A new channel, Notes From The Past, has posted some interesting history videos (and some that seem to be not so much history as social commentary). The most recent, How Liberalism Failed, attempts to outline what has happened to the concept of ‘liberty’ in America. Seems this one is behind paywall on their Substack, but it’s up for free on YouTube…
Thanks for discovering and letting us know about 'Notes from the Past' Winston. I've had a browse and it has some interesting videos I plan on wading through.
Sometimes we make an error in judgement, thinking that everybody is capable to handle philosophical and ethical discussions - in this case about freedom - with the same depth and vigour as we do. It is my opinion that the masses are quite comfortable with a set of rules for life that limits freedom extensively. In fact, they volunteer for it.
Most people don't know how to handle a broad definition of freedom like "Do what you want as long as it doesn’t breach the law or the liberty of others". I understand that those who wrote this wanted to cast as broad a net as possible, in order to encompass every human orientation. But for most folk, that's just not good enough.
I dare say, faced with this definition as guidance for their lives, most people will look for a leader (political, religious) to limit their freedoms in exchange for the "safety" of being in a group. Be it out of fear, ignorance or just plain lazyness to deal with the subject themselves. Don't underestimate that feeling. As a colleague of mine once responded to my remark "You know, I was thinking..." with "What on earth did you do that for?" See, in this light, one can understand the acceptance of people having their freedom taken away in the last years, as well as in some major historical occurences.
"the Christian moral foundation the Founding Fathers had in mind"- Which Christian moral foundation? The Quaker version? The Unitarian/Deist one? The Episcopal/Anglican one? The Baptist version? "By the end of the 18th century, Deism had become a dominant religious attitude among intellectual and upper-class Americans. Benjamin Franklin, the great sage of the colonies and then of the new republic, summarized in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College, a personal creed that almost literally reproduced Herbert’s five fundamental beliefs. The second and third presidents of the United States also held Deistic convictions, as is amply evidenced in their correspondence. “The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion,” John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1816." https://www.britannica.com/topic/Deism/Deists-in-other-countries
“Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs the World by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable Service we can render him, is doing good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another life, respect[ing] its Conduct in this. These I take to be fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet them.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Complete Set: Volumes 1-37
Compare those with the morals of Puritanism:
"Puritans in both England and New England believed that the state should protect and promote true religion and that religion should influence politics and social life.[107][108] Certain holidays were outlawed when Puritans came to power. In 1647, Parliament outlawed the celebration of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide.[109] Puritans strongly condemned the celebration of Christmas, considering it a Catholic invention and the "trappings of popery" or the "rags of the Beast".[110] They also objected to Christmas because the festivities surrounding the holiday were seen as impious (English jails were usually filled with drunken revelers and brawlers).[111] During the years that the Puritan ban on Christmas was in place, semi-clandestine religious services marking Christ's birth continued to be held, and people sang carols in secret.[112] Following the restoration in 1660, when Puritan legislation was declared null and void, Christmas was again freely celebrated in England.[112] Christmas was outlawed in Boston from 1659.[113] The ban was revoked in 1681 by the English-appointed governor Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban on festivities on Saturday nights.[113] Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.[114]
Attempting to force religious and intellectual homogeneity on the whole community, civil and religious restrictions were most strictly applied by the Puritans of Massachusetts which saw various banishments applied to enforce conformity, including the branding iron, the whipping post, the bilboes and the hangman's noose.[115] Swearing and blasphemy were illegal. In 1636, Massachusetts made blasphemy—defined as "a cursing of God by atheism, or the like"—punishable by death.[116]
Puritans were opposed to Sunday sport or recreation because these distracted from religious observance of the Sabbath.[108] In an attempt to offset the strictness of the Puritans, James I's Book of Sports (1618) permitted Christians to play football every Sunday afternoon after worship.[117] When the Puritans established themselves in power football was among the sports that were banned: boys caught playing on Sunday could be prosecuted.[118] Football was also used as a rebellious force: when Puritans outlawed Christmas in England in December 1647 the crowd brought out footballs as a symbol of festive misrule.[118] Other forms of leisure and entertainment were completely forbidden on moral grounds. For example, Puritans were universally opposed to blood sports such as bearbaiting and cockfighting because they involved unnecessary injury to God's creatures. For similar reasons, they also opposed boxing.[61] These sports were illegal in England during Puritan rule.[119]
