Posted on 05/03/2012 1:38:59 AM PDT by neverdem
bump
THe Cube and the Cathedral by George Weigel
You found a good one, neverdem. Thanks for sharing.
"But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure."
"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."
"If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."
The anti-federalists have been proven that they were correct in their fears....
From a link within this article - enjoy!
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903639404576516252066723110.html
Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, has a fascinating passage in his recent book “Civilization,” in which he asks whether the West can maintain its primacy on the world stage or if it is a civilization in decline.
He quotes a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, tasked with finding out what gave the West its dominance. He said: At first we thought it was your guns. Then we thought it was your political system, democracy. Then we said it was your economic system, capitalism. But for the last 20 years, we have known that it was your religion.
It was the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave the West its restless pursuit of a tomorrow that would be better than today. The Chinese have learned the lesson. Fifty years after Chairman Mao declared China a religion-free zone, there are now more Chinese Christians than there are members of the Communist Party.
Federalists argued for a republic. You disagree. What form of government do you prefer?
And, when the men and women of leadership, either secular or religious leaders can not hold to the Biblical truths entrusted to them by God (it says in the Bible that they are there because God puts them there), then we truly have the enemy at the water gate.
And it is, by the way, Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin...not "Parsin".
After reading the article, now perhaps my fellow Freepers will realize why I selected my moniker. Good day to all.
Later
Exactly. However, it should perhaps read that "...we have known it WAS your religion." Now that the religion is nearly gone, so will the nation be gone.
Proverbs 14:34 Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people.
Amos 9:10 "All the sinners of My people will die by the sword, Those who say, 'The calamity will not overtake or confront us.'
Thanks for the link. Too few are willing to challenge the Leftist assault on all that is good.
Powerful commentary
Societal Disarray, to my mind, driven by
a loss of two primary virtues
Humility and Gratitude
“in the 6th century before our era.”
Why would he not write “in the 6th century before Christ”?
Thanks for that link.
Maybe the editor of National Affairs modified the time period.
For the first time - in all these years - I understand...
Too long to read right now, but this looks interesting. Thanks for posting.
The so-called "progressive" movement has, over America's last 100+ years, like termites, eroded the foundations of America's founding ideas of Creator-endowed liberty by removing references to the Divine and replacing it with what Weigel calls an "empty shrine."
As a result, citizens find themselves to be without adequate weapons in the battle of ideas.
In the Pope's speech in Germany a few years ago, he observed:
"A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."
Yesterday, on another thread, I shared the following link to Eugen Richter's satire entitled, "Pictures of the Socialistic Future," to be of interest.
When one looks around at what has happened to America already, and the degree to which the backward "forward" ideas of "progressives" have dimmed the light of liberty which once beamed from America, then Richter's pages take on new meaning.
Click on any of the segments and find something relevant to today's discussions. Please note that this exquisite bit of satire by Richter was written in 1893.
Coincidentally, in "The New Laws" section, he mentions that the "organ" under the new order is called "Onward." How interesting is that? Other sections describing family, work, etc., in a world centered around an "empty shrine" ought to stir deep feelings in the hearts of most who have memories of a different time.
Had most of us read this writer's work twenty years ago, it might not have the chilling effect it does today. After the last 3 years, however, the descriptions of life in a "socialistic future," as described, even in satirical terms, is current as today's news, and too realistic to be amusing.
This observation is consistent with observations about America throughout its noble history.
Even before the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Edmund Burke, in his 1775 "Speech on Conciliation," observed the following "spirit" in the founding generations:
"Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." (Underlining added for emphasis)
Burke also declared to the Parliament that what he called the colonists' "fierce spirit of liberty" also must be attributed to their "religion," "under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty."
Then, in the 1830's, French jurist Tocqueville made similar observations about the influence of religious belief and understanding in America in his "Democracy in America."
Thanks for adding this to the discussion today, GOPJ.
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