On January 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson, having retired from public life, wrote to a friend named Charles Yancey saying in part: “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will…
Last month, we discussed the state motto of North Carolina and its implications for individuals and for society more broadly. This month, we follow the same process in examining the state motto of South Carolina. South Carolina actually has two mottos. The first is Animis Opibusque Parati, meaning “prepared in mind and resources.” The second motto is Dum…
On February 21, 1893, the General Assembly of North Carolina ratified legislation establishing the Latin phrase Esse Quam Videri as the motto of North Carolina. The Latin phrase means “to be, rather than to seem” and is taken from a philosophical treatise on friendship by the Roman thinker and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero (d. 43 B.C.).[i] Part…
The Marine Corps understands the importance of tradition. Tradition maintains the identity of a people over time, and a healthy tradition contains within it, through its moral and religious commitments, the means of its improvement over time. Within a larger cultural tradition there are traditions specific to important elements in a society and proper to…
What does it mean to be inspired? We needn’t engage in etymological studies or comparative analysis, since these simply complicate a search for meaning that is readily available. To be inspired is to be motivated to acts of healthy emulation of that which one sees as humanly good. Whether someone can articulate it to himself…
In the 17th century, Rene Descartes (d. 1650 A.D.) published several works of philosophy that had a substantial effect on how people in Europe thought about our world, and importantly, about our capacity to understand it. Since the great thinkers of ancient Athens, people sought to understand our world from the belief that everything, living and…
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