First Friday - Self-Government or Czarist Bureaucracy - Dr. Larry P. Arnn

Larry P Arnn is the 12th president of Hillsdale College he received his BA from Arkansas State University graduating with the highest distinction he received his MA in government and a PhD in government from the Claremont Graduate School he also studied in England from 1977 to 1980 first as a research student in international history at the London School of Economics and then in modern history at Worcester College Oxford University while in England he also served as director of research for Martin Gilbert now Sir Martin of Merton College Oxford and the official biographer of Winston Churchill he returned to the United States in 1980 to become an editor for public research syndicated and from 1985 to 2000 he also served as the president the Claremont Institute and educational and Research Institute based in Southern California while at Claremont he was the founding chairman the California Civil Rights initiative which passed by California voters in 1996 prohibited racial preferences in state hiring contracting and admissions dr. Arnn is on the board of directors of the Heritage Foundation the Army War College the Henry celebratory Center of Claremont McKenna College and the Claremont Institute published widely in national newspapers magazines and periodicals on issues of Public Policy history and political theory is the author of Liberty and learning the evolution of American education published published by Hillsdale College press in 2004 this morning you will speak on the topic self-government or Czarist bureaucracy certain will be very interesting we could go on with listing his accomplishments but on a personal note I think some of his finest accomplishments are that he's a very fine speaker but more importantly a very fine educator I'm very glad that we can have met Hillsdale College very proud to say that he is our college president please join me in welcoming dr. lair Thank You Dylan Dylan's daddy runs a pheasant shooting Nirvana is that true in Aberdeen South Dakota I've not been there yet but it looks beautiful I am an old man now and I'm a teacher by trade and that means that when I talk in this room I my eye goes to all these people that have grown up around me yeah Dylan is not the squirming freshman that I knew two years ago and Geneva Manuel who's a very pretty girl is married to Neil Cole how did that happen you know why did she do that and d-bob you know say David professor David Bob you know D Bob and he told me you say I gave him that name yeah nobody else he doesn't like it I don't care but look at him all grown up now and carrying on like he can do stuff so okay I'm distracted from my work by the fact that my students are here I have something hopelessly complicated today and so I'll just say announcer I'll try to simplify it first I'll tell you why I think it matters I don't think we understand what we're up against I don't think we're good at predicting its ways I think we miss characterize what it is about and I think that we do things that make it stronger not knowing that we do them I think of President Bush first of all with longing of course I mean I even long for Bill Clinton but and I think there's never been a finer man occupy the office than George W Bush and I think that he didn't know the basic terms of the controversy that were in today and we need to know them we need to know what's being sought and done and I will try to say I'm provoked in part to this because I'm in a school of thought and several of them several of us acting separately have been going around saying that socialism is not what is coming at us something else is coming at us it's worse but it isn't socialism and it's a mistake to think that it is I actually believe that Obama tells the truth when he says he doesn't want to own General Motors I expect he's going to sell it you know I don't think he's going to get much for it but but I think he he intends to sell it and the reason is he has another ambition it's related to socialism it's it's a cousin but it's not the same thing I'm from Arkansas you know we're all cousins and I actually gave a speech in my hometown not long ago and there's a big crowd there it's kind of fun and I said you know we're all cousins here but I said let me introduce you to my first cousins there were a lot of them too what is going on the Democrats I was told often say these days in the long night sessions that they have to get their bills through on Saturday night that they often say to the opposition say Paul Ryan said this yeah we're very ready to compromise about that we want to get our architecture in place that's what we're going to do we've won the election we're going to put our architecture in place what is that architecture first of all the original American architecture is worth stating it is an act of obedience in the making of our country there is this statement about the laws of nature and of nature's God and I think by the way the first tool our first task in the education of a citizen is to get to a place where you can give a clear definition of what those laws might be and you can get that clear definition by seeing how they operate in the Declaration of Independence the people who signed the Declaration in a much more desperate situation than we're in today although ours is desperate because remember what they were doing they were doing something that had never been done before you know to take on the greatest power on earth in the name of something that had never been a political principle of any nation in history in the name of the rights of every human being including the right to be governed only by their consent that's a remarkable thing and they're saying that to the king it is the Kings point the siege of Boston was that means the siege of the United States of America of the city of Boston was saved by a circular that the king wrote and had distributed all over Boston and he managed to get it up among our troops and what it says is I'm gonna be really nice to you I love you I'm your ruler I'm born to it he thought that would the day you know but why did he think that he thought that because that's what everyone thought that's what everyone had ever thought it was the only thought and the reaction of the colonists and what had they done by the way except come over here to