Unschooled

Nick

Hi, I'm Nick. This is my blog. I'm a life-long unschooler living in New York. You can find more about me here.

I help run the Recurse Center (YC'S10).

Follow me @nicholasbs

Happy Independence Day

July 04, 2007

This seemed like the best way to celebrate:

Celebrating America

More photos of me looking bewildered after the jump.

Drafting our message What is the Constitution? Silently marching

july-4-signs-17.jpg Restore habeas corpus Tired

For the curious, my quotation is from Jefferson's first inaugural address:

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Now go read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Then read Frederick Douglas's chilling, What to the slave is the Fourth of July?, which has these still beautiful words in its final paragraph:

I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind.