Nietzsche Life Is Not Meaningless

https://medium.com/@harrystead17/fighting-nihilism-why-life-is-not-meaningless

Watch Lecture Eleven Congress Conclusion Hillsdale College

Congress/lecture-11

Conclusion

Overview

After undergoing a transformation that began in the Progressive Era, Congress today stands in opposition to the Founders’ Constitution. As Congress continues to delegate its legislative authority to bureaucratic agencies, it loses ever more control over decisions reserved to it by the Constitution. The solution is a return to constitutional government, which requires a change in public opinion.

Lecture 3 Victor Davis Hanson World War II Hillsdale

lecture-03/world-war-2---lecture-3

Water

Overview

At the beginning of World War II, naval doctrine emphasized the primacy of battleships in naval warfare. However, the war revealed the battleship’s limitations and the importance of a diversified and flexible fleet centered around aircraft carriers. The Allies’ ability to build and supply such a fleet allowed them to achieve naval supremacy first in the Atlantic and eventually in the Pacific.

Learning Geospatial and Terrain Analysis Through Gaming

learning-geospatial-and-terrain-analysis-through-gaming

Lecture 10 - The Modern Congress – Part 2

/Congress/lecture-10/

Overview

The Founders sought to create a system of government in which reason and deliberation would rule, rather than passion. The theory of legislative power they developed to achieve this good was based on two essential elements: the extended republic and the separation of powers. Progressive reformers rejected both the Founders’ conception of the problem as well as their solution.

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present

Lecture Two The Second World Wars

worldwarii/lecture-02/

Overview

During the interwar years, tremendous technological advances led several leading theorists to overestimate the importance of air power in World War II. They overlooked the inherent limitations of air power and failed to account for the indispensability of naval and ground operations. The lessons the Allied powers learned about air power in 1941-1943 led to the development of new technologies and tactics, which enabled them to achieve air superiority and eventually air supremacy.

Readings.pdf

Israeli Religious Practice

israel-news/the-only-country-in-the-world-where-men-claim-they-re-more-religious-than-women

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. -Edgar Allan Poe

Orwell's Rules for Great Writing

george-orwells-six-rules-for-great-writing

Ninth Circuit rules Newsom's COVID closure of Private Schools Unconstitutional

Newson Unconstitutional 

Hillsdale College: Lecture 9 The Modern Congress – Part 1

Lecture 9 The Modern Congress – Part 1

Overview

The Founders sought to create a system of government in which reason and deliberation would rule, rather than passion. The theory of legislative power they developed to achieve this good was based on two essential elements: the extended republic and the separation of powers. Progressive reformers rejected both the Founders’ conception of the problem as well as their solution.

Primary Sources for Ancient History. Volume II: The Roman World

Primary Sources for Ancient History. Volume II: The Roman World

Protecting the Roman Empire: Fortlets, Frontiers, and the Quest for Post-Conquest Security

Protecting the Roman Empire: Fortlets, Frontiers, and the Quest for Post-Conquest Security

The Stakes of World War II

The Stakes of World War II

Overview

World War II can be understood in terms of two competing arguments regarding the nature of man. One argument views man primarily as part of a collective, shaped in decisive respects by race or class. This led to the invasion of peaceful lands and the organized slaughter of millions. The other argument views the human soul as free—never to be governed without consent. The unflinching insistence on this view led to liberation.

Second World Wars, Hillsdale College and Victor Davis Hanson

second-world-wars-trailer

World War II, the greatest armed conflict in human history, encompassed global fighting in unprecedented ways. In this free online course, you will learn  how Allied and Axis investments and strategies led one side to win and the other to lose.

Grade 6 Student Sources Supplement V Conflict and Absolutism in Europe

Grade 6 Student Sources Supplement V Conflict and Absolutism in Europe

Source #21

 

What is the effect of commerce and mercantile wealth on the development of both religious and secular painting in Northern Europe?

