"The 5,000 Year Leap"

[Sam 163]

Originally posted by: CWLGAMER01

Taken from Amazon:

In The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World, Discover the 28 Principles of Freedom our Founding Fathers said must be understood and perpetuated by every people who desire peace, prosperity, and freedom. quote>

This part I disagree with. There are nations and peoples outside of the United States who base their societies on different principles to those the US adopts. Many of those nations are peaceful, prosperous and free, not in any way less than that of the US. I think time and recent history have shown the above statement to be false. It may have appeared to be true in the days of your Founding Fathers, and I have great respect for many of their ideas, probably more so than many recent counterparts, but consider the time and political conditions they lived in and compare it to now.

Originally posted by: morriswalters

Rather than give credit to the founding fathers for advancing civilzation you might want to thank Gutenberg for developing the printing press thereby creating a mechanism for storing information.  Most advances through today happen because there is continuity provide by the written and now electronic word.  Until that invention data could only be carried forth by folklore or by handwritten texts.  The age of discovery was a product of this, as the thinkers of those times were able to interact and share ideas with their peers all around the world.

quote>

This I would agree has had far more impact on human progress, including social, moral, political and technological.

 

 

[Leolas 0]

my President, Berlusconi, is not virtuous at all (you probably have already heard some "funny" stuff about him), but he lives veeery well

In my opinion, it's a republican constitution that cannot survive without virtuous people :/

[Duke87 1,070]

True, there is this tendency for freedom to be taken away if it is percieved to be getting abused.

Example: America's obesity problem has been leading to regulations about the healtiness of food. It's illegal now in New York City for restaurants to serve anything that contains trans fatty acids. School lunches keep coming under scrutiny, and many jurisdictions have banned certain vending machines in school cafeterias. A lot of people aren't being responsible about eating properly anymore, so we feel the need to find ways to force them to.

We bring this upon ourselves with our culture of apathy... no sense of right and wrong, just of legal and illegal.

[CWLGAMER01 39]

The Founders and virtue:

Washington praised the American Constitution as the “palladium of human rights”, but pointed out that it could survive only “so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people”.

We must first understand “public virtue”. The Founders understood this to be apart of their republic and made clear that each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants and wills into the greater good of the whole.

Part of this process also includes “self-doubt”. In essence we may look at ourselves and say we do not bare the moral capacity to self-govern ourselves. Some of the early Americans that also had these doubts include, John Jay, John Roberts, Robert Livingston, and John Dickinson.

What becomes clear however is that the Founders understood and had a profound degree of anxiety concerning the “quality” of virtue in Americans. Without these qualities the republic system of government established by the Constitution would not be maintained. James Madison said:

“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.”

Virtue thus cannot be earned but must always be a learned behavior. It must be cultivated and exercised from day to day. The Founders looked to first the home to teach these values, then to the schools to assist, and finally the churches or spiritual places.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: CWLGAMER01

The Founders and virtue:

Washington praised the American Constitution as the “palladium of human rights”, but pointed out that it could survive only “so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people”.

We must first understand “public virtue”. The Founders understood this to be apart of their republic and made clear that each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants and wills into the greater good of the whole.

Part of this process also includes “self-doubt”. In essence we may look at ourselves and say we do not bare the moral capacity to self-govern ourselves. Some of the early Americans that also had these doubts include, John Jay, John Roberts, Robert Livingston, and John Dickinson.

What becomes clear however is that the Founders understood and had a profound degree of anxiety concerning the “quality” of virtue in Americans. Without these qualities the republic system of government established by the Constitution would not be maintained. James Madison said:

“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.”

Virtue thus cannot be earned but must always be a learned behavior. It must be cultivated and exercised from day to day. The Founders looked to first the home to teach these values, then to the schools to assist, and finally the churches or spiritual places.

quote>

The above marked typo has me confused.  Did you intend it to read "a part of" or "apart from"?  The sense of this paragraph depends on this.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Ah, advertising.  We can't shield our kids from it no matter how hard we try.  If they don't get slathered with it on TV, they get it on public transit, malls, billboards, etc.  The only thing we can do for them is encourage scepticism with respect to what they see and hear.  This is a good thing, but with really young kids, it can be carried to extremes, so be careful how you approach this.