"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, Against Catiline I
I am not a professional philosopher. Really, there is no such thing. Yet, I did pursue and recieve a degree in philosophy. To this day, friends and acquaintances still ask me as to why in the name of the almighty dollar, would I have pursued and continue to pursue something so, well, "fruitless." Meanwhile, today is election day, and today is the day which marks the beginning of something unprecedented for our country. A strange growth indeed: I believe that Obama will easily take the White House. The enormous force of propaganda and excitement generated out of it, the likes of which I have not seen during my lifetime, except in the case of perhaps a movie like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, is a tsunami that is just too massive for the majority of Americans to resist. People have flocked to the Obama show and have been swept up by his character, his drama and his platitudes. However, whether it be a day or a week or a month or years, many people are going to wonder why and how we got here. People are either going to be in shock for what is to come or they are going to be in such a narcotic stupor, so zombified, that they won't even notice. They won't even notice to what extent our minds and our wallets have come into utter slavery.
They don't notice because we don't teach our kids "fruitless" philosophy.
It takes times like these to see that philosophy is probably THE most fruitful of all the pursuits. I say "most fruitful" because where else are kids going to learn the origins of Marxism, communism, socialism and every other -ism for that matter? Sure, kids can learn about the -isms inside history, inside the variety of movements throughout the world both present and past. You yourself can hear Obama or Al Gore utter -ismic type sentences. However, if you want to see what truly rules the world, you will find that it is the ideas and the imagination these ideas provoke. And once understanding these and seeing their weaknesses and their lies, you can really see the absurdity and dangerous nature that is an Obama, that is antiscientific Global Warming theory, that is the United Nations, that has become our nation.
I furthermore ask as to where are kids going to learn the distinction between political thought and metaphysical/religious thought and scientific thought? Where are they going to learn that the distinctions matter? In computer programming 101? In social studies? In Spanish class? I don't think so. But in today's world, do we even recognize that you can't apply principles of, lets say, computer programming, to political science? I read many technology blogs, many of which assume that their expertise in matters of technology apply to matters of human politics and ethics. A combination of unbridled ego, a lack of education regarding the various types of knowledges and distinctions that had created by Aristotle and passed down into Medieval thought, has resulted in mass confusion, faulty logic and unbelievable arrogance, the likes of which is only reflected in the leader we will choose today, namely, Obama.
You see, ideas are like big monstrous babies. You need to keep a sharp eye on them. Otherwise, they could hurt themselves and everyone around them. They grow tentacles and roots and they insinuate themselves into the crevices of every life form on earth. They even take on the forms of other more benign beings, just to gain more power and more adherents to their cause. Really, after studying philosophy for many years and just paying attention to what is going on in the world, I don't need science fiction to entertain me. Everyone knows how insidious, how unexpected and how powerful a cancer like this can be to a body. It grows from within, not from without. It festers and overtakes the body until the body is no longer the body it once was and then, finally, it will kill at any moment, instantly.
As you can see, Obama is not our only problem, though he very well is one of the heads of the hydra. The disease has spread. And while writing this, I am reminded of Cicero's speech against Catiline before the senate, where is is warning them of the dangers of this man, Catiline, who attempted to overthrow the Republic:
Though there are some men in this body who either do not see what threatens, or dissemble what they do see; who have fed the hope of Catiline by mild sentiments, and have strengthened the rising conspiracy by not believing it; influenced by whose authority many, and they not wicked, but only ignorant, if I punished him would say that I had acted cruelly and tyrannically. But I know that if he arrives at the camp of Manlius to which he is going, there will be no one so stupid as not to see that there has been a conspiracy, no one so hardened as not to confess it. But if this man alone were put to death, I know that this disease of the republic would be only checked for a while, not eradicated forever. But if he banishes himself, and takes with him all his friends, and collects at one point all the ruined men from every quarter, then not only will this full-grown plague of the republic be extinguished and eradicated, but also the root and seed of all future evils.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Philosophy is like gardening. If a nation does not practice it, the weeds and the diseases will continue to grow unchecked. That is what is really meant by "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Philosophy always wants to keep all the powers in check by keeping the mind free as it swims amongst all the various beliefs and creeds, and chooses the ones it knows to be best:
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789
Philosophy *should* teach young people how to wake up, become aware of the power of thought and mind and knowledge and learn how to use it, how to tend their own garden and think for themselves. This is kids learning how to be free human beings. Are we going to allow our children to continue to be slaves to the -isms and MSNBCs of the world, or do we want to teach them how to wrestle themselves out of it through the exercise of mind and make better choices based on "common sense" rather than unchecked idealism. THAT is one of the many benefits of philosophy and that is why Plato's famous dictum, in the mouth of his character Socrates is: "Know Thyself!". This dictum does not mean go out and experience your feelings or find your inner woman. It doesn't mean go out and buy self-help books and experiment with different positions and different genders. What this means is to know who you are as a human being; Know what you are capable of and incapable of; explore your own power and use it WISELY.
If Americans do not wake up. If Americans refuse to follow Plato's and Ciceronian wisdom, we will continue down the path of slavery which is slavery of the soul, slavery of mind and the perpetuation of our rulers' unchecked power over us. The cancer will continue to spread. Power that is unchecked is corruption. America is already deeply, deeply in a state of utter corruption. Philosophy, the way Plato invented it, is meant to prevent or cure the corruption through questioning what you think you know; through experimenting through thought rather than experimenting on society a la progressivism; through exercising what freedoms we have to force those in power to be accountable for what they say and do. If we do not do this we will only have the history of America, but no longer America, because we simply gave up the gardening to something completely foreign, to something completely destructive to ourselves.
Socrates was put to death for the practice of philosophy in a democracy that became a tyranny. I believe that the election of Obama is the final death sentence for this nation. We have chosen the course we want to take, but it is a course that we really don't understand. It is a course that Obama calls "Hope". As such, America will never be what it was again, at least not in our lifetime, because today is the day philosophy died once and for all.
Still I have a favor to ask of them[the people of Athens]. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows. - Socrates addressing the jury upon his death sentence. Plato, The Apology
Over two thousand years later, Jefferson responds, making clear that that "for which they ought to care" is in fact the virtue of freedom:
May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)
