{"id":296,"date":"2004-01-20T17:17:07","date_gmt":"2004-01-21T00:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/wp2\/uncategorized\/on-the-grounds-of-excellence-alone\/"},"modified":"2004-01-20T17:17:07","modified_gmt":"2004-01-21T00:17:07","slug":"on-the-grounds-of-excellence-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/theirs\/on-the-grounds-of-excellence-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"‘on the grounds of excellence \r\n\r\nalone’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll swipe this quotation from Arthur Alpert because it is so stunning as to deserve <\/p>\n

echoing. mjh<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alpert’s <\/p>\n

Truth: Driving in the Rain<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s when my mind flew to the book that was waiting for me at my iMac, “Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea <\/p>\n

(Why the Greeks Matter)” by Thomas Cahill, and to the page I had book-marked.<\/p>\n

It was Pericles’ famous funeral oration over the <\/p>\n

Athenians who died in the Pelopponesian War. Specifically, this passage:<\/p>\n

“Our constitution is called a democracy, because power <\/p>\n

rests in the hands not of the few but of the many<\/b>. Our laws guarantee equal justice for all in their private disputes; and as for the <\/p>\n

election of public officials, we welcome talent to every arena of achievement, nor do we make our choices on the grounds of class but on <\/p>\n

the grounds of excellence alone.<\/p>\n

“Open and tolerant in our private lives, in our public affairs we keep within the law.<\/b> We <\/p>\n

acknowledge the restraint of reverence; we are obedient to those in authority and to the laws, especially to those that give protection <\/p>\n

to the oppressed and to those unwritten laws of the heart whose transgression brings admitted shame.”<\/p>\n

I have no doubt Pericles was <\/p>\n

gilding the lily, but even if his speech represents only what he and other Athenians aspired to, it speaks of a decent society. <\/p>\n

Contrast it with ours. What a fall-off. (Yes, they had slaves, but so did we until what, 140 years ago?)<\/p>\n

The measure of our <\/p>\n

society’s weakness is that we ridicule idealism<\/b>, sometimes with whole heart and sometimes for fear we will be ridiculed. <\/p>\n

This <\/p>\n

need not be forever, though. One day, maybe soon, we will muster the courage to be idealistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll swipe this quotation from Arthur Alpert because it is so stunning as to deserve echoing. mjh Alpert’s Truth: Driving in the Rain That’s when my mind flew to the book that was waiting for me at my iMac, “Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea (Why the Greeks Matter)” by Thomas Cahill, and to the page I … Continue reading ‘on the grounds of excellence <\/p>\n

alone’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theirs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}