While card playing by itself was generally considered acceptable, card playing and gambling were banned in England and the colonies, as was mixed dancing involving men and women—which Mather condemned as "promiscuous dancing"—because it was thought to lead to fornication.[107][120] Folk dance that did not involve close contact between men and women was considered appropriate.[121] The branle dance, which involved couples intertwining arms or holding hands, returned to popularity in England after the restoration when the bans imposed by the Puritans were lifted.[122] In New England, the first dancing school did not open until the end of the 17th century.[108]
Puritans condemned the sexualization of the theatre and its associations with depravity and prostitution—London's theatres were located on the south side of the Thames, which was a center of prostitution. A major Puritan attack on the theatre was William Prynne's book Histriomastix which marshals a multitude of ancient and medieval authorities against the "sin" of dramatic performance. Puritan authorities shut down English theatres in the 1640s and 1650s—Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was demolished—and none were allowed to open in Puritan-controlled colonies.[123][124] In January 1643, actors in London protested against the ban with a pamphlet titled The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession, and banishment from their severall play-houses.[125] With the end of Puritan rule and the restoration of Charles II, theatre among other arts exploded, and London's oldest operating theatre, Drury Lane in the West End, opened in 1663.[126][127]
Puritans were not opposed to drinking alcohol in moderation.[128] However, alehouses were closely regulated by Puritan-controlled governments in both England and Colonial America.[108] Laws in Massachusetts in 1634 banned the "abominable" practice of individuals toasting each other's health.[129] William Prynne, the most rabid of the Puritan anti-toasters, wrote a book on the subject, Health's Sicknesse (1628), that "this drinking and quaffing of healthes had it origin and birth from Pagans, heathens, and infidels, yea, from the very Deuill himself."[129]
19th-century portrayal of the burning of William Pynchon's banned book on Boston Common after it was deemed blasphemous by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In 1649, English colonist William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, wrote a critique of Puritanical Calvinism, entitled The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption. Published in London in 1650, when the book reached Boston it was immediately burned on Boston Common and the colony pressed Pynchon to return to England which he did.[130] The censorious nature of the Puritans and the region they inhabited would lead to the phrase "banned in Boston" being coined in the late 19th century, a phrase which was applied to Boston up to the mid-20th century.[131]
Bounds were not set on enjoying sexuality within the bounds of marriage, as a gift from God.[132] Spouses were disciplined if they did not perform their sexual marital duties, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 7 and other biblical passages. Women and men were equally expected to fulfill marital responsibilities.[133] Women and men could file for divorce based on this issue alone. In Massachusetts colony, which had some of the most liberal colonial divorce laws, one out of every six divorce petitions was filed on the basis of male impotence.[134] Puritans publicly punished drunkenness and sexual relations outside marriage.[107] Couples who had sex during their engagement were fined and publicly humiliated.[107] Men, and a handful of women, who engaged in homosexual behavior, were seen as especially sinful, with some executed.[107] While the practice of execution was also infrequently used for rape and adultery, homosexuality was actually seen as a worse sin.[135] Passages from the Old Testament, including Lev 20:13., were thought to support the disgust for homosexuality and efforts to purge society of it. New Haven code stated "If any man lyeth with mankinde, as a man lyeth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination, they shall surely be put to death"[136] and in 1636 the Plymouth Colony adopted a set of laws that included a sentence of death for sodomy and buggery.[137] Prominent authors such as Thomas Cobbert, Samual Danforth and Cotton Mather wrote pieces condemning homosexuality.[135] Mather argued that the passage "Overcome the Devil when he tempts you to the youthful sin of Uncleanness" was referring "probably to the young men of Sodom".[138]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans
I'll bet what most people think of when they refer to Christian Morals are for the most part the Puritan version...
The Need For Moral Codes:.......One aspect of the post-60s 'revolution' that gets little attention even from conservatives is that it saw a retreat, across the Western world, from the Christian conception of the individual as an intrinsically flawed being – prone to sin and prone to error. Now maximal 'self esteem' is valorised right across the political spectrum. People drunk on their own virtuous self esteem don't like to give 'free speech' to anyone who might challenge them. A culture that acknowledges that most people are ineluctably less than perfect will be less susceptible to the sanctification of particular sub-sets as ‘victims’. And those designated as such would be less likely to feel it as a reason for abrogating any personal responsibility for the condition of their lives. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers Christopher Lasch saw it all coming in the 70s with his book 'The Culture of Narcissism'.
