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This is an outstanding, one-hour video lecture advocating limited representative government presented by Hillsdale College president Dr. Larry P. Arnnand serves as a companion video to Arnn’s book “The Founders' Key” by Dr. Larry Arn, president, Hillsdale College. W strongly recommend "The Founders' Key" to all our readers.
Welcome to part 3 of Hillsdale College’s 10-part lecture series: History 101: Western Heritage.
OVERVIEW
The emergence of the polis as a political form distinguished Greece from its neighbors in the ancient Near East. The polis was a small community—originally grouped around a citadel—governed by a council and a public assembly, and defended by a hoplite phalanx. Oikonomia (household management) was structured in such a way as to enable full political participation of the household in the city, through words and deeds worthy of note. The individual man who engaged in reasoned speech (logos) thus had an importance in the Greek community that was unusual compared to the other civilizations of the Near East, which were generally organized as hydraulic societies based on irrigation and public works, governed by a sacral monarchy, and administered by a bureaucratic class using the technology of syllabic script. Each lecture is approximately 40 minutes.
Paul A. Rahe holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College, where he is Professor of History. He majored in History, the Arts and Letters at Yale University, read Litterae Humaniores at Oxford University’s Wadham College on a Rhodes Scholarship, and then returned to Yale to do his Ph.D. in ancient Greek history under the direction of Donald Kagan. He is the author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992) and of Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (2008), co-editor of Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on the Spirit of Laws (2001), and editor of Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy (2006). In 2009, Professor Rahe published two books: Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic, and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. He is currently working on a history of classical Sparta, tentatively entitled The Spartan Way of War, and he is a frequent contributor on contemporary politics and culture to the website Ricochet.
Welcome to part 2 of Hillsdale College’s 10-part lecture series: History 101: Western Heritage.
OVERVIEW
The Hebrew people are the source of a unique but vital contribution to our Western heritage. Rather than bequeathing to their cultural heirs magnificent innovations in art, architecture, political theory, and public administration as have the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, it is the treasure of sacred literature which constitutes the Hebrew legacy. The tradition of a monotheistic religion upon which Christianity would build, and out of which the modern world would emerge, has arguably served as the wellspring of Western civilization. If you missed Part 1 in this 10-part series, it can be found here.
ABOUT THE LECTURER
Mark Kalthoffis Professor of History and holds the Henry Salvatori Chair of History and Traditional Values at Hillsdale College where he has taught since 1989.
He completed his undergraduate study at Hillsdale College, where he majored in history, biology, and mathematics and graduated summa cum laude and class salutatorian in 1984. Dr. Kalthoff then earned the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, specializing in the historical relations between science and religion.
Beginning today and continuing for the next nine weeks we will present another Hillsdale College lecture series. In the past we have presented the lecture series’ “Introduction to the Constitution” and “Constitution 201.” Both will soon become a permanent part of FIJ.
Today we welcome you to Part 1: “Introduction – Jerusalem, Athens, and the Study of History”—From the Book of Genesis to John Locke.
Each lecture in this series lasts approximately 40 minutes and will be published each Wednesday at noon. Today we bring you part 1.
Introduction - “Jerusalem, Athens, and the Study of History at Hillsdale College”
Overview
In this introductory lecture to the History 101 online course, Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn discusses the founding of Hillsdale College, its Core Curriculum, and the importance of the study of history, particularly Western civilization and the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian heritage.
Larry P. Arnn is the twelfth president of Hillsdale College. Under Dr. Arnn’s leadership since May of 2000, Hillsdale College has conducted the $608 million Founders Campaign for capital and endowment goals, launched the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship (located in Washington, D.C.), expanded the core curriculum to include a required course on the U.S. Constitution, and established an Honor Code that all matriculates to the College sign. As a professor of politics and history at Hillsdale, Dr. Arnn regularly teaches courses on Aristotle, Winston Churchill and the American Constitution.
Welcome to part 9 of our 10-part lecture series produced by Hillsdale College entitled “Constitution 201.”
Each lecture lasts approximately 40 minutes. Lectures and other study materials will be included and are available to our readers. We expect to present all 10 parts before Election Day.
Each lecture lasts approximately 40 minutes. Lectures and other study materials will be included and are available to our readers. We expect to present all 10 parts before Election Day.
