, loving and loyal wife!
The great thing about dogs -and good wives and husbands - is their absolute fidelity until death.
I also think this is the best quality of a Highlander or U.S. Marine also besides his undaunted courage and work ethic -absolute fidelity until death and beyond.

THE LEAL AN' TRUE MON:WWI Scottish Highlander

A Leal an' True Mon I knew and loved: my grandfather Thomas Munro, Sr. in Salonika, Greece 1917. He taught me what honor, courage, and justice were. He struggled with moderation (temperance) and the demons of No Man's Land and the trenches. He killed hundreds of men and saw many thousands die and be killed.

Fidelity is not just one value or virtue but I think, with courage, a cardinal virtue or at least an essential part of justice which is a cardinal virtue. Where would justice be without fidelity? Socrates showed that every time of virtue (courage, justice, wisdom) naturally coexist with true sophrosyne (moderation). Sophrosyne is a very difficult word to interpret but Cicero helps; in Tuscalan Disputations 3.8 he translates sophrosyne as TEMPERANTIA (temprerance), MODERATIO (moderation), MODESTIA (modesty) and FRUGALITAS (thrift or frugality a basic understanding of economics that resources are scarce and so must be husbanded).

For it is true love to be loyal to someone or something that is dead or far away and cannot longer help you in anyway whatsoever except perhaps spiritually.   The past is no more and the future, of course, does not yet exist. Yes, the past is dead. Except in our memories and except in the relics of the past that surround us. There is always memory though we sometimes think of memory of being fragile and short-lived. But important things like great loves and great losses and great dangers and great joys we do remember as they seem to be impressed deeply and broadly in our neurons. To think is to use what we know and what we know is what we remember.

We must ask ourselves that would liberty be if free minds were not faithful to justice, the truth, the law, customs and history?   What would truth be without the fidelity of the truthful? One has to only think of the censors of Winston Smith's 1984 or Solzhenitsyn's Gulags or the tormentors of Raoul Wallenberg (both Nazi and Communist). What gives fidelity its value is thing or person that one is loyal to.
The SS swore absolute allegiance to their Fuhrer and their fidelity was horrible in its criminality and in fact though no one can deny the SS, upon the whole, were courageous and loyal they were most unjust and most intemperant.

One should not change a wife the way, for example one changes a shirt or trades in a car for a "new model" as the old joke goes.   I have heard a Frenchman say that no one bathes twice in the same river or loves the same woman twice. According to this hedonistic calculation women have only so many good years -their best are from age 19-30- so even an attractive 33 year old woman is past her prime and is not longer the woman she was, at say 25, or before she had children.

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Ingrid Bergman in her early twenties circa 1937

Therefore, so the Frenchman says, why should I be loyal and loving to a woman who "no longer exists"; if she were eternally 25 I could love her equally but since she is not I will be satisified with what is left as long as it provides me some pleasure! This is an attitude, I think that only a rich and spolied Frenchman could have (or his American, Spanish or British equivalent). I see here the mentality of Hugh Heffner here and I must say it scunners the mind and the heart of any Leal Mon (a loyal and true Highlander). We all age though perhaps it is true that women are more beautiful than men by nature and age more rapidly than men.

Ms. Bergman in her late 30's

Ingrid Berman in Autmn Sonata (1978) about 62 years of age

But if my wife sacrifices her figure and her beauty and risks her health by bearing our children that does not make me love her less but more. There is an old Irish poem "Beauty 'tis like the rainbow. When the shower is past its glory is gone. But beauty remains for the bard. He sees her in youth, unchanged, unmarred and loves her all the more."   I loved my mother dearly because to her I owed my life and she reared and educated me until I was strong enough to take care of myself. She sacrifced her life and her health and her career advancement for her children and grandchildren and also I think for the community around her to which she dedicated herself with true civic virtue. I love my wife because not only was the object of my love from youth but also because she is my faithful companion in life, in sickness and in health and the mother of our children.   They say there are couples who are "faithful in their fashion" (that is to their love, their pleasure and their common freedom) but to me that is no fidelity at all. If we want to understand marriage and conjugal fidelity we have to understand what marriage is. I am a traditionalist and marriage to me means the legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife. Marriage to me means openness to children; I suppose I am a simple man but I could never understand a woman who wanted to marry but wanted to "plan" or "put off children" for some "golden future time." When faced with such a response I would bluntly ask a young woman's age and to which she would respond 26, 29, or 31 and I would say, and you think you have all the time in the world to have children? I would say you are marrying late in the day. In the Auld Country, lassie, you would be considered a spinster already. This approach, needless to say was not successful in winning many hearts but it was successful at breaking off hopeless relationships with persons whose worldview were so different from mine.

For a marriage to work husband and wife must have things in common especially a worldview. This does not mean they are exactly the same race, culture, nationality or religion but I have come to understand that these things are very important. One can overcome differences but differences add to the difficulty one finds in marriage in any case. I believe that husband and wife should agree to practice the same religion, for example, and this religions should be the religion of the most sincere of the two. But it is possible for a couple to practice two (similar) religious faiths and to have two cultures and languages peacefully coexist in the same household. But it is very dificult and not the norm. Mere sexual union or cohabitation do not make for a couple certainly not a marriage. A marriage presupposes fidelity, love and duration. I may begin with the fire of passion but passion alone, beauty alone and sexual attraction cannot sustain a marriage. Passion at its best can provide the memory of something that was great and glorious.

But what makes marriage endure is a mixture of friendship, trust, gratitude plus physical companionship which of course includes sexual contact but mostly is just that joy in physical companionship that we also enjoy in our favorite pets. Love between girl and boy begins with fun and friendship (perhaps on the side of the female) and on the side of the boy with an electric lust. Willliams James said that Romeo wanted Juliet the way filings want the magnet. I have never known a man to pursue a young woman with whom he did not have a strong sexual attraction. In fact for most men once that conquest is made they quickly forget the dame. This is why young ladies, if they are smart, will ration their sexual favors only to the truly worthy. The brute male of little virtue -and such men are legion- has a very simple epicurean philosophy of life: "Find 'em. Feel 'em F**k 'em and forget 'em. " The very essences of infidelity and unfaithfulness and of a false man without honor. One does not seduce a maid without lies and deceit.

I have done many sinful and wrong acts in my life but one thing I have never done is deceived or harmed a young woman merely to satisfy my own lust.  I have treated them with respect even when I knew I could have overpowered them or seduced them with some convenient lies. But a man of honor stops when the young lady says, "please stop" or says "I am a virgin".    To have been so honored -to be offered the body of a willing young virgin- was, at the time, a great temptation but also the offering of a gift.   One forgets the casual sexual encounters one may have had but one never forgets the innocent young virgins one could have had but one kissed on the cheek, held her trembling hand and walked her home in the dark to her family, untouched.   I like to think that those young girls -if still alive an well- because I am talking about 35 and 40 years ago- remember me with fondness and without hatred for I treated them with respect and without deceit even though I greatly desired (at the time) to have sexual intercourse with them. But as I have since learned such feelings are just passing moments of infatuation and lust and are not love merely a pathway to love.

I have tried to be a Leal an' True Mon (a Highland Gentleman) and thus treat the fair sex with respect and with all the Honour due this most beautiful, this most worthy, most essential and most gentle sex.

A U.S. Marine is loyal to the Corps but above all swears allegiance to the U.S. Constitution that is "We the People" not the president and not the Marine Commandant. In the novel SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1962) by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey ; it is a Marine (Col. Jiggs Casey) who remains loyal to the president and Constitution when he becomes aware of a Fascist conspiracy in the Pentagon led by an Air Force general who seems to have been a composite of General MacArthur, General Edwin Walker and General Curtis Lemay.

The film script of SEVEN DAYS IN MAY is quite literate (by Rod Serling). It has a wonderul line which is the essence of virtuous fidelity.

SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964)
The General (Burt Lancaster) and the Marine (Kirk Douglas)

The Air Force General (Burt Lancaster) said "Do you know who Judas was?" and the Marine (Kirk Douglas) responds, "Yes. He's a man I used to work for and respect, until he disgraced the four stars on his uniform."

SEVEN DAYS IN MAY was a favorite book of John F. Kennedy though he never saw the film version having been assassinated before the film was released. It has some quotations which are eerie in retrospect : "Why, in God's name, do we elect a man president and then try to see how fast we can kill him?"

Marine Col. Jiggs Casey remarks with true Marine Corps irony when a high ranking senator makes fun of his numerous decorations as "fruit salad":
"On the contrary, Senator, they're standard awards for cocktail courage and dinner-table heroism. I thought you'd invented them. "   Fredric March as the president says to the ambitious would be American caudillo: "Then, by God, run for office. You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country - why in the name of God don't you have any faith in the system of government you're so hell-bent to protect? " He is challenging his word, his integrity and his fidelity and of course proving it is all a shame. All the general has is naked ambition: Caesar aut nihil (top dog or dead).   Jiggs by the way opposed the Nuclear Treaty and the president's policy towards the Soviet Union but he remains loyal to his oath as a Marine:
The president (Frederick March) says "So you, ah, you stand by the Constitution, Jiggs?

Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas): "I never thought of it just like that, Mr. President, but, well, that's what we got and I guess it's worked pretty well so far. I sure don't want to be the one to say we ought to change it." They even joke about the virtue of fidelity together using the president's dog as an example: the president (Frederick March says) "Trimmer is a very political dog. He doesn't have many principles, but he's loyal to his friends."   Col. Jiggs reminds others of the cost of service and the need for remembrance "You're just like a lot of civilians, Mr. Todd. After every armistice, you want to put us away in mothballs, like the fleet. When it comes to a little dying... "

What makes a Marine stand out is his ethos "once a Marine always a Marine." What makes a Marine is absolutely fidelity to duty and love of country above self. A Marine is always faithful to his Corps, his country and his comrades. A Marine is civic virtue and patriotism personified. The Marine's virtue is a virtuous, vigorous and intentional fidelity. The good Marine knows the only way to a good society is through good individuals who know there is no "I" in team. The good Marine knows he will die, he will not live forever but he hopes America will live, if not forever, for a long long time. We know one day there will be a final battle or the sad final disbandment of the heroes. And when the evening comes at last and there is peace on every hill how peaceful will be our sleep for we saw not the sacred flame extinguished . We saw not our Colors struck in our time.

We know every nation has its age of ascendancy and its age of decline. We know that billions of years from now the earth will not exist and the stars will blink out one by one.   But we know one thing more important: love IS IMMORTAL. Individuals are more important than the State because individuals ARE IMMORTAL. Marriage is a more important than an individual. Marriage is the basis of family, education and in a larger sense our civilization, our faiths and national culture.   To me education is all about the deepening of the mind and strengthening memory so that our children -all the nation's children can grasp the keys to our heritage an immesurable , inexhaustible secret treasure which has the power to transcend even Sergeant Death. As St. Paul said to the Corinthians "What is seen is transitory; what is not seen lasts forever."    True love waits and true love remembers because it is faithful.   And true love never forgets and never dies.

LIONEL TRILLING REMINDS US OF A GOLDEN AGE

2011-10-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

Lionel Trilling

Subject: LIONEL TRILLING REMINDS US OF A GOLDEN AGE BEFORE LEGIONS of tiresome PC AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BRATS

Like President Obama but also many “prize winning authors” since 1968.

“Today we relive Don Juan Manuel's tale -later retold as the Emperor's New Clothes- over and over. We pretend all people, all cultures all genders are absolutely equal in quality and in fact that PC works are what we must read because they are PC. Of course, multiculturalism and PC Affirmative Action authors and poet laureates are just one big lie just an exercise in propaganda. And as Orwell or Trilling would have told us, propaganda and lies make for the deadest literature of all.” (RICHARD K. MUNRO)

http://www.city-journal.org/comments/index.php?story=7546⦴

But most contemporary poetry and fiction falls flat as far as I am concerned with a few exceptions such as Ian Pears. I don't think Ken Follett is really a first class writer but at his best he comes close to matching in consistent quality of output of Kipling,Stevenson,Bryce,MacDonald, Bronte,Trollope, Boswell, Gibbon,Twain, Theodore Roosevelt,Bret Hart, Wells, Dickens or Scott or Conan Doyle. I used to think George Orwell's fiction was uneven but now -re-reading Orwell it all seems like gold and of course he had his masterpieces too and his essays and letters are among the greatest ever written by anyone in any language.

Theodore Roosevelt, president,naturalist and American author

But just match any post 1950 English language author to Conan Doyle for example or Dickens or Shaw or even Austen, or French literature, Flaubert, Verne, Zola, Gautier,Hugo, Balzac and so forth.

Then there is the great opus of Russian literature pre-1914 Tolstoy,Pushkin, Chekov, plus all the works of Solzhenitsyn, all the great romantic Spanish drams of the Golden age or 19th century (several made into operas by Mozart such as Don Giovanni -a play by Tirso de Molina- or by Verdi such as the Duque de Rivas' Don Alvaro La Forza del Destino)followed by the great Spanish playwrights and poets of the first half of the 20th century, The Quintero brothers, Benevente, Garcia Lorca, Machado. Then there is German literature as well, Thomas Mann, Goethe, Heine,Mommsen, Niebuhr, Ranke.

With men like Trilling or Gilbert Highet or Allan Nevins one always knew one was reading LITERATURE by people who knew their prose and poetry like modern Ciceros. The wide learning of a Trilling or Highet -men who were conversant with politics and history to a high degree plus classical and world literature or of an Allan Nevins whose vocabulary and literary allusions in his historical works show a man who knew his Gibbon, his Shakespeare, his Scott, his Dickents,his Twain, his Lincoln, his Theodore Roosevelt (yes TR was one of America's great prose writers and essayist equally a match to Winston Churchill and the superior author to Jefferson who was talented but relatively unoriginal and unproductive. As an original thinker and writer Jefferson is highly overrated -especially when one compares him to Theodore Roosevelt.

We have no one like TR today nor Mark Twain either nor Robert Sherwood or even Hemingway at his best. Hemingway is a classic example of a modern author who just cannot sustain excellence. Hemingway, at his best (1926-1950) is very, very good and still highly accessible. But -and I have read almost all of his fiction, letters and prose- Hemingway is not consistently as great an author as Conrad or Dickens or even Conan Doyle. My chief criticism of modern authors is that they are careless writers who seem not to have read very much. Once I tried to stay abreast of "current literature" but I found so much of it to be squalid, turgid and mediocre with some exceptions as I have mentioned plus others such as Anthony Burgess. The great thing about Trilling was that Trilling was truly learned and truly had great taste at time when men could be discriminating in their tastes and judge work ONLY by its literary beauty, originality, and general merit.

SPORTIN' LIFE
Today we relive Don Juan Manuel's tale -later retold as the Emperor's New Clothes- over and over. We pretend all people, all cultures all genders are absolutely equal in quality and in fact that PC works are what we must read because they are PC. Of course, multiculturalism and PC Affirmative Action authors and poet laureates are just one big lie just an exercise in propaganda. And as Orwell or Trilling would have told us, propaganda and lies make for the deadest literature of all. Trilling lived at time when a man could tell the truth and exalt in and know the limits of art. We are very glad to have him, still, as an untainted if somewhat overoptimistic old style liberal. One remembers when reading Trilling what is was like to when it made sense to be a (moderate) liberal because moderate liberals of the 1950's and early 1960's were manly, patriotic, proud of being American and part of what was then called Western Civilization. Most children today do not even know what Western Civilization is and in most places in the West -the USA probably being an exception- knowledge of the Bible is at its lowest since probably AD 200. I meet unbaptized and completely deracinated Russian, Spanish, Italian immigrants who have never heard of Noah, or the Psalms or Ecclesiastes, or Aaron or even Moses let alone Luke, Matthew, Paul etc. Men of the right often complain that immigrants from Latin American are destroying America because they are uneducated, have no values, do not share our culture etc.

We in America are very lucky that most Latin American immigrants DO NOT SHARE the non-culture of present day British or European immigrants. I work with Hispanic Youth groups and am amazed that most Hispanic youth 1) know and respect the Scriptures and Christian traditions 2) genuinely enjoy poetry and often recite it by heart 3) their songs and musical traditions are not (yet) completely divorced from their literary traditions and so at their best are surprisingly literate. I don't think it is all great by any means but at least it is not horrible post-modern aggressive noise like so much contemporary American popular music. Latin culture is actually (still) quite civilized in its music and manners.

The reason it is, I believe, is because they still consider themselves to be part of Christendom and value their language and ancient culture heritage. Latin Americans still have a deep sense of the sacred and a knowledge that there is such a thing as truth and right and wrong. English-speaking peoples and many Western Europeans seem to have lost all interest in their heritage, their religion and hope for the future hence their inability to man up and even have the children necessary to guarantee a future for their languages and nations. I cannot help but think so many "permanent" nations of today will merely be geographic or historical expressions by the 22nd century. That sort of knowledge and wisdom is something that would have intrigued Trilling and he would have been interested in that because he was not under any illusion that he was living one great summit of Western Civilization but was merely a small part of its great story.

Trilling always had the confidence to believe in himself, in America, in democracy, in Lockean tolerance in Western Civilization. Reading Trilling today reminds of a time when most Americans even intellectuals believed in America and in the old verities with a feeling of genuine optimism for America's future. Their optimism like Trilling's was based largely on an edifice of the truth mixed with some mild polite ficitons (such as that someday we would achieve merely by merit true equality for all). Today we are wiser. We know all Americans are equal but some are more equal than others.

Today we know there ARE HEREDITARY CASTES and TITLES OF NOBLITY that grant some persons preference and privilege part of the creeping unconstitutionality of our Bold State with its Liberal Elites and activist judges.

President Obama is a perfect example of a PC Affirmative Action brat whose entire political, intellectual, academic life is essentially an exaggeration and a lie based on a life of constant preference and a comfortable, easy rise via mediocrity, gut courses, inflated grades (what WERE his grades???) ghost writers and rapid promotion via Affirmative Action.

One always knows one is in the presences of an Affirmative Action Brat when he or she boasts “I have never applied for a job in my life; I have constantly been recruited.” No wonder people like Mr. Obama really believe they are God’s gift to the earth and the greatest thing to happen since Isaac Newton or at least A.J. Cronin or Booker T. Washington.
In their vanity they think they are truly great, historically great.

But in reality they are great in the way Lord Corwallis was great.

Lord Corwallis was great at hanging Irish patriots at least

Corwallis, of course, at least KNEW he bought his commission and in his moments of candor gloried in the preference his status as primogenitor in an Anglican world governed by Test Acts .

That is what the “Protestant Cause” meant to people like Cornwallis: wealth and preference usually without any pretence of merit only class privilege. That was the “Old Affirmative Action” for “White Anglo Saxon Males” (chiefly of course first born sons and heirs –no bastards or Irish need apply)

The Affirmative Action Brats of today –in literature, business and politics- of which Mr. Obama is most splendid example of what is, now, probably a permanent hereditary “title” of nobility –meaning people like Obama get preference based on the theory that there was discrimination in the past which has to be made good today and “forever more”.

Which means true excellence and merit in America is dead or dying in many fields of endeavor especially literature but also in business, government, finance, law, medicine. Obamacare, if it endures will probably be the end of the American era of dominance in medical technology and developments. Gradually our obsession with “fairness” , a “level playing field” (instead of a “square deal” for all), and racial and gender quotas will destroy and stifle our cultural life and our industrial productivity. More and more the mediocre and the non-producers will gobble up the best jobs and the most financial aid while taxing and discriminating against the productive and truly creative elements of American society.

Soon all insurances and all our medical programs as well as our schools and universities will be run by clones of Mr and Mrs. Obama. Big Brother would be less of a threat to human freedom than such an insidious lie as what is being foisted on Americans today. In fact, the growing Bold State is, perhaps, a stealth form of leveling and Socialism that will one day wipe out families, private lives, private religion and even free thought and speech.

Not a boot in the face of humanity forever but vapid teleprompter speeches on autoplay forever and a pauperized general public whose paper dollars will blow away in the wind like so many Weimar marks and whose happiness and confidence will be slowly crushed by confiscatory taxation and a debt load that can never be paid only repudiated and defaulted on until we in America are poorer and more miserable than Argentina or Weimar Germany.

Mr. Obama is no Hitler nor a Stalin; no he is more like helpless and hapless the president of a Banana Republic or Honorius a Roman emperor who enjoyed dreaming and reigning and partying but had not the slightest idea how even to defend or pay for a single legion or a single villa. Trilling would have understood what I am getting at and where I am coming from. He too would have been astonished that our first Black president was not a Frederick Douglas or even a Ralph Bunche or a Martin Luther King but someone more akin to Reconstruction Era politicians, Haitian presidents of old or even Boss Tweed.

Of course that is not fair to Boss Tweed. The Solyndra bankruptcy and the total losses of the Obama administration will probably dwarf anything Boss Tweed ever did.