In my opinion you’ve distilled what is going on upon the world stage, and in the hearts of mankind, down to one of the fundamental essences of our existence. How we land after the fracas is over will define our path for a long time. So it matters very much that we are aware of the true nature of this battle. It really is a fight between forces of light and darkness.
I’m not an adherent of dispensational theology, so I resist the urge to understand scriptures from world headlines. These opposing foundational philosophies have been duking it out throughout history, as best as I understand it. Periodically there is major upheaval and it will lean one way more than another. We appear to be at some sort of fork in the road moment again, and we teeter on the brink of sliding into a long period of darkness once more.
I’m not as anxious as I could be though. For it is often when darkness seems inevitable that the forces of destruction are beaten back.
Articles like you write are a powerful force in this current battle. To understand things in our minds and heart and soul is powerful in ways I don’t fully comprehend. Those we oppose understand that better than we often do. So thank you, for the light you shed.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Hmm, interesting. I'm an American and realize I've had more of that French revolution definition of Liberty than a founding fathers-esque one. I do not, however, conflate "evil" with "do whatever you want as long as it's not against the law doesn't harm anybody else". Nor have I ever once conflated Liberty with liberalism. Not once, and I never will. They are mutually exclusive. Evil can and always will impinge on the rights or happiness of others. So, although the vast majority of my fellow Americans do not have the moral or philosophical stamina to appreciate or even desire true Liberty, I still believe in it, expect it, demand it and believe it should be safeguarded for those yet too infantile to understand its importance. History and current events prove that evil starts at the top and trickles down. Psychopaths naturally float to the top by virtue of their hunger for power and control. Positions of power in global governance, finance and commerce provide them a safe haven and an arena where their psychopathy is rewarded. No brainer there. The populace is by and large innocent of true malice which is why the deep states of the world must employ the most "talented" psychologists and neuro linguistic programmers in order to manipulate public opinion and find consensus for their acts of evil, witnesseth the state of Israel.
Thanks for discovering and letting us know about 'Notes from the Past' Winston. I've had a browse and it has some interesting videos I plan on wading through.
Sometimes we make an error in judgement, thinking that everybody is capable to handle philosophical and ethical discussions - in this case about freedom - with the same depth and vigour as we do. It is my opinion that the masses are quite comfortable with a set of rules for life that limits freedom extensively. In fact, they volunteer for it.
Most people don't know how to handle a broad definition of freedom like "Do what you want as long as it doesn’t breach the law or the liberty of others". I understand that those who wrote this wanted to cast as broad a net as possible, in order to encompass every human orientation. But for most folk, that's just not good enough.
I dare say, faced with this definition as guidance for their lives, most people will look for a leader (political, religious) to limit their freedoms in exchange for the "safety" of being in a group. Be it out of fear, ignorance or just plain lazyness to deal with the subject themselves. Don't underestimate that feeling. As a colleague of mine once responded to my remark "You know, I was thinking..." with "What on earth did you do that for?" See, in this light, one can understand the acceptance of people having their freedom taken away in the last years, as well as in some major historical occurences.