In Bruges, painting was a major commodity, second only to cloth. The Corporation of Imagemakers produced for sale many small devotional panels, private prayer books, portraits, and town views. Each May, the city of Bruges sponsored a great fair, where painters, goldsmiths, booksellers, and jewelers displayed their wares in over 180 rented stalls on the grounds of a Franciscan cloister. Especially popular, because they were relatively inexpensive, were oil paintings. The medium of oil painting had been known for several centuries, and medieval painters had used oils to decorate stone, metal, and occasionally plaster walls. Oil painting enabled artists such as Jan van Eyck to add the kind of detail and subtle color and value gradations to their paintings that resulted in a remarkable realism. For many art historians, this detailed naturalism is the most distinctive feature of Northern European art. By the sixteenth century, at any rate, Bruges printmaker Johannes Stradanus popularized the idea of van Eyck’s mastery of the medium with the publication of his print, Jan van Eyck’s Studio. This print shows van Eyck’s Bruges studio as a factory where paintings are made as goods for consumption by a rising middle class.

 

Johannes Stradanus, Jan van Eyck’s Studio

 

One of the most representative paintings of the time was The Arnolfini Portrait (or The Arnolfini Wedding, The Arnolfini Marriage, the Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife. It is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It forms a full-length double portrait, believed to depict the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, presumably in their home in the Flemish city of Bruges.

How do we know this couple was wealthy?

What are symbols of wealth and marriage and fertility?

Mostly secular, but is religious symbolism in the painting as well?

 

The Arnolfini Portrait

            Symbols of wealth:

The chandelier, richly dressed, stained glass windows, intricately woven rug, sandals, fur-trimmed robes, mirror, dog, and oranges are all signifiers of incredible wealth in 15th century Belgium.

Double symbols of wealth and marriage/fertility

The chandelier has one lit candle, which represents the seeing eye of God; the mirror is decorated with scenes from the Passion of Christ; and an unblemished mirror is also a symbol of the piety of Mary, Mother of God. There are also rosary beads hanging next to the mirror. Oranges represent fecundity in art, as does the red bed. There is a figure on the finial of St. Margaret, the patron saint of pregnancy and childbirth, while the cherry tree outside the window is a symbol of love.

 

Detail of chandelier

 

 

Detail with rosary and mirror

 

 

Detail of mirror with the passion of Christ

 

Detail with oranges and St. Margaret

 

 

What tensions existed between the financial wealth of the North and its ethical and moral climate?

The pessimism and moral ambiguity of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings ran through the Northern intellectual climate as a whole: The human body was widely regarded as the vehicle and instrument of sin. This is in stark contrast to the Southern humanist approach to the body as an object of beauty that reflects the beauty of God. And, rather than offering hope, the Church seemed to many to be morally bankrupt and intent on bankrupting the faithful as it rebuilt Rome. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the French poet Jean Meschinot (1420–91) summed up the sense of physical and spiritual melancholy that pervaded the North with these words: “O miserable and very sad life!… We suffer from warfare, death and famine; Cold and heat, day and night, sap our strength; Fleas, scabmites and so much other vermine make war upon us. In short, have mercy, Lord, upon our wicked persons, whose life is very short.” As Johan Huizinga noted in the passage from his Autumn of the Middle Ages: “Sickness contrasted more strongly with health. The cutting cold and the dreaded darkness of winter were more concrete evils. Honor and wealth were enjoyed more fervently and greedily because they contrasted still more than now with lamentable poverty.” Thus, in a painting like van Eyck’s Arnolfini portrait, Giovanna’s robe, in all its bright color and fur-lined warmth, would also have evoked in the Northern imagination its opposite—dismal darkness, poverty, and cold. The tension between material well-being and spiritual narrative that we see in the Arnolfini portrait appears in all Northern painting.