the new world and cut themselves off from everything and survive and prosper and their reaction to this thing was like the reaction we're seeing out in the country right now to the things happening in the city everybody reenlist it everybody all of a sudden there was an army again because they read this appeal from the king you see and if you're going to do something so unprecedented is that so completely wild is that you cannot appeal to any law that any one ever passed if you're going at the end of the Declaration to stake your fortunes and your lives and your sacred honor and to promise those to each other like in this robust promising we're going to do something we swear to each other to do it it will be a breach against one another if we don't do it it's that that's what they're right right it's a battlefield thing it's a blood pledge to make that pledge they have to have some Authority for that pledge and where will they find it because there is no authority they can't really write to the King of England and say my will is more important than your will that would be such a foolish thing to save you ever been to London you know a king lived in a really great house and his ancestors you know up until the time of the last bloody change of monarchy in England had lived in that house forever and ever they were a bunch of Germans who moved in there by the but he was a really grand guy and he had the Divine Right of Kings on sit on his side and so you can't write to him and say we're gonna do what we want to do cuz we want to do it and so they did something stranger they subjected him to the idea that we are the same kind of thing as you are we are not horses and you are not born booted and spurred to bright us you are not an angel appointed in the divine order to govern us you are a man and so are we and all men as regards governing are created equal now that never happened before right and you have to you have to understand what a fixity that is you have to understand that that is give up your life over it and by the way the life of George Washington was really good when all this started out he was becoming rapidly one of the richest men in the United States of America and he was the best dang farmer he ever saw he could make money Thomas Jefferson was a hopeless farmer he wrote these treatises about farming and how great it was he never could farm you know it's true he made most of the money he managed to make in life he made by marriage and he made by running a nail factory you know with slaves and I don't mean to belittle him except a little I'm saying he was kind of weird you know he was really great he was a little weird Washington had this enormous stake he was connected to the oldest families you know Fairfax County he was married into that bunch see and why is that County called that they knew the king and so for him to say to the king this thing once the British landed on his farm come up the river and and stopped by the house a force and his brother I think it was gave them some stuff he was mortified he was a commander of the army at the time he said you know you've bargained with them you should let them burn the house fortunes and lives and sacred honor in the name of the laws of nature and of nature's God now what that means really it's explained the best it's by the way everybody knows what it means it's simple we're all different here some dark some light some feminine and beautiful and some the rest of us some of us are old some of us are young so we're all different right we're not the same at all and so in what sense are we created equal and the answer is bring a pig in here just bring one in and everybody a minute like if somebody walks in the back now late there might be a little stirring not much and we'll glance at them and if we know them will be interested if not we'll forget about it in two seconds but if somebody walks in here with a pig on the lead Wow the pig does not belong here it is not the same kind of thing Douglas says to Lincoln not Fred Douglas but Steve Douglas assisted Lincoln's you say that I can take my hog in my buckboard into Nebraska and have my property protected in it why can I not take my slave and Lincoln replies you can if there's no difference between the hog and the buckboard and the slave but you know that there is because you in the south your friends and you he goes from Illinois your friends in the South who perpetuate the incision of slavery never pass a law hanging a pig for murder but you do slaves and you never pass a law saying you cannot teach a hog to read what you do slaves you know what they are you cannot resist the knowledge what they are it is born in you Aristotle's account of that by the way he's a very beautiful and fun I'm looking around for an object I won't do it today because it's too early in the morning and some of you were up late last night this was I but I will tell you that what Aristotle says is when we look at an object like that cup right there we see more than any other creature on earth sees and we see it instantly and automatically we don't just see that that's a white thing you know and you might sniff it and see what's in it knock it over we have two dogs in our house and that is exactly what they would do and a little short squat want to actually find a way to get up there and do it you know I'd make a fool of himself what we see is come and you know that guy's got a cup hold it up and it's different and if that were the cup that would not be a cup and so you never see the cup and yet you recognize everyone you ever seen and that means that when you look at the world as a human as a rational creature you see a much richer world than any other living creature and because you know what category that is in it makes you instantly available to identify whether it is a good one or not and so come to find out Aristotle's but also Thomas Jefferson's argument in the Declaration of Independence is that everything you see is an act of sense perception is also at the same moment an identification of a moral world we live in this weird world today where we think it is proven beyond a doubt that that hard thing is made out of moving rapidly moving parts and then you know in movies they're always doing this now they were saying somebody like The Matrix was kind of built around this idea so far as it was built around consistent