Changes

2. How should we read The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Federalist Papers?  There are two schools of thought:

2. How should we read The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Federalist Papers?  There are two schools of thought:

a) The Traditional View, which I urge you to embrace, is that texts have a fixed and objective meaning, and it is the reader's task to ascertain '''that'''''Italic text'' meaning. In order to do this, you must, among other things, pay close attention to definitions of words - you must understand the meaning of words the same way the author understood them.  This is why you need Webster's 1828 Dictionary.

a) The Traditional View, which I urge you to embrace, is that texts have a fixed and objective meaning, and it is the reader's task to ascertain '''that''' meaning. In order to do this, you must, among other things, pay close attention to definitions of words - you must understand the meaning of words the same way the author understood them.  This is why you need Webster's 1828 Dictionary.

You must also lay aside your own views and everything you think you already know about the subject so that you can read with an open mind, and so you don't read your own views into the text.  Here is a common example of such error:  Our allies are rightly angry at the "federal" government in Washington, D.C.  But to some of these allies, "federal" has become a  very bad word synonymous with statist government. So, they argue, since Hamilton, Madison, and Jay were "federalists", they were big-government statists, and the Anti-federalists were the ones with the right idea!   

You must also lay aside your own views and everything you think you already know about the subject so that you can read with an open mind, and so you don't read your own views into the text.  Here is a common example of such error:  Our allies are rightly angry at the "federal" government in Washington, D.C.  But to some of these allies, "federal" has become a  very bad word synonymous with statist government. So, they argue, since Hamilton, Madison, and Jay were "federalists", they were big-government statists, and the Anti-federalists were the ones with the right idea!   

b) The modern view on how to understand a literary text is that a text means whatever the reader thinks it means.  The concept of a text having a fixed and objective meaning has been thrown out altogether!  [See article on "Deconstruction" at www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/deconessay.pdf ]

b) The modern view on how to understand a literary text is that a text means whatever the reader thinks it means.  The concept of a text having a fixed and objective meaning has been thrown out altogether!  [See article on "Deconstruction" at www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/deconessay.pdf ]

   

   

The sorry result of this view is that American educrats no longer teach how to read for the objective meaning of a text.  It has become the dogma of our time that texts have no “objective meaning” to be discovered!  Instead, each person is to come up with his own “understanding” – and one person’s “understanding” is as good as another’s.  A friend recalls the following incident which occurred in an high school English class during 1960:  The class read a short story, and then the teacher asked each student to say what the story meant to him.  Whatever a student said was praised by the teacher.  But when it was my friend’s turn, he said:  “It doesn’t matter what it means to me – what matters is what the author meant.”  The teacher was not pleased with this ‘out of place’ comment.  Is it any wonder that judges on the U.S. Supreme Court feel free to “understand” the Constitution any way they please?  They were '''''conditioned''' in school'' to “think” that way; but '''they'''''Italic text'' did not resist the conditioning.

The sorry result of this view is that American educrats no longer teach how to read for the objective meaning of a text.  It has become the dogma of our time that texts have no “objective meaning” to be discovered!  Instead, each person is to come up with his own “understanding” – and one person’s “understanding” is as good as another’s.  A friend recalls the following incident which occurred in an high school English class during 1960:  The class read a short story, and then the teacher asked each student to say what the story meant to him.  Whatever a student said was praised by the teacher.  But when it was my friend’s turn, he said:  “It doesn’t matter what it means to me – what matters is what the author meant.”  The teacher was not pleased with this ‘out of place’ comment.  Is it any wonder that judges on the U.S. Supreme Court feel free to “understand” the Constitution any way they please?  They were '''''conditioned''' in school'' to “think” that way; but '''they''' did not resist the conditioning.

But here, you will learn how to read our founding Documents to look for and find the "original intent" - the "objective" meaning of the Documents.   

But here, you will learn how to read our founding Documents to look for and find the "original intent" - the "objective" meaning of the Documents.