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No polity without comity, and no comity without commonality.
E pluribus unum is a noble goal. But a durable and vibrant One cannot be made out of just any Many. Not just any diversity is combinable into unity.
This is why the oft-repeated 'Diversity is our strength' is foolish verbiage that could be spouted only by a liberal-left shallow pate.
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As social animals we have a legitimate need for recognition by others. This need is not a mere desire for attention. Parents and teachers harm a child when they dismiss the legitimate need for recognition and respect as a bid for attention. A child so maligned may father a man who is more monster than man.
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"The child is father of the man" is from William Wordsworth's 1802 poem, "My Heart Leaps Up."
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
My allusion to Wordsworth above extends, and some will say, 'distorts,' the meaning of his "The Child is Father of the Man."
I learned the phrase "natural piety" from Samuel Alexander, but now I see where Alexander found it.
Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, vol. II, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1979, (originally published in 1920), p. 46:
The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, and it does not belong to that lower level, but constitutes its possessor a new order of existent with its special laws of behaviour. The existence of emergent qualities thus described is something to be noted, as some would say, under the compulsion of brute empirical fact, or, as I would prefer to say in less harsh terms, to be accepted with the "natural piety" of the investigator. It admits no explanation.
If, however, the emergent entities admit of no explanation, if their emergence is a brute fact, then claims of emergence are open to the 'poof' objection. It would appear to be rather unbecoming of a hard-assed physicalist to simply announce that such-and-such has emerged when he can offer no explanation of how it has emerged. If interactionist dualists are supposed to be embarrassed by questions as to how mind and body interact, then emergentists are in a similar boat.
That being said, "natural piety" is a beautiful phrase.
I've been saying it for years: A 'LIBERAL' IS ONE WHO HAS NEVER MET A STANDARD HE DIDN'T WANT TO ERODE. I suppose it is all in pursuit of that beautiful thing they call 'equity,' that is, equality of result or outcome. Mathematics is called 'racist' because blacks as a group are not good at it compared to Asians, Jews, and whites. Could the same motive be operative in this case?