ideas that you should be able to stick your hand in it because it's in motion and we think that's an objective fact but we think it's doubtful that I should not treat the students at Hillsdale College the same way I would treat my dogs I do kind of treat them the same way but but I expect more of the students because the dogs are stupid and and they respond to some of the same things but the students are human and that means that moral knowledge is apparent to them at everything they see it springs up Aristotle even says it is the reason we can identify things what he says is the good and being are convertible terms and what that means is if you punched a hole in the bottom of the cup it would not only start being a bad cup it would also stop being a cup and it would start becoming a funnel that's what he says so these laws of nature and of nature's God are apparent to us because we can see and they're a fixity and only humans can see them and all humans can see them and the wrong of slavery has always been apparent to all who've practiced it and that is why in any society ancient or modern that is why in the first few pages of Aristotle's politics slavery is spoken of as a necessity but with apology it is always a doubtful institution because everybody of any serious thinking who has looked at the question down through history has said it is not right unreservedly to treat a human like it was a pig that's how America was built and it is the first thing in history built on that idea and now we have a new idea and I'll try to say what that is the new idea I'll mention this philosopher over so I don't know why I got up this morning out of course I'm tired I was up too late last night as you were what are you doing here this morning I have to be here but why are you here so I'm going to talk about this philosopher what we're so rights in the second discourse is we're born in the state of nature and we don't know anybody else and the first time we run across people we invent lie language so language is not in our nature anymore it's a development it arises and the key thing about human beings that make them what they are is not rationality the ability to see the rich moral world implicit in the cup it's what he calls malleability which might be translated as chain isn't it odd that that word should become the master word in our politics change the great thing about human beings is that they change and all of a sudden were interested in the narrative now it's not that ancient man knew as we know that human beings are not to be treated as pigs it's not that when I Josh these kids that I know so well right because you by the way everybody before you die you should go work in a college for a while you'll become an expert on growing up anyway you won't grow up but you can watch others do it right and they come and they look like little kids and they leave and they look like grown-ups and it happens in four years precisely Neil call he looks like a man now right he didn't used to it's recent you know it's very funny you know and I know his character I watch to display itself they open up as he was growing up right he's a good kid he went to graduate school somewhere and he had a moral objection to things they teach there in the sciences for goodness sake so he changed didn't he a weird guy it's great see that's nature and that's by the way why mommies and daddies matter because when he was 21 he still needed his mommy and daddy and other creatures don't it's not looking at the world that way anymore it's looking at everything as change and once you see that everything is in motion and that now you are the special creature given the gift to see that fan are you not therefore appointed to control the process of change what if you could bring the tools of modern science to bear upon human affairs what if you could control everything what if you could make everything right there's a contradiction but don't don't don't think about that for a minute the contradiction is obvious what do you mean by right the old guys had this idea of nature they had this idea that in sense perception and thinking themselves which are the two things conjoined to make the human being and they're not separate they're the same in the human being there's only sense perception in the animal see the idea is that makes us that is our divine spark that is why that we can see the difference between a man and a beast and twinam angel and a man right they people who think like that they can use the term right people who think that everything is changing and you could get control of the process they can't use that word I will read to you from the president implicit in the very idea of ordered Liberty is a rejection of absolute truth the infallibility of any idea or ideologies he writes that audacity of hope' compare we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them the rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among parchments they are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature that's Hamilton it's a paraphrase that's one way of talking this way of talking is implicit and the very idea of ordered Liberty is a rejection of absolute truth and by the way this is written by a man who seeks power and the obvious question is what restraint will there be on its use what principle of restraint could there be do you like to have conversations with eighteen-year-olds I do it's just great especially if they're smart and you know in our place they're smart and it's just so much fun to torture them because cuz you ask them you know it's easy to get them to say the word good and then it's easy to ask them what it means step1 step2 everybody the college is used to it now so they avoid me but it's not very big so you can't get away and you'll say you know you said good what does that mean and they'll say you know they say they learn the standard answers don't work but the standard answers are well doing what you think is right you know because the modern mind doesn't want to say anything is right and so I always bring up Hitler Hitler's handy in this regard I always say you know he didn't really thought he was right you know he was going for it or as the white who's that press lady at the White House who says that Mao lived his dream Don is that her name and she reads him every day she living her dream right how are you