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Below is a message from our sponsor...
Hillsdale College Logo ( [link removed] )
Dear friend,
I invite you to view an eight-lecture course that we prepared. It
is called “American Citizenship and Its Decline ( [link removed] ),” and the online course is based on Victor Davis Hanson's
latest book, the recently released The Dying Citizen.
Like the book, the course describes the current crises in America
as symptoms of a far larger problem: the steady decline of the
autonomy and political influence of the citizen.
American Citizenship DVD ( [link removed] )
The class describes the origins and history of citizenship in the
West, reminding us that it is a rare phenomenon both in the past
and the present—given the enormous responsibility placed on
citizens to create and control their own government.
Citizenship then requires a large and self-reliant middle
class—currently shrinking under enormous economic strains.
Clearly defined and enforced borders are also essential to ensure
a civic space in which citizens can nurture common customs,
sustain traditions, and honor their own shared past.
Yet borders are now increasingly fluid as mere residence and
citizenship seem often indistinguishable. Pre-civilizational
tribalism—identifying by superficial appearance rather than
through shared culture and values—is returning to America as so
often the salad bowl replaces the melting pot.
These organic, bottom-up challenges are often matched by top-down
stresses such as the growth of a huge, permanent, but unelected,
government of bureaucrats and administrators who combine
judicial, executive, and legislative powers that overwhelm the
citizen.
In addition, revisionists in law, the media, and politics seek to
change the Constitution, long-held customs of governance, and
political traditions for short-term partisan agendas, on the
theory that a new, changing, and fluid Constitution must match an
always evolving human nature.
Globalism is an ancient challenge to the sovereignty of the
nation-state. But in the age of instant communications and
unprecedented concentrations of globalized wealth, so often
elites seek to supplant American laws and independence with
international organizations and often without the consent of the
legislative branch or the assent of the governed.
The course ends, however, on an optimistic note that citizens
still have it within their power to restore our traditions of
empowered citizenship and return government to the control of
citizens.
You can receive a DVD box set of “American Citizenship and Its
Decline” with a tax-deductible gift of $100 or more toward
Hillsdale College’s Annual Fund. You can easily give and reserve
your DVD box set using this secure link:
[link removed] ( [link removed] )
Best wishes,
Kyle Murnen, ’09
Director of Online Learning
Hillsdale College
If you no longer wish to receive emails or feel you have received
this in error please Unsubscribe ( [link removed] )
Patriots Online 4712 Penn Ave, PMB 5006, Sinking Springs, PA
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