I
can say with certainty that if Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce appeared
at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, presiding
officer George Washington would have expelled them for squandering their
time and energies on juvenile drivel antithetical to enlightened
self-government. Both score zero on the scale of wisdom. Both score zero
on the scale of constitutional literacy indispensable to discharging
the responsibilities of citizenship. Both score zero on the scales of
justice and moral philosophy. Both would profit by reading the chapter
in Plutarch’s Lives on Pericles to which I have often referred:
“Therefore
it was a fine saying of Antisthenes, when he heard that Ismenias was an
excellent piper: ‘But he's a worthless man,’ said he, ‘otherwise he
wouldn't be so good a piper.’ And so Philip once
said to his son, who, as the wine went round, plucked the strings
charmingly and skilfully, ‘Art thou not ashamed to pluck the strings so
well?’ It is enough, surely, if a king have leisure to hear others pluck
the strings, and he pays great deference to the Muses if he be but a
spectator of such contests.”
I
write these words knowing they will be scorned by the mass of mankind.
The species is hormonal and cannot rise above hormonal gratifications.
The reflective faculties are dormant. This will never change. The end
game of all species is survival for the sake of survival, not truth,
justice, or morality. The reflective faculties cast doubt on the
superiority of humans to other creatures, for example, humans uniquely
covet and celebrate greater proficiency in industrial scale killings of
each other over straws. Remember the famed Greek-Trojan War
immortalized by Homer was fought over Helen of Troy. The human species
fights for the sake of fighting to concoct self-esteem to fill the
vacuum created by philosophically empty souls. No other creature is so
depraved.