gonna criticize that if everything is change and the tools of science are to be used to control the process have you wondered why those climatologists guys in England should be such liars because it's counterintuitive isn't it just think what they are right first of all they're very intelligent people second of all they have they have survived two decades no three decades of serious academic work challenging difficult hard demanding enormous virtues of perseverance and seriousness they are at the top of their field how can they be just simple liars that they are liars is clear but can they really be just simple Liars in their own mind are they in the wrong it's not possible to think that if you just think about them for a minute right what they are instead is pioneers of a new world in which science is wedded to administration and everything can be managed and perfected and they know they must know that global warming is a stalking horse for that kind of regime it is part of the architecture that is being built and that means that you do not have to own things if you can regulate them in any way that you please indeed it's not a good idea to own things because what would you regulate what will it be like it's coming first of all community organizing is going to be a big deal it is a miserable experience to be organized I'm gonna mention the book 1984 it's an extreme thing to say in one way and I don't mean to say that these people imagine a world like that at all but I want to mention a particular feature of the book if you want to understand by the way the totalitarian impulse the to bless places I know to read it I mean you can read marks and stuff if you want to I did and I got over it read 1984 Orwell a communist who reformed and was horrified by what he was involved in and read darkness at noon by Arthur Koestler another of the same time but in 1984 what's going on there these three parties right there are these three groups of people that appear it's a regime in three parts and the proletariat they're left alone and they're happy the great thing is to be one of them they the only appear well they appear as poor they appear as a prostitute in one case a poor old ugly prostitute living a miserable existence but then the big study of them is when they're Winston Smith and his mistress are in their secret room by the way where they get to have privacy see and that's what you cannot have you cannot turn off the television what we're ports seem like you today to you today I cannot bear I use I have like four sets of fancy headphones and and now once in a while the lady on the airplane will say you know sir you can't you can't really have that in while we're talking and I will say but yeah that's why I want to have it in to engage in public transportation today is to be lectured and ordered about wherever you going you know I do it all the time today I'll be doing it you can't turn off the television Winston and his and his girlfriend look out the window and there's a lady and she's singing an old ditty and it's vaguely resonant with them and she's hanging up clothes it's beautifully described and and she's living normally she's unaffected the hope Winston Smith thinks is in them and the other two parts of the regime are the active parts the inner party a world of despots struggling one against the other for power over the outer party which is what Winston Smith is and the outer party are the people who are regimented they are made to exercise early in the morning they can't get a razor blade they have to listen to a television all the time and by the way if they don't do what's supposed to the person on television can see them and will talk to them and make them do their exercises better and stuff like that now I mentioned that because a regime like that is imagined it's kindly imagined in that regime there's most of us and according to American progressivism we get to rule we get to decide ideas are proposed to us from an active scientific and technical administration of very large size and we hear these ideas and we vote once in a while kind like a big pleb site and we decide whether this will be implemented or not but the process can't get dangerous for the administration because the government has become such a considerable force that it's not impossible what was that is it the Heritage Foundation sign or ours I'm a trustee of the Heritage Foundation and fully entitled to speak under its banner and we'll proceed in that vein so I'm nearly finished now but if there's a corn is there more going down thank you dear there you go thank you it if there's if there's why you know by the way why were they outraged that Sarah Palin said kind of like a community organizer but with real responsibilities you wouldn't know it I didn't know it but there's a class a person who does that and it's a large class and it's a powerful class acorn is by the way a very large body of people funded by the government to work upon us to influence elections to influence the government in its decisions to bring lawsuits against corporations to make them behave the way it thinks they should and the government then has actually appointed people to work upon us and that is a direct abnegation of the central arrangement of our old regime which is that the society is separate from the government and sovereignty is located in the society look at the health care thing it's the public option is not a separate thing it's all the public option you know I got mr. Carville to look it up because I keep hearing that it's gonna be unionized the whole healthcare in she's gonna be unionized how would that work personal care attendants workforce advisory panel that will likely impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created by the way who could ever room I have to read these words I read them this morning I can't remember them and you know I I have a fair memory I can remember Hamilton personal care attendants workforce Advisory Panel impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created community living assistant services and support class can anyone assign any meaning to those terms you know they don't mean anything it's a new world created by the will of man and things are not descriptive teacher Minister surgeon nurse you know what those are right those are things in nature you know as long as there's been people