Curtis Dahlgren
Gown vs. town, part 4: They think we're SOOO stupid!
By Curtis Dahlgren
By the waters of Babylon, there we wept and there sat down;
They required of us there the Eternal's songs, but how could we sing, by the waters of Babylon? — Psalms (600 BC)
I cannot sing the old songs
I sang long years ago,
For heart and voice would fail me,
And foolish tears would follow. — Charlotte Alington Barnard (1840-1869)
"FROM BEETHOVEN TO RAP — AND THE LEFT THINKS WE'RE GOING UPHILL!" says Michael Savage (2005 AD).
WE HAVE ALREADY LOST SO MUCH of our cultural Heritage that we don't even notice it anymore! The old Left applauds "change" just for change's sake, the young Left never knew any better, while the rest of us are just plain numb!
For the old Left, the "Dark Ages" ended in about 1974 (the year Nixon resigned) and literature has gone from Shakespeare to the "Revised Standard Version of history," to the NEW Revised Standard Version, to "Ebonics" in one-half of one generation!
Art has gone from Grandma Moses and Norman Rockwell to kindergarten sex-ed books in just a few decades. As for Lala Land and the motion picture industry, I don't even want to talk about it.
AN ODE TO THE OLDEN DAYS
Believe it or not, the greatest writings of our literary heritage were mostly written by authors who lived in the 1700s and 1800s — if not even earlier! Amazing but "priceless!"
Some of the lines from classic Western writers sound as if they were talking about current events! Benjamin Disraeli, the English statesman (1804-1881), said in an address to the House of Commons (1871): "We have legalized confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, and condoned high treason."
That sounds a lot like Eminent Domain, "gay marriage," and the calls for an immediate surrender to blood-thirsty monsters in Babylon!
"La trahison des clercs" — "The treason of the educated classes." — Julien Benda (1868-?)
MARK TWAIN (1835-1910) said, "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they so were bred.
— John Dryden (1631-1700)
Disraeli said, "Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels . . . You are not going, I hope, to leave the destinies of the British Empire to prigs and pedants."
"Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation," said Francis Bacon (1561-1626).
Also, "Nothing doth more hurt in a state than [when] cunning men pass for wise . . . [and] It has been said that the arch-flatterers with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a man's self" [as in modern "self-esteem"].
"There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty gives understanding. Great men are not always wise." — Elihu (1520 BC)
"Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago." — John Wesley (1703-1797)
"It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth," said Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930).
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent. — William Blake (1757-1827)
THE P.C. CAMPUS BANS MANY A TRUTH, WHILE TELLING MANY A LIE!
"To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education," said John Ruskin (1810-1900).
"None can love freedom heartily, but Godly men; the rest love not freedom, but license." [John Milton, 1608-74]
Milton also said: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."
Even though the last word in conscience is "science," the word "conscience" is almost as dead as the spoken Latin. It means "To 'know something within oneself,' implying, in a neutral sense, 'consciousness,' but also a moral awareness, a mental differentiation between right and wrong."
"RIGHT" and "WRONG" are words strictly forbidden in the modern political/academic lexicon. Now it's "appropriate" versus "hateful, and "tolerant" versus "inappropriate."
Ward Churchill is a hero, and Winston Churchill is just a dead white European. Ward Churchill makes "sense," but Pat Buchanan's "Culture War" speech was pure hatred!
Nevertheless, Pat's words were TRUE, and the social engineers have come out of the closet. At the 77th conference of the National Council for the Social Studies, a few years ago, their theme was, "TRANSFORMING CULTURES — PAST PRESENT & FUTURE."
In "1984," George Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
Academia — and the teachers' unions — are in control of the present, and their "scholars" control the PAST (the rewriting of history). Therefore, they were confident that they'd also have control of the future. "GIVEN ENOUGH TIME," they believed, they would be able to change ordinary Americans into heathens and pagans [not in those words, you understand, but you get the idea].
"The great 'tragedy' of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact," said Thomas Huxley (1825-1895).
