Richard Dreyfuss Sr. Advisor Oxford University on Democracy
Ok, I'm not a terribly political guy, but this discussion Richard Dreyfuss had on the Bill Maher show was just amazing.
This clip I posted is just 4 minutes of the segment (and gives the broad strokes), but on the you tube page, there are links to parts 1 and 2 in their entirety.
It's almost sad that such revolutionary thought as teaching 'civics' has to come from an actor/educator as opposed to our own politicians.
Ok, I'm not a terribly political guy, but this discussion Richard Dreyfuss had on the Bill Maher show was just amazing.
This clip I posted is just 4 minutes of the segment (and gives the broad strokes), but on the you tube page, there are links to parts 1 and 2 in their entirety.
It's almost sad that such revolutionary thought as teaching 'civics' has to come from an actor/educator as opposed to our own politicians.
posted by InkTank at
10:37 PM
9 Comments:
Well said indeed!
Just to let you know, you have a couple typos in your post. I found two.
He's talking about Locke and Kant, Paine and the age of reason. And Maher is wrong - Athens had slavery, tons of it. Babylon isn't just a convenient term for Rastafari for the oppressive state.
Back to reason, America was founded on the enlightenment values of Europe - values based less on classical knowledge and more on rationality, men taking stock of their age and expressing what was necessary for mankind to progress.
Kant expected mankind to have discarded religion and superstition in favour of reason by the end of the nineteenth century. We're as far away now, as he was then - and with current global trends, we're going backwards not forwards.
Richard Dreyfus Sr. on November 17, 2006 - Real Time with Bill Maher TV Show
Senior Research Advisor at Oxford University and Oscar-winning Actor
You can actually learn the constancy of curiosity and the constancy of outrage. You can learn that it is okay to keep asking the questions and to be dissenters. And if you don't, if you're not taught it, then you don't know it. But we owe ourselves and the United States that we will pass off to our children to relearn the tools of reason, logic, clarity, uh, dissent, civility, and debate. And those things are the-the nonpartisan basis of democracy, and without them, we can kiss this thing goodbye and-
(Applause)
-and it is up to us. It is up to…us. It wasn't because of a conspiracy that this () - and what you have to do is get it back and what happens now in this partisan-addicted country of ours is that Democrats are afraid that if they send their kids to civics classes, they might not come back Democrats and Republicans are afraid their kids won't come back Republicans. But ci-but civics, the expertise needed to understand Western enlightenment and civil liberties is not something you're born with. You have to learn it. And we teach our kids what we want them to know and we don't teach them what we don't want them to know. And that's not a conspiracy, it's human nature.
(Applause)
And you have to-we have to remember that unless we teach the ideas that make America a miracle in government - a miracle that everyone knows is America. Unless we teach what that means, then it will go away in your kids' lifetime. And we will be a fable. We will be a-a tale told about this place that used to stand up for blah-blah-blah. You have to teach it. You have to find the time and creativity to teach it in school and if you don't, then you-you-you will lose it to fundamentalists of any stripe. You will lose it to stupidity. You will lose it to the darkness. And what this country represents is a tiny twinkle of light in a history of oppression and darkness and cruelty. And if it lasts for more than our lifetime or our kids' lifetime, it is only-it is only due to the fact that we put some effort into teaching what it is-the ideas of America. The idea of opportunity, mobility, freedom of thought, [and] freedom of assembly. And if you don't teach it, it'll go away and in the middle of the night when the towers fall, we will not say "What am I responsible for?" We will say, "Tell us what to do."
And remember. Democracy in any form is only 200 or 300 years old. Kingship is
Bill Maher: No it's not. It goes back to Athens.
I mean in practice in the way we live with each other, in the practice-
Bill Maher: They practiced it in ancient Athens.
And then it went away for 2,000 years. And what we've had is monarchy and theocracy and all kind of tel-you know, God tells the king and the king tells us. And the idea of being personally responsible for your government is a twinkle. It's only as only as-you know, as, Victoria's death. And we have to support it or we will else instinctively react as we have for 10,000 years. "Tell us what to do and we'll chuck these liberties the moment the next terrorist horror happens."
Bill Maher: Okay, that's well said and glad to have you here-
(Applause)
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Transliteration
-Taospark
Wow! An actor who got it right!!!!
If you like this, you probably also like the 'Ken Robbinson talk' @ TED of this year. Though Ken's talk wasn't so much about 'freedom of thought' but more on 'freedom of creativity':
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson&flashEnabled=1
I like being the part about being responsible for you government. People should start by voting.
1. Thanks for getting the gist of my opinion correct.
2. Invite me back. Get the Maher show to invite me bsck for a more in depkth disussion of how Not Teaching Civic Expertise is Fatal.
Get Mill to invite me back.
Hopefully,
Richard@dreyfuss.us
nicepost
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