After I thought about it, I decided to pass on Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It didn't seem, after I had read some reviews, that it would be a very profitable use of my time. Further, I still had a lot of ISI reading to do. They assigned us four entire books, not to mention a 40-page excerpt from Augustine's City of God. They're not inconsequential books, either. The lineup is as follows: Whittaker Chamber's Witness, Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences. They describe the history of conservative thought, the Western world's steady slide into socialism, and the overall, underpinning thoughts that must support true freedom.

It's quite simple, really. Successful human governments are founded on the knowledge of men's fallen nature. They exist to limit our evil so that we can live as close to free as is practicable. The only thing that limits a will to power is opposing power, so every constitution is a compromise, a balance of powers. Otherwise, a single side would reign, and its laws would merely be sanction for enforcing its will on everyone else via absolute rule.

Power is a fact; some have more of it than others. Any attempt to "even out" the playing field merely displaces the power and puts it into the hands of a less intelligent and knowledgeable majority. The majority does not know what to do with its power, so it gives it away to whoever is the most persuasive. Government officials then gain authority through emotional appeal instead of rational. All officials are dependent on the majority for their power, and so they will not/cannot counter their people's appetites in any way, or they will quickly lose their positions. The legal system, too, finds itself listening to heartwarming appeals for the underdog instead of to justice. (Thus, if a murderer kills someone small and cute, he is likely to receive a much worse penalty.)

The only force that can convince anyone that he ought to submit to a mind greater than his own is religion. The reason for this is that, without religion, science teaches that this world is all we have. If so, bodily power holds much more weight than does the world of ideas. Ideals of duty and honor, the "brotherhood of man," mean very little when it comes down to the dirty nitty-gritty of everyday existence - unless there is something beyond. If people are swimming around in filth and nobody tells them to lift their heads out for air - well then, they'll just try to make the filth as pleasant as possible. And they'll work themselves to exhaustion so they don't have to notice their surroundings. In the meanwhile, they don't especially care about others who live outside their own family nucleus. They pay attention to their own affairs, and they expect the government to take care of everything else. Little by little, "everything else" begins to intrude into the private sphere. But people do not notice, because they don't remember how expansive the private sphere used to be.

History is basically the tale of humanity's continual clash against unmovable force. That force is God, no matter how much we rage against him. The conservative, by very definition of his title, wants to preserve his nation. He wants to guide it back to the eternal laws that guarantee freedom. The conservative, therefore, also holds the best right to the name of "liberal." People who call themselves "Liberals" nowadays seek extraordinary freedom for some at the expense of others. In the process, they slowly leech away the liberty of everyone. Conservatives want to allow society to fall out into the natural hierarchy in which every person plays his or her best part.

Sheesh. I didn't intend to go on so long, and there's still a lot more I could say. The part of education, as Derby would say, is essential. I'm going to need to figure that out sometime before next spring, as I'm supposed to write my history project about the history of homeschooling. I have a feeling it is inextricable from the overall history of education, so I have a lot of learning to do before then. :P Thankfully, I will still have a month and a half of summer after my ISI conference.

Garbled? Not? Thoughts? I highly recommend all four of those books I've been reading, whether you are a public policy major or a literature major. Whether you are planning to fix a society or write one, they are excellent.  ¶ 8:46 AM