RICHARD K. MUNRO

October 22, 2011

http://www.city-journal.org/comments/index.php?story=7546⦴

RE: THREE FAMINES by T. Keneally STARVED FOR EVIDENCE INDEED

2011-09-04T04:45:00.000-07:00

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904888304576473074248245158.html?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_Books_8&mg=reno-secaucus-wsj#articleTabs_comments%3D%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Blaming Britain (and in the subtext "capitalism") for the Irish Potato Famine and claiming it was a "holocaust" as bad as anything the Nazis did is old hat for extreme Irish nationalists. They almost always fail to note that there was a Potato Famine in the Scottish Highlands at the same time which led to hundreds of thousands moving to lowland cities or emigrating. They also fail to notice that many Britons contributed to famine relief funds, a fact pointed out by Andrew Roberts. Queen Victoria was not aloof from these trials as can be seen by her personal letters and the personal interest she showed in alleviating the suffering of famine victims contributing large sums for charity and famine relief. The famine was very real. As as a descendant of Irish and Scottish Gaels a strong memory of the Great Hunger (An T-Acras Mor) was part of our heritage. We often debated the causes and the policies of the governments at that time but the main conclusion was that it was absolutely fatal for any society to be based so heavily on a monoculture such as became the case in rural Ireland and in the Scottish Highlands.

Thomas Keneally is of course a novelist looking for sensational stories and I think one last chance to knock Britain the Commonwealth which he despises. But Keneally goes beyond any of the "Famine was deliberate school" to link Britain to other great famines such as the Bengal Famine of 1943-1944 and the Ethiopian famines of the 1970's and 1980's.

But Andrew Roberts is right these were not the greatest food shortages in modern history.

There is no doubt that Stalin's collectivization induced famines were among worse and largest and most unnecessary famines in all history. The Kulaks were efficient and productive farmers; they were killed for reasons of ideology and revenge and Stalin's paranoia more than anything else.

Greater in scope and numbers of victims has to be Mao's Chinese famines in the 1960's. In the Great Leap Forward the hills were denuded of trees to smelt iron and entire populations of birds were eradicated on orders of the Communist Party. This led to huge infestations of insects which devastated crops.

We all know of the hunger and famine in Nazi occupied Europe, particularly Russia but even Hitler's "Great Hunger" was brief compared to Stalin's and Mao's.

And in the case of the great totalitarian dictators famine was used as weapon and it was government policy to confiscate food and to deny food aid to victims. It was never British policy in 1943-1944 to confiscate food from civilians or to deny them any food aid in Bengal. As Andrew Roberts points out the Allies were in a desperate life and death struggle with Axis forces in Burma. Yes, they could have chosen not to supply Allied Troops and allowed the Japanese Militarists to conquer Bengal. But can anyone believe -can anyone actually believe!!!- that the Japanese policy towards starving civilians would have been benevolent? Their record in China, on the Death Railway, Allied POW's and in their occupied countries makes such a notion impossible for any fair and rational observer to even consider that anything Britain and her allies did could compare to the vastness of Axis war crimes.

It was never British policy to confiscate food from civilians and denying them food aid in Ireland during the famine years 1845-1851. And it is a great stretch to include Ethiopia in this mix because Britain was no longer a major player in that region of Africa nor a dominant world power.

Keneally's greatest calumny of all is not against Britain or her Commonwealth but against Prime Minister Winston Churchill. To this man and to his leadership we in the West owe our very freedom. It was he, not Stalin, who defied Hitler and made it possible for the Allies to hold on until the full strength of the United States could be brought to bear. To even consider placing Churchill on the same level of murderous terror and ruthlessness as Hitler, Stalin or Mao is contemptible and of course places into doubt Mr. Keneally's objectivity and accuracy as an author.

To write such lies and calumnies is to be on the level of a far-left or far-right propagandist with no respect for the facts and no attempt at finding the truth.

"Starved for evidence" is right. Thomas Keneally may be right that we must investigate famines and unavoidable human tragedies and learn from them. No rational person could be joyous at the suffering and starvation of millions. But there is a vast difference between catastrophes that are a direct and deliberate policy of a government and policy and catastrophes that are acts of God that no one could have predicted and that no one really wanted.

By the way, my wife and I have belonged to Children International for over 25 years and are sponsoring and have sponsored children in the Bengal region of India. We are not indifferent to the suffering of others in our own land and in distant lands. We know it is not enough to share the crumbs from the feast. We make a real sacrifice to make sure our monthly contributions are paid and we also make voluntary donations for Easter, Christmas, our sponsored child's birthday and also special needs requests. We know our sponsored children by name and correspond with them. We can never forget the hungry, the thirsty and the orphans of empire. But we do not dwell on thoughts of blame, hatred and revenge. Instead we live a life of service and dedicate a portion of our modest income to charity.

We can question to what extent governments are responsible for famine relief, farm policy and foreign aid. But to me the historical lesson is clear: the greatest man-made famines in the world have been induced by Totalitarian governments of the Far Right and the Far Left not by corporations like Nestle, American presidents or British Prime Ministers. The real question we should ask ourselves is why certain economic systems are unable to feed their own people and how authoritarian governments actively use food coupons and famine as a weapon of revenge. That is a famine story I would like to hear more about.

Self-Reliance and Individualism have their limits.

2011-08-12T05:15:00.000-07:00

The brave man is not afraid to serve, voluntarily a greater cause than he for the common good. Note I said voluntarily. I recognize my debt to others and the civil society in which I live. God made us strong only for a while so that we can help others. One cannot only think of one's self but i also believe in the virtue of self-reliance because I know that in self-reliance is great strength, joy and dignity. But I am also wise enough to know that one man alone is not enough; united we stand -as free men with a free choice-divided we fall. The virtue of self-reliance and individualism if taken the extreme is a flawed ideal that constricts our social, national and our personal emotional natures. No man is an island; we live and flourish in communities. It is in the context of a civil society and its social structures that great things can be done and achieved never forgetting the right to individual freedom, individual conscience to worship God (or not) as one wishes in one's private life. I believe very strongly in the private life, my private religion and my private languages but i am also a citizen. I have individual rights but I also have duties to perform for my school, my community, my state, my nation and my house of God. If you do not know such virtues or such community spirit then I pity you. You are missing out on the chance to help others and be helped by them and to gain the love and gratitude of your neighbors and your fellows. RICHARD K. MUNRO

Caledonia

2011-08-12T03:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl4oIpF-YpU

http://bartholomewmaps.com/gaelic/test_mapping_150px.asp?xcoord=900&ycoord=600&xreal=900&yreal=600&idx=277653#demo

A Munro sleeping on a rock

Auld Lang Syne: The Leal and True Men arrive:
France August 1914 THEY SHALL NOT PASS!!!
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

ARTICLE ONE OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

2011-08-12T02:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&note_id=10150350839669369

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1144187/?site_locale=en_GB

An Eternal Bond:WWI Jocks and Doughboys

2011-08-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&note_id=10150349841119369#!/note.php?note_id=10150161410644369

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030305671.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40815F93F5C1B728DDDAB0894D9405B878DF1D3

Dear Sir:

I want to thank you for your thoughtful and moving tribute to the Doughboys. Indeed “Pershing’s army has finally retired from the field. The drum is stilled….”

I am descended from World War II and World War I veterans and I have an especial love and respect for the Doughboys.

My father and uncles served in the American forces during WWII but my Scottish grandfather served in a Highland Regiment –the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders- from August 1914 until May 1919. His name was Thomas Munro, Sr. (1886-1963) and he received the Military Medal for Valour during 2nd Ypres (1915). He was one of only three men in his company to serve the entire war without being killed or seriously wounded.

One of the happiest days of his life was when they got the news that the United States had declared war on Germany in April 1917. He was stationed at Salonika at the time and all the talk was that the Balkans could be abandoned to prepare for a last ditch defense against the Germans on the Western Front. My grandfather survived 2nd Ypres –barely, and Gallipoli and the Struma Valley but he probably would not have survived 5th Ypres. He knew then the Allies would win the war and so he had this photo taken and sent to my grandmother with the note; “Dear Mary, running to catch the post. With America in the war victory cannot be far off. Your loving husband, Thomas.” He always felt he literally owed his life to the Doughboys.

He and his Scottish pals volunteered en masse in response to the declaration of war following the violation of Belgium’s neutrality by Germany. They were encouraged by Scottish Chiefs and their sons and nephews and notable Scots like Arthur Conan Doyle whose brother-in-law, nephews and brothers all enlisted (they would all be killed or die of their wounds).. One of the most famous people to enlist in the Argylls and to encourage others to do likewise was Harry Lauder’s son Captain John Lauder who was later killed in action after having been seriously wounded twice. Later Harry Lauder wrote “Keep Right On To the End of the Road” in honor of his son, the Argylls and all the Allied soldiers who experienced the Calvary of the Western Front.

Over 200,000 men enlisted in Glasgow –a number that seems incredible today- but not all of the men were Glaswegians or even Scottish. I would estimate that at least 50,000 were overseas Scots or people of Scottish sympathies of blood. We should remember many Americans as well as Canadians were in the war from the very beginning. My grandfather grew up playing shinty in the Highlands (he never played football or soccer) but during the war he played baseball in Salonika in 1917 with the Americans and Canadians in the Allied Forces there. So there were Canadians and Americans in the Argylls as well as Italians, Irish, English, Scandinavians, Jews, Catholics and Protestants.

My grandfather’s best friend was called American Johnny Robertson by everyone because he was a naturalized US citizen. Robertson just happened to be in Glasgow at the time of the declaration of war and so got caught up in all his enthusiasm. Robertson, whose photograph can be seen in the Edison museum with Thomas Edison, was an electronics and communications expert. He was a master of improvisation and of keeping phone communications between the front and the rear. I never knew him of course he died in 1941- but my father and grandfather knew him very well and my father saw the letter of recommendation signed by Thomas Edison that “American” Johnny always carried with him. I own books that belonged to Johnny Robertson –called “Uncle Johnny” by my father which Robertson had given to my father in 1938 before he returned to Scotland after a second long sojourn in America that began in 1920. He and my grandfather were roommates and travelled all over America working on various construction projects in New York, Baltimore, Galveston , Texas and other places.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40815F93F5C1B728DDDAB0894D9405B878DF1D3

Today we sometimes think World War I was all for nothing and the men who enlisted were naïve but to those men they were defending the lifeline of their country for if Belgium and the channel ports had fallen to the Germans and their U-Boats the British Isles would have been in a precarious position as we were later to see during WWII. They knew Kaiserism was a real danger to the peace, freedom and independence of the English-speaking peoples as well as others.

Hence the dogged determination by the British and Commonwealth forces to hold on to Ypres. Over 250,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers would give their lives in the desperate defense of the Ypres Salient. My grandfather and his Scottish pals helped hold the Ypres Salient at 2nd Ypres; they arrived at the Western Front in January 1915 and the fighting started to heat up gradually in March 1915 until it exploded in a terrific battle of hellish proportions that saw the first wide-scale use of poison gas by the Germans. Some of the fiercest fighting took place from April 1915 and early May specifically from May 8 to May 13th. The Argylls spent 36 straight days in combat without any relief and much of the time individual companies were cut off and virtually surrounded without any officers or NCO’s.

Privates like Colin Campbell Mitchell, Sr., took command and organized strong points, rationing food and water and resupplying themselves at night from the bodies of dead soldiers. He was later given a battlefield commission in the Argylls to captain. The Argylls had very few machine guns but the men had four or five rifles a piece –usually the Smelly, the Lee-Enfield Mark III with the spitzer .303 high velocity ammunition. They were lucky to be armed in abundance with the best bolt action infantry rifle ever produced. A reasonably trained soldier could easily get off 15 rounds a minute but in the top British regiments most of the soldiers were trained to shoot over 20 rounds a minute even reaching 30 rounds in a crisis situation. As guns and ammunition were plentiful this gave the British and Commonwealth troops a decisive advantage especially in defense where the Germans could not utilize their heavy machine guns. There were many stories of squads holding a flank using multiple rifles against hundreds of attackers.

None of the allied troops had any gas masks to begin with and their only defense was blankets, rubberized tents and urine impregnated handkerchiefs. One of the reasons the Argyll positions were not lost is that medical students from Glasgow University were quick to indentify the gas as chlorine gas and rapidly improvised a defense. The urine impregnated handkerchiefs acted as a primitive filter and gave soldiers a few minutes of extra protection. In the first days their only tactic was to take cover in shelters that were as air tight as possible and hope that the winds or rain would blow away the gas. Individual soldiers would venture out protected only by motorcycle goggles and medical gauze impregnated with urine. Later they got supplies of chemicals to do the same thing and supplemented with captured German gas masks. The leader of the Argylls during the most desperate days was Captain Dick Donald Porteous (called “Port” by the men); he was killed in the very last stage of the battle by a German sniper on May 10, 1915. My grandfather said Captain Porteous was a great and beloved man and that he could have been as great as Churchill. So many talented and good men were lost in that terrible war.

Today 2nd Ypres is largely forgotten but the heroism and resourcefulness of the soldiers of the 81st Brigade and the 27th Division which included Indian troops (“Dins”) , the Black Watch, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Highland Light Infantry matched anything in the annals of human warfare including Balaklava which was the signature Thin Red Line moment of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

But all that sacrifice would have been for naught if had not been for the Doughboys like Frank Buckles, Joyce Kilmer (killed in action), Col. “Wild Bill” Donovan, (Medal of Honor), Marine Sergeant Major Dan Daly (Twice awarded the Medal of Honor).,Alvin York (Medal of Honor), Eddie Rickenbacker, Quentin Roosevelt (killed in action and now buried next to his brother another Doughboy Gen Theodore Roosevelt Jr who died after D-day –also awarded the Medal of Honor.) and Major Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion (Medal of Honor). Behind them was a force of Doughboys almost 2,000,000 strong. The fact that only about half of them reached Europe is beside the point. Their mere existence and their readiness to cross the Atlantic to go Over There completely demoralized the Germans and at the same time gave the Allies the courage they needed to hang on just a little longer until relief finally came.

Britain, the Democracies of Europe and the world owe a very great debt of gratitude to the American fighting men of the twentieth century. We should remember their fortitude and their selfless devotion to duty in the cause of liberty.

It is not an exaggeration to say the whole of Western Europe and the Free World is their monument. NE OBLIVISCARIS: do not forget. And to the Doughboys I give personal thanks and pledge to honor their memory the rest of my life. I had only one grandfather growing up (the other was killed in August 1918) but I was blessed to have at least one and get to know him, love him and hear his stories. Many other sons and grandsons were not so lucky.

Richard K. Munro

Why do people riot, loot and steal?

2011-08-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&note_id=10150349841119369

Why do people riot, loot and steal?

.by Richard K. Munro on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 7:08pm.Richard K. Munro

Urban "Youths" at play

Sorry to say but this doesn't look like New York's Finest; they seem demoralized and underequipped.

People who have three square meals a day, free education, free healthcare, cheap public transportation, free or subsidized housing do not riot like san cullottes due to a lack of material necessities. They steal because they are greedy and amoral and have TOO MUCH free time on their hands. Idleness is the devil's workshop is an old saying. How true. They are uncontrolled because they are a spoiled entitlement mob expecting more bread, more booze, more holidays and more circuses (entertainment). Hard working decent people of honor would be ashamed to act as they do (I am sure still most British people are horrified and ashamed at the behavior of this state-subsidized underclass).

Reading is a very special and inestimable pleasure

2011-08-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

Two well-known Shakespearean actors: Maurice Evans & Charlton Heston
"Human see, human do."

George Taylor (Charlton Heston): "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape." quoted in the current blockbuster.

Most famous quote by a Shakespearan actor in the 20th century (Maurice Evans as Dr. Zaius)

Maurice Evans had fun in Hollywooed for laughs and lucre

"Dr. Zira, I must caution you. Experimental brain surgery on these creatures is one thing, and I'm all in favor of it. But your behavior studies are another matter. To suggest that we can learn anything about the simian nature from a study of man is sheer nonsense. Why, man is a nuisance. He eats up his food supply in the forest, then migrates to our green belts and ravages our crops. The sooner he is exterminated, the better. It's a question of simian survival."

Also "The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago."

Reading for pleasure is a vital part of reading development. In order to read well one must have an adequate vocabulary and the discipline to concentrate. One does not develop vocabulary by watching TV sit-coms. One does not develop vocabulary having casual conversations. One develops vocabulary and cultural literacy by a steady habit of reading and when one is young, in particular, by being read to. I enjoy recorded books occasionally as a change of pace but for me they could not replace books because, frankly, there are not many quality recorded books and certainly the range is very small. Book reading seems today almost as much a minority pleasure as in Fahrenheit 451. Yet, in the end, reading and writing are both inestimable pleasures. One is foolish not to give reading a try.

Of course, some of the reading we do will not be for pleasure. Reading tax information or reading an application for a passport. However, I believe reading is a habit and the pleasures of reading are developed by choice and whim. If you enjoy reading adventure or about hunting and fishing or sports or military history great. As a boy I was an avid reader of sports biographies and comic books. Then I graduated to science fiction. I read the entire collections of autors I liked. And of course science fiction led me to read H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Steven Vincent Benet, Jules Verne, and Joseph Conrad.

You don't have to be a specialist. You can develop an amateur interest in the subject and as you become an aficionado you will enjoy it even more. I also believe there is a place for reading aloud. Some prose and some poetry is best when read aloud. Recently I was hiking round the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. As it is my habit I also carry some small books with me to read in a spare moment. I have not yet graduated to Kindle or Nook. I enjoy having a physical book which I can carry with me and where I can underline the words. I enjoy reading the WSJ on line when I am on vacation or in a remote location. There it is a delight to have access in a place where there are no kiosks. Nevertheless, I prefer reading the newspaper and when I like articles I can keep them. They are already printed out. One thing people do not mention is that the permant book like the permanent magazine article or the printed encourage re-reading. Re-reading fine literature is one of the great pleasures of reading. On-line articles have the great virtue of being easy to share and interactive, which is wonderful in its own way. But I rarely re-read or closely read on-line articles. If I like a book review I print it out to keep for future reference.

The 20th century scholar, author and teacher Gilbert Highet gave good advice on reading: Highet recommends to readers to read for pleasure and mature their reading pleasures. Highet believed it was important to choose an “important author” and read all of his or her work. He argues that such a regimen helps readers to “escape from themselves.” It certainly will develop taste and stamina for reading. Highet felt “it is also valuable to push directly through the works of a good author, trying to see them as a single creation, appreciating their wholeness and their uniqueness and leaving the details for later study.”

I have followed his advice with a few authors, Conrad, Hemingway, Orwell, Twain, Camilo José Cela, Emile Zola, Cervantes, and a lot but not quite all of Chesterton, or Dickens or Shakespeare. Of course, I have followed Highet’s advice with his own work. Many of his books remain in print; The Classical Tradition, The Art of Teaching, Man’s Unconquerable Mind are enduring books. I consider Highet’s best essays on par with anything Orwell or Chesterton wrote. Most of his books and essays are still are in print. A great anthology could be compiled just publishing his numerous book reviews. I have read dozens of them from the 1950’s and 1960’s.

In addition, Highet, suggests reading about “one single important and interesting subject: for instance, the paintings of the cave men; or the agony of modern music; or the rebirth of calligraphy; or recent theories of the creation and duration of the universe.” Once again, not everyone is going to have the same tastes but one of the purposes of reading widely is to acquaint yourself with different subject areas. Surely one or another will be more interesting to the individual reader. As a teacher I have always tried to encourage extra credit and individual choice in reading as much as possible.

Highet also believe it was important to read across a whole variety of genres, not merely fiction or merely non-fiction but also travel writing, biography, history, poetry, drams, stories, novels. Highet said “we might read a large selection of poems and prose passages selected in order to illuminate one single aspect of the world. One such volume would go into a pocket or a handbag and yet last all summer.” Ravitch’s American Reader or his English Reader are some good modern examples but there are also the excellent Norton Anthologies. The Library of America has a wonderful series of anthologies, American Sea Writing, Reporting WWII, True Crime: an American Anthology, Baseball: a Literary Anthology and The Lincoln Anthology.

Reading Highet –who wrote this over fifty years ago is sometimes poignant because he often shows to me how he is closer to Victorian Scotland than we are. Also he also has become from being my contemporary to becoming a historic figure for us living in the 20th century. Highet wrote most of his best work 50 and 60 years ago.

Highet wrote: “..one might decide to spend the summer with a single great or at least a single interesting man. For example, every doctor should know The Life of Sir William Osler by Harvey Cushing, and after reading that fine book he would enjoy himself if he went on to read Osler’s own writings. Osler never tired of complaining that most doctors had minds too limited and too confined to the physical symptoms which they observed in the routine of their practice. He kept trying to enlarge his own mind and spirit, and his books will therefore enlarge the mind and spirit of his readers, whether they are of the medical profession or not.”

It seems to me Mr. Highet lived in a happier, more sane world in which scholars and teacher could safely assume SOME of their students, neighbor and readers would be broadly educated and have wide interests beyond their own narrow field. Highet assumed there were a well-read general reading public who would seek delight and entertainment as well as enlightenment in the books they read. Highet was sure that if they read and re-read “Great Books” and the best of modern literature he or she would find self-improvement to their liking.

