The “McGuffy Paradigm” & Why It Should Be Revived
August 15, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · Leave a Comment
Have you heard of the McGuffy Readers? Do you know there were 120 million of them sold in the middle part of our nation’s history? They were the standard educational text for America for a hundred years. So, what is in them?
Well, the first page of the first book talks about cats and rats, the second page shows the cat eating the rat, the third page is about a brother and sister trying out a homemade sail boat, fanning it because there is not enough wind. Skip down the pages; stories about boys that are fat getting caught in games of tag by skinny and fast boys, old men with makeshift bandages over broken legs, young girls being kind to old and young blind men.
Then we have three different notes on a bird’s nest with five eggs in it. “Do not rob the nest,” it says. And, “Tom will not rob a bird’s nest, he is too kind to do so.” Then a few more pages and we have twelve-year old boys chopping wood with the caption, “Ned and John are hard at work. John has a saw, and Ned has an ax. They will try to cut all of the wood which you can in the pile. Do you think they can do this in one day?”
Interesting…animals dying, skinny boys catching fat boys, charity for the downtrodden, protecting a bird’s nest. Young, unfortunate boys breaking a sweat — not to mention breaking child-labor regulations and facing dismal obituaries someday that may contain the words “hard worker” in them.
These stories are real! You know as well as I do that in the real world we don’t get anywhere by staying home forever and being entertained by The Cat in the Hat. No offense intended to fans of Cat in the Hat; I’m just a little burned out on the media-mania out there. I want some backbone to my children’s stories!
Life is an experience like no other! It is about toil, hardship, joy, service to others, excitement, challenges surmounted, focus, driving out the imperfections in ourselves, moving the cause of liberty, and making a difference! This is where we find our happiness. There is so much more to life than most of us realize and experience; we have so much dormant ability. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”
Love the challenge! Face life with all its wonder, mystery, and difficulty. Take a stand in spite of opposition.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, recently deceased, was a man who lived life to the fullest. In a speech at Harvard he said the following:
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days…A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being.”
Struggle? Isn’t that for foreigners — or at least anybody but “me”? It is time we all took a step back and asked ourselves some tough questions: Why are we fighting so hard for the stagnant life here in America? Why are we so intent on outsourcing our window washing, lawn care, weed pulling, the teaching of our children (public education), thinking (the media), policy making (anybody but us), and the good life (our entertainment gods and goddesses); and all this in the hopes of allowing ourselves the Pastoral boringness of a fake, aristocratic ease and laziness.
There is a constant discussion in our country about illegal aliens and the work that they do because we won’t. “Isn’t hard work something that migrant workers do?” we ask. Isn’t it our ultimate goal to get out of work, to “retire,” to “arrive” and never have to work again? No! It’s not — or at least it should not be if we want to call ourselves Americans! Work is for us, if we have a spine or any real desire for happiness and success in this life! “The love of work is success,” said David O Mackay.
Virgil also wrote of this in The Georgics:
“No easy road to husbandry assigned,
And first was he by human skill to rouse
The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men
With care on care, nor suffering realm of his
In drowsy sloth to stagnate.”
In our affluence, we have forgotten that happiness comes through work, service, love, and faith. The greatest nation on earth doesn’t know what it stands for anymore. Actually, WE as individuals don’t know what we stand for anymore. After all you and I are America!
Too many of us stagnate in the mire of complacency, afraid to be leaders. Make the change, not excuses! Join the Cause of Liberty, subscribe to the Sentinel, and experience the Georgic Revolution in your life!
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
Extinguishing the Flames of the Illegal Immigration Debate
April 21, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
Illegal immigration poses serious problems for America, on many levels and for many different reasons. It absolutely must be dealt with if we wish to preserve our heritage and culture and “establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, [and] provide for the common defence…”
It is, in fact, such a monumental and profound issue that to arrive at and enact long-term solutions will require us to raise the level, temper the tone, and deepen the wisdom of the current discussion.
We’ve all witnessed or taken part in furious debates about illegal immigration, and undoubtedly received intense mass emails about it. The issue is definitely a turbulent fire raging across America.
My immediate concerns have less to do with illegal immigration as a fact, and more with the virulence surrounding the issue. It’s imperative that we extinguish the flames of fear and enmity and find solutions initiated by love and kindness, infused with human dignity and respect, and based in justice and principle.
Specifically, there are three destructive tendencies that must be eliminated from the anti-illegal immigration stance in order to raise the level of the debate and find real and lasting solutions. These are… Read more
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