Overview
Post-1960s Progressivism has steadily eroded religious liberty and the freedom of association in America. Measures such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) and many anti-discrimination laws express a new understanding of rights that rejects the Founders’ view of religious liberty and the freedom of private associations to govern themselves. Recent Progressivism follows the early Progressive belief that effective freedom requires government to redistribute resources in order to provide equal access to the goods that promote mental development and that make life comfortable. This redistributive agenda is combined with a new emphasis on the empowerment of victim groups, sexual liberation, and an aversion to traditional Christianity and Judaism that requires government intervention in the internal affairs of private organizations. Religious liberty today is divorced from the freedom of association and the free exercise of religion, which the Founders understood to be essential for a free society.
Thomas G. West is the Paul and Dawn Potter Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, where he has taught since 2011. Dr. West teaches courses in American politics, with a focus on the U.S. Constitution, civil rights, foreign policy, and the political thought of the American founding. He also teaches course in political philosophy, with particular emphasis on Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke.
Prior to joining the faculty at Hillsdale, Dr. West was Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas, where he taught from 1974 to 2011. Formerly a visiting scholar at the Heritage Foundation and at Claremont McKenna College, Dr. West is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, where he teaches in the Institute’s Publius and Lincoln Fellows summer programs. He is the author of the best-selling "Vindicating the Founders": Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America, and co-translator of Four Texts on Socrates: Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, and Aristophanes’ Clouds, of which there are more than 180,000 copies in print. He received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate University.
SUGGESTED READINGS
NOTE: all readings link to Hillsdale's online Constitution Reader, also available at ConstitutionReader.com.
Next week we will bring you “Restoring Constitutional Government,” the tenth and final lecture in Hillsdale College’s “Constitution 201, “Restoring Constitutional Government,” presented by Hillsdale College president, Dr. Larry P. Arnn. Your comments on this series are welcome.
Welcome to part 8 of our 10-part lecture series produced by Hillsdale College entitled “Constitution 201.”
Each lecture lasts approximately 40 minutes. Lectures and other study materials will be included and are available to our readers. We expect to present all 10 parts before Election Day.
Each lecture lasts approximately 40 minutes. Lectures and other study materials will be included and are available to our readers. We expect to present all 10 parts before Election Day.
Post-1960s Progressivism is an incoherent blend of the earlier Progressive emphasis on material and spiritual uplift coupled with a new, adamantly relativistic orientation. This altered Progressivism champions an understanding of freedom as “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the meaning of human life.” Policies that attack the traditional family through the promotion of sexual liberation, the redefinition of racial equality in terms of atonement for alleged historical victimization, and a preference for the preservation of the environment over human flourishing—demonstrate that post-1960s Progressivism not only rejects the ethical ideal of earlier Progressivism; it also denies the Founders’ conception of equality and rights as grounded in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
Welcome to part 7 of our 10-part lecture series produced by Hillsdale College entitled “Constitution 201.”
Each lecture lasts approximately 40 minutes. Lectures and other study materials will be included and are available to our readers. We expect to present all 10 parts before Election Day, November 6.
Progressives undertook the transformation of America’s political institutions—in particular the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches—to reflect their understanding that government is divided into politics (representation of the will of the people) and administration (development and implementation of civic policies and programs determined by scientific expertise). This administrative system, in which Congress delegates its lawmaking authority to regulatory agencies, replaces the centrality of the consent of the governed with the rule of unelected, bureaucratic experts.
About The Lecturer
Kevin Portteus is associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College, where he has taught since 2008. Dr. Portteus is faculty advisor for the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program, and teaches courses in American political thought and American political institutions.
A visiting graduate faculty member in the American History and Government program at Ashland University, Dr. Portteus formerly taught at Belmont Abbey College and Mountain View College, in Dallas. Having published online through the Washington Times, Human Events, and BigGovernment.com, his book, Executive Details: Public Administration and American Constitutionalism, is under review for publication. He received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Ashland University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in politics from the University of Dallas.
Monday, January 14, 2013 at 12:00 PM 
This is an outstanding, one-hour video lecture advocating limited representative government presented by Hillsdale College president Dr. Larry P. Arnn and serves as a companion video to Arnn’s book “The Founders' Key” by Dr. Larry Arn, president, Hillsdale College. W strongly recommend "The Founders' Key" to all our readers.
