Outstanding essay, joanie-f! The above obervation further substantiates YHAOS' observation that our system of government has become a de facto, if not de jure, oligarchy constituted by nine black robes exercising virtually unlimited authority by means of a simple majority vote. They issue the marching orders, and we better march when they do. As long as this situation is allowed to stand, we can no longer say that the American system of government is a democratic, constitutional republic -- or that we are any longer a free people.
I wholly share your outrage over the "ambulance-chaser's" TV commercial, and its suggestion that the people's most important right is the right to money. You might as well institutionalize theft, and say it's okay to so do.
Which brings to mind some lines from Solon:
Pallas Athene, whose hands are stretched out over our heads, mightily fathered, protects us,Pallas Athene, of course is the goddess of wisdom, embodiment of reason, champion of the divine Logos, and the divine protector of the polis of Athens....
But the citizens themselves in their wildness are bent on the destruction of their great city, and money is the compulsive cause.
The leaders of the people are evil-minded. The next stage will be great suffering, recompense for their violent acts....
Some people tell me they worry that the United States will go down to its demise on the model of imperial Rome. I suggest on such occasions that the more likely model is the fall of ancient Athens. Solon put his finger on the crucial problem in the quote just above.
In his own time, Plato railed against the irrational disorder of the people. For he held that the polis (i.e., political society) is "Man writ large." And so no political society could be better than the general quality of the "human material" that constitutes it. And no amount of legislation could ever succeed in remedying the ill social effects of the profound defects of a disordered populace.
I also whole-heartedly agree with your take on the so-called "living constitution." It should be obvious that any constitution that changes gratuitously and frequently could rationally even be considered a constitution. Article V is what makes the constitution a "living document"; not the self-interested tinkering of "innovating" progressivist judges, grinding out case law reinforced by the doctrine of stare decisis....
Thank you so very much joanie for your kind and gracious words about my little essay here. But surely you recognize how desperately I am in need of a competent copy editor!!! :^)
Thank you once more for your magnificent post-essay!
In his own time, Plato railed against the irrational disorder of the people. For he held that the polis (i.e., political society) is "Man writ large." And so no political society could be better than the general quality of the "human material" that constitutes it. And no amount of legislation could ever succeed in remedying the ill social effects of the profound defects of a disordered populace.
A text from Heraclitus runs thusly, according to the translation given at the Logos site:
One must follow what is common; but, even though the Logos is common, most people live as though they possessed their own private wisdom. (Fragment 2)Cornelis Loew ... cites Fragment 2 in Myth, Sacred History, and Philosophy, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1967, p. 227. In this work, Loew uses Eric Voegelin’s translation:
But though the Logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.The Voegelinian translation of Fragment 2 is, I believe, more faithful to the original Greek in terms of the sheer compactness of its language.
Voegelin’s translation of Heraclitus’ Fragment 1 is worth giving here also:
Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it – at least if they are judged in the light of such words and deeds as I am here setting forth. My own method is to distinguish each thing according to its nature, and to specify how it behaves; other men, on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on around and within them as they are during sleep.Certain other of Heraclitus’ Fragments are worthy of note in this connection:
Those who are awake have a world one and common, but those who are asleep each turn aside into their own private worlds. [Fr. 89]Loew observes that “these are striking sentences. Omit the notion of a divine law and Heraclitus sounds very modern; he seems to say that the one common world, which is the corrective for our tendencies to be sleepwalkers in our private worlds, is that with which science deals. The oracles become a call for empirical objectivity over and against emotional subjectivity. But this is not what Heraclitus is saying. The social universality of the human logos is not the universality of scientific language and method, although if Heraclitus were living today he would in no way belittle the impressive and productive results achieved by scientists because their ‘logos’ makes possible dependable worldwide communications within the scientific community. Heraclitus had in mind the community of the polis [i.e., the type of political society of ancient Greece, which was understood as manifesting the dynamic relationship obtaining among the participants in a great hierarchy of being: divine – human – social – natural], its daily life, and its need to be attuned to the one divine logos by which all human laws are nourished.”It is not meet [i.e., fitting] to act and speak like men asleep. {Fr. 73]
Those who speak with the mind must strengthen themselves with that which is common to all [i.e., the Logos], as the polis does with the law and more strongly so. For all human laws nourish themselves from the one divine – which prevails as it will, and suffices for all things and more than suffices. [Fr. 114]
Shades of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence here – to my ear, at least. Certainly Heraclitus thought that men who have “turned aside into their own private worlds as if asleep” were no longer fit to be “public men.”
A couple more fascinating Fragments from a fascinating thinker:
From all is One, and from One is all. [Fr. 10]Voegelin has said that Heraclitus is Plato’s “long shadow.” Indeed, Plato articulated the theme of death-in-life and life-in-death well after Heraclitus, and long before the coming of Christ.Immortals – mortals, mortals – immortals, they live each other’s death and die each other’s life.” [Fr. 42]
Well, just some “grist for the mill” for any interested thinkers out there. Or not, as the case may be.
[God bless you, dear reader.]
Dear joanie, I hope you are not unduly distressed by your eye situation. I pray for your speedy recovery, and shall continue to do so until you tell me things are better. God bless.