Musings on Christmas
George Washington cautioned in his Farewell Address that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
John Parillo
Federalist 85 The Closing Argument
In Federalist 85, the last of the Federalist Papers, Hamilton brings his closing argument for the adoption of the draft Constitution.
Citizen Responsibility
There are widely varying views of the responibility of leaders in the proper formation of government. Plato believed in the philosopher king while his student Aristotle believed in the rule of law and the proper formation of a constitution consisting of the laws, traditions, and habits that together form the nature of a country.
We Didn’t Start This Fire
Americans murdered, hostages taken, Hamas is running amok. What did President Madison do when faced with a similar situation?
Why We Have Elections
I believe that it is worthwhile to consider why we have elections. The first reason is the obvious one, we use elections to choose representatives. That is how a representative government works. That concept was reinforced by the Christian concept that God made all men and that there is, therefore, no longer Roman or Jew, freeman …
Science, Rationalism and the Enlightenment
The age of enlightenment in the mid 1700’s was led by thinkers such as Voltaire, Descartes, and Montesquieu in France, and Kant and Mendelssohn in Germany. These philosophers believed that a new world was dawning.
The Enlightenment as a Political Movement
Over the last few days, we have been exploring the enlightenment as a philosophical movement. This movement started as a reaction to the significant advances in math and science, particularly Isaac Newton’s mathematical modeling of planetary movement, which described their orbits without the traditional process of metaphysics, the understanding of the planet’s first principles. From there, the …
The Enlightenment and The Science of Man
As we continue trying to understand the philosophy of the enlightenment (an admitted challenge for me I freely admit) we started with Newton’s mathematical explanation of the movement of planets. He completed this analysis without the use of metaphysics, the intellectual discipline where the observer would attempt to understand the entire nature of the item that …
The Enlightenment – Empiricism and Skepticism
Last time we talked about rationalism and the enlightenment, how science became a large influence on the philosophers of the time and how they felt that science would continue to unlock the secrets of the universe to mankind, both those secrets that were scientifically provable, and those that existed in a philosophical sense. Another …
Citizenship – Or, Thoughts on Why Paul was not Crucified
Citizenship can mean many things, depending on your viewpoint
The Last and Greatest Creation
What can we learn from someone living four or five thousand years ago that is applicable today?
The Old Jew and the Indian
The Hebrews, like the Stoics, did not have the benefit of modern science, neither were they fools. Their brightest people looked at the world that surrounded them and tried to make sense of it in the same way that we do.
The Cave Painting and the Grave
The cave painting and the grave tell us that early man was aware of himself and thought about himself as an individual, and as mortal.
Thank You and Farewell
With the wrap up of the Federalist Papers last week I will be taking a break from writing for this website. When I started this effort, I remember thinking to myself that this was an extended love letter to my country addressed to my children. I do not believe that I am reflexively patriotic. My …
The Ten Commandments – Part One
As we continue to explore the philosophical basis for western civilization, it is key to understand that the underpinnings of what we consider morality today is rooted in the Ten Commandments of the Hebrew Torah. Whether one considers them to be divinely inspired or not, they have been pillars of our civilization for centuries, and …
We are Finally Here!
For those who have been suffering through my articles for the past many days, you probably suspected early on what it was I was trying to do. We started with the most basic philosophical question, who am I and why am I here, and have worked our way through some of the highlights of western thought. This …
Post Modernism and the Commandments
A a person who torments you out of greed will be satisfied when he takes what is yours. A person who torments you for your own good will never be satisfied.
The Ten Commandments Part II
Last time we met, we looked at the first three commandments that God gave to his people through Moses. For the purposes of better understanding western thought, it is critical to recognize that the Ten Commandants have been the bedrock of western morality for centuries. As we discussed, the entire law of Moses is predicated on two …
The Stoics Today
What were the lessons of the Stoics, why were they critical in Admiral Stockdale’s survival as a POW, and what can they tell us today?