The original Declaration of Independence may someday be unreadable
to the cursive-illiterate generations.
Via Michael Bechloss on Twitter, here is a draft of the Declaration of Independence:
There was an interesting point made by someone responding to the tweet. How much longer will it be before students cannot read cursive?
I think we may be there already. Certainly, handwriting is nearly extinct among students.
Fortunately, somebody printed it:
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
First major problem … it’s not in Spanish.
Also, there is no fuzzy legal language, no “this document applies to…”, no statement of conditions etc. Hell, you can understand it!
Written by today’s politicians, it would be 1500 pages and old K.G.III would’ve fallen asleep reading it or been unable to figure out what the Colonists were try to say.
Dude – that was, like, 200 years ago.
/sarc
When the young lady at the Trayvon Martin trial said she couldn’t read a cursive note (presumably her own note), I was floored. Not by the nonsense that she couldn’t read what she supposedly wrote, but that she couldn’t READ THE NOTE at all.
Literacy is more than being able to READ PRINTED MATERIAL. It is being able to read and decipher hand-written material as well. Literacy doesn’t just mean READING, either; it means being able to WRITE – by hand, manual writing. Signing your own name, not a mere ‘X’ on a page, has always been an indication of literacy. Writing in CURSIVE demonstrated that you were able to write – print, or “manuscript” as it is called, incorrectly, in the ed biz today – was non-existent. You “learned your letters” as they appear in cursive; then the child progressed to writing words, sentences, etc. (Go to Williamsburg; they have lots of old handwriting tools, including slates and slate pencils, Hornbook primers, etc. to remind us how it was done in Jefferson’s day!)
Literacy is no longer being taught in our public schools. But the kids sure do “feel good” about themselves – unless (or until) they get the idea to do some evil deed, hurt themselves, or others……… (I’ve often wondered at that vast difference in the extreme outcomes – by design, perhaps, if you read about Dewey, etc.)
A little too Orwellian, 1984-ish, for me. Or maybe it’s more like Fahrenheit 451?!
The Daily Beast has this piece of swill …
One of the most famous phrases in American history may have had its meaning changed by a wayward drop of ink. According to the scholar Danielle Allen, the National Archive’s copy of the Declaration of Independence has an error—a period right after the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That period, she says, has caused a “routine but serious misunderstanding” throughout history, thinking that the sentence ends there. In fact, it continues with “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The difference, she argues, is that “The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights. You lose that connection when the period gets added.” The errant period apparently does not exist on other copies, including Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft. As a result of Allen’s work, the National Archives are considering changes to its online presentation of the Declaration.
Just look at the draft above and it is obvious this is no scholar, but rather, yet another of those “it’s not an individual right” hit job that Soros-money is famous for clogging journals with.
I see it was actually in the NYT …
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/us/politics/a-period-is-questioned-in-the-declaration-of-independence.html?_r=1
Yah, that lil’ rat turd will bounce around the Collectivist bubble for a few days.
Think of it as click bait/troll bait for the 4th, and remember what the Collectivist means when he/she tell you they “love America”. They love an “America” that is antithetical to actual American values.
BTW, Baracula has been out using the term “patriotic economics” again. Which means he’s really out of steam on the economy, and can’t convince anyone of his standard BS.
In fact, it continues with “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
In actual fact, it continues with “that to secure these rights, governments are” or “That to secure these rights, Governments are”, depending on which piece of parchment one considers canonical. Our “scholar”, even allied with that animated corpse of a newspaper, the Times, will have a hard time making all that disappear.
Fortunately, Jefferson didn’t give us mere textual legerdemain. The Declaration is a logical series of straightforward statements, each simple enough to be “self-evident”. This feeble attack can’t dent it; it falls flat on both grammatical and polemical grounds.
Amazing how the media now exists to promulate disinformation.
By the way, “happiness” in the phrase is a reconstruction of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property”. A little propaganda change from the landed class seeking to be inclusive.
No. Not really, and not at all.
The evolution of property rights is the evolution of Western culture out of serfdom. We are free because we can hold our own property, in some very important ways.
In the Middle Ages, it would have been uncommon for anybody but a noble to own a chair. Stools or benches were what most people sat upon. If you were a serf, nobody needed an iron collar to keep you down. Barons owned the factors of production for food (most importantly, land). You were held to them by your hunger, and that of your family. You had a “right” to retain essentially nothing from the demands of your lord if he wanted it.
The property rights of Scots, English, and Swiss yeoman were what made them free men. Of course, The Framers and Founders knew all this.
Happy Independence Day to all you, my fellow in-bred, swamp-dwelling, anachronistic knuckle-dragging brethren and sisteren…!!!
I have hopes we can bring our beloved liberties back from the precipice at the end of the Obamic Decline! Have a good heart, and enjoy your 4th Of July with your family and friends!
Thanks, Rags. I share your hope of bringing back our liberties. Happy Independence Day to all.
Probably just as well – the document’s an open call for treason and anti-government extremism.
It might as well be unreadable since the injustices listed in the DofI, many of which continue to occur,* are neither understood or even read by today’s students of government. Similarly with the 1787 Constitution despite pols’ oath to support and defend it!
*”He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”
The main reason Americans are illiterate – our public school system.
Here is a recent post I put together about some of what’s going on in our schools.
Listen especially to the video of Samuel L. Blumenfeld “Making American Illiterate.” What he says will blow your mind.
http://kingdomventurers.com/2014/06/21/worker-bees-outcome-based-education-and-our-little-ones/
Happy, blessed and safe 4th of July everyone. You, too, Rags and Henry. Have a good cigar and put it on my tab.
http://kingdomventurers.com/2014/07/04/the-fourth-of-july/
What does it matter? Our so-called leaders don’t abide by it anyway.
It matters only in as much as we make it matter.
“A republic, if you can keep it.“