Personally, I cannot imagine a life without books, without literature and without poetry and song. Pop culture and the movies are mildly entertaining but very superficial. The best that can be said for them is that they are an easy shared pleasure.

But even entertaining films like The Rise of the Planet Apes have their literary precursors. La Planète des singes 1963, (Planet of the Apes)of course was first a French novel by Pierre Boulle. Boulle’s book was also influenced by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Well’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.

In this last novel there is an a wise “Ape-Man” - A who considers himself equal to men and capable of “big think.” Even earlier than H.G. Wells is Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island (1874). Also influential was Stephen Vincent Benet’s famous short story “By the Waters of Babylon” (1937) originally called the “Place of the Gods”.

Benet’s work, which was written as a reaction to the Nazi fire-bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica is fascinating because at first one is not certain of the time and place. We find out that the Place of the Gods is actually the bombed out ruins of New York City. It is also fascinating because it was written long before the development of the Atomic bomb or missles yet Benet’s seemed to know that once world war broke out advances in military technology would be ever more dangerous and might even destroy most of humanity. The complete story can be read on the internet. http://www.esm.vt.edu/~sdross/text/babylon1.html

From Richard Connell's famous story; here I saw the movie first. The movie is fairly close to the book except they added a sexy Fay Wray to make it more interesting and to allow for a more chipper dialogue. Many adventures add a romantic element to add drama and make it more appealing.

There is nothing wrong with reading comic book versions or abridged versions; they can be very entertaining and may lead the reader to read the original later. I cheerfully admit to having read most of the classics from age 5 to 12 in the Classic Illustrated version. I read some of them dozens of times.

Flight from the Plaent of the Apes (In German); a book dervied from the movie

The idea of human decline and the fall of civilization due to war, disease or uncontrolled science is a theme seen over and over again. One of the reasons it appeals to people is that we are all fascinated by the very real possibility of the fall of our civilization and the possibility of a “New Dark Age made more sinister and more protracted,” as Churchill himself remarked during WWII. “by the lights of perverted science.” Here there are a plethora of thrilling stories: Well’s The Time Machine (1895) and his The Shape of Things to Come (1933), Nightfall (1941) by Isaac Asimov, or his Foundation Trilogy (1951) “There will come soft rains” (1950) by Ray Bradbury. Then there is I am Legend (1954). Another fine thriller is The White Plague (1982) by Frank Herbert. Film, it seems to me, is very dependent on literature for its best stories and inspiration. In other words even your movie going pleasure is improved by a knowledge of classic film and classic books!

We recall Cicero's speech, Pro Archia, with its famous defense of literature and quoted by Petrarch, Jefferon, Gibbon, Toynbee, Highet and countless others. . Haec studia adolescentiam alunt…"These studies sustain youth and entertain old age, they are an ornament during prosperity. They offer a refuge and solace in hard times; they delight us when we are at home but do not hinder us in the world outside. They are with us in the evenings, in our wanderings and travels and when in the country..."

Petrarch was very fond of this quotation and whenever Cicero used the phrase "litterarum lumen", "the light of literature", Petrarch drew a sketch in the margin of a candle (still used as a symbol for enlightenment today).
Sometimes it is good to read serious literature and other times it is good to slum and enjoy more popular genres such as sports, survival literature, adventure or romance. All reading is good in that it sharpens the mind and improves one’s fluency and enriches one’s vocabulary and cultural literacy. Nonetheless, one need not read Moby Dick every day nor write it; one can merely correspond with friends and read as the whim suits.

In conclusion, we may not all be Joseph Conrads or Hemingways or Andrew Roberts or Stephen Ambrose or Edith Wharton but we can write book reviews, blogs and letters.

And this too is part of the Republic of Letters.

And we can read and share our reading experiences with others -for our own edification as well as for others.

Reading is one of the greatest and most lasting pleasures for those wise enough to cultivate this habit.

If you want to be a reader it really is very simple and not that expensive.
Just read. And by all means read for pleasure as much as you can.

Yes, I often tell my students “Try it! You might like it.”

Or as Unamuno said: “leer, leer, leer!” READ, READ, READ.

Wise advice by the most prolific of Spanish authors.

Note: (Cicero Pro Archia

Poeta 7.16).

Inner excellence matters more than physical appearance

2011-08-06T04:37:00.000-07:00

I am presently visiting Phoenix, Arizona where my son and daughter-in-law are residing at present. It is an amazing oasis in the middle of what must have been a burning desert only 100 years ago. I thought Bakersfield, California was hot but Phoenix makes Bakersfield seem tame by comparison as Phoenix is more Texas-like in its 100+ degrees every day (109 day after day). One effect this has is that when one goes for a walk (I have no car) one has to have some water, sun screen (60+ or more) and a hat. It is interesting to visit with so many young people and hear their views and to meet both athletes and business people. When one comes to a place like this, which is rather far from the centers of culture and far from the sort of people one usually consorts with one is taken aback at times.

Of the young people I met -all college graduates- not a single one reads the daily newspaper or subscribes to a single magazine. What news they get they get from the Daily Show and the Internet but it seems to me they are far more interested in 1) gossip 2) popular culture which includes vampire shows and pop music 3)professional sports and or gambling and 4) sex and pornography (not necessarily in that order). All of the young men in question had his own very attractive "squeeze" (some married some not) but still the talk turned to a discussion on collections of hard core pornography. The kind that makes Playboy seem like Shakespeare! It appeared there was a fascination with hedonism of all kinds particularly the sexual but also food and drink and simple animal pleasures. Everyone was having a Good Time and it seems every lust and appetite was being satisfied and new stimulants for lust were being invented. It appears to me that much of the wealth of America is being squandered before my very eyes on women, drink, drugs, sports, gambling and other modern circuses.

We always talk about education and the future but we must consider the very real possiblity that the American people might just commit suicide. People respect education in a way because they know it is a necessary outward sign of a person of means but that doesn't mean they really like it. Suppose our economic problems were solved and the work week were shortened and vacations of six weeks or more were guaranteed. Which would these people prefer? Art? Music (fine music? Books? or video games, gambling and pornography? I know the new Planet of the Apes film is about to premiere. can't help thinking we MUST be closely related to apes because so few of us understand that hedonistic pleasures are not the same as happiness.

Ingrid Berman in her 20's circa 1943

Irish actress Maureen O'Hara still spry in her 90's

A young actress without any English, French or Italian (she later added these to her native Swedish and German):
INGRID BERGMAN circa 1937 about 19 years old

I thought of the young women I saw last night. As I said they were all very attractive, far above average I would say and all less than 25 years of age; perhaps one or two was 27 or so. Females must be especially burdened by the attention they receive for their pretty faces, curling locks and slender appealing figures. From the time they are young such women must have been flattered by males and evaluated heavily only in terms of their physical appearance.

Unfortunately, if a woman only tends to her looks and physical appearance because she figures that is the way to get a man's attention she may let her inner gifts and talents atrophy. Such a woman puts all of her efforts into enhancing and maintaining her physical beauty at the price of distorting her natural self to pleasure others, chiefly males. Despite all the furor of Equal Rights and Feminism some things have not changed at all especially here in the provinces.

I think it is mistake many people make -and this includes men as well as women. They put all their efforts in managing their physical appearance and the impression they make on others. I could not help but think that some of these young women ten or fifteen years hence will be discarded for "newer models". The lucky ones will have at least gotten married to someone with some money and thus gained some security. Yes, the world may reward us for wrong or superficial reasons -such as our youth and physical beauty- but what really matters now and in the long run is character and culture -who we are inside and who we are becoming.

All of us seek the happy life and a secure life but many confuse the means -wealth and rank- with life. The really worthwhile things are family, children, friends, faith, good books, time spent together with shared leisure -swimming, going to a ball game, telling stories, singing, laughing, cooking family recipes passed down from lip to ear and to tongue, watching fireworks and hiking in the Grand Canyon. The things that make life worthwhile are sound, healthy virtuous activities not the external means that seem to produce it. We are all tempted to buy the fanciest car, the special shoes and the stylish shirt. I saw shirts priced at over $100 each. I saw shoes and accessories priced at over $500 each. But I must say I was very happy with my discounted cotton shirts from JC Penny and my comfortable, well-fitting New Balance (American-made) walking shoes.

But just when I was about to write off an entire generation of Americans I found myself renewed at the ball park.

There I saw the great mass of Americans lower middle class, middle class and upper middle class, enjoying a common moment of leisure. There I saw many families with young children -2, 3 or even 4 -this isn't Madrid or Rome or Berlin or New York. One of the most touching moments was when they had a romantic frame on the scoreboard for kisses and they moved across the stadium crowd for couples from 18 to 80 and asked them to show us all a kiss. Then they focused in on a pretty young Hispanic woman and a muscular young American with a short crew cut -he might have been an off duty soldier- and he asked her live not for a kiss but on one knee "WILL YOU MARRY ME and MAKE ME THE HAPPIEST MAN IN THE WORLD". The young woman was completely surprised and doubly surprised to be on television and on the big screen of the scoreboard. She literally had to wipe the salt tears from her eyes and gave a big , almost shy smile to the entire crowd and then said yes (THE ENTIRE CROWD CHEERED "YES") and then kissed him. The lucky man then took out an engagement ring and placed it on her finger. My son said to me, "Well, Dad, what do you think of that?" And I sad, "I hope they live happily ever after!"

Some people become very pessimistic that young people are impossible, that illegal immigrants are going to destroy this country, that the Black hate the White and the White hate the Brown etc. But when you go out teach the people as I have, and go to their weddings and baptisms, and see them at their pastimes you have to feel very, very optimistic. Because when it comes down to it the melting pot is still bubbling on.

John F. Kennedy said: "And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future."

My mother used to say that "life and love were just a brief moment in time, so let us forgive each other and let us love one another while we can." When we walk down the street with our son -who is now 26- I remember when we walked out of the Polo Grounds and the old Yankee Stadium three generations of my family. And as the generation of leaves so are the generations of men! It is hard to remember now the loved and the lost but we must remember them with gratitude and tranquility for I was very lucky to have had them as mentors and companions if only for a brief moment in time. Yes, we are all mortal that is a certainty. What lies beyond is not; it may be described as a fond hope. As Jake Barnes said: "Isn't it pretty to think so." My father, ever the sceptic said, "I vote yes for all the good it will do me."

I recently re-read MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Viktor Frankl. I first read it almost 40 years ago and I think I have read it at least once every five years since then. It was not the edition I was used to but a new edition belonging to my son which he had bought at ASU. The older book had a different introduction by a psychologist a certain Dr. Gordon Allport; this edition (2006) had and introduction written by a clergyman, Rabbi Harold S. Kushner. Kushner wrote: "terrible as it was, his experience in Auschwitz reinforced what was already one of his key ideas: Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.

I think the reason so many teachers are happy despite everything is that their work is very, very significant. They are not usually rewarded in a material sense but the teacher's true rewards is the love and gratitude of his or her disciples. And I think teachers find joy when they have to be courageous during difficult times.

Think back to Columbine when a teacher sacrificed his life to save his students.

Frankl's love for his young wife -torn from his breast before even a final kiss were possible-is very, very moving: "That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of us wife. Occasionally I looked in the sky, where the starts were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife' image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: THE SALVATION OF MAN IS THROUGH LOVE and IN LOVE. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be if only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way -an honorable way- in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved {MUNRO: I would say BELOVEDS}, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

***

"My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I konw only one thing -which I have learned well by now. LOVE GOES FAR BEYOND THE PHYSICAL PERSON OF THE BELOVED. IT FINDS ITS DEEPEST MEANING IN HIS SPIRITUAL BEING, HIS INNER SELF. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importantance." ...nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved....."

Yes, Dr. Frankl suffered and was very unlucky. And he would say that suffering is of itself meaningless. We give suffering and sacrifice meaning by the way we respond to it. In our lives there will be forces beyond our ken and beyond our human control. There will be storms, floods, fires and acts of God and acts of the Godless. All our human posseessions could be smashed or taken from us. All those we love might be killed or separated from us forever. But if we live there is one thing , one freedom that no one can take away from us. That is how we respond to the storms, temptations and travails of life. Rabbi Kushner said, following Frankl, "you cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always, control what you will feel and do about what happens to you."

Argyll and Sutheland Highlanders arrive in France, August 1914:
The many Scottish Pals Aye the Floors o' the Forest are a' weed awa

They suffered over 6,000 killed and 25,000 casualties. My grandfather lost his brother, his brother-in-law, most of his best friends, over 10 first cousins, all of his commanding officers and NCO's from 1914. All of them. 1914-1918 was a journey of the cross for an entire generation of Scottish manhood; after 1918 over 400,000 Scots (10% of the population and 30% of the youth emigrated most never to return.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
'
We count our blessings.

I like to put quotations on my bulletin boards. I think I have found a new one for this fall. Teachers all over America must do what men and women will do and must suffer what teachers -especially American teachers must. But no matter what happens or what indignity we suffer we can control how we behave, how we feel and do something about what happens to us and our schools. We are not sticks upon strings adrift without pattern or hope; we are human beings and we are swimmers, strong swimmers. We can endure, we can reach the shore and we can carry on despite everything.

Re: IN GOD WE TRUST vs. E PLURIBUS UNUM

2011-01-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

CC: interested parties

Re: IN GOD WE TRUST vs. E PLURIBUS UNUM

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/mottoletter.asp

Recently there some controversy on President Obama quoting our "national motto." But which one?

What you have here is the clash of two traditions, zeitgeists or worldviews depending on which word one prefers. Much of the heated nature of contemporary American political debate derives from the clash of fundamental philosophical differences between the adherents of a more traditional Judeo-Christian world view (or Theism) and the more Enlightenment based Secular Humanistic view. The two mottos represent two different intellectual and philosophic movements. One is theistic or God-centered and the other is humanistic or human-centered.

Is there an unwritten constitution (meaning accepted traditions and customs) or is there only positive law as embodied in statues and judicial decisions? Do rights originate with the government or are they inherent or God-given?
It is the same clash of worldviews that says the rights of man are “life, liberty and property” (Locke’s formulation quoted in the U.S. Constitution) and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (Jefferson’s formulation in the Declaration which is NOT part of the U.S. Constitution but could be said to be a part of America’s unwritten Constitution or tradition of freedom).

It is the same clash of worldviews that alleges that the Mojave Cross or the Pledge of Allegiance ought to be challenged as unconstitutional and in violation of the First Amendment–because they favor “religion”- and tomorrow that only a certain nomenclature is politically acceptable and traditional language as simple as “mankind” (instead of humankind) is worse than obsolete but representative of an invalid and bigoted worldview.

It is the same clash of worldviews that says by definition and tradition marriage is the legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife and the liberal relativistic viewpoint that marriage is what we construct or make up according to our legislature or even one judge totally disregarding popular sovereignty AND long established tradition.

There is no question that IN GOD WE TRUST is by law the national motto of the United States. Prior to 1956 it had been on US coins since 1864 and of course is part of our national anthem. It has only been on all US coins since 1955 (adopted by the unanimous vote of Congress). The national anthem was not the national anthem until 1931. It was the US Army anthem; it became popular when it was played before every major league baseball game during the 1917-1918 seasons in honor of the Doughboys. “In God we Trust” ultimately comes from Francis Scott Key’s poem and represents our Judeo-Christian heritage, specifically, I believe, the heritage of the Great Awakening which was a popular religious movement in the 18th century inspired primarily by the open air sermons of English preacher George Whitefield. Whitefield’s emotional rhetoric had a great influence on Patrick Henry who heard him speak as a child in company of his mother who became an adherent to Whitefield’s “New Light” Christianity. Benjamin Franklin, who published Whitefield’s sermons, said during the Constitutional Convention:

"I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages."

When Franklin spoke like this –alluding to the 127th Psalm- he was appeasing the theistic viewpoint of many of the Founding Fathers, their wives and their supporters that is to say those influenced by the Great Awakening. But Franklin also seems to imply a nation must be united by something such as a common language or culture or common values. “In God We Trust” became our official national motto in 1954 during a Republican administration (Eisenhower) but received almost no opposition from Democrats at the time –indeed most Southern Democrats voted for it. But an argument could be made that “In God We Trust” is an expression of the conservative American theistic worldview, a worldview which is chiefly defended, today, by Republicans. Liberal Democrats today are much more likely to support a secular humanistic view and to be Jeffersonian absolutists when it comes to “separation of Church and State.”

“E pluribus unum” is a Latin phrase that comes ultimately from a translation of a Greek philosophic quotation (probably the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus). The Latin phrase itself is variously attributed to St. Augustine from his Confessions and to a poem that at one time was attributed to Virgil. This Latin motto represents our classical humanistic Greco-Roman heritage; it is a hallmark of the secular Enlightenment as represented by Thomas Jefferson in particular. Ultimately, we should remember, the Democratic Party has its roots in Jeffersonian Democracy. “E Pluribus Unum” is, however, by tradition, our de facto joint national motto. The reason why it “E Pluribus Unum” never been officially adopted as our national motto may have to do with the suspicion ordinary Americans have of Latin mottos which were seen as aristocratic, elite or even Roman Catholic.

By contrast “In God We Trust” was almost unanimously voted our national motto and in recent polls is supported by over 90% of Americans. This is evidence that the American people believe deeply-still- in the traditions of the Bible (our Judeo-Christian heritage) as one of the pillars of our culture and civilization.

So the rivalry of these two mottos goes back to our founding and is related to the growth of our political parties with their slightly different worldviews. Liberal Humanists favor Lockean religious toleration and they hold that man (to them “humans”) is innately good and so they remain very optimistic that if they spend more money on education or this program or that they can transform a child’s innate tendency or a poor person’s innate tendency towards goodness into genuine virtue. “E pluribus unum” represents this optimism.

Nevertheless most liberal humanists, like Franklin, can peacefully coexist with Theism or “In God We Trust”-but not all. Liberal Humanists may rankle at the suggestion that they have a totalitarian tendency towards religious intolerance or political intolerance but the fact remains Epicurean humanism also has morphed into a New Left or Marxist Humanism which endorses PC speech codes, the elimination of religion from public and private life, an extreme statism and state ownership of property and the means of production for the “benefit” of the “people.” Voltaire said “ quoi que fassiez, écrasez l’ infâme” (“whatever you do crush that infamous thing”: i.e religion ); this is essentially the attitude of Newdow of the anti-Pledge of Allegiance Case. I thought it ironic he wanted to prevent the free choice of his daughter –who was not in his custody at the time- to say the pledge which is what the girl’s mother desired.

But to the New Left nothing matters but power and imposing the “right” or “politically correct” view. These New Left Secular Humanists may not support totalitarian dictatorship per se and insist they are supporters of democracy but they are blind to the fact that the growth of the power of the state may tend towards centralism and authoritarianism. In Glasgow they used to call people like this “Corry-fisted Sullivans”; people who could only see a threat to freedom from the Right and never from the Left. Most reasonable people today would agree that threats to our freedom can come from both quarters. We must never forget that laws mean power of the state over the individual. It is why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place; not to grant us rights but to limit the government (especially the Federal government).

The American political tradition of equality and “live and let live” implies tolerance but few advocate absolute and universal toleration. There can be no toleration of slavery, inhuman child labor, human sacrifice, traffic of human organs, the Gulags or the Nazi Holocaust. Such horrific aberrations are inconsistent with a free peaceful civil society –indeed with world peace- and a free people has a right to reject and fight against such tyrannical totalitarian world views. We, as Americans tolerate sincerely held private beliefs and thoughts but we do not tolerate actions that harm others. We distrust people who desire to deprive another of his or her legitimate freedom and dignity.

Most Americans sense that there is always a conditional right to toleration. We tolerate a wide variety of private behaviors and opinions and thought as long as those opinions do not disrupt education, block public traffic or commerce or harm, kill or terrorize others. John F. Kennedy said, “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state from the hand of God.” That is, we are “one nation, under God” or “In God We Trust.” This is very profound: for if rights are not natural or God-given to the individual then the State can grant rights or redefine them as it pleases or take them away according to what political group is in power. If we are “one nation, under God” it is implied that our government is limited.

If we are “E pluribus unum” it is implied that our liberty and strength come from our political union of states and of individuals and that we, the people, allow government to be strong. The essence of civic virtue is to believe in the value and importance of the “team”, of unity –the Union- and the necessity for individuals to be able to subordinate their interests, especially in moments of great national crisis, for the good of the survival and success of liberty and of the nation itself.

