Some much needed words of wisdom from the past

Loopy Loo, posting at Zilla’s place, has a must read bit of history

United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845) was a famous jurist, and his Commentaries was a very influential treatise on United States constitutional law

His tenure on the Supreme Court spanned three decades, from 1811 to 1845.   At the beginning of the twentieth century, Story was elected to the Hall of Fame.   His views on the Constitution of the United States are still widely respected.

On November 18, 1811, President James Madison nominated Story to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate confirmed the appointment on February 3, 1812. At the age of thirty-two, Story was the youngest person ever appointed to the Supreme Court. While on the Supreme Court, Story served as a delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820 and was a Professor of Law at Harvard, where he wrote a series of nine commentaries on the law, each of which was published in several editions. Story served on the Supreme Court for thirty-three years. He died on September 10, 1845, at the age of sixty-five.

This quote from him caught  my attention:

“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them.”

- Joseph Story – Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 2d ed. (1851), vol. 2, chapter

Is that not a very near perfect summation of where America is today? The wise ARE mocked, and the honest are called “extremists”. Many of our citizens are blithely ignorant of our Constitution, our founders, our founding principles, and of our history. And some of the worst cases of ignorance occur in well-educated Americans. This is, I believe, because our education system  is about idoctrination, not education. 

Go read the rest of the post, it is worth it.