Aldous Huxley envisioned the slaying of Christianity through Darwinism, as in the Beatles' "Imagine — no religion!" The Bible was just the collection of "campfire stories" by an inferior race, and Western Civ would soon be replaced with (drum roll). . . ROCK MUSIC!
BUT — "THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MOUSY MEN . . . "
Lately it has been the 'sacred cows' of science that are turning more and more into fables (just go to www.junkscience.com and http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180148,00.html for the Top Ten myths from the Scientific Community in 2005).
Last July, the Center for Science in the Public Interest asked the FDA for warning labels on soft drinks! Suffice it to say here, I hope to live long enough to see Royal Crown and Coca Cola declared a health food along with chocolate, wine, and cheese.
"The old songs" we USED to sing are ringing true for more and more people out there on the highways and byways — and "those who feared the Lord spoke often one to another" via the "Information Superhighway."
John Ruskin said, "All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time." The OLD books!
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
— Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
As far as the Left is concerned, "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" might as well be burned along with the Bible, because all of its quotations come from the "olden days" — the pre-Enlightenment days (in their minds, they believe that mankind made a huge leap in mental evolution during the 60s and 70s, when they stopped trusting anyone over the age of 30).
CONCLUSION: LIFE IS A PARADOX
"The thing you feared the most" shall come upon you, and the thing you laughed at the loudest, may return to bite you in the butt.
Truth's sacred Fort the exploded laugh shall win;
And Coxcombs vanquish Berkley with a grin. — John Brown (1800-1859)
Translation: He who laughs last laughs longest, and it's not going to be the campus of UC-Berkeley, etc. (Wisconsin's victory over Auburn this week was especially satisfying in light of Auburn's politically correct stance on the "Holidays").
The hippest among us believe that without 'deviltry' there can be no humor in life, but some humorous trends are developing on the typical American campus. For one thing, more and more real men are bypassing the university as the usual road to a career.
Baron Broughham Henry (1778-1868) said, "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."
"You can fool some of the kids some of the time, and some of the kids all of the time, but you can't fool all of the kids all of the time," is the way Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) would put it.
Robert Lowe (1811-1892) said, "I believe it will be absolutely necessary that you should prevail on our future masters to learn their letters." This was popularly paraphrased as, "We must educate our masters" (i.e., the next generation of leaders].
Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is no more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream."
He also once said, "All great change in America begins at the dinner table."
WHAT DINNER TABLE? Many of today's families deliberately plan their daily schedules so as to avoid eating at the same time and having to look each other in the eye around the "dinner table."
If the next change in America's culture is going to be a great one (and not just another "hip" one), America will need to revive the "dinner table" (which we used to call "supper table" for those of you still stuck in Kansas).
"Grabbing a bite to eat" has replaced the "Dinner hour" (where the news of the day was rehashed by both the young and the old). If I were to have the power to decree it, I would decree at least 5 "dinner hours" per week, attendance mandatory — with headphones and cell phones not permitted!
A dozen social workers reading this column just had to go to the bathroom and vomit [BUT] —
Edward Everett said, "Education is a better safeguard than a standing army."
Victor Hugo said, "He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
Sydney J. Harris said, "The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."
We can assume, I'm sure, that these three men were talking about a good education, not an education in "Ebonics" designed to perpetuate the life of the "streets" (by focusing on the mirrors of "victim-hood").
Emma Goldman said, "No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure."
When it's more dangerous to be a motorist on the streets of Milwaukee — or Kansas City! — than in Baghdad, you are witnessing the fruits of an education that denies that a child has a soul!
When the soul is denied its rightful place at the dinner table or in the classroom, what you see is what you get:
Murder, mayhem, and mob rule.
Mark Twain was absolutely right: "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
The slow, tortured death of the soul of true Education is more criminal than Columbine, or the carnage in that Russian school held hostage.
May the extraordinary mercies of God extend to the perpetrators of the fraud that is called (strictly) public and (strictly) 'secular' Education! May God have mercy on those who make a sport of destroying the treasures of faith in our little children!