I remember the Stanley Kramer film INHERIT THE WIND with its magnificent performances by Fredrick March and Spencer Tracy. It was loosely based on the Scopes “Monkey” Trials. I remember at the very end of the trial Spencer Tracy –the Darrow-like character- picks up both the US Constitution and the Bible and carries both of them out of the court room seemingly to say BOTH were pillars of our civilization and both traditions –the Classical Humanist and Theist- could endure side by side. Personally, I think both mottos are very wise and good. Both mottos are posted in every classroom of my high school district and it is good for students and teachers to consider the origins of these ancient sayings. They represent the pluralism of our American political tradition and the peaceful coexistence of different world views which nevertheless embrace a common ground for the common good. I believe as Franklin did that these differences do not necessarily mean that America will be divided into two warring camps pledged to destroy each other. Carl J. Richard has written in THE BATTLE FOR THE AMERICAN MIND “Strongly held beliefs can be compatible with compassion and respect. The battle for the American mind must be fought with ideas, not bullets. “

RICHARD K. MUNRO

January 15, 2011

American Teacher

Kern HS District

Bakersfield, California

IN CHINA'S ORBIT by Niall Ferguson

2010-11-20T20:40:00.000-08:00

Read your piece today. One thing is certain i will put "Civilization the West and the Rest" on my reading list and will pre-order today if possible!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704104104575622531909154228.html

I found your basic thesis very convincing and when you had the Chinese saying "We are Masters now" I could not help but think in the back of your mind the British hearing this from the Americans if not in 1918 then surely in 1945-1946 and definitely by 1956 with the Suez Crisis. My family, which immigrated from Scotland en masse from 1927-1948, witnessed the last great flowering of the British Empire -which they and their kinsmen helped build and defend- and they also witnessed when the "Empire went smash" (a favorite line of my father's and grandfather's taken from the LIVES OF THE BENGAL LANCERS with Gary Cooper and Franchet Tone. My grandfather spent 8 years in the British Merchant Marine and so saw at first hand India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Victoria (BC), Australia, Capetown, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Alexandria, Cyprus, Constantinople (1919), Malta, Gibraltar, London, Glasgow, and Montreal. My kinsmen built the railroads in Argentina (hence the Munro suburb of Buenos Aires built around the Munro train station) and South America. He later spent 5 years in the Army (August 4 1914-May 10 1919 serving with the 3rd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and transferring to the 1st Battalion ASH in Dec 1914 first seeing action at Ypres January-May 1915 and thence on to Gallipoli, Salonika, the Struma Valley and Derian ending the his military service in Constantinople in 1918-1919 as part of the Allied Army of occupation. In the Second World War most of my immediate family served in the American forces (my father, my uncles and first cousins but of course we still had close ties to the Auld Country and so my parents and I knew many people who served in the 51st Highland Division, the British 8th Army and the RAF during WWII as well as some in the Canadian and Commonwealth Forces (Australia and New Zealand). My father was a quasi colonial officer in the Philippines 1944-1946 where he was offered a promotion to Captain and a regular army commission by General Sutherland (chief of staff to General MacArthur whom my father met). My father always said that if he had been in the British Army in 1857 or 1890 he would have accepted such an offer as that would have been the best career choice for a Scot with a "red brick" education (rather than elite public school). But my father, after consultation with my mother, turned that job officer down because he felt that American post 1946 would be booming. And indeed it did right up until the early 1970's. But even then my father was concerned with our ever growing appetite for imported oil. our trade deficit and our slow slipping away from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation. My father was trained as an English and French teacher but who got his MBA at NYU and spent his life as a businessman an financier so he had great insight to America's industrial growth and decline. He financed commercial construction (chiefly diners and restaurants), mining equipment, textile machinery, Caterpillar , John Deer, Case IH tractors, and Allis Chalmers tractors. He was very close the to president of Allis Chalmers in the 1960's and early 70's who like himself was a Glaswegian born Scot. I never met the man himself but my father recounted their many meeting and lunches. They often talked about the rise of Japan and Germany and of the decline of Britain. Often their discussions turned to America's fate as both men saw the same symptoms of decline in the USA due to hubris and the corruption and selfishness of the trade unions which were making American equipment uncompetitive and also gradually losing their reputation for reliability, efficiency and high technology. Although both men were Scots they considered themselves as part of the English-speaking world and in addition they believed only the English-speaking peoples were the only truly free people in the world. Neither man feared Russia whom they considered a backwater but they believed Asia was making a resurgence, particularly in Singapore, Korea (once part of the Japanese Empire), Taiwan (also once part of the Japanese Empire), Japan and Hong Kong. They did not think China could be far behind and sometimes they talked of India as well.

And here I was looking at your projections of growth with China as number 1 and India and the USA battling it out for number 2. These projections seem inevitable and if they come true will see the Pacific Rim come under the Chinese sphere of influence. It is only a matter of time when the 7th fleet will find it self having to make a strategic withdrawal to Hawaii or even San Diego leaving the Pacific Rim at the mercy of the Chinese. The only possible counter (the British being long out of the picture) is a resurgent India as a quasi-English speaking nation. China's great Achilles heel of course is its aging population and its one child policy which has lead to an enormous imbalance of males to females. For that reason one could imagine a scenario in which India-Australia-New Zealand-Canada and the USA have enough economic, military and demographic power to check Chinese hegemony. Whither China? China is one of the great countries and civilizations of the world and it has great scholarly traditions and an ancient mercantile tradition. This is now combined with Western Style education combined with a strong oriental work ethic. The two areas which China is lacking are political freedom and religious freedom. Without an ethical and moral base for their society and without political and personal freedom China may lack essential factors it needs to become a dominant superpower. When one factors India in -and then English-speaking countries of Africa plus Australia especially, Canada and the USA I don't think we can count out the English-speaking peoples. China MAY surpass the USA individually -if everything goes according to plan- or China may enter a period of crisis when it has no clean water, a complete collapse of river and ocean fishing and a collapse in its domestic agriculture. Because Ironically China is like Britain 1900-1945 in that it will be heavily dependent on the importation of food stuffs and raw materials. In addition it may have to import foreign workers and even foreign wives to meet its needs. If China fails to do this -they they may enter a period of slow decline starting in 2030 or 2040 as Japan is experiencing now. My father was fond of saying "money makes the world go round", "money forms the sinews of war" (paraphrase of Cicero), and "Demography is destiny." HIS father, Thomas Munro, Sr. added another quote from an older tradition:” Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh [but] in vain." (Ps 127:1)

Auld Pop (Thomas Munro, Sr.) said we should always look to God's providence with great humility. In all our affairs and business of a family and nation we had to depend upon His blessing. Both my father and Auld Pop believed that the family was the basis of our culture and civilization and If God were not acknowledged there we would have no reason to expect his blessing. Auld Pop often said the "best laid plans o' mice an' men aft gang agley." For enriching a family or nation some are so grasping and avaricious and Midas-like that they forget what really matters which is love and the happiness of one's race and line. Yes, that was an expression I often heard that we should have pride in our race and line (as Munros and as Gaels) and that we should "Dread God" (Biodh T-eagal Dhe Oirre; we should reverence unto God: this is the ancient Munro motto of course). Money was important, of course, because one needed bread "but man did not live on bread alone" and also "what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" I think it was very clear to me that my father and grandfather were unfailing opponents of the passion for wealth, advancement in society or the preoccupation with material things. Neither man played golf of spent more time than necessary with business associates preferring to spend their holidays and weekend entirely with their wives and children. My father and grandfather taught me to read and write before I went to school and gave me the rudiments of Spanish, Latin, French and Gaelic at home. They considered children to be God's gifts, a heritage, a blessing and special a reward : a thousand treasures in one. They often spoke of "our splendid ancient heritage" which I suppose was our entire civilization of music, poetry, literature, art, language, song and our faith and free institutions. My father and Auld Pop also lived through the Great Depression and had memories of the Highland Clearances and the Great Hunger of the 1840's. They had seen war, experienced hunger, exile and immigration and knew that there was no absolute security to be found in material wealth anywhere at any time. At best money could be a cushion but over and over I was told the "man was the gold and that a man could not be measured by the colour of his skin, or by his speech, or by his clothes and jewels, but only by the heart" (from Mika Waltari) Real wealth was richness of experience, joy in friends and family and delight in conviviality, music, verse, art and literature. So I wonder if Chinese society with its narrow, mean-spirited materialistic vision could ever have any inking of true justice, true freedom and true happiness. This spiritual deficit and this deficit of freedom may prove that China's greatness is house built upon sand. There is a cyclical drama in history and all national rises and falls are merely transient stages along the way though many people lack the broadness of perspective to perceive such a vision. But history remains dynamic subject to many "killer applications" as you say that drives it on and always above all else it seeks balance and equilibrium. The Greeks called this drama Hubris and Nemesis; the Indians called it the law of karma. Pride is not without trouble, Auld Pop would say so let us not be troubled by it. Supremacy, arrogance and domination are not the way of nature and they will be leveled in due course. Every nation has its age of ascendency and its age of decline. My father and Auld Pop spoke as Britons but also as Gaels and Scots who remembered a disastrous history which saw may kingdoms and empires that we served rise and fall. They knew English was the lingua franca of their age but they often said "English is the language of the banks and the long-range guns; which is why everyone speaks English including of course the English. When they cease to have gold and guns then it is vae victis all over again." You might recall vae victis was the Roman translation of one of their earliest humiliations when the Celtic Chief Brennus burnt Rome to the ground. And yes, the proud Celt got his comeuppance. "For when the beat of the kettle-drum of the steely-hard Roman come, taken were our own hill-tops, one by one." Though we face firmly towards the future, we never forget that past. RICHARD KEITH MUNRO

                                                     THOMAS MUNRO, Sr. Acting Colour Sergeant
                                                      1st Batallion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
                                                        Military Medal for Valour, April 15 1915 2nd Ypres.

He served side by side with Captain Dick Porteous (KIA May 10 1915), Colin Campbell Mitchell Sir HLI (later Captain in the Argylls) and American Johnny Robertson. NE OBLIVISCARIS DO NOT FORGET

                                                       "The Thin Red Line of Heroes"

STORM OF WAR by ANDREW ROBERTS

2010-04-01T20:44:00.001-07:00

Andrew Robert's FINEST HOUR STORM OF WAR is magnificent, June 29, 2011

By Richard Munro (Bakersfield, California) - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME) This review is from: The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Hardcover)

Why did Hitler and the Axis lose the war? Read Andrew Robert's STORM OF WAR and you will receive a magnificent, comprehensive and enthralling analysis of WWII. Roberts has not merely written a history which is intellectually coherent but also a piece of literature that is a model for language. What is also amazing about this book is that it is complete yet concise; it is only about 600 pages. I have been reading and listening to military history books and World War II books for over 50 years. On the shortest roster of must read WWII history books I would include STORM OF WAR. It was informative -teaching me new angles and facts I did not know- but also very moving. I too have visited many American and Commonwealth Cemeteries and there lay many a man we could claim as kith, kin and Regimental comrades. All throughout STORM OF WAR, Roberts never lets us forget that war is not a story of big ships and big tanks but a struggle of mortal men; all gave some but NE OBLIVISCARIS do not forget some gave all. STORM OF WAR is a very entertaining read. I have read and re-read several parts two and three times. If Hanson Baldwin or Sir Winston Churchill or Ike were still living they would say THIS IS ANDREW ROBERT'S FINEST HOUR. If one wants to understand how the Colours of the Democracies endured -stained as the Allied cause was by its alliance with one of the "Great Dictators" who caused the war (Stalin)- a very good place to begin is by reading ANDREW ROBERT'S STORM OF WAR.

I was also very impressed by the extent of Robert's scholarship. He not only examines rare archives and private collections some never before investigated but the best of the Times Literary Supplement and of WWII novels (Kaput) and literature such as Viktor Frank's Man's Quest For Meaning probably the single greatest book dealing with the Holocaust experience and one of the greatest books of the 20th century. Robert's references, quotes and bibliography alone are worth the price of the book as they are a first class compendium of the most interesting and useful works dealing with WWII history from almost every aspect. There are 22 maps (all in the beginning of the book and over 50 photos. The maps on the Battle of Stalingrad, el Alamein, Monte Casino/Anzio, Kursk and the Normandy landings are extremely useful and elucidating. I found myself referring to them constantly.

STORM OF WAR is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the origins of WWII, the peculiar alliance against the totalitarian Fascism of the Axis of the Western Democracies and Soviet Russia. I read Timothy Snyder's NYT Review -a very positive one-"AFTER THE LIGHTNING" (June 19, 2011) ; one of the criticisms Snyder made was that Roberts "conflated Russia with the Soviet Union." I didn't feel that was a mistake merely an instrument to clarify that the Soviet Union or Soviet Russia were one in the same just as "England" is often used as a synonym for "Britain" or the "UK". Roberts was writing for the average reader as well as the historian. When Roberts wrote of Russia or the Soviet Union (USSR) or Soviet Russia I think it was clear that he mean the polity which continued the Russian Empire in a different form as the so-called USSR.

STORM OF WAR begins with a short prelude and then is divided into three parts. Part I (Onslaught) covers all the invasions of the Dictators who caused WWII (this includes Hitler's blitzkriegs but also Stalin's. It was Stalin who made a pact with Hitler, helped supply his armies and himself invaded Poland and Finland). Many WWII histories -particularly older ones- underplay the significance of Stalin's early alliance with Hitler and Stalin's aggression. Here is, in concise form the Fall of France, The Battle of Britain, the battles for the Atlantic, Mediterranean and North Africa, Hitler's catastrophic mistake of invading Russia in 1941 and the Tokyo Typhoon when the Japanese militarists made their gamble to crush the US Navy at Pearl Harbor. "Last Hope Island" deals with the crucial period when Britain "stood alone" from June 1940-1941. But Roberts makes it clear this overstates the case somewhat because Britain in 1940 had the entire vast resources of the British Empire and Commonwealth behind them as well as the goodwill of millions of Americans. Secretly FDR helped the British in June 1940 with 500,000 Enfield Rifles, 129 million rounds of ammunition, 895 guns of 75 mm, 316 mortars, 25,000 BAR's plus 20,000 revolvers and many thousands of rounds of ammunition. When one realizes the magnitude of the defeat in France and the near disaster of Dunkirk these figures take on tremendous significance. In February 1941 the US shipped 1.35 million more Enfield Rifles. They may have saved Britain and the Suez in 1940 as well as 1941.

But Hitler's campaign to conquer Britain was doomed, as Roberts shows us because he did not "grasp the fundamental principles of air warfare." As Roberts notes, Hitler failed to develop a large fleet of four engine strategic bombers, he did not build enough modern fighters (and his long range Me110 was useless), he did not train the Germany army for amphibious warfare and he did not put enough faith in landing huge numbers of paratroopers to capture air bases in the opening stages of the Battle of Britain. One of the decisive factors in the Battle of Britain was the invention of radar; Roberts rightly credits Chamberlain for contributing to the victory by his wise investment in radar stations and in beefing up Fighter Command. As they say in America, there is no I in team; Chamberlain was the shaky starting pitcher but he kept the game close; Churchill got the win but he built upon Chamberlain's wise decisions such as introducing military conscription in April 1939. Roberts makes it clear that WWII was a team effort. One realizes that Chamberlain should be remembered for more than just Munich. Churchill's leadership was vital in mobilizing the home front and especially in "mobilizing the English language and sending it into battle." Churchill boosted domestic production of food (arable land was increased by 43%) and industrial productivity. By the end of the war Britain grew enough sugar to meet 50% of its needs which as Roberts points out was remarkable under the circumstances. Roberts also gives a good background as to the financial crisis caused by the war; by 1945 almost all of Britain's foreign assets, gold and financial reserves had been wiped out. What 1914 started 1939-1945 completed. Germany played catch up with radar technology but in 1940 radar might have made the difference. Radar, of course, was not developed to kill people or even for military purposes. Radar was meant to make air travel in foggy Britain more safe. Robert's description of the Battle of Britain is technically and military excellent and I gained new insights. He does not forget the special advantage of the many international volunteers to the RAF especially the Poles and the New Zealanders. Nor does he forget the valor of the London firemen and the cool courage and devotion of duty to the bomb-disposal units. He seems to know everything about the capabilities of the aircraft involved and their weapons. The Me-109 for example had a fatal flaw; it could only carry enough fuel for ONE HOUR. It did not have fuel tanks; this meant it had only about 30 minutes air time over the south of England and less than 10 minutes over London. How many German pilots were killed in the English Channel or captured because their fighter's ran out of fuel? Roberts also give credit where it is due to the unsung Hurricane -which was decisive in the Battle of Britain because it was cheaper, easier to repair and sturdier that the Spitfire. The Hurricane was outmatched by the ME-109 but on the other hand downed more bombers than the Spitfire and to the German's surprise easily outclassed the heavily armed but clunky ME-110.

Roberts mentions penicillin of course being used to save Churchill's life but in a minor quibble I think he could have said more about the Allied advantages over the Axis in medical technology. They had better equipped medical units with sulfa drugs, plasma and transfusions. American know-how also contributed to the use, late in the war of portable refrigerators to be used (chiefly in the Pacific Theater) so that whole blood could be used on ships and right up to the front lines. In the USA the Red Cross collected blood from millions of volunteers, separated the plasma and had them shipped to pharmaceutical labs that could produce freeze-drying plasma en masse which was then flown to the front lines. This probably saved the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of American and Allied soldiers and helped keep up morale. I remember my grandfather -a British WWI combat vet- telling me that one of the most demoralizing things on soldiers in WWI was the high death rate of wounded soldiers. Soldiers would make heroic efforts to save comrades only to hear about their death hours, days or weeks later. In WWII however many wounded soldiers recovered to fight again with their original units. But Roberts is perfectly aware of all these things and alludes to them but I think the Allied blood banks were emblematic of one of the reasons the Allies won the war. Individual initiative by doctors and entrepreneurs spurred development of new medical technologies and then civic virtue by free peoples, not compulsion, contributed to a spirit of volunteerism which embodied all that was decent, modern and humane in contrast to Nazi brutality and racism. (Stephen Ambrose in CITIZEN SOLDIER reported German soldiers who refused blood transfusions from American medics on the basis they might receive tainted Jewish or Black blood and so died.).

Robert's depiction of the Mediterranean Campaign including Crete, Malta and El Alamein is magisterial. I have read dozens of books about the 8th Army and the Afrika Korps but STORM OF WAR provides the clearest and most exciting analysis of both stages of Battle of El Alamein yet. Roberts has visited many of the battlefields of the war personally and this adds to the color and interest of his descriptions of the key campaigns and battles of WWII. Roberts argues, quite convincingly, that Hitler made a crucial error by not taking Malta by parachute attack instead wasting his elite corps on Crete and that also Hitler should have invested all his resources to capture Suez and Britain's access to Middle Eastern oil; at the time 80% of Britain's oil came from there.

But Hitler's fanatical hatred of the Jews and the Bolsheviks caused him to be precipitous in his attack on Russia before Britain had been knocked out of the air or the Mediterranean. By 1942 Hitler seems to have realized his mistake but by then it was too late; Rommel was defeated not only by Ultra but also by enormous quantities of USA Lend Lease.

Today it seems automatic that the USA won the war against Japan but Roberts makes it clear that it was a very narrow margin in 1941-42 as the Japanese had 11 Air Craft Carriers to the 3 of the US (four others were in the Atlantic). Japan's failure to destroy America's pacific carrier force and its egregious error not to knock out Pearl Harbor's fueling station proved disastrous. Despite America's military inferiority in the early stages, it had the advantage of "Magic" the breaking of the Japanese cipher "Purple". Though "Magic" contributed mightily to the American victory at Midway ("five minutes at Midway" " in June 1942 Roberts puts to rest any conspiracy theories that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance. In fact, as at the Bulge in 1944, the Japanese very effectively hid their thrust to Hawaii by an "intricate deception operation."

Everyone knows that Churchill and the allies feared the U-boat and that the U-boat inflicted fearsome loses on Allied shipping. Britain imported over 80% of its oil and 70% of its food. Roberts highlights the fact that even in this area Hitler may have doomed his effort by spreading himself too thin by building "pocket battleships" like the Graf Spee and the gargantuan but obsolete Bismarck. Roberts wrote ""Had Hitler given first priority in terms of funding to his U-boat fleet...he might have built a force that would have strangled and starved Britain into surrender." Roberts notes that the Germany navy and its U-boat arm were very small in 1939 and it was not until 1944-45 that the Germans deployed as many as 400 U-boats but by that time it was too late to affect the outcome of the war. But the Germans did not only use torpedoes to sink ships they also used magnetic mines placed by U-boats , He-111 bombers and E-boats. One can only think what would have happened to Britain if Hitler had deployed more resources earlier in the Battle of the Atlantic including FW-200 Kondor (Condor) long range maritime reconnaissance plane (the Germans built relatively few only about 200).