there's been those things right personal care attendants workforce advisory panel the way you do broadcasting is that you form an advisory panel and they decide who gets a license and licenses have to be renewed every other year and the word and the advisory panel represents all of the diversity groups you see and then they meet and they decide if your programming has been good enough to qualify and of course their union reps and there are so so you meet in a group I used to say at the air cries to fight with the Air Quality Management District in Southern California it's a it's awful they had 1200 employees and they had a hundred of them doing PR probably they got 2,000 or 3,000 now and I used to argue with them a lot I went to me at the Claremont is did we once made them take back a rule and their whole idea I said you know I'm going to body parts organization because every time you do you guys do a panel you got the Lung Association and the Heart Association and uh you know all the different stakeholders they call them that's a term from Hegel and they all get together and they all by the way have an interest because they're all grantees when I started causing them trouble they said they called me in and said would you come and visit the director and the chief of community relations I said sure I'll go down there and so we had a long talk and they said you know this is really interesting what you're doing here we'd like to have your help and I said well you know you got it and they said well we'd like to give you a grant and I said well you know I don't really want a grand they said but you know you you we'd like to have your help and I said you're gonna get it you know you see but they at one point she said I don't understand one thing she said she said you say that we spend too much money because you know the way these things are funded all these local regulatory agencies on the environmental stuff they're funded by the fees and fines that they impose on the regulated community and so they find you and if you don't like it you appeal to them right and they're living off the revenue they get from you and you've got reason not to put to it to protest about it and she said you say that we've got too much money but then you want us to charge instead of regulating he wants to charge for pollutants and I said correct that's what I want you to do I mean if you're gonna do it that way everybody will see the cost and the market can adjust and that takes you our discretion out of it but she said what are we gonna do with the extra money and I said well there might not be any extra money and she said why and I said it's the difference between a regulatory and a Revenue tariff regulatory tariffs are high and they don't yield much money what you're trying to do is keep the good sound revenue tariffs are low a lot of goods come in you get a lot of dough and this woman said to me wow that's brilliant and I replied no ma'am that is Elementary you see but the point is in your dealings with the government your interest is married to quote Woodrow Wilson to the interest of the government and so you lose the one thing that you must lose and under the regulatory state the one thing that everyone will lose which is their independence you can keep your ownership of your property you will hold it on title from us in all of your use of it and that by the way is the economic principle of feudalism born again in this country and I will stop by saying that there are two things to do about this and they're easy to state the first is we have to develop a clear way of talking about this that is accurate we have to study the laws of nature and of nature's God so that we can say what they are and we have to study the bureaucratic way so we can describe it as it is we have to do that relentlessly we have to start producing not big administrative bureaucratic platforms from both parties but short and simple and beautiful platforms from one party which everyone turns out not to be evil right now they're both evil and both stupid we have to produce clear and simple and beautiful laws and when we get ourselves to an intellectual state where we can produce that kind of thing then we have to talk with all our might and all our eloquence and all our hearts to our fellow citizens because they alone can save their freedom there are are two tasks and there are no others thank you we have time for a few questions if you would for the benefit of the recording wait until the microphone comes to you and then stand up and address your short question doctrinal be pleased to answer it any questions this is sort of a constitutional question when since you quoted Hamilton so often when Hamilton was arguing with Madison and Jefferson over the establishment of the first bank he used I believe the general welfare clause is his justification for that do you think that in some ways he won that battle of lost the war well yeah yeah in some ways he did but do you understand what the issue is is in article 1 section 8 there's 17 clauses and they're all specific except the first and the specific ones are things like coin money and regulate the value thereof and you know go kill pirates is one of them I don't think they put it quite that way but that's what they meant and and then you know necessary and proper to the general welfare right is that how it reads so the point is here's my answer to that the Constitution we have to in my opinion it's not as important to conceive it as a specific set of prohibitions and and empowerment's that comes second the first thing is to understand its grand structure because the Constitution from the first days was fraught with hard cases Jefferson struggles over whether you can build a harbor to defend the port of Boston right there's no build a harbor right you can't read that in there but there's defense is that okay he kind of wants to say you can't do it but then he stuck by in Louisiana so so the truth is the Constitution can be read intelligently if you understand its large purpose which is to keep the federal government to a few grand things and by the way to have a lot of power over those but to have almost no administrative power over our ordinary daily lives and I'll make the distinction before you for you the biggest subsidy ever given in education is in the Northwest Ordinance second-biggest is in the