Category Archives: History

History, Philosophy, Republic of Letters

Founder James Wilson

Some of my favorite quotes from the lectures of James Wilson, signer of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, delivered at what is now the University of Pennsylvania, 1790-1791.

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“Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.” [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1061]

“In his unrelated state, man has a natural right to his property, to his character, to liberty, and to safety.  From his peculiar relations, as a husband, as a father, as a son, he is entitled to the enjoyment of peculiar rights, and obliged to the performance of peculiar duties.  These will be specified in their due course.  From his general relations, he is entitled to other rights, simple in their principle, but, in their operation, fruitful and extensive.  His duties, in their principle and in their operation, may be characterized in the same manner as his rights.  In these general relations, his rights are, to be free from injury, and to receive the fulfillment of the engagements, which are made to him: his duties are, to do no injury, and to fulfil the engagements, which he has made.  On these two pillars principally and respectively rest the criminal and the civil codes of the municipal law.  These are the pillars of justice.”  [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1062]

“Under some aspects, character may be considered as a species of property; but, of all, the nearest, the dearest, and the most interest. . . . By the exertion of the same talents and virtues, property and character both are often acquired: by vice and indolence, both are often lost or destroyed.  The love of reputation and the fear of dishonour are, by the all-gracious Author of our existence, implanted in our breasts, for purposes the most beneficent and wise.”  [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1063]

“But to that honour, whose connexion with virtue is indissoluable, a republic government produces the most unquestionable title.  The principle of virtue is allowed to be hers: if she possesses virtue, she also possesses honour.”   [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1065]

“It is unwarrantable to bestow reputation where it is not due.”  [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1066]

“Property must often–reputation must always be purchased: liberty and life are the gratuitous gifts of heaven.”  [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1066]

“With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law.  In the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb.  By the law, life is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and, in some cases, from every degree of danger.”  [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1068]

“Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power, in the master, over the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law.  Indeed, it is repugnant to the principles of natural law, that such a state should subsist in any social system.”  [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1077]

“As a man is justified in defending, so he is justified in retaking, his property, or his peculiar relations, when from him they are unjustly taken and detained.”  [Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals,” 1083]

The above, all taken from James Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals” in Kermit L. Hall and Mark David Hall, eds., Collected Works of James Wilson (Indianapolis, Ind: Liberty Fund, 2007), vol. 2.

Art, History, Republic of Letters

Submit Your Proposals: Fifth Annual Midwestern History Conference

The Midwestern History Association and the Hauenstein Center at Grand Valley State University invite proposals for papers to be delivered at the Fifth Annual Midwestern History Conference, to be held May 30-31, 2019 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This conference continues a discussion which has grown significantly over the last four years, at collaborative conferences designed to spark – and sustain – a revival of Midwestern studies in American historiography. Infused with varieties of original research pursued by scholars from many different career paths and stages, this annual gathering strives to cultivate rigorous historical understanding of a complex, dynamic, changing, and often misunderstood region.
— Read on mailchi.mp/c52375433445/call-for-proposals-fifth-annual-midwestern-history-conference-1262039

Sponsored and created by two great men: Gleaves Whitney and Jon Lauck.

History, Politics, Republic of Letters

When In Gotham . . . | Front Porch Republic

So far as the politics of our debased republic go, the mid-twentieth century quarrel of the leftist C. Wright Mills with his liberal critics comes to mind.  Said Mills by way of response to their demand for what he acidly termed “A Balanced View”: “I feel no need for, and perhaps am incapable of arranging for you, a lyric upsurge, a cheerful little pat on the moral back.”2  In our pitiable circumstance, we all, whether we’re making policy or casting votes, face nothing more immediately hopeful than prudential choices for compromised parties, positions, and politicians—which is not to say that all such options are equal.  We have real choices to make.  To my mind, the most urgent political action today centers on our systemic needs: protecting and promoting (negatively) the separation of powers and (positively) citizen rule.  Such a stance at least will keep us, whatever our take on globalism, from succumbing to nationalist fantasies of repristinated bliss.
— Read on www.frontporchrepublic.com/2018/12/when-in-gotham/

History, Philosophy, Politics

The Bigotry Inherent in American Progressivism | The American Conservative

Tellingly, it is impossible to separate Progressivism from racial and religious bigotry, especially in the United States. Eugenics and social engineering come directly from America’s progressives, who firmly believed in a lily white, Protestant America. One of progressivism’s most famous scholars—a man who supported and received the support of Teddy Roosevelt as well as Woodrow Wilson—was Edward Alsworth Ross, author of the wretched The Old World in the New (1914). “In this sense it is fair to say that the blood now being injected into the veins of our people is ‘sub–common,’” Ross asserted. “To one accustomed to the aspect of the normal American population, the Caliban type shows up with a frequency that is startling.”
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-bigotry-inherent-in-american-progressivism/

History, Politics

Manifest Destiny and the American Nimrods ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Whatever one wants to label it, American expansion has led to the habit of empire, expansion, and war. As Americans, we might very well cover our actions and deeds in fair, liberal, and republican language, but these adornments cannot change the essence of imperialism, by whatever name. The repeated government removal of American Indians is certainly one blatant example of this imperialism in the 19th century, which often failed even to discriminate against those Indian tribes hostile to American interests (such as the Sioux) and those in admiration and alliance (the Nez Perce).
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/11/manifest-destiny-american-nimrods-bradley-birzer.html

Biography, History

Tolkien and Carroll bios half price

Hello Readers of Spirit of Cecilia, believe it or not, I’m going to be self-promotional (shock, horror!).  The publisher of my biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, ISI Books, is currently offering each for 1/2 price.  How great is that?  Now, you can have your Shire and your Philadelphia!  

https://isibooks.org/author/index/books/id/611

Just imagine.  Rather than a quote or a snippy comment, you actually get me at my thoughtful best (well, thoughtful most).  

Enjoy!

History, Philosophy

Aldous Huxley on TIME

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Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time-sense is hardly older than the United States. It is a by-product of industrialism–a sort of psychological analogue of synthetic perfumes and aniline dyes.

Time is our tyrant. We are chronically aware of the moving minute hand, even of the moving second hand. We have to be. There are trains to be caught, clocks to be punched, tasks to be done in specified periods, records to be broken by fractions of a second, machines that set the pace and have to be kept up with. Our consciousness of the smallest units of time is now acute. To us, for example, the moment 8:17 A.M. means something—something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance–did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time. [Please go to page 2]

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History, Philosophy, Politics

Propaganda as Mechanization

“What caused the disturbances in people’s minds [in the 1920s and 1930s] was that we were all subjected to propaganda of a kind the human race had never before experienced; we were subject to two deliberate scientifically-organised lie-machines, the Nazi one and the Soviet one, operated in the interests of two tyrants who were also demagogues. 

What made things unique is the they told opposite lies. 

It was like having two anti-Christs contradicting one another. 

The machines plunged on whatever anyone said, however young or unauthoratative that person might be.”

—Bernard Wall, Headlong into Change (London: Harvill Press, 1969), 79.