 

Christ Carrying the Cross

 

 

Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516) was born, lived, and worked in the town of ’s-Hertogenbosch (the correct spelling and now in southern Holland). The town owed its prosperity to wool and cloth. Bosch was a contemporary of the painters in southern Europe who worked in the so-called High Renaissance. Such a distinction seems inappropriate in the North, where there was greater continuity between fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art. (Only Albrecht Dürer, a German, fits comfortably into the High Renaissance cult of the individual creative genius.) Bosch’s paintings are at once minutely detailed and brutally imaginative, casting a dark, satiric shadow over the materialistic concerns of his Northern predecessors. In Carrying of the Cross, Bosch (there is scholarly dispute about the painting since it may be by a close follower) presents Christ in the middle of the painting, the crown of thorns on his head, bent under the weight of the cross, his eyes closed, and several days’ growth of beard on his face. It is difficult to say whether he closes his eyes from exhaustion or from sorrow and pity for the grotesque menagerie of humanity that surrounds him. From their faces, these participants in Christ’s pain and humiliation seem morally bankrupt, hideously evil, almost sublimely stupid, if not criminally insane.

What is the effect of commerce and mercantile wealth on the development of both religious and secular painting in Northern Europe?

The center of commercial activity in Flanders by the beginning of the fifteenth century was Bruges. Each year, it sponsored a great fair where luxury art goods, especially tapestries and paintings, were sold to a rising merchant class, for both local consumption and export. Flemish painters took oil painting to new heights. Often, the objects depicted in these paintings seem so real that the viewer might actually touch them.

World History, Grade 6, Student Sources Supplement VII The Muslim Empires

World History, Grade 6, Student Sources Supplement VII The Muslim Empires

Source #2

            “the incidence of taxation fell more heavily on a Muslim than a non-Muslim (Le Bon).”

            On the other hand, many scholars argue that the jizya fell more heavily on non-Muslims and is oppressive. Jizya or jizyah (Arabic: جزية‎ ǧizya; Ottoman Turkish: جزيه‎ cizye) is a per capita yearly tax historically levied on non-Muslim subjects.

Jizya is based on Qur’an 9:29 and Muhammad’s instructions in Sahih Muslim 4294 to subjugate non-Muslims and accept Islam; and if they refuse that, to invite them to enter the Islamic social order by paying the jizya, the non-Muslim poll tax, and accepting subservient status; and if they refuse both, to go to war with them. The triple choice of conversion, subjugation, or war is founded on Muhammad’s words.

The Qur’an states: “Fight those who believe not in Allāh, nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allāh and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth—from those who have been given the Book—until they pay the jizyah by hand and are subdued” (9:29 ). CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list (link)

            The practice began with the Quran and the hadiths that mention jizya (cf. Sabet, Amr [2006], The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 24:4, Oxford; pp. 99–100). In fact, taxes levied on non-Muslim subjects were among the main sources of revenues collected by some Islamic polities, such as the Ottoman Empire (cf. Oded Peri; Gilbar [Ed], Gad [1990]. Ottoman Palestine, 1800-1914: Studies in economic and social history. Leiden: E.J. Brill. p. 287).

Conversion to Islam was a secondary concern since the dhimma were taxed to support the Ottoman state. Non-Muslims are dhimmis, that is, a dhimmī (Arabic: ذمي‎ ḏimmī, is a historical term referring to a protected person. Rights are granted by the Ottoman state. Non-Muslims were taxed and thereafter either conscripted or enslaved as well. Beginning with Murad I in the 14th century and extending through the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire employed devşirme (دوشيرم), a kind of tribute or conscription system where young Christian boys were taken from communities in the Balkans, enslaved and converted to Islam and later employed either in the Janissary military corps or the Ottoman administrative system.

 

Historically, the jizya tax has been understood in Islam as a fee for protection provided by the Muslim ruler to non-Muslims, for the exemption from military service for non-Muslims, for the permission to practice a non-Muslim faith with some communal autonomy in a Muslim state, and as material proof of the non-Muslims' submission to the Muslim state and its laws. Jizya has also been understood as a ritual humiliation of the non-Muslims in a Muslim state for not converting to Islam. “Akbar (#Source 8) abolished the Muslim right to enslave prisoners captured in war, repealed a tax levied on Hindu pilgrims and abolished the jizyah or poll tax on non-Muslims” (Mughal Empire, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, 2009).