Part II "Climacteric" deals with the both the Pacific Theater and the Atlantic Theater June 1942-October 1944. It gives an excellent account of the Russian Front and the Stalingrad disaster; likewise Roberts tells the story of Midway and Guadalcanal and the ferocity and sheer savageness of the fighting there as well as the logistical challenges. But most memorably "Climacteric" begins with an excellent short history of the Holocaust called "The Everlasting Shame of Mankind." Roberts makes it very clear that it makes no difference when Hitler decided to exterminate the Jews or if he had one single written order beginning "the industrialized use of the Vernichtungslager (extermination camp)." For vicious anti-Semitism and the "annihilation" of the "Jewish race" was the essence of Hitler and Nazism. It was in fact the raison d'etre of Nazism. Once again, I have read many books on the Holocaust but I learned stories and facts about the Final Solution that I did not know. I was very impressed by Roberts' understanding of the magnitude of the human suffering and loss such as the lucky survivors in one case of 600 orphaned children who did not even know their own names. The Jews of course were the primary object of Hitler's wrath but millions of others were killed or tortured as well. I was familiar with some of the sources Roberts used in this chapter such as Viktor Frankl's work but time and again Roberts brings our a new fact, a new anecdote or a new technical detail which I did have never encountered before such as the story of the sadism of SS Staff Sergeant Paul Grot at Sobior Some of these details came from recently discovered tin cans which had been hidden other came from an examination as recently as 2004 at Auschwitz-Birkenau of 43,000 pairs of shoes in which money was found tucked away but never recovered. Seven tons of human hair were there that would have been used by the German textile industry. Then there is the story of Levi Hafling(Prisoner) number 174517 who desired to drink from an icicle outside his hut; he said WARUM? (why) and the SS guard answered "HIER IST KEIN WARUM" (Here there is no why). Roberts also debunks the idea that FDR and Churchill were somehow complicit in the Holocaust because they knew all about it and could easily have bombed the Death Camps and their rail system. In fact, the negatives of the aerial photographs were not printed and examined until 1978 and during WWII they did not have the technology to enlarge them to the extent so that exact details of the camps could be made clear. A clear case of presentism. Roberts does not forget to mention Father (Saint)Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Roman Catholic priest who gave his life so that another prisoner who had a wife and children could live (the man's name Roberts tells us was Franciszek Gajownicnek). STORM OF WAR's brief account of the Holocaust alone is worth reading and re-reading for it tells of tells of heroism and also of man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Once again, NE OBLISIVCARIS. Do not forget.

Part III of STORM OF WAR is "Retribution" . There we see the final denouement of the Russian Front and the death of the Panzers at Kursk In "Cruel Reality" Roberts talks about the most controversial aspect of the allied war effort during WWII the use of the Atomic bomb and the mass bombing of civilians. Roberts is certainly right that few men and women of the WWII generation lost much sleep concerning the suffering of the Axis civilian populations because after all Japan and Germany had started it and deserved what they got. But he quotes Churchill saying "Are we beasts are we taking this too far?" I can't imagine Hitler (or Stalin ever saying anything like that). I believe it proved that Churchill was basically a humane and decent statesman. I learned the Paul Tibbets also bombed Germany in a B-17 (later of course he piloted the Enola Gay B-29 over Hiroshima). Was the bombing campaign effective? Roberts gives German figures that show it was. Albert Speer estimated that the bombing caused Germany to produce 35 % fewer tanks, 31 % fewer planes and 42% fewer trucks.

In any case 70% of German fighters were deployed to defend the home industry and 10,000 88's were deployed as Flak guns; and this weakened Wermacht and the Luftwaffe on the Russian Front contributing to the German defeat at Kursk. The D-Day invasion has been told and retold many times but Roberts gives a very good précis of the Normandy campaign and some of the great characters of the American Army such as General Patton and Eisenhower. STORM OF WAR closes with the fall of Nazi Germany and Hitler's suicide in the bunker. I believe Roberts is perhaps a little harsh on Col. Stauffenberg; he quotes a letter from 1939 that shows Stauffenberg in an arrogant anti-Polish and anti-Jewish light almost as a Nazi. In 2003 I had a chance to make the acquaintance of the daughter of Stauffenberg's nanny, who was employed as my father's private nurse. She indicated that Stauffenberg kept up a correspondence with her mother throughout his adult life only stopping completely in late 1943 so as to protect her. She also believed it was only later in the war that Stauffenberg really began to understand the true nature of Nazi Germany and that he went through what could only be described as a religious conversion transferring his loyalty from his Fatherland which he saw as captive to an anti-Christian maniac (she used the term "Anti-Christ") to Humanity, the Church and to a future "sacred Germany" he knew he would never live to see. Churchill himself, as Roberts recounts said of the 20 July plotters, they were the "bravest of the best." Perhaps when the myth meets history we choose to remember the myth? Perhaps. But I think we cannot discount entirely the testimony of people who knew Stauffenberg personally. I recall Hemingway said once "it's it pretty to think so"; I do not think this is a romanticized view of Stauffenberg but merely gives him the benefit of the doubt. His effort to kill Hitler and end the war in 1944 was certainly one of the most heroic acts of WWII; it he had succeeded he may have saved the lives of millions of Jews, Poles, Germans and Allied soldiers. Many others talked; Stauffenberg took action and it was only by merest chance that his wife and children were not massacred by Hitler himself (as luck would have it General Fromm had him summarily executed trying, ultimately vainly to save himself but in doing so he probably saved Stauffenberg's family.)

The very last part of Part III deals with the fall of Japan "The Land of the Setting Sun" and then a conclusion going over point by point why the Axis lost the war. Roberts demonstrates that the Germany First policy of Churchill and FDR was wise; Japan folded just within months of Germany's collapse. The defeat of Germany meant the Allies (especially the USA) could throw the full weight of their forces against Japan. At the time of course, few knew anything about the Atomic bomb and when it was used no one knew the USA had only two. There still were many bloody battles before the Allies particularly Iwo Jima, Kohima and Okinawa. At Iwo Jima the US Marines suffered 6, 891 killed and 18,070 wounded; but as Roberts pointed out about 24,761 US airmen were possibly saved by the air strip on the island. Roberts accurately describes Hiroshima as "hellish" and I think it is true that the A-bomb itself is the only thing that could possible be compared to the horror of the Holocaust. There are big differences however. Truman felt he had to used to bomb to SAVE lives both American and Japanese and end the war. If Truman had been Hitler like he would have refused negotiations, continued bombing Japan and letting her civilian population die of hunger. But instead, once the peace was signed and the occupation secured the Americans did everything they could to restore law and order and see that the civilian population was fed, received medical treatment and Japan began its reconstruction (which Roberts only alludes to during the surrender of September 2,1945 "six years and one day after Germany had invaded Poland". But honor is due to Nimitiz and especially to MacArthur and Truman. Roberts says it was only coincidence that the surrender took place on the USS Missouri (Truman's home state); I like many others have always assumed that Nimitz picked it as his flag ship to honor the president.

Why did Hitler and the Axis lose the war? I think Robert's main thesis is correct -Nazism (and fascism in general) was doomed by its fanatical worldview which distorted judgment and impaired the collaboration of effort that is necessary for war or any high organization or enterprise. The both before and after the Atlantic Charter shared technology and collaborated in their war effort. By contrast the Axis stragetgy was not cohesive. Mussolini made attacks without consulting Hitler; the Japanese attacked the USA without consulting Hitler and the Germans made no attempt to share jet technology or rockets until it was far too late. The Nazi Weltanschauung was like a fever of the mind; those whom the gods destroy they first make mad. And Nazism was noting else but feverish nightmare of greed, violence and racial arrogance. Over and over the Nazis were destroyed in large part by their own arrogance and hubris. Hitler refused to believe metrological reports of experts warning of the intense cold of the Russian winter; he seemed to think (insanely) sub-zero temperatures could be overcome by willpower. It seems made up but it is true that Hitler fantasized about SS troops able to endure the winter in lederhosen (short pants)! Churchill of course said "There is a winter, you know, in Russia." He probably could not believe his luck that Hitler had thrown his legions uselessly on the Russian front instead of against Alexandria and the Suez. The Germans had the best cipher and radio communications of any power but they believed the Enigma code was scientifically impossible to break. And so it was unless "subhuman" Poles happened to capture a working model, fake its destruction and spirit it along to the British which they did. I learned in STORM OF WAR that the Poles had in fact broken the German Enigma code independently for a time prior to September1939 and that Hitler shared a dozen Enigma machines with Franco. The Germans had magnificent war material. Their machine guns could fire at three times the rate of the Allie's guns. One of the best Air Forces in the world, the best submarine force, and without a doubt the greatest fighting Army in modern history the vaunted Wermacht. Despite being outnumbered time and again the Germany army triumphed and when it lost it inflicted far more causalities on its opponents than it lost itself. The Nazis also had the first operational Jet fighters (the ME-262) the first jet bombers (the Arado 234 Blitz bomber) and of course the V-1 and the V-2 rockets. But all these were too little and too late. Yet the Nazis under Hitler suffered from gigantism and a desire to have ever more advanced technological "wonder weapons." This led them to rush into production tank destroyers at Kursk without machine guns to protect them from Russian infantry and flame thrower attacks. The much vaunted Panthers and Tigers were hugely expensive and too few in numbers to make a real difference; and for all their armor they were extremely vulnerable to attacks from the air. And having so many different models of tanks was a logistical nightmare. In that sense the Russia t-34 and the Shermans were more successful tanks. Hence also the Bismarck and the Tirpitz capital ships that satisfied the prestige of Nazi Germany but were essentially useless though terrifying. Both were sunk by the British and neither inflicted much damage on Allied convoys. Roberts acknowledges the V-1 and V-2 were "horrific" weapons and he describes their capabilities and range with precision. Over 13,000 V-1's were launched on Britain and over 1,359 V-2 were fired at London at an immense cost (100,000 Reichmarks each). But as Roberts describes these terror weapons were ineffective militarily and he quotes Churchill who said "the damage and the casualties have not so far been heavy. There is no need to exaggerate the danger." The V-2 was another "prestige" Nazi weapon but without the Atomic bomb it had little bang for the buck (or Reichmark). But it is chilling to think how close Hitler came to achieve if not world conquest world domination. Roberts makes us remember how near a thing it was in 1939,1940, 1941 and 1942. I often ask my students if Hitler had won the war do they think their lives would be the same? It is something to think about. Robert Harris deals with this theme in his excellent novel FATHERLAND; in it Hitler is still alive in 1964 having won the war with rockets and the atomic bomb.

STORM OF WAR is technically and strategically very sound as a WWII history but Andrew Robert's triumph is that he captures the essence the human tragedy of millions and their suffering to stop the advent, in Churchill's words of Hitler's New Dark age "made more sinister and more protracted by the lights of perverted science." Books like STORM OF WAR are essential reading not just for historians but for all teachers, parents, citizens and students. One moving episode in the STORM OF WAR is Robert's recounting of the sacrifice of 25 year old Sergeant M. A. W. Rogers of the Wiltshire Regiment who won the Victoria Cross for Valour in Italy -read the story of his incredible and noble heroism and you also know why the Allies won because they had men like Rogers who were prepared to give their all -even their lives for the cause. But Roberts does not end the story there -he recalls the inscription on the gravestone in Italy put by Sergeant Roger's wife "in memory of my beloved husband. May we be together soon, dear, Peace at last." Other very moving parts of STORM OF WAR were when Roberts discusses the Holocaust and the Brave Fallen -he mentioned some by name and gives the circumstances of their death such as the story of Flying Officer Lt. J.B. Nicholson a whose feats of heroism during the Battle of Britain remain awe-inspiring; Roberts also recounts tragically that Nicholson was shot down May 2, 1945 thus never seeing the final victory. Books like ANDREW ROBERT'S STORM OF WAR leave the reader with the greatest desire never to forget the greatest war of all time and the people who worked and fought to see the Allies achieve victory. We remember now the young dead soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marine of so long ago and the Allied leaders who won not only the war but the peace as well. Their valiant struggle and their sacrifice must awaken in us a lasting remembrance and the deepest respect and appreciation for our liberty and our free lives. ANDREW ROBERT'S STORM OF WAR is destined to be the definitive one volume history of WWII.

LIFE AND DEALTH OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM

2010-03-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.

Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.

Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.

AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.

I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?

This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.

Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.

I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.

And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.

Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:

We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.

I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”

Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.

In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.

And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.

Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."

Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."

Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).

Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.

One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".

If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.

Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).

This way lies more than madness or bad policy.

This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.

Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.

Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..

Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.

What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.

I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.

The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.

And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.

As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.

Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.

Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.

Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.

AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.

I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?

This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.

Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.

I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.

And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.

Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:

We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.

I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”

Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.

In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.

And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.

Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."

Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."

Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).

Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.

One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".

If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.

Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).

This way lies more than madness or bad policy.

This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.

Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.

Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..

Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.

What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.

I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.

The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.

And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.

As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.

Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.

Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.

Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.

AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.

I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?

This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.

Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.

I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.

And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.

Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:

We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.

I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”

Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.

In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.

And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.

Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."

Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."

Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).

Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.

One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".

If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.

Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).

This way lies more than madness or bad policy.

This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.

Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.

Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..

Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.

What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.

I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.

The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.

And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.

As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.

Some years ago Diane Ravitch wrote LEFT BACK which is a minor masterpiece; years from now historians will recommend one book to understand the background of American public education and it will be LEFT BACK. With her new book, THE DEATH AND LIFE of the AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM, Diane Ravitch has once again proven that she is the Grand Dame of the history of American education and once again has produced what must be classed as a permanent book a book scholars will turn to years from now as a standard sourcebook for American public education's virtues and vices.

Diane has always been a supporter of standards; as a public school teacher so am I. But Diane makes a powerful case that our scientism of day -which mistakenly believes schools can be judged or measured by such narrow instruments as scantron/edusoft bubble tests-is NOT an accurate measure of educational effectiveness.

Ravitch is also not afraid to state the obvious: the temptation for schools, teachers and administrators to game the system or cheat is sometimes overwhelming. Even honest administrators would be foolish not to drop students who never show up for class. The reason why is because NCLB hits schools for low participation points and students who don't show up count as a ZERO for school averages.

AYP's tell us something but they are not a valid barometer of true academic achievement. One would think that if a high school had 300 AP scholars a year that would count for something but it does not. But the reality that those 300 AP scholars are not merely proficient but far, far above state standards (ten times as much twenty times as much?). On the AYP's AP students are counted as just competent students. That would be like rating the US military but not counting the Special Forces or Marines. It is idiotic. Much of NCLB is idiotic and Ravitch proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As a classroom teacher I know that teacher evaluations based on performance of standardized tests are notoriously biased. When I had all AP classes I was a genius and the "Jaime Escalante" of Bakersfield. The truth is even Jaime Escalante was not Jaime Escalante when he was challenged by a different school body with different problems and different cultural backgrounds than Mr. Escalante was accustomed to. And similarly, now that I have no AP students my test scores are no longer so stellar. The reality is the friends of the principal or departments chairs make sure to assign themselves the best classes so that THEIR teaching may not be called into question.

I am not afraid of having the lowest performing students however. I consider them a challenge and I consider it my duty to try to give these students the best quality education I can. But I am not a miracle worker. If my juniors are unable to read a single sentence of English how are they -in one year or two years- pass their proficiencies and complete the curriculum for college prep students in social studies? My job (as I see it) is to give these students an introduction to history, study skills and the reading of English. My theory is that the students must learn how to learn to read English first. If they can't do that then they cannot hope to engage the English medium curriculum. No one would expect first year American students of Spanish or French to score as well as high school students in France, Spain or Costa Rica so why should we expect immigrant students -often from the poorest and most disadvantaged classes- to read, write and score "ABOVE BASIC" , "PROFICIENT" or “ADVANCED on their standardized tests?

This writer remembers when Diane Ravitch was flirting with “voucherism” as a solution to low performing schools; but Ravitch examines the facts dispassionately and says "in sum, twenty years of vouchers in Milwaukee and a decade of the program's expansion to include religious school, there was no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind." Ravitch is exactly right that non-educators -often with no classroom experience- are simply not qualified to reform schools let alone run them.

Ravitch is blunt she says NCLB is wrong headed and "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Ravitch proves that Charter schools are no panacea. Ravitch proves that small schools (as touted by Bill Gates) are no solution. One thing she doesn't mention is that reforms like smaller schools and block schedules undermine and virtually destroy Advanced Placement programs because there are not the resources, students or teachers to sustain these programs. So in trying to improve a school we often dynamite the highest achieving classes. That makes no sense.

I am not irrevocably opposed to Charter schools or Catholic schools. In fact I spent much of my professional career teaching in Catholic schools or private education; at present I am still involved in tutoring “home schoolers” in subject areas their parents are unable to give them (such as Spanish and Latin). But like Ravitch I know that Charters ("school choice") by themselves are no answer to our societal and educational problem. And Ravitch documents the incompetence, theft and corruption associated with Charter schools such as The California Charter Academy which declared bankruptcy in 2004 stranding over 6000 students in more than 60 "storefront" schools. The founder of the organization -not an educator but a former insurance salesman- may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy.

And by the way, does anyone think a nation can be defended by a citizen militia with private gunboats to protect the coast? Of course, not! No modern nation could defend itself on that basis. As Ron Unz noted many years ago not a single modern nation has dared to abandon universal public education. The USA would be very unwise if it were to abandon universal free public education.

Ravitch pulls no punches but is not a pessimistic doomsayer. She writes "If we want to improve education, we must first have a vision of what good education is. We should have goals that are worth striving for." Ravitch is right that our students need basic skills in literacy and numeracy but then says, wisely, "but that is not enough." Ravitch writes:

We want to prepare them for a useful life.

We want them to be able to think for themselves when they are out in the world on their own.

We want them to have a good character and to make sound decisions about their life, their work, and their health.

We want them to face life's joys and travails with courage and humor.

We hope that they will be kind and compassionate in their dealings with others.

We want them to have a sense of justice and fairness.

We want them to understand our nation and our world and the challenges we face.

We want them to be active, responsible citizens, and to reach decisions rationally. We want them to learn science and mathematics so they understand the problems of modern live and participate in finding solutions. We want them to enjoy the rich artistic and culture heritage of our society and other societies.

I may be mistaken but here I sense the influence of two other great teachers of the 20th century: NYU worthy Sidney Hook and another great Columbian like Dr. Ravitch, and one of the finest teachers and authors of the 20th century, Gilbert Highet. Hook, Sidney. (SEE "The Closing of the American Mind: An Intellectual Best-Seller Revisited." The. American Scholar 58 (1989): pp. 123-35.)

.

And I may be mistaken again but I sense at least indirectly the influence of Catholic educators on Ms. Ravitch because when she speaks like this she sounds like Sister Rosemary of Holy Names Academy (Seattle) one of the hardest work and most inspiring teachers I ever had the privilege to work with. But this just goes to show you how catholic (small c) the intellectual influences have been on Diane Ravitch. Diane is always thinking, always revising, always researching and always exploring. She may have visited more schools and interviewed and corresponded with more teachers from more states and more countries than anybody alive. Ravitch is not parochial at all and she is right when she notes that countries like Finland and Japan have excellent public systems without rewards or sanctions of any kind. Ravitch notes "their students excel at tested subjects because they are well educated in many other subjects that teach them to use language well and to wrestle with important ideas.”

Ravitch is also right that our very expensive text books are, for the most part, veritable quaking bogs of boredom and ennui or as she put it in THE LANGUAGE POLICE sanitized PC tomes that create "the Empire of Boredom." Ravitch notes such PC textbooks "maintain a studied air of neutrality, thus ensuring the triumph of dullness.

In fact, I feel it is my primary job as a classroom teacher to enliven the curriculum with humorous anecdotes and great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how students pick up things in classroom discussion such as Butch O'Hare's notorious father (an associate of Al Capone) , why German machine guns had three times the rate of fire of the best Allied machine guns, why Hitler's V-2 rocket program may have ensured Hitler's defeat, why Puerto Rico produces zero illegal aliens (due to the Jones Act of 1917), how the Polish Air Force smuggled out a Nazi Enigma machine to England and help win the Battle of the Atlantic, how Lesley Howard may have helped kept Spain neutral and so became a target of assassination by the Nazis- the story of Earl Warren's immigrant wife and parents (none of whom were native English-speakers), how Martin Luther King survived TWO assassination attempts prior to 1968, the fact 80 or 90 year old women could be wet nurses to babies- this was once very common place in the Highlands and Islands- , stories of Cubans working in the Gran Zafra (sugar cane harvest), how primitive medicine was even as late as 1915 -no blood transfusions or antibiotics- Tiger tanks shooting duds because the shells had been sabotaged by slave laborers, Jacqueline Kennedy's famous pink dress at Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy giving speeches in fluent French and Spanish, John F. Kennedy using Latin and German in his Berlin speech, how Roosevelt helped establish the March of Dimes, and the story of the Candy Bombers during the Berlin Airlift. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and it is these very human stories and curious anecdotes that help make history come alive.

And I might add that public schools are not the only places where safe mediocrity reigns; most books on required reading lists in Teacher Ed programs were unknown 50 years ago and I dare say will be unknown 50 years from now. What a colossal waste of paper, time and resources! As a case in point a good argument could be made that one could learn more about the Cold War, politics and totalitarianism by reading and studying in depth three pieces of literature than every text book every written: the candidates would be Animal Farm by Orwell, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak or perhaps the First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I know from experience that young peoples eyes light up when they read great literature filled with humor and insights.

Ravitch is absolutely right that curriculum, good curriculum is absolutely the sine qua non. She writes " It is a road map. Without a road map, you are sure to drive in circles and get nowhere...a sound curriculum ensures that young people will not remain ignorant of the most essential facts and ideas of the humanities and sciences."