May God save America!
© Curtis Dahlgren
By the waters of Babylon, there we wept and there sat down;
They required of us there the Eternal's songs, but how could we sing, by the waters of Babylon? — Psalms (600 BC)
I cannot sing the old songs
I sang long years ago,
For heart and voice would fail me,
And foolish tears would follow. — Charlotte Alington Barnard (1840-1869)
"FROM BEETHOVEN TO RAP — AND THE LEFT THINKS WE'RE GOING UPHILL!" says Michael Savage (2005 AD).
WE HAVE ALREADY LOST SO MUCH of our cultural Heritage that we don't even notice it anymore! The old Left applauds "change" just for change's sake, the young Left never knew any better, while the rest of us are just plain numb!
For the old Left, the "Dark Ages" ended in about 1974 (the year Nixon resigned) and literature has gone from Shakespeare to the "Revised Standard Version of history," to the NEW Revised Standard Version, to "Ebonics" in one-half of one generation!
Art has gone from Grandma Moses and Norman Rockwell to kindergarten sex-ed books in just a few decades. As for Lala Land and the motion picture industry, I don't even want to talk about it.
AN ODE TO THE OLDEN DAYS
Believe it or not, the greatest writings of our literary heritage were mostly written by authors who lived in the 1700s and 1800s — if not even earlier! Amazing but "priceless!"
Some of the lines from classic Western writers sound as if they were talking about current events! Benjamin Disraeli, the English statesman (1804-1881), said in an address to the House of Commons (1871): "We have legalized confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, and condoned high treason."
That sounds a lot like Eminent Domain, "gay marriage," and the calls for an immediate surrender to blood-thirsty monsters in Babylon!
"La trahison des clercs" — "The treason of the educated classes." — Julien Benda (1868-?)
MARK TWAIN (1835-1910) said, "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they so were bred.
— John Dryden (1631-1700)
Disraeli said, "Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels . . . You are not going, I hope, to leave the destinies of the British Empire to prigs and pedants."
"Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation," said Francis Bacon (1561-1626).
Also, "Nothing doth more hurt in a state than [when] cunning men pass for wise . . . [and] It has been said that the arch-flatterers with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a man's self" [as in modern "self-esteem"].
"There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty gives understanding. Great men are not always wise." — Elihu (1520 BC)
"Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago." — John Wesley (1703-1797)
"It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth," said Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930).
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent. — William Blake (1757-1827)
THE P.C. CAMPUS BANS MANY A TRUTH, WHILE TELLING MANY A LIE!
"To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education," said John Ruskin (1810-1900).
"None can love freedom heartily, but Godly men; the rest love not freedom, but license." [John Milton, 1608-74]
Milton also said: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."
Even though the last word in conscience is "science," the word "conscience" is almost as dead as the spoken Latin. It means "To 'know something within oneself,' implying, in a neutral sense, 'consciousness,' but also a moral awareness, a mental differentiation between right and wrong."
"RIGHT" and "WRONG" are words strictly forbidden in the modern political/academic lexicon. Now it's "appropriate" versus "hateful, and "tolerant" versus "inappropriate."
Ward Churchill is a hero, and Winston Churchill is just a dead white European. Ward Churchill makes "sense," but Pat Buchanan's "Culture War" speech was pure hatred!
Nevertheless, Pat's words were TRUE, and the social engineers have come out of the closet. At the 77th conference of the National Council for the Social Studies, a few years ago, their theme was, "TRANSFORMING CULTURES — PAST PRESENT & FUTURE."
In "1984," George Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
Academia — and the teachers' unions — are in control of the present, and their "scholars" control the PAST (the rewriting of history). Therefore, they were confident that they'd also have control of the future. "GIVEN ENOUGH TIME," they believed, they would be able to change ordinary Americans into heathens and pagans [not in those words, you understand, but you get the idea].
"The great 'tragedy' of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact," said Thomas Huxley (1825-1895).