"the Christian moral foundation the Founding Fathers had in mind"- Which Christian moral foundation? The Quaker version? The Unitarian/Deist one? The Episcopal/Anglican one? The Baptist version? "By the end of the 18th century, Deism had become a dominant religious attitude among intellectual and upper-class Americans. Benjamin Franklin, the great sage of the colonies and then of the new republic, summarized in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College, a personal creed that almost literally reproduced Herbert’s five fundamental beliefs. The second and third presidents of the United States also held Deistic convictions, as is amply evidenced in their correspondence. “The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion,” John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1816." https://www.britannica.com/topic/Deism/Deists-in-other-countries
“Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs the World by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable Service we can render him, is doing good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another life, respect[ing] its Conduct in this. These I take to be fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet them.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Complete Set: Volumes 1-37
Compare those with the morals of Puritanism:
"Puritans in both England and New England believed that the state should protect and promote true religion and that religion should influence politics and social life.[107][108] Certain holidays were outlawed when Puritans came to power. In 1647, Parliament outlawed the celebration of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide.[109] Puritans strongly condemned the celebration of Christmas, considering it a Catholic invention and the "trappings of popery" or the "rags of the Beast".[110] They also objected to Christmas because the festivities surrounding the holiday were seen as impious (English jails were usually filled with drunken revelers and brawlers).[111] During the years that the Puritan ban on Christmas was in place, semi-clandestine religious services marking Christ's birth continued to be held, and people sang carols in secret.[112] Following the restoration in 1660, when Puritan legislation was declared null and void, Christmas was again freely celebrated in England.[112] Christmas was outlawed in Boston from 1659.[113] The ban was revoked in 1681 by the English-appointed governor Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban on festivities on Saturday nights.[113] Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.[114]
Attempting to force religious and intellectual homogeneity on the whole community, civil and religious restrictions were most strictly applied by the Puritans of Massachusetts which saw various banishments applied to enforce conformity, including the branding iron, the whipping post, the bilboes and the hangman's noose.[115] Swearing and blasphemy were illegal. In 1636, Massachusetts made blasphemy—defined as "a cursing of God by atheism, or the like"—punishable by death.[116]
Puritans were opposed to Sunday sport or recreation because these distracted from religious observance of the Sabbath.[108] In an attempt to offset the strictness of the Puritans, James I's Book of Sports (1618) permitted Christians to play football every Sunday afternoon after worship.[117] When the Puritans established themselves in power football was among the sports that were banned: boys caught playing on Sunday could be prosecuted.[118] Football was also used as a rebellious force: when Puritans outlawed Christmas in England in December 1647 the crowd brought out footballs as a symbol of festive misrule.[118] Other forms of leisure and entertainment were completely forbidden on moral grounds. For example, Puritans were universally opposed to blood sports such as bearbaiting and cockfighting because they involved unnecessary injury to God's creatures. For similar reasons, they also opposed boxing.[61] These sports were illegal in England during Puritan rule.[119]
While card playing by itself was generally considered acceptable, card playing and gambling were banned in England and the colonies, as was mixed dancing involving men and women—which Mather condemned as "promiscuous dancing"—because it was thought to lead to fornication.[107][120] Folk dance that did not involve close contact between men and women was considered appropriate.[121] The branle dance, which involved couples intertwining arms or holding hands, returned to popularity in England after the restoration when the bans imposed by the Puritans were lifted.[122] In New England, the first dancing school did not open until the end of the 17th century.[108]
Puritans condemned the sexualization of the theatre and its associations with depravity and prostitution—London's theatres were located on the south side of the Thames, which was a center of prostitution. A major Puritan attack on the theatre was William Prynne's book Histriomastix which marshals a multitude of ancient and medieval authorities against the "sin" of dramatic performance. Puritan authorities shut down English theatres in the 1640s and 1650s—Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was demolished—and none were allowed to open in Puritan-controlled colonies.[123][124] In January 1643, actors in London protested against the ban with a pamphlet titled The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession, and banishment from their severall play-houses.[125] With the end of Puritan rule and the restoration of Charles II, theatre among other arts exploded, and London's oldest operating theatre, Drury Lane in the West End, opened in 1663.[126][127]
Puritans were not opposed to drinking alcohol in moderation.[128] However, alehouses were closely regulated by Puritan-controlled governments in both England and Colonial America.[108] Laws in Massachusetts in 1634 banned the "abominable" practice of individuals toasting each other's health.[129] William Prynne, the most rabid of the Puritan anti-toasters, wrote a book on the subject, Health's Sicknesse (1628), that "this drinking and quaffing of healthes had it origin and birth from Pagans, heathens, and infidels, yea, from the very Deuill himself."[129]