Ravitch also has been made aware by her school visits and her many contacts with classroom teachers "in the trenches" how student behavior and civility has, essentially, collapsed. Teachers today hear more curse words and see more violence that any Marine recruit ever heard or witnessed in Camp Pendleton or Parris Island 30 years ago. Teachers are taxed to the breaking point by the constant challenge to their authority and disruptions to the learning process. It is a wonder more teachers don't break and attack their students. The fact is many teachers soldier on heroically resorting to mental health counseling and if things become unbearable they die or resign. I don't know of any teacher who gets combat pay or disability but they should. Just the other day a teacher had to take a loaded gun away from an intruder and it did not even make a line in the local paper. Ravitch is right on the mark when she says "schools must enforce standards of civility and teach student to respect themselves and others, or they cannot provide a safe, orderly environment which is necessary for learning."

Ravitch’s book is not a series of unsupported assertions by any means. Every chapter is very convincingly documented. My favorite chapter, as a school teacher, is chapter 9 "What would Mrs. Ratliff do?" Nobody knows Mrs. Ratliff but Ravitch makes it clear that Mrs. Ratliff was an unsung front line heroine of American civilization and education. American owes more to the Mrs. Ratliffs than most of its presidents past and present (if we are honest most were mediocre plodders or worse complete incompetents with a few glorious exceptions).

Who was Mrs.Ruby Ratliff ? She was none other than the mentor and homeroom teacher of Diane Ravitch herself. I found Ravitch's homage to her former teacher moving. Most teachers labor on in genteel poverty and rarely get any recognition but the teacher's reward is the gratitude of his or her many students. That is what makes it all worthwhile because one does not teach just for fun or for oneself but for the community and in a larger sense for one's civilization. Gilbert Highet once said that a teacher must know and love his subject and Ravitch emphasizes that Mrs. Ratliff loved her subject: the English language and its literature. Mrs. Ratliff had high standards and no doubt spent many hours after school and at home correcting essays, exams and reports. And Ravitch notes that Mrs. Ratliff did it all without once ever recurring to standardized multiple choice tests. That Ravitch does not say so I have a hunch she agrees with this classroom teacher that excessive use of standardized tests is like excessive consumption of junk food; in excess it is sheer poison.

One of the chief faults of American teachers and American education may be excessive overreliance on machine graded superficial bubble multiple guess tests which I may add are exceedingly easy to cheat on or fake. I am quite sure Mrs. Ratliff was never fooled by plagiarism or cheating and by her hands on familiarity with her students work easily spotted the `"rats" and "cheats".

If one seeks a `magic bullet' to cure our educational ills or as Ravitch humorously alludes to a "magic feather" a la Dumbo you will not find it here. Ravitch says "in education, there are no short cuts, no utopias, no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly.

Truly, as Euclid reportedly said to King Ptolemy, “there is no Royal Road to Geometry." He or she who wants to learn mathematics, solve equations, writing clear prose and gain wisdom must toil and sweat for days, months and years on end. Ravitch is also right that the survival and success of our free society may depend on our public school system. If the public school system is allowed to wither away we may become more like Latin America (which has excellent private schools for the rich and non-existent or woefully inadequate public education for the many who are poor).

This way lies more than madness or bad policy.

This way lies social strife and class warfare to an extent that the independence, prosperity and unity of our Republic may be at risk.

Ravitch writes "it is unlikely that the United States would have emerged as a world leader had it left the development of education to the whim and will of the free market." In my opinion, she never wrote a truer line.

Education is neither about profit and loss nor merely about narrow utilitarian goals. America by its very nature has tended to be utilitarian and materialist for better or for worst. Success in America has always been measured by the accumulation of power, money, status, prestige, property and fame. In addition, Americans have always valued the new over the tried and true disregarding most traditions, -this is their philistine side - which when it comes to culture is often a mistake. The Greeks had a word for this “apeirokalia” (a lack of experience in things beautiful) and yet another which we could translate as `unculture' or "apaideusia" (ignorance of the greatest goods in life)..

Yet I would argue that the most enduring aspect of the American Dream is not these manifestations of pomp, prosperity and power-these things like the Almighty Dollar -presently quite anemic- our naval and air supremacy will pass away- but not the single most valuable we thing we have which is our free and splendid ancient heritage.

What are we to do? We must look firmly towards the future but must never forget the past -that is to say our splendid and free ancient heritage. Above all we must not throw in the towel. We must teach every man, woman and child to wish for liberty, to cherish liberty, to understand liberty and most importantly to be capable of it.

I always tell my students there are there are TWO educations:

The first education is the practical one we all need that teaches us what we need to make a living -most of us have to make a living.

The second education we need is the other education, the "true education" that which teaches us how to live our lives more fully by teaching us to think AND to appreciate `the Good Life". I can't imagine my life without the second education and I encourage my students to cultivate their private lives for their own benefit, happiness and enjoyment and for the unity and mental health of their families.

And we must have the humility and foresight to recognize a people without wisdom -without a strong culture- without a strong memory and strong values without strong schools- will come to ruin.

As we pass the torch to a new generation we are most fortunate to have the lantern of Ravitch's wisdom and learning to help us see a better way. With The Death and Life of the Great American School System Diane Ravitch has raised a monument more enduring than brass -to paraphrase Horace: Non omnis morieris.

On Robert Sherwood, America and Sarah Palin

2009-12-21T13:58:00.000-08:00

I am very fond of Robert Sherwood’s work and have read and studied a good portion of his work including his fine biography of Roosevelt and Hopkinns and about half a dozen of his plays. I also know –you might not know it- that he was a combat veteran of the Black Watch (of Canada) in the First World War. Humphrey Bogart is a great favorite. My father saw him and Lesley Howard on Broadway in the mid-30’s in Robert Sherwood’s PETRIFIED FOREST (I have in an anthology of American drama). The film version is very well done and my son enjoyed watching it with my father so it has become part of the family tradition.
Of course Sherwood’s script for THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES which won an Oscar I believe is a masterpiece. It is worth reading the NYT review. I recommend it to my students but do not show it to them because most are not mature enough to appreciate it. I used to show clips to my AP US history classes and give them the movie review to read.

http://movies.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?_r=2&res=EE05E7DF1739E561BC4A51DFB767838D659EDE

Bosley Crowther (1946):

“It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment but as food for quiet and humanizing thought. Yet such a one opened at the Astor last evening. It is The Best Years of Our Lives. Having to do with a subject of large moment—the veteran home from war—and cut, as it were, from the heartwood of contemporary American life, this film from the Samuel Goldwyn studio does a great deal more, even, than the above. It gives off a warm glow of affection for everyday, down-to-earth folks.”

I like GONE WITH THE WIND and it has an interesting POV from the home front and at times it has wonderful performances and even intelligent dialogue but I think THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES is a more grown up film and captures some of the best and worst of America.

The best is its generosity and the humanity of its people and genuine democratic spirit; the worst is its anomie, carnal materialism and hedonism (as exemplified in the “Pat Derry” character the shallow estranged adulterous wife of Dana Andrews). We have a lot of Pat Derrys in our schools and universities. But as I live in the western most fringe of the American Heartland I know America is redeemed by its legions (still) of Sarah Palinesque women.

It is hard to understand the hatred and contempt felt for Mrs. Palin but then again Messalina had great hatred and contempt for other women whose virtue and character showed her own corrupt selfish blackened soul in a bad light. Much of the disdain for Mrs. Palin is class prejudice ( I know a lot about class prejudice ) mixed with envy and a ideological vitriol. There is a thing as Sarah Palin derangement syndrome. Personally, I would love to match Mrs. Palin versus Mr. Obama in, let’s say Jeopardy. I would even love to match their literary efforts (leaving off Mr. Obama’s ghost written hagiographies.) I have no doubt Mrs. Palin would come off as the wiser of the two. Mr. Obama (or as I like to call him sometimes “Sportin’ Life”) is a zero without his speechwriters and teleprompter . That is my opinion. I saw him speak in person last summer and admit he has great charm but I believe there is no substance there and Mr. Obama is an immature, ignorant, arrogant political witch doctor. America will do well to vote him out of office in 2012; I think Independents are coming to that realization too.

Personally I think post modernist Sangerite-Shakerite hedonists like this are a tragic waste of womanhood. But of course they are great temptations for American males (and others ) and are (for a while) objects of lustful desire. The wise ones realize they don’t have many good years and so make adjustments. But traditional family life and motherhood –and my sources are the mothers themselves- is a much happier and saner life choice.

By Sangerite-Shakerite I mean people who use dud in the mud sex for entertainment purposes only in the fashion of the Last Days of Pompeii. But of course I am a traditionalist. I believe, however, there is something to the “Roe effect”. It is why there will always be Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Mormons etc. If a movement and if a nation and if a belief system are to have a strong future they must go forth and multiply. We survived the 20th century and hope our race and line will survive the 21st century.

Well these are some Saturday morning musings as I listen to E Power Biggs on the organ playing Bach on the Flentroop organ in the Busch-Resinger Museum (Harvard University).

Turn Ye to Me by John McCormack

2009-11-19T21:08:00.001-08:00

Scottish Gaelic and Auld Country Scottish Attitudes

2009-11-14T13:58:00.000-08:00

Well, Bruce

Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is pronounced “Gallic”; my grandfather who was born in the Scottish Highlands in 1886 often referred to his native language as Highland Scots (as opposed to Lallans or Lowland Scots). He said it was a dialect of Irish Gaelic (pronounced Gael-ic) and many people called Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) “ERSE “(Irish) when he was young but he never did.

He never considered “Erse” to be denigrating. Most Highlanders consider themselves to be Gaels and to have racial ties to Irish Gaels as well as the Cymric (Welsh/British people).

My grandfather often said “the Scots and the Irish are the same people except half of them don’t know it and the other half don’t want to know!.” He was referring to the attitude of so many who wanted to out English to the English and hide their Irish/Celtic roots. That was a very common attitude in the late Victorian or Edwardian period in Britain. My people by the way always considered themselves Islanders or Highlanders and referred to Ireland and Scotland as “the Isles”. Their homeland was their native place (Cioch Mhor) or the Gaidhealteachd (Highlands) and sometimes they spoke of “Alba” (the land of the mountains white) as Scotland. They also called it Scotia and Caledonia but those were poetic usages I think.

They rarely if ever, quite innocently, referred to themselves as “British” because to them British people were their WELSH cousins and they themselves were not Welsh. They never, it hardly needs to be said, spoke of themselves as English or Europeans. They were Highlanders, Islanders or Gaels. People who lived on the Continent or An Roinn Eorpa were the other though of course it seemed to me my grandfather was aware of his kinship to the Gauls of old. He often called his kilt the “Garb of Auld Gaul.”

The English (or Sassunachs) and the Europeans were the other. My Auld Pop referred to English women, for example, as “South o’ the Dyke Lassies” and routinely called English “Saxon.” As a joke he used to say anyone who married French women or Italians or Spanish were marrying lassies ‘very much to South o’ the Dyke’ but aye closer to Rome. As a boy most of the priests in my grandfather’s region were educated at the Scots College in Rome or the Scots College of Valladolid (Spain); some were Irish Franciscans. He had a very strong sense of belonging to Christendom and believing in the unity of Christendom in way many Calvinists did not. Of course, many people in my family intermarried with Irish people in Glasgow and I know there were a lot of Tallies (Scottish born Italians) in my grandfather’s parish in Govan. Glasgow has long been a very cosmopolitan town not unlike Brooklyn or London.

The Scots language was always called Beurla Albannach (Anglo-Scottish or Scots). “Gnath-bheurla na H-Eireann” was (Anglo-Irish). His language he always called ‘the Gallic” or “Highland Scots.”

Manx Gaelic (spelled in a phonetic English pattern) has been extinct, except in an artificially restored way, since the early 20th or late 19th century. It appears to be very close to the Scottish Gaelic of the Western Isles and Argyll.

Today I think it clear that Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are two languages as separate as say Portuguese and Spanish but they are also very closely related. I have heard many Irish scholars say that Scottish Gaelic is (or was) a dialect of Irish Gaelic

The habit of calling Irish Gaelic “Irish” seems to be a modern one from the dates of the Free State. It is a simple fact that “Irish” and “Ireland” are not Irish words! Gaeilge is the Irish Gaelic word for Irish Gaelic.

As a final note my grandfather always called many city girls “paltry women”. “They wadna survive a Highland winter until Easter.”

He was of the opinion that healthy, strong and beautiful women were well-rounded and solidly built. To him the ideal woman was a woman with womanly, matronly look. I suppose our ideals of beauty have been shaped by the childless or nearly so Hollywood ideal. If we honored motherhood more we would not put the figures of childless teenagers as the ideal.

He had nothing but scorn for boyish bony gamin-like women. To him they were hardly women at all. Personally, I tend to agree with him.

Mise le meas (that’s me with respect)

Richard Keith Munro

****
READER COMMENT

Hebrew sadly is a special case- there were so many immigrants from
Europe and natives that Hebrew was the only way they cld talk to each
other(Yiddish did not include the middle eastern Jews). Irish was
being taught much earlier but it didn't take the same way because
people could speak English.

It's amazing how fast Hebrew became a mother tongue - but hard to
emulate.

On Nov 12, 2009, at 8:21 PM, "Richard K. Munro"
wrote:

> Dear Todd: I am delighted to know that Manx has be resurrected ; if
> it can
> be done with Hebrew it can be done with Manx. It is all a matter of
> making it the lingua franca of a family or community.
>
> I wish you all the luck in the world. I was vaguely aware that there
> were
> some movements to preserve the language or restore it. I know
> recordings
> were made of the last fluent native speakers.
>
> Manx music and Manx songs are very special as is Ellan Vanin
> herself. I
> have known a few Manxmen in my life including men who fought along
> side my
> grandfather's Regiment in the Struma Valley (they served in the 27th
> Division together). I visted the Menin Gate with one of the last
> veterans
> of the 27th Division and he was a Manxman.
>
> I have read some Manx songs and it seems very similar to Irish
> Gaelic or
> Scottish Gaelic but especially the "English phonetics" of the Book
> of the
> Dean of Lismore.
>
> Richard Munro
>
> _____
READER COMMENT >
>

Subject: Re: [CelticCafe] Gaelic Languages and South O' the Dyke
> Lassies
>
> Great post, Richard. I wanted to add an interesting note. At our
> festival we typically have several Irish Gaelic speakers, but in
> 2007 we
> had over a dozen. That year we also had a Manx band, who had a Manx
> speaker. The Irish, who all came from either Cork or Conamara, were
> very
> excited and spent lots of time conversing with the Manx speaker. They
> indicated that they could understand each other well, and figured that
> the actual languages were around 80% the same. Manx has a slew of
> Norse,
> Latin, and English borrow words in it, but in any given sentence the
> Irish knew what the Manx speaker was saying. They may miss a word or
> two, but the context was readily known. We also had two Welsh speakers
> that year, and all of the Celtic speakers jumped in a round table
> discussion about the languages that the public absolutely loved. Of
> course, the Welsh speakers and the Gaelic speakers couldn't
> communicate,
> but they were very aware that they shared a huge number of common
> words.
> In any case, the last fully fluent Manx speaker only died in the 70's.
> There were still several mostly fluent speakers alive then, and they
> have managed to pull the language from the edge of extinction to the
> point today where there are more than a hundred fluent speakers, with
> several native speakers (meaning children who learn it as a first
> language). A couple of thousand can speak it with some proficiency.
> They
> are a very interesting group and quite a lot of fun.
>
> Tod Ardoin
>
> >
MUNRO:

Of course, when I was referring to Hebrew I was referring to a best case scenario.

And Hebrew being a language of a great classic the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures and all the rabbinic commentaries has a special allure that Latin once had (and still does to a diminished degree). My father studied Latin at school and so could read Virgil in Latin but he had only a passing, corrupt , oral knowledge of Gaelic which was his father and grandfather’s native language.

But they were both –essentially- illiterate in Gaelic as they were not taught the language.

So it is curious that my father and grandfather both being Gaels could read and write in French, Latin and English but almost not at all in Gaelic.

When they went to school in Scotland (1890-1927) used Gaelic was discouraged if not prohibited. Those who grew p in the great cities because English dominant and Gaelic survived only as part of the oral and musical culture. I became interested in Gaelic and Scots poetry chiefly because of my interest in clan histories, slogans, songs piping and traditional music.

I cannot remember a time when I did not know Caisteal Folais Na Theine (Foulis Castle Ablaze ) and Biodh eagal Dhe oirre! (Reverence you to God or Dread God; the ancient clan Munro motto). My grandfather taught me to count in Gaelic (and Punjabi too) by lining up my toy solders. He also taught me elementary commands in both languages. In his stories he would often punctuate his stories with Punjabi (“marv e” he is dead changa dost (good comrade)….changa gori spahis (the good white soldier) ‘covering fire day-do” (give him covering fire) nan lao (bring bread; food); panee lao (bring water) chai lao (bring tea). I remember these off the top of my head but if I think about it I could remember more and naturally he knew so much more than I because they ate, drink and slept with Indian Regiments of the 27th Division and they had almost daily contact for five years. In another age I would have been an NCO in a Highland regiment or in the Indian Army.

In his day Scottish Highlanders were expected to be the interpreters and go betweens with the Dins (soldiers of the Indian Army) so he had some basic oral competence in Punjabi (which is an Indo-European Language closely related to Latin and Gaelic). They often went on scouting patrols with the Dins and never spoke a word of English. They and the Punjabis communicated in a Punjabi-Gaelic-English patois.

Educationally all the adults in my family were all English dominant, however though I think our bilingual background and respect for Latin and French as universal languages gave us a cosmopolitan interest in languages. My father never discouraged me from studying Gaelic as a hobby but there is no question he favored my studying Spanish, Portuguese and German formerly as he considered these to be culture languages with great utility. For that reason I never studied a single day in Scotland; my father considered Scotland to be part of our past. He was not against Gaelic in the sense of being hostile but he was convinced that “English was the language of the banks and the long-range guns.” In other words as the Romans won the war in Gaul so the English and English-speaking Lowlanders won their wars so Latin, French and Gaelic were (the old pre-Flodden languages of the court) were dethroned. ‘He believed that Lingua Francas were languages based upon high culture or empire; minority languages were doomed to be swept away or assimilated like Gaulish or Old British (a native language of the Scottish lowlands).

Many people date the decline of Gaelic to the Highland Clearances or Culloden but my father thought the decisive movement was Flodden (1513) when the last Gaelic-speaking King of Scotland (James IV) was killed. At that time most of the Scottish Roman Catholic aristocracy could speak French, Gaelic and read and write in Latin or French. A whole generation of Scots were wiped out in that battle and it may have changed the cultural history of Scotland as well.

Mary Queen of Scots, for example, could not speak English (she was a native speaker of French and could read and write Latin) but as far as I know she knew little or no Gaelic. When she spoke with her friends among the Highland Chiefs she probably spoke in French or Latin. This probably explains part of her alienation from her own people; it was more than just religion.

Gaelic is hurt by the fact that

1) it is not a true national language (unlike Welsh) ; it one is the ancient ancestral languages of the native Gael, Pict and Briton.

2) It’s hinterland of Gaelic speakers has diminished almost to the vanishing point; once less than 50% of a population speaks a language there is no language majority to immerse oneself in.

3) 80% of Gaelic speaking people intermarry with non Gaelic speakers and most do not live in Gaelic speaking communities. Some of their children will be Gaelic speakers but many if not most will not be.

4) Planned Parenthood has come to the Scottish Islands and Highlands; at one time a high birth rate helped offset the high immigration rate but this is not true any longer. I read that there are scarcely 2000 Gaelic speaking children living in households in which both parents are native Gaelic speakers. No language has a long future if it does not have demographic vitality. The desire for independence came too late for French Quebec and I think there is little chance that Scotland will ever vote to become an independent country especially as non Scottish ethnics emigrate to Scotland. They, like immigrants to French Canada, will have no interest in Scottish Gaelic culture or Scottish Independence.

5) The Gaels are very religiously divided embracing different sects of Christianity. I could be wrong but essentially I have observed there is a Roman Catholic minority in some places and Evangelical Christians in another. This division means that Gaels do no have a strong unified religious tradition to sustain them and unite them.

6) The decline in the Scottish Regiments and Territorial units is another factor. I have heard it said that the Army discouraged the use of Gaelic but on the other hand when my grandfather served in the Argylls it was the most Scottish institution he was ever associated with bar none. There is no question the Scottish Regiments kept piping and promoted a pride in Scottish national feeling In the First World War there were hundreds of volunteers from Nova Scotia in my grandfather’s Regiment (the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) who were native Gaelic speakers. English may have been the language of command but at the squad level they men spoke and sang as they pleased. There was an active piping culture and many companies –all recruited from the Highlands and Islands were predominately Gaelic-speaking. In fact the only education in Gaelic my grandfather ever received was while in the Army. What Gaelic he could read was from the Psalms and the New Testament which was the only Gaelic book he ever saw (or owned). But he really couldn’t read; he used it as a memory aid it seems to me. He really just memorized some psalms and some portions of the Bible. He could not write them out properly so he was for all intents and purposes illiterate. (though of course he could read and write English reasonably well for a person with only an elementary education; he went to sea at age 8.

At one time the Churches were a very important community and educational force for Gaelic if not the most important. I don’t think any one will disagree that Church attendance and participation has declined in Scotland though it Gaels in general have high attendance rates than the general population. One place Gaelic thrived was in the hymns and prayers of the people.

