When Cheap, Angry Trends Have Died Out, The Classics Will Remain

The Federalist ^ | April 30, 2021 | Sarah Weaver

[Ann Archy]

Get Real!! Our country is FULL of IDIOTS who don’t want to be smart or learned!!

[redgolum]

There were great works of Roman time that we no longer know. Grat works of the 17th century gone forever.

It happens.

[Mariner]

“A mind like that is hard ground to plow.”

They plow under, just like the rest.

Those in power today seek to eliminate all vestiges of western art and philosophy. For some reason thy want to eradicate 3,000 years of culture.

Personally, I think it’s not so much they have to tear down that which is so they can build something new, it’s far more base.

It’s animus bred in jealousy and shame.

Those minds don’t change. Ever.

In order to preserve this greatest human accomplishment known as Western Civilization we have to eliminate those determined to destroy it.

If it’s worth dying for, it’s most certainly worth killing for.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Red Badger]

Old School is the Best School..................

[Red Badger]

And “It Can’t Happen Here”, Sinclair Lewis....................

[Savage Beast]

“Academia’s continual campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture.”

As I say, the inexorable lowering of standards everywhere is a manifestation of the decadence of Western Civilisation.

Those who have allowed themselves to succumb to the decadence are fools.

Some of these fools think that theirs is a "new morality" and a "higher truth", though they are in reality merely immorality and untruth.

Note tagline, and observe: today's circumambient society is one of immorality and untruth. Truth for its own sake is held in contempt. Today's "new morality" reflects this.

[alternatives?]

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

You could substitute Bill and Hillary or George and Laura or any number of couples in the elite class in here and it would be both so true and yet these couples wouldn’t recognize themselves if it was stuck under their noise.

[napscoordinator]

I wish the banned Beowulf before I was forced to read it. I hated that book more then any other.

[Savage Beast]

'Sometimes the renewing force of youth exposes the moral decay of “civilization.”'

The moral decay of America has been amply exposed already; however no civilisation has ever needed moral restoration more than the USA does today, for America's moral decay is a cancer which, if not extirpated, will destroy America forever.

So overwhelmed by the decadence is the US population, that half of the American People are completely blind to the moral decay that is ubiquitous, relentless, soul sickening, all around them and right before their eyes. Honest, benevolent, profoundly moral people can only gasp in horror!

[7thson]

It was/is a little hard to read Dickens - for me - because he was such a master at the art of dialect. I think of Dickens as the English Mark Twain.

[CtBigPat]

[Savage Beast]

“After you’ve read ‘Moby-Dick’, if you took the time to truly grapple with it, you’ll start to recognize Ahab whenever he shows up in your own life.”

Yes! So true! I see mad Ahab every day--especially in "the news"!

This quotation from Moby Dick (one of my ABSOLUTELY FAVORITE BOOKS EVER!) is one of my favourites--mad Ahab baptising the harpoon with which he intends to kill the whale:

'“Ego non baptize te in nominee patris, sed in nominee diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.'
Moby Dick
Chapter 113, “The Forge.”
New York: Penguin Books, 2001, p 532.

And this:

“not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring; worse than the Persian host who murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

“Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”

Moby Dick
Chapter 58, “Brit,” p 298-299.

I see Melville's observations and his warnings every day. The woke generation is wilfully blind! Nothing incites hatred like truth threatening delusion, and half of America--the Democrat Party, establishment Republicans, so called "journalists", academicians, all who have allowed themselves to succumb to the decadence of Western Civilisation are as blind as Oedipus and as deluded as Ahab.

[Savage Beast]

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

Our descendants--if they survive it--will be cleaning up the mess made by today's me-first, woke generation for a long time.

[Nateman]

Will the classics remain? The Library in Alexandria had plenty of classics. Now they are gone. The Destruction of Libraries by forces that don't like what is inside is a reoccurring theme through history.

[Vigilanteman]

Read it? We are living in it!

[MayflowerMadam]

That writing is so good. It would be easy to replace “Tom and Daisy” with “Democrats”, and it would make perfect sense today, last century, and future years.

[Verginius Rufus]

Back when The Greening of America was the latest fad, I remember the professor in my Greek class (I think we were reading Plato) mention that he was reading that book. He later returned to his native Ireland. I guess he realized that Ireland was already greener than America could ever be.

[a fool in paradise]

>> we found the classics “section” — a barely 10-foot-wide corner where “Hamlet” was shoved up beside “The Catcher in the Rye” in an uneven pile. For all that the store owners and its patrons cared, the sign at the top could have read: “Old Stuff.”

book report assignments/public domain titles

[Verginius Rufus]

Most of what we have of Greek and Roman literature is that which was considered the best by the Greeks and Romans--for example, we have the seven plays of Sophocles which were considered his best plays. Not that everything good survived--the books of Livy which survived were not necessarily better than the books of Livy which did not survive.

The loss of the library of Alexandria is greatly to be lamented. But in the last 150 years bits and pieces of lost Greek literature have been recovered on papyrus and even though those papyri were not found in Alexandria, the copies found elsewhere in Egypt may have been copied from an exemplar at the library of Alexandria.