19th-century portrayal of the burning of William Pynchon's banned book on Boston Common after it was deemed blasphemous by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In 1649, English colonist William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, wrote a critique of Puritanical Calvinism, entitled The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption. Published in London in 1650, when the book reached Boston it was immediately burned on Boston Common and the colony pressed Pynchon to return to England which he did.[130] The censorious nature of the Puritans and the region they inhabited would lead to the phrase "banned in Boston" being coined in the late 19th century, a phrase which was applied to Boston up to the mid-20th century.[131]
Bounds were not set on enjoying sexuality within the bounds of marriage, as a gift from God.[132] Spouses were disciplined if they did not perform their sexual marital duties, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 7 and other biblical passages. Women and men were equally expected to fulfill marital responsibilities.[133] Women and men could file for divorce based on this issue alone. In Massachusetts colony, which had some of the most liberal colonial divorce laws, one out of every six divorce petitions was filed on the basis of male impotence.[134] Puritans publicly punished drunkenness and sexual relations outside marriage.[107] Couples who had sex during their engagement were fined and publicly humiliated.[107] Men, and a handful of women, who engaged in homosexual behavior, were seen as especially sinful, with some executed.[107] While the practice of execution was also infrequently used for rape and adultery, homosexuality was actually seen as a worse sin.[135] Passages from the Old Testament, including Lev 20:13., were thought to support the disgust for homosexuality and efforts to purge society of it. New Haven code stated "If any man lyeth with mankinde, as a man lyeth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination, they shall surely be put to death"[136] and in 1636 the Plymouth Colony adopted a set of laws that included a sentence of death for sodomy and buggery.[137] Prominent authors such as Thomas Cobbert, Samual Danforth and Cotton Mather wrote pieces condemning homosexuality.[135] Mather argued that the passage "Overcome the Devil when he tempts you to the youthful sin of Uncleanness" was referring "probably to the young men of Sodom".[138]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans
I'll bet what most people think of when they refer to Christian Morals are for the most part the Puritan version...
The Need For Moral Codes:.......One aspect of the post-60s 'revolution' that gets little attention even from conservatives is that it saw a retreat, across the Western world, from the Christian conception of the individual as an intrinsically flawed being – prone to sin and prone to error. Now maximal 'self esteem' is valorised right across the political spectrum. People drunk on their own virtuous self esteem don't like to give 'free speech' to anyone who might challenge them. A culture that acknowledges that most people are ineluctably less than perfect will be less susceptible to the sanctification of particular sub-sets as ‘victims’. And those designated as such would be less likely to feel it as a reason for abrogating any personal responsibility for the condition of their lives. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers Christopher Lasch saw it all coming in the 70s with his book 'The Culture of Narcissism'.
With sufficient detachment from the illusions of "the free world" (and our own individual prejudices) we can discover what the root problem is.
https://peterwebster.substack.com/p/its-been-twenty-years
“…Ay, there’s the rub.”
In my opinion you’ve distilled what is going on upon the world stage, and in the hearts of mankind, down to one of the fundamental essences of our existence. How we land after the fracas is over will define our path for a long time. So it matters very much that we are aware of the true nature of this battle. It really is a fight between forces of light and darkness.
I’m not an adherent of dispensational theology, so I resist the urge to understand scriptures from world headlines. These opposing foundational philosophies have been duking it out throughout history, as best as I understand it. Periodically there is major upheaval and it will lean one way more than another. We appear to be at some sort of fork in the road moment again, and we teeter on the brink of sliding into a long period of darkness once more.
I’m not as anxious as I could be though. For it is often when darkness seems inevitable that the forces of destruction are beaten back.
Articles like you write are a powerful force in this current battle. To understand things in our minds and heart and soul is powerful in ways I don’t fully comprehend. Those we oppose understand that better than we often do. So thank you, for the light you shed.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John 1:5
Hmm, interesting. I'm an American and realize I've had more of that French revolution definition of Liberty than a founding fathers-esque one. I do not, however, conflate "evil" with "do whatever you want as long as it's not against the law doesn't harm anybody else". Nor have I ever once conflated Liberty with liberalism. Not once, and I never will. They are mutually exclusive. Evil can and always will impinge on the rights or happiness of others. So, although the vast majority of my fellow Americans do not have the moral or philosophical stamina to appreciate or even desire true Liberty, I still believe in it, expect it, demand it and believe it should be safeguarded for those yet too infantile to understand its importance. History and current events prove that evil starts at the top and trickles down. Psychopaths naturally float to the top by virtue of their hunger for power and control. Positions of power in global governance, finance and commerce provide them a safe haven and an arena where their psychopathy is rewarded. No brainer there. The populace is by and large innocent of true malice which is why the deep states of the world must employ the most "talented" psychologists and neuro linguistic programmers in order to manipulate public opinion and find consensus for their acts of evil, witnesseth the state of Israel.
Thank you for introducing this topic.
Thank you for the interest!