Renewing the Wellspring

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Renewing the Wellspring
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Democracy and the GreeksJen Girad was wrong!!!

• Greek word
• Dem people
• Crat power, government
• Greeks wanted to instill Arete into the student
• Arete was their concept of goodness, justice, and
  wisdom

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Greeks cont.

• Greek culture was one of justice, knowledge, and
  citizenship
• America is a mesh of culture it can not be
  reduced to three ideals like the Greeks
• American because of ideas

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Ideas

• Ideas have power
• Russia in 1917- Marxs ideas lead to a revolution
• 1989 Yeltsins Yeltsins ideas lead to the fall
  of the Berlin Wall
• When peoples thoughts change the state changes

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Brief History of America

• May 14, 1607- King James allows the VA Company to
  settle in the Chesapeake
• July 30, 1619-1st representative assembly meets
  in Jamestown
• 1700-275,000 people are in America
• 1776-1781- American Revolution- Small number of
  mens ideas change the world

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Brief History of America

• 1832- Alexis de Tocqueville writes Democracy in
  Action
• Europeans realize they can have democracy
• 20th Century- America is the pre-imminent idea

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Where Did the Idea Come From

• Renaissance
• Takes place in Italy and Europe from 1495-1520
• Rebirth of painting-Sistine Chapel
• Rebirth of ideas- Gutenberg invents printing
  press in 1445
• Rebirth of sculpture- David

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What is Renaissance About

• Man in all his glory, potential, and beauty
• Sistine Chapel
• 300 human figures
• Most naked flesh that had ever been displayed
• Characters in the paintings are about what man
  might be

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More on Mans Potential

• Sculpture of David
• Not biblical David
• Uncircumcised
• Triumph of David is not God aided
• Left hand is larger than normal
• What man can do alone
• It is the story of a man who has not fallen. It
  is the story of the Renaissance man

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Reformation

• 1510- Martin Luther takes a pilgrimage to Rome
  and is repulsed by the church
• All of the works of what man can do alone and the
  impious clergy clash with his belief that man is
  fallen, finite, and frail.
• Heart of his belief is that humans are not
  perfect. They are prone to sin.

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3 Characteristics of America

• American Exceptionalism
• The people who immigrated to America where
  rejecting something. CalvinistKing, Irish
  potato famine
• America became a try something new culture
• We became a place to get away from the old world
  and try new things.

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Characteristics of America

• A Frontier
• The American West was an unspoiled vast land.
• Frontier life leads to innovation
• Yankee ingenuity becomes part of our culture

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Characteristics of America

• A Unique Civic Culture
• Based on each person looking out for themselves
• America has no established state church
• Mixture of cultures leads to establishment of
  equality and acceptance

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Whats Gone Wrong

• No belief that we are exceptional
• Marxism, central authority have all crept into
  our culture
• No Frontier
• Is there still a can do attitude?
• Has the global economy changed American
  Innovation
• Ideas are no longer ideas
• They are racist, sexist, or something else
• We stopped emphasizing the ideas of the founding

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What Makes America Unique

• 3 types of government
• Force
• Fraud
• Consent
• We have peaceful transitions of power