Also I believe the decline in church attendance tends to diminish the use of Gaelic and well as the decline (in young people) in the interest in traditional music.

The allure of English-speaking pop culture is very great. Youth only interested in movies , video games and computers tend to be English dominant.

On the plus side, Scottish Gaels are more literate than at anytime in modern history and Scottish Gaelic is popular

and fashionable in a way it hasn’t been in centuries.

Gaelic is available on the Internet and via mass media, This allows heritage speakers to support the language and retain or regain the use of the language.

But the decline of the Scottish birthrate to ZPG or even Negative Population Growth guarantees there will be a diminishing number of native speaking children.

So by the 22nd century Gaelic may go the way of Manx and exist only in folkloric tradition. I reverently hope this is not the case but I am being realistic. That worse case scenario is probably more likely than a Hebrew like resuscitation.

By the 22nd Century if present population trends continue not only Gaelic will be endangered but other European languages as well.

French and Italian, for example may become minority languages in their own hinterlands.

As incredible as that seems, it is a real possibility if one looks at birth rates, assimilation rates and immigration rates to Europe.

Demography is destiny. The hands that rock the cradles rule the word and it is their mother tongue that shall endure because tomorrow belongs to the big battalions.

A seal fein fuair an t-eineach HONOUR has had its own day,

Ag so an dile dheireadhach This is the final flood

A dhuid fa chre do chadal that shut your sleep under clay

Rug a re go Roghadal. That brought his life span to Rodel.

Mise le meas (that’s “me” with respect)

Richard K. Munro

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Gwen
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:22 PM
To: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com
Cc:
Subject: Re: [CelticCafe] Gaelic Languages and South O' the Dyke Lassies

Hebrew sadly is a special case- there were so many immigrants from
Europe and natives that Hebrew was the only way they cld talk to each
other(Yiddish did not include the middle eastern Jews). Irish was
being taught much earlier but it didn't take the same way because
people could speak English.

It's amazing how fast Hebrew became a mother tongue - but hard to
emulate.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 12, 2009, at 8:21 PM, "Richard K. Munro"
wrote:

> Dear Todd: I am delighted to know that Manx has be resurrected ; if
> it can
> be done with Hebrew it can be done with Manx. It is all a matter of
> making it the lingua franca of a family or community.
>
> I wish you all the luck in the world. I was vaguely aware that there
> were
> some movements to preserve the language or restore it. I know
> recordings
> were made of the last fluent native speakers.
>
> Manx music and Manx songs are very special as is Ellan Vanin
> herself. I
> have known a few Manxmen in my life including men who fought along
> side my
> grandfather's Regiment in the Struma Valley (they served in the 27th
> Division together). I visted the Menin Gate with one of the last
> veterans
> of the 27th Division and he was a Manxman.
>
> I have read some Manx songs and it seems very similar to Irish
> Gaelic or
> Scottish Gaelic but especially the "English phonetics" of the Book
> of the
> Dean of Lismore.
>
> Richard Munro
>
> _____
>
> From: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com]
> On
> Behalf Of Tod Ardoin
> Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:14 AM
> To: CelticCafe@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [CelticCafe] Gaelic Languages and South O' the Dyke
> Lassies
>
> Great post, Richard. I wanted to add an interesting note. At our
> festival we typically have several Irish Gaelic speakers, but in
> 2007 we
> had over a dozen. That year we also had a Manx band, who had a Manx
> speaker. The Irish, who all came from either Cork or Conamara, were
> very
> excited and spent lots of time conversing with the Manx speaker. They
> indicated that they could understand each other well, and figured that
> the actual languages were around 80% the same. Manx has a slew of
> Norse,
> Latin, and English borrow words in it, but in any given sentence the
> Irish knew what the Manx speaker was saying. They may miss a word or
> two, but the context was readily known. We also had two Welsh speakers
> that year, and all of the Celtic speakers jumped in a round table
> discussion about the languages that the public absolutely loved. Of
> course, the Welsh speakers and the Gaelic speakers couldn't
> communicate,
> but they were very aware that they shared a huge number of common
> words.
> In any case, the last fully fluent Manx speaker only died in the 70's.
> There were still several mostly fluent speakers alive then, and they
> have managed to pull the language from the edge of extinction to the
> point today where there are more than a hundred fluent speakers, with
> several native speakers (meaning children who learn it as a first
> language). A couple of thousand can speak it with some proficiency.
> They
> are a very interesting group and quite a lot of fun.
>
> Tod Ardoin
>
> >Of course, when I was referring to Hebrew I was referring to a best case scenario.

And Hebrew being a language of a great classic the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures and all the rabbinic commentaries has a special allure that Latin once had (and still does to a diminished degree). My father studied Latin at school and so could read Virgil in Latin but he had only a passing, corrupt , oral knowledge of Gaelic which was his father and grandfather’s native language.

But they were both –essentially- illiterate in Gaelic as they were not taught the language.

So it is curious that my father and grandfather both being Gaels could read and write in French, Latin and English but almost not at all in Gaelic.

When they went to school in Scotland (1890-1927) used Gaelic was discouraged if not prohibited. Those who grew p in the great cities because English dominant and Gaelic survived only as part of the oral and musical culture. I became interested in Gaelic and Scots poetry chiefly because of my interest in clan histories, slogans, songs piping and traditional music.

I cannot remember a time when I did not know Caisteal Folais Na Theine (Foulis Castle Ablaze ) and Biodh eagal Dhe oirre! (Reverence you to God or Dread God; the ancient clan Munro motto). My grandfather taught me to count in Gaelic (and Punjabi too) by lining up my toy solders. He also taught me elementary commands in both languages. In his stories he would often punctuate his stories with Punjabi (“marv e” he is dead changa dost (good comrade)….changa gori spahis (the good white soldier) ‘covering fire day-do” (give him covering fire) nan lao (bring bread; food); panee lao (bring water) chai lao (bring tea). I remember these off the top of my head but if I think about it I could remember more and naturally he knew so much more than I because they ate, drink and slept with Indian Regiments of the 27th Division and they had almost daily contact for five years. In another age I would have been an NCO in a Highland regiment or in the Indian Army.

In his day Scottish Highlanders were expected to be the interpreters and go betweens with the Dins (soldiers of the Indian Army) so he had some basic oral competence in Punjabi (which is an Indo-European Language closely related to Latin and Gaelic). They often went on scouting patrols with the Dins and never spoke a word of English. They and the Punjabis communicated in a Punjabi-Gaelic-English patois.

Educationally all the adults in my family were all English dominant, however though I think our bilingual background and respect for Latin and French as universal languages gave us a cosmopolitan interest in languages. My father never discouraged me from studying Gaelic as a hobby but there is no question he favored my studying Spanish, Portuguese and German formerly as he considered these to be culture languages with great utility. For that reason I never studied a single day in Scotland; my father considered Scotland to be part of our past. He was not against Gaelic in the sense of being hostile but he was convinced that “English was the language of the banks and the long-range guns.” In other words as the Romans won the war in Gaul so the English and English-speaking Lowlanders won their wars so Latin, French and Gaelic were (the old pre-Flodden languages of the court) were dethroned. ‘He believed that Lingua Francas were languages based upon high culture or empire; minority languages were doomed to be swept away or assimilated like Gaulish or Old British (a native language of the Scottish lowlands).

Many people date the decline of Gaelic to the Highland Clearances or Culloden but my father thought the decisive movement was Flodden (1513) when the last Gaelic-speaking King of Scotland (James IV) was killed. At that time most of the Scottish Roman Catholic aristocracy could speak French, Gaelic and read and write in Latin or French. A whole generation of Scots were wiped out in that battle and it may have changed the cultural history of Scotland as well.

Mary Queen of Scots, for example, could not speak English (she was a native speaker of French and could read and write Latin) but as far as I know she knew little or no Gaelic. When she spoke with her friends among the Highland Chiefs she probably spoke in French or Latin. This probably explains part of her alienation from her own people; it was more than just religion.

Gaelic is hurt by the fact that

1) it is not a true national language (unlike Welsh) ; it one is the ancient ancestral languages of the native Gael, Pict and Briton.

2) It’s hinterland of Gaelic speakers has diminished almost to the vanishing point; once less than 50% of a population speaks a language there is no language majority to immerse oneself in.

3) 80% of Gaelic speaking people intermarry with non Gaelic speakers and most do not live in Gaelic speaking communities. Some of their children will be Gaelic speakers but many if not most will not be.

4) Planned Parenthood has come to the Scottish Islands and Highlands; at one time a high birth rate helped offset the high immigration rate but this is not true any longer. I read that there are scarcely 2000 Gaelic speaking children living in households in which both parents are native Gaelic speakers. No language has a long future if it does not have demographic vitality. The desire for independence came too late for French Quebec and I think there is little chance that Scotland will ever vote to become an independent country especially as non Scottish ethnics emigrate to Scotland. They, like immigrants to French Canada, will have no interest in Scottish Gaelic culture or Scottish Independence.

5) The Gaels are very religiously divided embracing different sects of Christianity. I could be wrong but essentially I have observed there is a Roman Catholic minority in some places and Evangelical Christians in another. This division means that Gaels do no have a strong unified religious tradition to sustain them and unite them.

6) The decline in the Scottish Regiments and Territorial units is another factor. I have heard it said that the Army discouraged the use of Gaelic but on the other hand when my grandfather served in the Argylls it was the most Scottish institution he was ever associated with bar none. There is no question the Scottish Regiments kept piping and promoted a pride in Scottish national feeling In the First World War there were hundreds of volunteers from Nova Scotia in my grandfather’s Regiment (the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) who were native Gaelic speakers. English may have been the language of command but at the squad level they men spoke and sang as they pleased. There was an active piping culture and many companies –all recruited from the Highlands and Islands were predominately Gaelic-speaking. In fact the only education in Gaelic my grandfather ever received was while in the Army. What Gaelic he could read was from the Psalms and the New Testament which was the only Gaelic book he ever saw (or owned). But he really couldn’t read; he used it as a memory aid it seems to me. He really just memorized some psalms and some portions of the Bible. He could not write them out properly so he was for all intents and purposes illiterate. (though of course he could read and write English reasonably well for a person with only an elementary education; he went to sea at age 8.

At one time the Churches were a very important community and educational force for Gaelic if not the most important. I don’t think any one will disagree that Church attendance and participation has declined in Scotland though it Gaels in general have high attendance rates than the general population. One place Gaelic thrived was in the hymns and prayers of the people.

Also I believe the decline in church attendance tends to diminish the use of Gaelic and well as the decline (in young people) in the interest in traditional music.

The allure of English-speaking pop culture is very great. Youth only interested in movies , video games and computers tend to be English dominant.

On the plus side, Scottish Gaels are more literate than at anytime in modern history and Scottish Gaelic is popular

and fashionable in a way it hasn’t been in centuries.

Gaelic is available on the Internet and via mass media, This allows heritage speakers to support the language and retain or regain the use of the language.

But the decline of the Scottish birthrate to ZPG or even Negative Population Growth guarantees there will be a diminishing number of native speaking children.

So by the 22nd century Gaelic may go the way of Manx and exist only in folkloric tradition. I reverently hope this is not the case but I am being realistic. That worse case scenario is probably more likely than a Hebrew like resuscitation.

By the 22nd Century if present population trends continue not only Gaelic will be endangered but other European languages as well.

French and Italian, for example may become minority languages in their own hinterlands.

As incredible as that seems, it is a real possibility if one looks at birth rates, assimilation rates and immigration rates to Europe.

Demography is destiny. The hands that rock the cradles rule the word and it is their mother tongue that shall endure because tomorrow belongs to the big battalions.

A seal fein fuair an t-eineach HONOUR has had its own day,

Ag so an dile dheireadhach This is the final flood

A dhuid fa chre do chadal that shut your sleep under clay

Rug a re go Roghadal. That brought his life span to Rodel.

Mise le meas (that’s “me” with respect)

Richard K. Munro

Technology per se is not the answer to Education Reform.

2009-11-03T21:23:00.000-08:00

Technology can do wonders. I think our use of Safari (libraries of videos, long and short often with subtitles in English and Spanish), Smartboards and speakers have been a big improvement. We can make instant copies of articles we research on line. We have access to spell-check and online dictionaries , quotations and encyclopedias. For our English learners every story and article is available on CD; a summary of each story is available in twenty languages including Arabic, Chinese , Russian and Japanese. Computer labs make writing and editing essays easier.

But cheating is a big problem. Excessive reliance on multiple choice instruments when there are 40 and 50 students in a classroom designed for 30 or 35 is a problem. Computers and technology can help for review but by themselves they do not teach grammar, literary devices and good style. I recall Bill Gates boasting he got an A in a mythology class he never attended by studying the Cliffnotes. Well, perhaps he got an A on a superficial multiple choice test but he missed the point of gaining an introduction to Greek and Roman literature.

One cannot dismiss the utilitarian argument because one must be practical. One must pay the bills, “keep the wolf from the door” and be prepared to compete in today’s society. However, a liberal or humane education, at its best in the most practical and adaptive education a man can get. Why? For one reason a classical liberal education based on a well-rounded education of mathematics, history, literature, music and languages is a very hard and challenging curriculum. Second a good general education is important because we don’t know what challenges and questions we may face in our lives. The mere training of today may soon be obsolete. A third reason is as Cicero famously said, is that literature (the liberal arts) “hinders not.” They are, indeed a great ornament and a great comfort. They are, in my opinion, the key to a happy and satisfying life. There is no royal road to geometry, algebra, or fluency in French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Russian, English or Italian. And he who writes a living line must sweat.

A student asked Miguel de Unamuno what he should do to obtain wisdom.
Unamuno who excelled in every genre and who was fluent in many languages answered with only one word repeated three times: LEER! LEER! LEER!. Then he walked away. Regardless of the technology those who do not read and think will remain as children. A people lacking understanding will come to ruin. An individual who does not inform him or herself will simply be unable to make wise and informed decisions.
I believe there can be no short cut to Core Knowledge or Cultural Literacy.

Technology can help in so many ways but really, to me, in the subjects I teach, technology is only something to help, to make presentations more efficient, to print out thumbnails of class notes, to provide sound effects and memorable images in color. Technology helps give us tools to analyze some standardized test results and so have quicker feedback and be able to share records more easily. But in the final analysis we in the public schools must create citizens imbued with civic virtue, with a community spirit, with an appreciation for our splendid ancient heritage of freedom. And that includes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the private domain, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom to educate one’s self and one’s own child or children.

And there is no question that students need to learn not only of individual freedoms but also individual responsibility. There is no question that students should learn not only of what is good for themselves but what is right for others and the common good. Those who are strong should learn with humility that they will be strong only for a while. Those who are rich should learn that materialism is not enough and that boundless prosperity may slip away from us. Those who are strong should not hate the weak or the orphans or empire who lack the documents of the rich but instead remember the warning to be merciful to the stranger and the alien for “you too were once a slave in the land of Egypt.”

Scientists, technicians, bureaucrats, lawyers wrap themselves in a suffocating blanket misguidedly thinking they can solve all ills by planning and calculation when they have cut themselves off from their humanity and real understanding. Haim Ginott in his wonderful book TEACHER AND CHILD reminded us that “learned engineers” built gas chambers, “educated physicians” and “trained nurses” murdered infants and innocents not by the thousands but by the millions. He warned his fellow teachers that their efforts should never produce “learned monsters, skilled psychopaths” and “educated Eichmans.”

A well-rounded liberal or humane education teaches us how to think. I am a very strong advocate of a liberal culture because it is essential for the good life and as the basis ofa free society and for the preservation of what the Gael would call “ar dualchas airidh;our splendid ancient heritage. President Kennedy made reference to this is his famous inaugural of January 20, 1961 when he said he was proud of his “ancient heritage.” Dr. Morbius (remember FORBIDDEN PLANET?) sought all knowledge but he forgot the danger of unlimited power without restraint and without moderation and without care for others. In the end he and all he created was destroyed by Id Monsters. Technology is only as good or bad as how we apply it and how we use it. It can be used for the good of mankind or for unlimited evil or destruction. So whatever we do for our children and our schools and whatever technology we use we should take care that our schools are not murder machines of civility and humanity.

The ACLU, the Mojave Cross and Democracy

2009-10-10T12:41:00.001-07:00

Consider the comments of Diane Ravitch, author of Making Good Citizens:
Education and Civil Society: "Democracy is a process, a way of living and
working together. It is evolutionary, not static. It requires cooperation,
compromise, and tolerance among all citizens. Making it work is hard, not easy.
Freedom means responsibility, not freedom from responsibility."

Without mutual respect and compromise Democracy becomes impossible.

One of the reasons the ACLU attack on the WWI memorial in the Mojave -which as I
write is
is shamefully hidden under a wooden shroud- is so dangerous for Democracy is
that the attack lacks all reason, all respect especially for the long lost
Doughboys on 1917-1919 who made the supreme sacrifice.

If the ACLU attack on our memory and our commemorations is allowed to succeed
then every public memorial and every public inscription of the past that is
unacceptable by the lights of the ACLU is in danger.

As I see it the ACLU-Secular-left attack on Judeo-Christian tradition and
Christianity in particular is a form of punishment and revenge that totally
lacks any respect for the memory of fallen comrades who died in service of their
country. If this form of persecution is sanctioned by the Court, the Federal
government would be denying the free exercise of religion of a community.

Federal lands supposedly belong TO THE PEOPLE not to the State. No Federal
money ws spent in putting up the cross and no state, Federal or local money is
spent in its maintenance. And in fact the land upon which the cross sits is
now private land as well! No one is required to attend services there nor pay
any money. But the case of the ACLU is ,essentially, that a man in Oregon who
has never been to Mohave MIGHT be offended if he HAPPENED to NOTICE a cross in
public view and HE MIGHT interpret this as an unconstitutional establishment of
a "religion". This is the new doctrine of the veto power of one; just forget
tradition, custom and popular sovereignty! We might as well install Czars and
Commissars for life to run all our affairs.

It so happens that the vast majority of Americans are against this 'absolutist'
(and in my view totalitarian an intolerant) view of Christian symbols in public
places. (over 70% in recent polls).

It seems the ACLU-Secular-Left want and religious activity or symbolism to be
prohibited in speech, public life, community life and absolutely restricted to
whispers in a darkened private sphere. Every year we recall the great moral
tragedy of our culture of death which has accepted tens of millions of
abortions as no big deal. So we place hundreds of white crosses on Church
property and display signs -not of hatred or accusation -but of sorrow and
prayer for what seems to many of us a human holocaust on a scale which very soon
will surpass the total number of dead in both world wars. You may not agree
with this point of view but this is a valid and reasonable viewpoint and a
peaceful free exercise of religion. If our people were to put these crosses on
your lawn or glue them to the wall of Clinica Sierra Vista I would be opposed to
such an illegal trespass and lack of respect for the property of others.

What happens when we do this? Radicals-offended by seeing these symbolic
crosses next to a public highway- trespass and vandalize the crosses tearing
them down and marking them with swastikas. In this they are no different than
the fanatical iconoclasts of another era. And the message they send is very
clear. They hate and if they could get away with it they would burn
our church to the ground. Similarly anyone who supported Prop 8 was
considered "hateful" and "bigoted". But almost all the acts of violence and
intimidation were performed by homosexual activists and the Left such as the
assault of an old lady whose crime was to carry a pro proposition 8 placard.
Other groups vandalized signs on people's lawns. Other groups publicized hotel
and restaurant owners who contributed to the pro prop 8. And once again the
CTA/NEA -without consulting its rank and file- blithely gave over 400,000 to the
Anti prop 8 campaign. Indirectly they used taxpayers funds to support their
philosophy or "their doctrines." There is very little Democracy in these actions
in my opinion and a measure of Bossism and totalitarianism.

What is happening because of the constant attacks by the Secular Left on
traditional symbols and values (traditional marriage in the monogamous
Judeo-Christian tradition) is great anger and frustration and a sense that SOME
institutions -which are tax-supported- have become are are becoming ENEMY
institutions.

Thirty years ago I never heard the contempt and distrust that people express
towards the state government and the Federal government. One sixth of all
hospital patients are taken care of in Catholic hospitals and now there is great
concern that nurses, doctors and hospital personnel will be REQUIRED to peform
abortions once Obamacare is passed. Already in California there is no parental
consent and children as young as 11 or 12 can have access to birth control and
abortions without the consent and knowledge of their parents. Already
pharmacists MUST prescribe RU-486 abortion pills or risk losing their jobs.
What is actually happening is pharmacists cover for each other or discourage the
use of RU-486 by not having it on hand (young women who want it typically want
it IMMEDIATELY). I never thought I could ever come to the day where I would
ever feel that the day seems to becoming when I have to revoke my allegiance to
America and her government but we seem to be closer to that possibility every
day.
My only solace is that things are far worse in Britain and Canada than they are
here. Our system of Federalism and local control of schools gives us some
breathing space. And yet some believe that the Federal government should be
given more authority and more power over our lives and tax us even more than
they do so that elites can impose their 'correct' views on the rest of us.

