[Loud Mime]

Notice that Jefferson does not advise Carr to join a militia, but to carry his own firearm. The Supreme Court should know of this advice as they debate the DC gun law.

[Huck]

Epictetus

This guy changed my life. And he was recommended to me by none other than John Adams, our second president. Ok, not to me directly, but that's how I heard of him. I read McCullough's biography of Adams; Adams spoke highly of Epictetus, I got curious. Next thing you know, I'm a better man for it.

[Loud Mime]

PING

[wizr]

A very loud AMEN!

Every child should be allowed to learn the principals of protection. You notice, I said allowed, not taught. For it is a choice for all to make, not a requirement. Just another freedom to be enjoyed.

Thank you for this enlightenment.

[Greg F]

The next, will be of Roman history (*). From that, we will come down to modern history.

Interesting to me that the tendency is to skip from millenia old history to the modern era, leaving out the period from 300 A.D. to the Renaissance . . . or whatever they regarded as modern then. I think we have lost a lot of lessons from that gap in historical focus. One of the lessons is the danger of Islam.

[Greg F]

In order to assure a certain progress in this reading, consider what hours you have free from the school and the exercises of the school. Give about two of them, every day, to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning.

Wow! Makes your average gym rat today look like a piker! And this advice from a man that wrote, politicked, farmed, invented, read, and wrote letters in great volume.

[Drawsing]

I have something in common with George Washington. He and I both have bemoaned our lack of a classical education. George's older brother got it, but George didn't get the chance. A good percentage of our founding fathers could read Greek and Latin fluently and used that foundation to learn other languages and firmly ground themselves in the lessons of history.

My 14 year old son is receiving a classical Christian education now. I watched him last night as he translated an inscription he saw under a painting. The inscription was in French, but he was able to translate it using his knowledge of Latin roots.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

This shall form the first stage of your historical reading, and is all I need mention to you now. The next, will be of Roman history (*). From that, we will come down to modern history.

Why does TJ skip an entire millennium of philosophy and history? Even if he wasn't particularly clerical, there's a whole bundle of republican history from Holland, Novgorod, Switzerland, and northern Italy to be learned, plus everything from Ockham and Bacon to Aquinas and Boethius.

[ZGuy]

Metmom -
I thought you might enjoy seeing this.
Many of Jefferson's recommendations are already on our homeschool reading list for our daughter.

[Mr. Mojo]

....his advice to aquaint oneself with firearms rather than sports that use a ball.

Or better yet one can do both! Anyway, we have far superior ball games these days than existed back in Jefferson's day.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I feel that we read to learn new things, sure, absolutely,
but more often than not, what we really get out of the good
books we read is self- recognition.
We read and discover stuff about life that we already knew,
except that we didn’t know we knew it until we read it in a
particular book.
And this self-recognition, this discovering ourselves in
the writings of others can be very exciting, can make us
feel a little less isolated inside our own thing and a
little more connected to the larger world.

Richard Price, Samaritan

[ovrtaxt]

Cool. Makes me proud that I chose paintball as my sport.

[kalee]

bookmark

[airborne]

Bookmark

[EverOnward]

bump for reference — and more reading