Posted on 02/24/2014 2:31:06 PM PST by rhema
WHAT IS MEMORABLE FROM YOUR 9TH GRADE CLASS?
Modern American Marxism insists that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No beauty can be more beautiful than another. All art is equally beautiful ..which logically means that which is equally beautiful is equally ugly ..Equality is the goal of Marxist achievement.
I disagree with these academic Marxist goals in any of the social sciences. It is because I am old and have been taught otherwise when Marxism was an anathema to our American way of life..
Is it possible that the utterings of a well-heeled, but cold-blooded murderer faced with his own imminent demise can be written with magnificent unsurpassed beauty, beauty of words and message you cannot forget as long as you live? Could such utterings rise above the Marxist command of forced equality of todays lessons of mediocrity? Read the following assemblage of words from the 17th century:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle. Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It is easy enough English to understand. I found it breath-takingly beautiful when I heard it for the first time, read to me by my 9th grade English teacher, 68 years old, 90 pounds, withered but commanding, Mabel Wicker, at my local urban public high school. There were 35 other kids in that class, mostly of us boys who were disruptive during eighth grade classes in elementary school. This is the same Miss Wicker from whom I earned an F for my first eight week period in her class. I was mesmerized by the Shakespeare she read as part of her daily lectures. I recognized its beauty. I was not disruptive. No one in that class was disruptive. We were not allowed to be. She used red ink in designing the large F handwritten on my report card to increase the chances for public humiliation.
I enjoyed her readings so much. I had never cared about grades. They never meant anything in elementary school. You were either okay or you werent. I never even thought about grades .until the marking period after the first eight weeks with Miss Mabel Wickers flashy red F shining for all to see for the rest of the school year.
She expected homework from me. She showed me her grading book. There was nothing listed under my name. It was a perfectly clean slate sans any indication of handed-in homework. She pointed out to me that I had earned my keep. What could I say?
Later in the year I did memorize the above lines from William Shakespeares Macbeth as part of the 400 lines of poetry required to get a passing grade.
WHAT IS MEMORABLE FROM YOUR 9TH GRADE CLASS?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
The government forces citizens to wear “handicaps” (a mask if they are too handsome or beautiful, earphones with deafening radio signals to make intelligent people unable to concentrate and form thoughts, and heavy weights to slow down those who are too strong or fast).
First thing I thought of...
Such an imposed standard of equality in every aspect can only last for a while. It is too absurd and artificial to endure.
Ever notice that the “art” that the government buys for public display is almost always ugly beyond reason? I have figured out why. Since there is always a committee that picks out the art, they always pick the “art” that they all hate. Since they all hate it it MUST be so good that it exceeds their capacity to understand it.
Progressive liberal women are in favor, some of the most ugly women ive seen
Marxism is loaded with people who couldn’t get laid in high school and instead of self improvement, they want to lower everyone to their ugliness..
This is their undoing. They can have Betty Friedan, we can have the King James Version of the Holy Bible. They get the dross, we get the poetry. They get the banality of liberal evil, we get the gorgeousness of true art. They are already meaningless. This will only make them more so.
Definition of a committee.
Any living organism with 5 or more legs and no brain.
That's a new one on me. Cite?
That explains why Hollywood calls some very ugly people “beautiful”. It also explains why they call Moochelle “lovely”.
I’ve noticed that people who claim to believe that all art is equally beautiful tend to prefer art that is overtly ugly.
The great paintings of the Renaissance, the music of Beethoven and Bach, the sculptures of Michelangelo are all quite beautiful.
But to my mind Rothko's and Pollock's art is also beautiful. As is Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and the poetry of T. S. Eliot.
They’ve learned the power of demeaning others. Having eviscerated anything superior to them, as bullies inflicting suffering and cognitive dissonance on others to make them malleable & submissive, they can declare themselves superior.
I was in 9th grade in 1964, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. My englsh teacher, Sr. Elzabeth (a.k.a. Dizzy Lizzie) hatched an actual plan to borrow a 707 and get my brother-in-law to fly us all to Stratford-on-Avon for the Bard’s festival. The plan got more elaborate as time passed; my friend Bill’s father was going to be the navigator and radio man.
Slowly it dawned on us that she was serious. Dead serious. It dawned on the administration tootat her delusion was beginning to scare some students, amaze others and entertain the rest. When we got back from the Christmas break, Dizzy Lizzie had “gone to visit her sick mother”. I found it easy to believe she had been committed to the same loonie bin where her mother was.
I guess you’d have to question the author via the link to the article.
Sorry. Prager is a putz.
You are aware, aren’t you, that Prager didn’t write the article? The author’s name is listed, should you want an actual answer to your question.
Ooops. The opening statement about Marxism blinded me so that I didn’t see his name. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has nothing to do with Marx.
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