I am off topic in so far as gunsmithing
and the subject of firearms in general, but those who were former
readers of Lighthouse Journal (established in 1999 first as “Keifer's Korner”) and Old Glory Gunsmith Shoppe (UK),
know that besides being a connoisseur (Webster English word
from France) of firearms and weaponry, I have a passion for history,
literature, and American patriotism.
Reviewing the visits of
readership here at Liberty Lighthouse Journal, I find that the most popular are
my articles concerning tips and tricks concerning firearms and my
historical essays. The readership is primarily in the United States,
but also folks from: Israel, Germany, France, Ukraine, United
Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, Turkey, and Russia being the
primary nations.
Since I was a teenager I found I had a
gift of writing and the appreciation of literature, classic and
American, that extended into the study of philosophy and, of course,
history. The high school newsletter published one of my poems and I
was hooked; but when an unscrupulous publisher stole my manuscript, I
set aside the love of writing and the desire to be published for
decades. It was a hard lesson to learn and I pass this wisdom that
stems from being a victim of unethical publishers and editors: never
send a whole manuscript, even a copy, only a segment or chapter to
get approval – unless you have first gotten a copyright. It was a
novel based on a real historical person known as Belle Starr.
Something that has fallen away in our society is the art of writing.
Few write letters anymore, although the speed of email cannot be
ignored. Communication is suffering because too many use the informality
of texting rather than speaking on a phone or in person. Can you
imagine the mental shock if suddenly society was cast back into the 19th
century? Few would survive, and because so much of our knowledge is
recorded electronically and on computer, the lack of the written word
would indeed be critical. I am just about as guilty as the next person -
but it is disturbing to see the younger generation with poor penmanship
and no pride in their writing skills.
Writing requires some knowledge of the
schematics of language. I have always admired those that could speak,
read, and write in more than one language. One of the places on my
bucket list while serving in the military was Australia, but the Army
told me that the only way to get assigned there was to be an attaché
(also a French word used by Webster English), and the only way to be
an attaché
is to pass the US Armed Forces language test. It is an examination
that comprises a made up language or combined languages to see if one
has the ability to learn a language other than English. The more
difficult the written language the higher the score is required; like
learning Arabic and the Eastern languages like Chinese and Japanese –
which makes understanding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics easy.
Egyptology
and Archaeology
are also passions of mine, which makes sense since it concerns
history. My final score was 76, which means I only had an aptitude
for languages like Latin (of which I self studied) and general
European languages. Not a good score, but don't have to worry about being put in a corner and wear a "dunce" cap.
Looking at the perspective of sensibility, I
didn't understand why I needed to score higher to become an attaché
if my goal was assignment to Australia.
During the course
of my education in literature and the general arts at university
level, I discovered how written English is so unnecessarily complex.
Indeed, while I made high scoring in literature and the art of
writing in high school, my grades were nothing to be proud of when it
came to the schematics of English as the written word. It wasn't
until I went to executive administration school at Fort Benjamin
Harrison (after several years in the infantry) that I more fully
understood those schematics and became more dedicated to insisting
that English not be made such a confusing and complex language.
Indeed, in the need to insist upon independence from Mother England,
we should have stuck with the “Queen's English” as a spoken and
written language, rather than what evolved after Noah Webster (not to be confused with Daniel Webster the Democrat politician) created the first American
English Dictionary. To make it worse, we have added too much slang
and colloquial words that has dumbed-down our youth much like the
government- and progressive-controlled education program has done. It
is part of the reason why students find Shakespeare, the Federalist
Papers, and even the original Constitution and its amendments
difficult to read and understand. Except for technological
advancement, one word comes to mind concerning the general atmosphere of the
American education system as pathetic. Indeed, the ranking of the
American education system continues to slide down the international
standard to just above “third world” nations. That truly is
pathetic. Besides of having government control and political
correctness police in charge of writing the textbooks and
establishing teaching staff lessons, it is because we have a
generation that does not appreciate the value of an education where
knowledge and the encouragement of ideas is downplayed.
To many,
linguistics, like history, is boring. But those same people are fans
of the written and film series of Lord of the Rings, which was written by
J.R.R. Tolkien,
an English linguist and philologist, a professor of English Language
and Literature of Merton College, Oxford, England who has been
recognized as the father of sword-n-sorcery fantasy literature.
Let's take the
word linguist
as the first example: it should be spelled lingwist,
should it not? Why is it not spelled phonetically? Indeed, why isn't
the word phonetic
spelled fonetic?
I do not use the wonder of my word processor spell check on this
essay because I would certainly screw it up. Well, in terms of
accepted spelling, written and pronunciation levels.
I have a passion
of Celtic history, but even that word is messed up but people still
accept it. It should be spelled as it is pronounced: Keltic.
Professor Laurie Bauer,
New Zealand, examines as to why we
pluralize avocados without an “e”, yet add “es” to tomatoes.
I am not alone upon this examination of the strange written word of
English.
Personally, I
believe that Americans should have stuck with the “Queen's English”
- both spoken and written, and the latter kept as simple as Latin
with addition of words/phrases as technology advanced. Indeed, along
with French, many of our words found in Webster/Oxford dictionaries
are Latin/Greek derivatives.
Allegedly, the
government mandated education program called Common Core Standards Initiative has
come under scrutiny, which allegedly will help students with their
difficulty with reading proficiency – the foundation of all
learning. If you cannot understand what you are reading, you cannot
attain an accepted level of knowledge. Since the progressive PC crowd
has taken over our educational system and the University of California has hailed this program – it is immediately under
scrutiny because these are the same type of people who insisted upon
dumbing -down an entire generation!