And Monday is so-called Columbus Day. At one time the celebration of Columbus
Day like the public celebration of Christmas was seen as proof of religious
tolerance towards Catholics and Italians and Hispanics in particular. Lincoln
knew the significance of this respect and hence the Columbus doors in the
Capitol which celebrate Queen Isabella and Columbus for opening the path to the
New World. Of course, in California we no longer celebrate Columbus day and it
is not a school holiday and you know why. Native American and Chicano Activists
have spread anti-Spanish and anti-Christian propaganda to the effect that
Columbus and even the Missionary founders of California are NO BETTER THAN
GENOCIDAL MANIACS and KILLERS like the Nazis! The Black Legend is alive in well
in California’s public schools and it seems to me nothing more than a veiled
Anti-Catholicism and anti- "White Culture". That is the true meaning of
multiculturalism to accuse, to teach hatred and resentment and to divide
Americans and hence weaken the Union.

Once again their is no respect for history, tradition and the cherished beliefs
of a large portion of American citizens. What's next? Will they dynamite the
Columbus doors in Congress. Will they go on a campaign to eradicate every
inscription and public monument they don't like? We can expect continued
attacks in the coming years.

What radicals like this really are doing is weakening our national union step by
step and playing a dangerous game as they flirt with the politics of ethnic
grievances and political separatism. They are not willing, as most of the
American public are, to live and let live. They are not peacefully coexisting,
they are not compromising, they are not respecting long held customs and
traditions but insist in their proto-totalitarian way that there is ONLY ONE
WAY...THEIR WAY and THEIR interpretation. They are in fact very illiberal
liberals. They will force their way by hook or by crook via the Courts or by
steady political pressure regardless of the long term consequences. They are
acting very irresponsibly and with this irresponsibility they are contributing to a
polarization of political view that could eventually lead to violent
confrontation, bitter factionalism, even Civil War.

And that is the price the will be paid for having a total lack of civic virtue,
moderation and tolerance. Democracy means rule by the people -popular
sovereignty-. It is not rule by ACLU lawyers or Dukes for life (Federal Judges).
Any attempt to muzzle the American people and impose laws without popular
support will cause great bitterness and upheaval. But worst of all it causes
resentment and disrespect for officials of the government and so weakens public
confidence in Democracy itself.

Richard K. Munro

CALEDONIA

2009-09-19T19:45:00.001-07:00

MUNRO'S COMMENTARY ON THE RABBI'S SERMON (fFAGMENT)

2009-09-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

I found this sermon very wise and very, very
interesting. I liked the detail about the Roman coins marked by the Jewish
fighters. As a Gael and the son and grandson of Gaels I have always thought of
places like Masada or Numantia or Alesia or Culloden from two perspectives.
That of the men who served the yoke -the Empire- and those who fought for the
lost cause of independence and liberty FOR THEMSELVES. Perhaps their liberty
was imperfect and their societies not as strong politically but they fought the
cause of true honor for liberty FOR THEMSELVES and that is always an honorable
fight and there is something more. The spirit of liberty , the spirit of
sacrifice and spirit of courage and struggle is never entirely lost if the past
is remembered. This is something Gaels -though we are small in number- have in
common I think with the Jews. We remember the past. I remember reading
Caesar's Gallic Wars -translated by Moses Hades- with great joy. It is , after
all a great adventure story. And as a Roman Catholic, I admit that something in
me made me want to root for Caesar and the Romans not the Gauls who were the
barbarians. But I remembered my grandfather who read out the name
VERRRRCINGETORRRRIX said that rix or Righ was King or High Chief of the Marching
Men (or Host). Ver is man as in VIRILE and CINGETO -cogante with the Gaelic
CEUM for step or path and the Spanish CAMINO (path or track). He reminded me
that my ancestors were kinsmen of the Gauls though we were brought into the
Christian Catholic faith by Roman hands.......Patrick and Mungo came from the
same northern Romano-British Diocese and of course St. Columba and St. Maelrubha
and St. Bridget were Gaels but brought into to the faith by the hand of Patrick
or his disciples. And of course we believe in Apostalic Secession -that Patrick
was baptized by priests who were baptized by priests whose baptism traces back
to Peter, John the Baptist and Jesus himself. Perhaps this is a romantic dream
but the Celtic line of my family traces its Christian-Jewish roots that way. Of
course I am part Sutherland and Anderson as well as these lines came relatively
late to Christianity as they were Norse originally. I am quite sure I have
racial roots to Norway and Sweden but interesting enough I have never been
interested in them particularly as my people were completely assimilated to
Scottish Gaelic culture and Christianity over a period of 1000 years.

As you know I have much love and facination for the Jewish faith which I
consider the mother faith of Christianity. And as I have told Diane many times
I hold Jews in awe because really you are of the line of David -collaterally the
same line as Joseph. Mary and Jesus. I could never understand anti-Semitism
because to love the Bible and the teachings of the Great Teacher is to have love
and awe and gratitude for the Jewish people. I begin my catechism classes this
Sunday. And when I read from the Bible I never cease to remember that the Old
Book began as a Jewish Hebrew book and that the New Testament is a Greek book
written by and for Helenistic Jews and a few gentile friends. It is my own
personal theory that the first Christian communities came about when Jewish men
or half-Jewish men and their gentile converts married gentile women and so were
gradually alienated and rejected by the Jewish community as half-breeds and
religious degenerates. And so there must be roots of conflict and alienation
from the very beginning like the murderous bickering of Highland Clans. Yet all
very tragic and unnecessary because we are one human family and those of us who
believe in the God of Abraham have more in common than not. We believe in the
dignity of individual human beings. We reverence unto God and obey his
commandments and we know not to do this is vainglory or hubris.

But I have learned as a teacher that teaching is not an easy matter. Many
people are slackers and resist education as too painful. Education means
alienation from their home culture and their peers so they cling to what is
familar even if it drags them down.

GO FOR YOURSELF: LECH LECHA (GEN 12:1)

2009-09-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

GO FOR YOURSELF: LECH LECHA (GEN 12:1)
>
> ROSH HASHANA DAY 2009/5770
>
> BY RABBI MARC GELLMAN, PH.D.
>
>
>
> The sages taught that there are no extra words in the torah. I think
> the sages were right and the irony is that it will take me three
> sermons with lots of extra words to prove it to you. My proof text
> for these three linked yontiff sermons is a single Hebrew word, lecha,
> which means "for yourself" and on the surface lecha seems to be a
> completely superfluous word in every Torah verse where it appears.
>
> For example, in Genesis chapter 12, the first text we shall consider
> today, God commands Abram, his name had not yet been changed to
> Abraham, to leave his homeland in Haran (present day Syria) and travel
> to Canaan, the newly promised homeland for the Jewish people. God
> calls to Abram, "Lech lecha meiarzecha u'meimoladecha u'mebeit avicha
> el ha aretz asher ani erecha." "Go for yourself from your land and
> from your culture and from your father's house to the land I will show
> you." God could have said, "lech m'artzecha" go from your land. The
> extra word lecha "go for yourself" adds nothing--or does it? I
> believe that lecha is not extra but essential. I believe lecha is the
> key to understanding what it means to be deeply Jewish, not just
> Jewish by birth or bagels, but Jewish for yourself--lecha. Lecha is
> the perfect proof that there are no extra words in the Torah.
>
> The command to Abram teaches us the first meaning of lecha: the first
> way to become Jewish for yourself is to love Zion.
>
> Abram's Jewish journey begins the same way each of our Jewish journeys
> begin, with a call to Zion. I say Zion and not Israel because the
> land that is the land of Israel has had many historical names, Canaan,
> Judea, Palestine and Israel (in fact Israel in the Bible is the name
> of the Jewish people not the land), but spiritually, religiously the
> land has always had just one name, Tzion, Zion. 154 times in the
> Tanach the land is called Zion. However, Zion is not just the name of
> the land promised to Abram by God. It is the land promised to us
> through Abram. Before we were given a law code, before we were given
> a set of beliefs and customs and rituals, before we were given lox and
> bagels and cholent and tzimis and rugelach and petchaw (cow's foot
> borsht--don't ask) we were given Zion. Zion is the beginning of any
> serious Jewish journey. Zion is the foundation for any thick and rich
> and real sense of personal Jewishness. To find yourself as a real Jew
> you must find your way to Zion.
>
> Being a lover of Zion is closely related but is not the same as being
> a Zionist. The dream of Zion is a religious belief. Zionism is a
> political movement. For some ultra orthodox Jewish sects, like the
> Satmar Hasidim, the dream of Zion is actually a reason for opposing
> the State of Israel. They believe that Zion can only be made real on
> earth by the Messiah, and Herzl and Ben Gurion were not the Messiah.
> I think their views and their actions are not just wrong but actually
> a perversion of Judaism and an nightmare in the dream of Zion.
>
> ON the other end of the religious and political spectrum was early
> Classical Reform Judaism which, until the 50s actively opposed the
> State of Israel as a source of dual loyalty for American Jews and as a
> particularistic anachronism for what they believed was a
> universalistic Reform Judaism. Both these religious objections to the
> actual State of Israel embrace the dream of Zion but reject the way
> the dream has become real in the world.
>
> Both are blind to the way Israel has transformed modern Jewish life.
> Satmar is still mired in the 17th century and Reform Judaism has
> finally embraced the religious meaning of the State of Israel despite
> its unfortunate resolutions condemning Israel that have the effect of
> undermining support particularly among our youth, and emboldening
> Israel's enemies.
>
> What we must all remember and embrace is the reality of a Jewish state
> that has transformed Jewish life while also remembering that Zion is
> the dream of a land that will transform the world .In the words of the
> prophet Isaiah 2:3, ki mitzion tetze torah u'davar adonai
> mirushalayim, "For the torah shall go forth from Zion and the word of
> the Lord from Jerusalem." The State of Israel is incomprehensible
> except as a part of that dream. The question is, can we and can our
> children still dream the dream of Zion and so strenghten our roots and
> our faith? Beyond giving to the UJA or AIPAC, will you allow the
> dream of Zion to be for you, lecha?
>
> For the oldest generations here in this room my question must seem
> totally absurd. How could a Jew not love Zion? You, the members of
> what Tom Brokaw called the greatest generation, you are the ones who
> remember a world without Israel. You are the ones who raised money
> for a state that did not yet exist. You remember the little blue
> pushkes for the JNF on your grandmother's table. Some of you saw in
> your childhood in Europe what Herzl saw in the Dreyfus trial in Paris
> at the end of the 19th century, that there was no future for the Jews
> of Europe. You smelled the chimneys. Your support for Israel was
> unquestioned and constant, and many of you have done a wonderful job
> teaching your children and grandchildren about the dream and the debt
> it imposes on every Jewish person to support the State of Israel and
> expose her enemies.
>
> However, today the love of Zion is a besieged and imperiled Jewish
> dream. I never thought I would say this, and saying it makes my soul
> shiver, but today for many Jews the dream of Zion does not include
> them, and this has seriously weakened the State of Israel, decreased
> Jewish identity, and fractured Jewish solidarity world wide. The
> severing of the Jewish connection to Israel particularly among the
> young is a nightmare in the dream God dreamed for the children of Abram.
>
> The most important Jewish task of our time is to reinvigorate the
> dream of Zion among young Jewish dreamers. New surveys indicate that
> 30% of 20-30 year old Jews felt that that the destruction of the State
> of Israel would not be a personal catastrophe for them. It's not that
> they seek Israel's destruction, actually it is worse. They would be
> unmoved by Israel's destruction. Israel can survive any external foe,
> but it cannot survive the disconnection of young Jews from Zion.
>
> The greatest success story in the effort to restore the fading dream
> of Zion among young Jews is Birthright. To date, the Birthright trips
> to Israel have brought almost a quarter of a million young Jews to
> Israel so that they might rediscover Zion. Its results are generally
> positive, but mixed. It takes more than a ten day trip to Israel to
> revive a dream. Most love the trip but the follow up has been spotty
> and often unsuccessful. The reason for this is how they go. They are
> going to Israel and they should be going to Zion. The religious
> element of the land is often left out of their orientation lectures
> and itineraries in favor of bar crawling in Tel Aviv and swimming in
> the Dead Sea. The problem with including a religious element in the
> Birthright trips is of course deciding which flavor of Judaism you
> will choose. Now there is a controversy that the follow up program
> Birthright Next is being monopolized by orthodox Judaism. This is
> good because it is at least a religious effort but bad because it does
> not respect or reflect the diversity of modern Jewish religious life.
> As a result the birthrightarians are often spiritually short changed.
>
> The problem with Birthright, from my own personal perspective is that
> these kids do not have a chance to learn about Zion from Nelson
> Glueck, and sadly Nelson is dead. Rabbi Nelson Glueck, Ph.D. was my
> teacher, my mentor, my rabbi who convinced me to become a rabbi and to
> study in Israel and (in the hardest thing he ever got me to do) to eat
> pita bread cooked over a camel dung fire in a Bedouin camp in the
> Judean wilderness.
>
> Nelson was a spy, the head of the OSS in the Middle East during WWII,
> and in fact the model for Indiana Jones. Nelson was a distinguished
> biblical archeologist who discovered King Solomon's mines and Nelson
> was the president of Hebrew Union College the seminary which ordains
> Reform rabbis. In my first visit to Israel during my sophomore summer
> in college in 1966, Nelson took me up to the roof of the HUC building
> on King David Street and pointed to the old city which had not yet
> been liberated. He looked through me with his deep blue eyes resting
> under the shade of his arching eyebrows and said,, "The Arabs believe
> that the temple mount is the axis mundi, the omphilos, the navel of
> the universe. They believe that the universe was created from
> Jerusalem. Well, we Jews believed that first. Yehudah Ha-Levi taught
> that Jerusalem is the place where Heaven and Earth kiss, and I believe
> it too." That day on the rooftop changed my Jewish life. That day
> the dream of Zion entered my heart and my soul. I did not learn
> anything new on that rooftop. I felt something new on that rooftop.
> I felt my Jewish roots sink into the soil of Zion and the dream of
> Zion. Zion is the place where the Jewish universe and the universe of
> the world intersect. Zion is the place God pointed to when he said
> lech lecha to Abram. Zion was the Jewish sacred space.
>
> Every great world religion is rooted in a sacred place. Hinduism is
> rooted in India, indeed Hindu means India. Islam is rooted in Mecca.
> The Lakota Sioux religion is rooted in the Black Hills of South
> Dakota. The Rastafarians are rooted in Ethiopia which they call
> Zion. The dream of Zion is the Jewish version of the universal
> religious dream of sacred space.
>
> For two thousand years in the Diaspora we Jews have forgotten about
> sacred space. We have sanctified sacred time for two thousand years
> since the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the first
> century. We sanctify communal time through holidays and through rites
> of passage, but we have lost a sense of sacred space. Sacred space
> roots us in the earth. Most people can see the value of sacred space
> when they see the Native American rituals or when they see Hindus
> bathing in the Ganges or when they see Muslims at the Kabah stone in
> Mecca, but for some reason many Jews cannot admire in our own
> tradition, the sacred space we instantly admire in other tribes and
> traditions.
>
> There are, sadly, no effective arguments to convince a person of the
> importance of sacred space. You must go up to the rooftop and have a
> teacher point it out to you. You must see the light of Jerusalem as
> different than any other light in any other place. You must touch the
> stones of the kotel and feel their warmth as different than the warmth
> of any other stones. You must travel half way around the world to
> Israel and get off the plane and feel in some real way that you are
> not a visitor but that you are home.
>
> I know that to many of you this may all sound quite tribal, and my
> response is, "Yes it is tribal, but you are a part of this tribe."
> And what do you think a bris is? Isn't that tribal enough for you.
> And how about blowing a hollowed out ram's horn? That is also a
> tribal ritual. Religions are not just a collection of intellectual
> beliefs. They are the record of the collective wisdom of the tribal
> elders. And one of the pieces of wisdom is that we did not come from
> anywhere, we came from Zion and that we will return there all of us
> some day at the end of time. If you are serious about your Jewish
> identity, you must come to a realization that being Jewish is partly
> about coming from Zion. You must believe and know that we are bound
> to that land and also bound by that land.
>
> The most contemptible name for Jews in Europe was luftmentchen, "air
> people". A luftmench was a rootless cosmopolitan who had traded in
> authenticity for assimilation. Surrendering the dream of Zion is like
> cutting the string on a balloon and watching it float away on the
> winds of fashion and fate. Now of course the rootless cosmopolitan
> can retort, "I am happy to cut the string. I am a citizen of the
> world. I do not need a homeland." Herzl's counterargument was that
> you need a homeland to be safe.
>
> This is still true for many oppressed Jews in the world. I remember a
> little Ethiopian Jewish boy named Ari drawing a crayon picture of a
> smiling dog in a nursery school absorption center in Israel. I asked
> him why the dog was smiling and he answered me, "Because the dog knows
> that I do not have to eat him." Part of the dream of Zion is
> concrete. Part of that dream, we must never forget, is to create and
> sustain and protect a real and safe place where a real little boy
> named Ari can crayon a picture of a smiling dog that he does not have
> to eat.
>
> Now we generally do not eat dogs and so, in addition to Herzl's
> argument from safety for the dream of Zion, there are other reasons
> for each of us, safe in this land of freedom, to embrace a Jewish
> identity that is rooted in Zion.
>
> In these perilous times building our Jewish identity on the
> foundations of a love of Zion is also building our identity on the
> foundations of freedom. Since long before 9/11 but absolutely since
> then the war of the jihadists is a war against all those who love Zion
> and the promise of freedom that is the heart of the dream. Detaching
> oneself from the struggle to defeat the enemies of Israel is at one
> and the same time detaching oneself from the struggle to defeat
> worldwide Islamic jihadism. This is why many non-Jews today also
> support for the dream of Zion. In other times, many Jews thought it
> was safe to melt into the cosmopolitan masses and surrender the dream
> of Zion. The fight to defeat jihadists demands that all people join
> all Jews in taking up the dream of Zion as our dream for freedom and
> victory. Today every patriot must become a spiritual Zionist. All
> the dreams of freedom in our time go through Zion. Our choice is
> simple and brutal. We are rooted in the defense of Zion or the dream
> of freedom from terrorism will become a nightmare for the entire free
> world.
>
> Finally, on a very personal level, whether you know it or not, the
> dream of Zion is an ineluctable part of each and every Jewish person.
> In Yiddish it is called a pintele yid which literally means a Jewish
> spark. It refers to that irreducible Jewish part within us that
> cannot be erased. The reason that on visits to Israel this spark can
> be and has been fanned into a roaring Jewish fire of faith and
> fidelity is that the spark was always in us. It is a spark from God
> in Zion. This is why loving Zion is not just something you ought to
> do to become more deeply Jewish; it is something you have to do to
> become more deeply Jewish. Zion is not the only spark in our Jewish
> souls, but it is the first spark to live in us and the last spark to
> die. When God commanded Abram, lech lecha, we must feel that God
> commanded each and every one of us. God gave Zion to the Jewish
> people and through us to the world. This means that God gave Zion to
> you--lecha.
>
> The dream of Zion is also the last dream we will dream at the end of
> our life here on planet earth. The Jewish mystics, the mekubalim,
> taught about gilgul haneshamot. They taught that there are tunnels
> under the earth. When we die our soul travels through these
> subterranean tunnels until they arrive at a place under the Temple
> mount, directly under the Holy of Holies. From there, from Zion, all
> souls ascend to the Olam Habah, to Heaven, to the World to Come where
> they are judged and welcomed by God and the angelic hosts. Zion was
> not just the end point of Abrams journey. It is, if this legend of
> the mekubalim is true, the end point for each and every one of us in
> our earthly journey through life and into death and beyond death.
>
> For two millennia reconnecting to the dream of Zion was very
> difficult. Jews could only go to Israel as guests of the overlords of
> land--the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the Arabs and the Ottoman
> Turks--and this made the choice of journeying to Zion perilous. And
> in the lands of our dispersion we were never free to choose to leave
> the Jewish tribe the way we are free to leave it today. Our Jewish
> identity was forced upon us by antisemitism, but after May 18, 1948
> and especially after June 7, 1967 we were free to see all of Zion not
> from a rooftop, but with our touch and our tears. So the choice of
> lech lecha is particularly poignant and powerful now. Our decision to
> take Zion into our personal Jewishness, into our hearts and our faith
> and not just to acknowledge it as a part of our ancient and hoary
> history is now both possible and pressing in a way it has never been
> before in all of Jewish history. This choice, born of our dream of
> Zion and the courage of Israeli freedom fighters, is our choice now.
>
> Two weeks ago 120 coins some of them gold were discovered in a cave in
> the Judean hills. They are from the failed Bar Kochba revolt against
> Roman rule in 135 ce. The coins were Roman but the freedom fighters
> of Beitar melted them and stamped their own insignia on them which
> bore the words "For the freedom of Jerusalem." We cannot hold the
> coins, but we can dream the dream that forged the coins. Put one of
> those coins in your pocket and dream the dream of Zion for yourself.
> It is a dream that finally we can dream when we are awake.
>
> There are no extra words in the Torah.
>
> Amen
>