land-grant colleges act in 1862 and in both of those what they do is they take a section of the western lands their idea about the western lands being to get it into private hands as fast as they could and they reserve it for education but the but but the the vehicle is and this is so beautiful by the way if you go if you go read the Morell act it's called the land-grant colleges Act the Homestead Act or the Northwest Ordinance I think the longest of those is five pages long and they're lovely documents you know the Northwest Ordinance says religion morality and knowledge being necessarily good government and the happiness of mankind schools and the means of education shall ever be encouraged how do you do it the answer is you got this asset give it to the state on condition that the state use it for the purpose of education end of story there is no one to whom the state could report now if they abuse the privilege I imagine somebody could sue in federal court and say you know you got this for this but now you use it for that you know this in the Northwest Ordinance in the land ordinance of 1785 it's the 16th section of each township of 36 sections that is reserved for education I know where that is in Hillsdale Michigan it's just a little bit north and a little bit east of our campus and if you go follow the deeds all the way back and they will exist all the way back you will see that at one point that land to the state and the state either devoted to education or sold it and used the money for education if they didn't do that you consume and so there's no administrative authority over anything local or detailed and concerning the regular citizens of the country in Washington DC and if you can achieve that again then this question about the bank and about the harbor and about the Louisiana Purchase won't matter so much because the heart of the evil that we have today is this enormous administrative class the bureaucracy which is large enough to interfere with everything and powerful and large enough to influence the outcome of elections so now all of a sudden elections become powerfully influenced and eventually may be dominated by people who are really judging in their own cause what I mean by that they vote the way they get so you see that's my point and my point then is the Constitution in the grand sense and I mean the whole of it the structure of it with its division of powers and you know of its division of labor between the branches it's you know because here's another accident from the Constitution the Constitution convention is called because Madison and Hamilton in the Maine are concerned about violation of Rights and States they want a strong government they actually agree although you know they later fight like cats and dogs over stuff like this they agree at the convention and proposed that the government of the United States should be empowered to legislate in all cases whatsoever now these guys by the way there's no way they're trying to build a despotism look who they are look how they risk their lives look at the treason they had committed right so their idea is we need a strong federal government to legislate wherever it needs for the great national purposes they can't get that through the convention because there's the other party is saying no states are very important we don't want to give it up we're not gonna build a thing like the King of England again and what is worked out it's not so much the grand compromise of the Bill of Rights although that's important what's worked out is the system of enumeration reinforced by the system of states electing senators by state legislatures which gives States a tool to defend their authorities my argument is states don't have rights people do and and you know that means by the way that the 17th amendment is the worst amendment ever passed if you could get back to that world then it wouldn't matter very much how strictly you interpreted the 17 clauses it's the fact of them and the indication of them in general and then the lack of a federal domestic bureaucracy that our protection should be in that make sense okay Lyndsay Hoban US Court of Federal Claims could you explain how the apparent value of humanity applies to abortion and embryonic stem cell research well human life has a different in higher dignity than other life although all life has a dignity and animal life for sure which has sense perception memory and intelligence is not to be abused but human life is special because it is immortal and what immortal means in the religious sense is not what you need it to mean here what you need it to mean here is it is aware of the eternal and lives its life in accordance with that and the universal in its ordinary operation and so it was made with a power that is divine and beyond any particular situation it's human beings are odd creatures you should read I just I'm just finishing a class on the Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle and it's such a beautiful experience to do that you know the kids are real smart and and we just are having just a fantastic time because the we're we're in next next class is the last class and it's on book ten and we actually somehow got through it for the second time in my experience and books 8 9 and 10 are about friendship happiness and pleasure and they're the culmination of the great book and in the book what's described is that pleasure in the beginning of the book is suspicious suspected it's demoted it's confined it's told you're told not to listen to it at the end it's purified and it becomes the point of your life the point of your life is the feeling of you of the active proper activity of your being but you're a compound being and so this highest things in us like you know when when if we've had a moment this morning where we're thinking about things quite beyond ourselves things that are high and beautiful and we maybe have had one last night we probably did if you were there that's the best thing in us but we also have all these needs well it's these needs that we have that lead us to hurt each other and damage each other but we ought not to do that and that means that the details of things like that those are those questions of abortion and stem-cell research is that you must not treat human making as a manufacturing process you must not treat a human being a life and well-being