David Davis
Here’s Gerald Warner today. I also flagged up this pretentiously socialist rubbish now going on, a couple of days ago.
Gerald is especially good, and far better than me, about the importance and fundamemtalness of Latin (and by implication other languages from which we have extracted loan-words and grammar) in our language.
I add that the freedom of language underlies also the freedom of thought and (by inference) action, which we libertarians spend so much time banging on about. This publishing house is going great guns in especially Latin: I use their books (this is the Latin link in particular – get them!) to teach with in this language and have helped a couple of students already (it is a slow business, pulling the planet out of the Dark Ages despite the best efforts of ths Stalinists) and they are very traditionally-oriented and very good indeed. Order their stuff please.
Phone them if you want, on 01580 764242. I’m sure they take credit cards.
Additionally, if you are an extreme right-wing-fascist-imperialist-running-dog-of-the-boss-class-toff, and also a member of the Bullingdon, (only stalinists and people who can’t say “shibboleth” call it the “Bullingdon Club” so one knows in a NANOsecond whom to exclude and distrust – it’s like saying “horse-riding” when you mean “riding” on a horse which is the only thing you can do – you can’t ride a sheep, can you) which is to say most libertarians if they are honest about themselves and their political anticedents (liberal-left-lower-class-grammar-school-type-boys-made-good), then you might like Harry Mount’s book.
Dave:
You HAVE to be kidding us!
We were forced to learn Latin at Dulwich College for three reasons:
[1] To force patterns of thinking upon our minds. Languages structure thinking.
[2] To inculcate their “preferred model” for the British Empire upon us (they could not understand that the Empire was long gone).
[3] To equip us to enter one of the rent-seeking “professions” (Law, Medicine etc.)
For “talking before class” when I was twelve, I was forced to write out two entire Latin textbooks (Civis Romanus and Mentor) in longhand. This took me six weeks of all my free time. When I presented the sheaves of paper, they were coldly ripped up in front of me.
That’s what Latin deserves, actually. A dead language.
I much preferred Classical Greek.
One of my greatest heroes is Alaric the Visigoth, who sacked Rome. A heroic achievement.
Read J. M. Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians”, available online free at the Burgomeister’s Books.
Best,
Tony
I’m not kidding, Tony. We are faced with a nation of incurious cretins, who at the age of 16 ask (when pressed) what quite simple words mean, because Latin (and Greek for that matter – the buggers ought to have been taught both at once – have been made voluntary or negligible.