So few Americans have had the benefit of a good education — and so the failure by Republicans and conservatives to fight in the information war seriously especially when it comes to our taxpayer funded schools — creates a situation where even the most basic elements of civil society are unknown to the majority of our fellow citizens.
Here is James Arlandson writing at American Thinker:
Is America experiencing inevitable decline? A nervous breakdown?
Recently I reviewed Sophocles’ fifth-century play Antigone, and I was again impressed with a deep truth in it. So were my students.
Here is the background first. The eponymous character decides to bury her dead brother Polynices, even though he attacked Thebes. The new king, Creon, her uncle, decreed that Polynices, for his treachery, shouldn’t be buried, on pain of death.
However, she reasoned that Creon couldn’t overstep his mortal bounds and forbid her brother’s rightful place in the underworld — not even the gods of heaven do that — regardless of the dead man’s sins.
A sentry guarding the rotting body caught her ritually sprinkling dirt over it and hauled her into the king’s presence. Creon asks her why she broke his new law.
She replies that natural justice transcends human edicts:
It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least, who made this proclamation — not to me. Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men. Nor did I think your edict had such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions. They are alive, not just today or yesterday: they live forever, from the first of time, and no one knows when they first saw the light.
This is the classic statement on moral or natural law. Humans cannot override the “great unwritten, unshakable traditions… [that] live forever, from the first of time.” If people do, they will crack and break.
…
Is our country [broken]? Or merely cracking up?
I believe in redemption. I don’t believe that we have (yet) gone past the point of no return — though you’re certainly free to disagree.
But we’d better be careful, for unwise “activists” particularly politicians of the left, who smile while breaking moral law will eventually break our country — not that the “great unwritten, unshakable traditions… [that] live forever from the first of time” will ever crack or bend.
It is we humans who do.
Read more: American Thinker
Image credit: Sophiclies/Wikipedia.
