I think that the main goal I have at this point will be getting back to my current Book REVIEW Series, where I am currently reading classic books on political/economical thought that may have inspired the Founding Fathers. "REVIEW" in this case is meant to mean that we 'go through it together,' like when you review your notes for an exam; as opposed to a movie review, where I tell you what I thought of it and whether I think it is worth your time and money. I have nothing against move reviewers -- I love film, and love movie reviews (as those who know me can attest). I'm just clarifying that my REVIEWs of these books will be different in approach, in format, and in content than what is meant more commonly these days by the word 'review' as it pertains to books.
I am currently reading/reviewing Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Other books in this particular series will include Two Treatises on Government by John Locke, The Spirit of Laws by Montesquieu, Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, and Aristotle's Republic.
I also discovered a page on the Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/), entitled "Founding Father's Library" (http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/founding-father-s-library), which included a Top 40 Authors Cited by the Founding Fathers in their writing, as well as a separate list containing the books they read of the various authors included in the Top 40 Authors Cited list. I mention it here because, now having found such a list, it seems worthwhile to make it a goal to eventually REVIEW all of the books on the list.
I think it is interesting to point out that the Number 1 most often cited author according to this list is Paul the Apostle, which means that the Number 1 most cited source among the Founding Fathers was the Bible, namely the New Testament. I'm sure that we'll come across more details about this in our readings, but as my knowledge stands at this point, this detail seems to me counter-intuitive to the popular interpretation of Jefferson's words regarding the First Amendment 'building a wall between Church & State' (https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html) as meaning that either no religion be present in government, or that the federal government ought to strive to effectively disallow (suppress?) any public religious discourse, display, or practice (which at the same time effectively promotes atheism or secularism) in the name of promoting religious protection.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Friday, July 21, 2017
SAD DAY
There was an account malfunction on my blog this past Sunday (07/16/2017) -- all of my published posts and all but six (6) of the posts I was working on (specifically the 6 most recent posts that I had worked on) were erased.
Part of my heart broke -- I never realized how much like a journal this blog has been: the time and energy set apart to organize your thoughts, formulating questions, doing the research, drinking deeply and intently from the available knowledge, sorting through the stack for the important information, attempting to answer those questions, carving out an opinion, anticipating questions and dissenting arguments, doing more research regarding those questions, synthesizing the answers you find, re-assessing your original conclusions in light of any new evidence, revising it as necessary (based on the evidence), then meticulously writing and re-writing then starting over then writing then re-writing again then editing then writing and re-writing some more in order to try as hard you possibly can to make as sure (as much as your wit and your grasp of the English language can guarantee) that you will not be misunderstood, then the thrill and dread of putting yourself out there, throwing your gauntlet into the fight. They were blog posts, but they were important to me, and I think they would have been important to others, had they survived for people to read as more people discovered my blog. I think that the principles of individual liberty are not very well understood by many of at least my and the next generation (and maybe of the previous generation), but it seems to me that these topics still resonate with even an incomplete understanding of them. I believe that they are still important to the majority of our American people, and they are important enough to defend with thoughtful strains and straight-forward presentation.
Loosing any progress in this way is frustrating to be sure. There was some grieving, even mourning. I've considered, but don't think that I have the personal resolve to do so, recreating the lot of those erased posts before proceeding with any further posting as usual. The ideas for those posts will simply rejoin the "cloud" of my mind. The topic of individual liberty, personal freedoms, natural laws -- I anticipate that they will come up again and again and again in our future discussions. Eternal principles tend to do that, return again and again to the discussion. So I will write posts on the lost topics as they come up again. For now, I look to the future, intending to continue immediately where I left off. I pray for your patience, that I may yet explain myself as intelligibly as possible, and that you will leave satisfied as least in the knowledge that you knew what I meant.
Part of my heart broke -- I never realized how much like a journal this blog has been: the time and energy set apart to organize your thoughts, formulating questions, doing the research, drinking deeply and intently from the available knowledge, sorting through the stack for the important information, attempting to answer those questions, carving out an opinion, anticipating questions and dissenting arguments, doing more research regarding those questions, synthesizing the answers you find, re-assessing your original conclusions in light of any new evidence, revising it as necessary (based on the evidence), then meticulously writing and re-writing then starting over then writing then re-writing again then editing then writing and re-writing some more in order to try as hard you possibly can to make as sure (as much as your wit and your grasp of the English language can guarantee) that you will not be misunderstood, then the thrill and dread of putting yourself out there, throwing your gauntlet into the fight. They were blog posts, but they were important to me, and I think they would have been important to others, had they survived for people to read as more people discovered my blog. I think that the principles of individual liberty are not very well understood by many of at least my and the next generation (and maybe of the previous generation), but it seems to me that these topics still resonate with even an incomplete understanding of them. I believe that they are still important to the majority of our American people, and they are important enough to defend with thoughtful strains and straight-forward presentation.
Loosing any progress in this way is frustrating to be sure. There was some grieving, even mourning. I've considered, but don't think that I have the personal resolve to do so, recreating the lot of those erased posts before proceeding with any further posting as usual. The ideas for those posts will simply rejoin the "cloud" of my mind. The topic of individual liberty, personal freedoms, natural laws -- I anticipate that they will come up again and again and again in our future discussions. Eternal principles tend to do that, return again and again to the discussion. So I will write posts on the lost topics as they come up again. For now, I look to the future, intending to continue immediately where I left off. I pray for your patience, that I may yet explain myself as intelligibly as possible, and that you will leave satisfied as least in the knowledge that you knew what I meant.
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