of another human being as a factor of production in your own well-being because that is like slavery so that's how you think about it broadly this will be our final question I'm undoubtedly fascinated by the intellectual analysis of the situation with President Obama but I don't think and this is just my humble opinion that we have time to develop a whole class a citizenry that can approach overturning what's happening within the time that we have so other than sewage which will happen in about a year and hopefully we will be able to turn around some of the things that are happening what would your recommendation be for people like me that are out there in contact with you know activists and even our children and our children's friends and you know our children's parents to somehow steer the country in the right direction good question so I'll just say a few points first of all we don't have to develop a class of citizens who have these basic points in their mind they're already exist in a considerable majority and they've proved it in recent weeks this stuff that I just told you is all kind of fancy and sophisticated I used to say to my dad before he died my dad's a school teacher in Arkansas and I had my young and stupid period now I have my old and stupid period but I used to argue with him about stuff when I was in college because I had you know about 18 months where I was pretty liberal and later in life one of the greatest satisfactions I gave him was that I said you know it's been a long time dad now learning complicated reasons why you were right he he loved that right and I have more complicated reasons than he had but where did my father get his education he got from undergraduate college you know and by the way they're not very good at teaching and undergraduate college these days that's a blessing I mean that it really is they can't the stuff they're trying to teach it's so counterintuitive the kids have to be really brilliant and have a little bit of a despotic ambition in them to take to it right must don't and then my dad you know he grew up on a farm and the depression and he was a hunter and he had three children and he got himself through college and he served in the Army and he made my mother and they were married for 53 years and he watched us grow up and most of us have you know somehow managed to work out okay in other words he got his education from life and it's very hard to get around that most people are not gonna gonna get the fancy education that made Liars out of those elite scientists in England and that's one reason why the populace of America are so stubborn about this stuff so I don't expect everybody in the country to follow the argument I just made I can hardly follow it myself as you could tell what we need is simple we we have the force in the society to turn all this back they need some leadership they need some people who can think and to have courage and are high-minded to take the lead and that by the way those people are in office right now I named several of them there you know I just had an inspiring couple of days right and a lot of those people I've known for a long time their characters are fantastic and they're not on the list of people who might run for president one of them might run actually pins from Indiana says he might run here's what he says he's such a such a self effacing fine talented guy he says I was saying for a long time that I have a calling not to run for president and I'm not saying that anymore which is not saying he's got a calling to do it right and he means that he's very self restrained man so there's two jobs right and one is whip up the people communicate with them you know and to the extent you can teach them about the meaning of their country you know we do that we're gonna have an online course so everybody understand the Constitution and it'll be simple and complex depending on how far you go but then the other thing is find some people who are really great and try to get them into positions of influence so I'm gonna try to make a few congressmen famous and I go around to them I might as you can tell I'm a frightful lecturer I've just I've been ruined by my job in one respect that I had a native tendency that way anyway so I go and sit with these powerful people and tell them how they ought to do their work and they like it you know I don't do at least they asked me back and they do because they know I love them and one of the things I tell them as friendship is the deal so you guys all have to get together and work and you got to not care who gets elected governor and Attorney General and president you've got to serve now country really needs you it needs the best in you it needs your selflessness in your high mindedness and your cooperation and they know that you know who are they I'll name them Paul Ryan Mike Pence Tom McClintock John Shattuck I'm forgetting something now that there's you know 15 20 30 of them maybe 40 Fortenberry I just met him yesterday walking down the hall sort of Nebraska it's just great so the point is they you know so by the way the two elements necessary are in place they're just not in the right order now it matters a lot the next two or three or four months everything should be done you know I actually just hesitated to say this but I'm a citizen I'm gonna say it it is my personal recommendation as a city and not deploying the resources of any organization represented here that it is very urgent Meritor first to delay and then to defeat this bill that's going through the Senate right now if it can be delayed it might be beaten and it will be mighty good for the country if it can be beaten because it will put infrastructure in place that will be terribly hard to repeal but never say that it will not be repealed so there you go and remember you don't what I just made today I'll close with this point was a defense of common sense and we've all got that don't we

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 7,439

Rating: 4.963964 out of 5

Keywords: education, constitution, founders, first principles, kirby center, freedom, larry arnn, liberty, Hillsdale College (College/University), Hillsdale College Kirby Center, Larry P. Arnn (Organization Leader), Bureaucracy (Quotation Subject)

Id: 2l9_7fjynf0

Length: 59min 38sec (3578 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 02 2010