Indeed, it was
Californians who established the “Valley Girl” mentality, and combined with Hollywood, has established
the American faddist manner of speaking English that correlates with
the progressive insistence of dumbing-down our educational system.
The Valley Girl not only represented a stereotype of a socio-economic
class of women through a California English dialect dubbed
Valleyspeak,
but hailed colloquial English like one would do with faddist
clothing. Result: a generation of stupidity that is rampant of
materialism. Oddly, the Valley Girl
creators will be the first to complain about disrespect of the female
gender – of which they are clearly to blame for the stereotyping of
that misnomer macro depiction of society. It is one of the reasons
why California has dropped from the fifth wealthiest state in the
world to a welfare state with constant economic and social problems
that has come to be known as Mexifornia,
established by the historian writer, Victor Davis Hanson. Problem is,
like a flu epidemic, Californians have been carriers of the disease
like Typhoid
Mary.
The Bible, a book
of many books and letters, has also been the victim of rewriting
through the ages. The 1599 Geneva Bible was published
with annotations so they common folk could enjoy reading its
historical stories, wisdom, and religious connotations. King James I of England decided that
in terms of English bibles, it undermined his authority, so he
ordered a version published in his name as being the only
“authorized” version to be accepted. As time went on into the
'modern age' beyond the fantastic Victorian era, the New Age Bible appeared that further
diluted the original content and too often meaning of the words
written in a book of books that is the oldest published book still in
circulation. The Bible, specifically the Old Testament section, began
in Hebrew, later in Greek, then Latin, then English, and later German
and about 80 languages and dialects. If the versions are studied, it
is no wonder that the Bible is the most misinterpreted (and
misquoted) book ever published.
The English
language history shows it is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects
brought to Britannia by Germanic
Keltic (Celtic) tribes from what is now northwest Germany and the
Netherlands. Indeed, some modern German and Dutch words are
recognizable because of this. Old English begins with the
Anglo-Saxons
after Rome ordered the withdrawal of its legions who controlled
England.
We all know that
changes during the course of a lifetime is not always for the better.
It is because too many people, especially those that control the
educational system, have forgotten the simple rule of life: If
it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Thus, we spell
“doktor” as “doctor” - the “C” letter mysteriously
becoming a “K” and other non-phonetic established words.
Fixing the
complexity of the English written word will most likely not fix the
woes of American society today, but since our established national
language is a derivative of England, the prime entity of the United
Kingdom – shouldn't we return to the “Queen's English”?
Unfortunately, the
chance of that occurring is minimal to say the least and as difficult
to establish as getting rid of the horrid income tax system of the
United States and its evil agency called IRS.
Progressives
(some erroneously refer to them as "liberals") today are a product of the institution of progressivism established by
20th Century political-social landmarks like Woodrow Wilson
that incorporated socialism infiltrated by European Marxist ideology;
who realized that the way to change a country is to commandeer the
educational system and influence the thinking of a nation's youth
through carefully planned curriculum that becomes the product of a
statist government. If one examines closely the American educational
system's evolution, it begins with Wilson, is firmly established by the
Democrat Party demogogue, FDR and is realizing its total submission to
collective socialism within the regime of the Obama administration.
People,
specifically intellectuals, write differently than they generally speak
in the English language. This is a phenomenon that I too am guilty of.
It is a subconscious act that culminates from the social stygma that
those who speak in an intellectual manner are "geeks" or "nerds".
The
progressives have not only rewritten our history in the name of
political correctness, but have included a degradation of the written
word and have added the mandate that Spanish should be a second national
language. This agenda has been established by only offering Spanish as a
required second language for the requirements of a degree on the
pretense that the educational system can only afford one language
available to meet the degree requirements.
Change
is inevitable as technology progresses, but society has the wrong
impression that established traditions and the art of the intellectual
that includes writing must be relegated to the dust bin of history; just
as tried-and-proven values and morals must also fall by the way of
"progress". This is a mistake that has cost our society dearly, and it
has bled off into the socio-political world and the constant misnomer
that has been drilled to generations since Woodrow Wilson that the
United States is a democracy is counter to the intention and
establishment of the constitutional republic. Democracy ends up to be
the rule of the mob, which in turn becomes a socialistic, statist state
that turns into an oligarchy.
The
constitutional republic foundation is set upon principles and the rule
of law; clearly, and in plain language, established by the articles and
amendments of the Constitution of the United States. The government is
provided with limitations and a check-and-balance system to ensure those
limitations are exercised. The retarded intellectual embrace of our
society has been degraded for a purpose and that purpose is just about
reaching its epic proportions intended by architects of the social order
and self-serving agenda.
The
degradation of standards of literacy within our national educational
system has made our youth, citizens of tomorrow, not appreciating what
made our nation so great and a model for others to follow. In the zeal
of progress, We the People have allowed ourselves to be manipulated into
what the socio-political climate is today; and represents the cancer
that has eaten away at our society and form of government, forgetting
the wisdom that if it works don't fix it and if it does not work, do not
use the same solutions to solve repeating problems.
Intellectual
endeavors should not be downplayed as the basic golden rule moralities
have been portrayed; for it is the beginning of the death throes of a
great society and civilization - both here and abroad.
As
John Adams and other Founders warned, a societies degradation of
morality and values cannot sustain good government; thus it is up to We
the People to make those necessary changes because the selfish,
self-serving individuals operating OUR government are not going to make
those changes on their own.
The
lost art of writing and the degradation of intellectual and logical
thinking are all tied into what I just presented; and leave for
contemplation and hopefully the decision to finally do something before
it is too late.
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