Aldous Huxley envisioned the slaying of Christianity through Darwinism, as in the Beatles' "Imagine — no religion!" The Bible was just the collection of "campfire stories" by an inferior race, and Western Civ would soon be replaced with (drum roll). . . ROCK MUSIC!
BUT — "THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MOUSY MEN . . . "
Lately it has been the 'sacred cows' of science that are turning more and more into fables (just go to www.junkscience.com and http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180148,00.html for the Top Ten myths from the Scientific Community in 2005).
Last July, the Center for Science in the Public Interest asked the FDA for warning labels on soft drinks! Suffice it to say here, I hope to live long enough to see Royal Crown and Coca Cola declared a health food along with chocolate, wine, and cheese.
"The old songs" we USED to sing are ringing true for more and more people out there on the highways and byways — and "those who feared the Lord spoke often one to another" via the "Information Superhighway."
John Ruskin said, "All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time." The OLD books!
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
— Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
As far as the Left is concerned, "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" might as well be burned along with the Bible, because all of its quotations come from the "olden days" — the pre-Enlightenment days (in their minds, they believe that mankind made a huge leap in mental evolution during the 60s and 70s, when they stopped trusting anyone over the age of 30).
CONCLUSION: LIFE IS A PARADOX
"The thing you feared the most" shall come upon you, and the thing you laughed at the loudest, may return to bite you in the butt.
Truth's sacred Fort the exploded laugh shall win;
And Coxcombs vanquish Berkley with a grin. — John Brown (1800-1859)
Translation: He who laughs last laughs longest, and it's not going to be the campus of UC-Berkeley, etc. (Wisconsin's victory over Auburn this week was especially satisfying in light of Auburn's politically correct stance on the "Holidays").
The hippest among us believe that without 'deviltry' there can be no humor in life, but some humorous trends are developing on the typical American campus. For one thing, more and more real men are bypassing the university as the usual road to a career.
Baron Broughham Henry (1778-1868) said, "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."
"You can fool some of the kids some of the time, and some of the kids all of the time, but you can't fool all of the kids all of the time," is the way Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) would put it.
Robert Lowe (1811-1892) said, "I believe it will be absolutely necessary that you should prevail on our future masters to learn their letters." This was popularly paraphrased as, "We must educate our masters" (i.e., the next generation of leaders].
Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is no more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream."
He also once said, "All great change in America begins at the dinner table."
WHAT DINNER TABLE? Many of today's families deliberately plan their daily schedules so as to avoid eating at the same time and having to look each other in the eye around the "dinner table."
If the next change in America's culture is going to be a great one (and not just another "hip" one), America will need to revive the "dinner table" (which we used to call "supper table" for those of you still stuck in Kansas).
"Grabbing a bite to eat" has replaced the "Dinner hour" (where the news of the day was rehashed by both the young and the old). If I were to have the power to decree it, I would decree at least 5 "dinner hours" per week, attendance mandatory — with headphones and cell phones not permitted!
A dozen social workers reading this column just had to go to the bathroom and vomit [BUT] —
Edward Everett said, "Education is a better safeguard than a standing army."
Victor Hugo said, "He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
Sydney J. Harris said, "The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."
We can assume, I'm sure, that these three men were talking about a good education, not an education in "Ebonics" designed to perpetuate the life of the "streets" (by focusing on the mirrors of "victim-hood").
Emma Goldman said, "No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure."
When it's more dangerous to be a motorist on the streets of Milwaukee — or Kansas City! — than in Baghdad, you are witnessing the fruits of an education that denies that a child has a soul!
When the soul is denied its rightful place at the dinner table or in the classroom, what you see is what you get:
Murder, mayhem, and mob rule.
Mark Twain was absolutely right: "Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
The slow, tortured death of the soul of true Education is more criminal than Columbine, or the carnage in that Russian school held hostage.
May the extraordinary mercies of God extend to the perpetrators of the fraud that is called (strictly) public and (strictly) 'secular' Education! May God have mercy on those who make a sport of destroying the treasures of faith in our little children!
May God save America!
© Curtis Dahlgren
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