Bat Ye’or, author of the history of religious minorities in the Muslim world and modern European politics, noted in Mark Durie’s The Third Choice (cf. The Third Choice- Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom
Deror Books, 2010):

“The strict scholarly rationalism of the author is particularly evident in the chapter on the theological significance of jizya, the head tax paid by non-Muslims under Islamic rule. Here Durie brings numerous and irrefutable sources illustrating the meaning, implications and religious justification of the jizya, which is the cost paid by non-Muslims for the right to live, albeit in humiliation. The jizya ritual, writes Durie, forces the dhimmi subject – through his participation in it – ‘to forfeit his very head if he violates any of the terms of the dhimma covenant, which has spared his life’. The author sheds new light on the jizya ritual, which he calls an ‘enactment of one’s own decapitation’. His discussion of this virtual beheading brings new depth to the Muslim-non-Muslim relationship.”

            Durie conveys the ritualized brutality of jizya –a virtual beheading:

            “For the dhimmi, the annual jizya payment was a powerful and public symbolic expression of the jihad-dhimmitude nexus, which fixed the horizon of the dhimmi’s world. Although the ritual varied in its specific features, its essential character was an enactment of a beheading, in which one of the recurrent features was a blow to the neck of the dhimmi, at the very point when he makes his payment (p. 131).”

            Durie goes on to note the devastating impact of the jizya on dhimmis:

            “The intended result of the jizya ritual is for the dhimmi to lose all sense of his own personhood. In return for this loss, the dhimmi was supposed to feel humility and gratitude towards his Muslim masters. Al-Mawardi said that the jizya head tax was either a sign of contempt, because of the dhimmis’ unbelief, or a sign of the mildness of Muslims, who granted them quarter (instead of killing or enslaving them) so humble gratitude was the intended response.

            The remarks of al-Mawardi and Ibn ‘Ajibah make clear that its true meaning is to be found in psychological attitudes of inferiority and indebtedness imposed upon non-Muslims living under Islam, as they willingly and gratefully handed over the jizya in service to the Muslim community (p. 141).”

            He notes this from the Koranic commentary of Ibn Kathir:

            “Allah said,

‘until they pay the Jizyah’, if they do not choose to embrace Islam, ‘with willing submission’, in defeat and subservience, ‘and feel themselves subdued.’ disgraced, humiliated and belittled.”

Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated (p. 142).

In light of this information perhaps re-consider an answer for #7, History Test #6—The Muslim Empires: “Explain three reasons why the Ottoman sultans were able to successfully rule such a large area of diverse societies for so long.”

·         Religious tolerance

Also, religious intolerance is compatible with Question #6 about benevolent rule. The sultans would maintain that they are benevolent rulers but they are ruling through humiliating taxation and state hegemony. Who or what do the dhimmis need protection from but the sultans and the Muslim majority population who use the power of the state to dispossess them.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Ottoman Empire was the so-called “sick man of Europe.” A second #7 question asks: “Explain in broad terms the economic factors that lead to the fall of empires.”

Potential answers include:

Ø  “revenue stream ends-higher taxes/debasement of currency”

In 1856, the Ottoman Empire lost a revenue stream once the jizyah was abolished which

weakened the regime.

 

Citizens in the Graeco-Roman World: Aspects of Citizenship from the Archaic Period to AD 212

Citizens in the Graeco-Roman World: Aspects of Citizenship from the Archaic Period to AD 212

Congressional Reform in the 1970s – Part 2

Congressional Reform in the 1970s – Part 2

Overview

In the 1970s, Congress acted on a variety of fronts to strengthen itself and to restrain the presidency and regulatory bureaucracies. These actions helped to undermine belief in the capacity of the president to govern effectively.