Happy New Year! Every year is a good one when your soul is animated by a noble task.
Here are some thoughts on what you can expect from MCC in 2022.
The Introduction to Literature Course will finish up at or around the beginning of March. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Hawthorne’s “Earth’s Holocaust” are two works that I recently added to the syllabus.
Closer to the end of March, I will pick back up the Nationalism vs. Globalism course. The syllabus will be slightly revised (I painfully discovered for instance, that Trotsky’s book The Permanent Revolution is not worth anyone’s time to read; he has more interesting things to say in other works). I will make a big push to get together an audio discussion group for this, to meet after each session. I really enjoyed the group we got together last year and I hope to see/hear some of you again. Look for the new syllabus in late January.
I have found an interested and highly capable co-teacher who is helping me put together a thematic course on American history that will help us understand how and why American statesmen gradually lost sight of the American national interest as well as the need to put the American people first. Most of the materials will be primary sources that are freely available on the internet, so we will put together both a set of links and an e-reader packet, depending on your preference. We will take turns putting together the lectures.
Finally, I am sending out invitations to outstanding teachers and thinkers to join me for what I will call “Classical Conversations”. These will be one off conversations on a text or idea with people who are smarter than I am. I hope that I will be able to wrangle Phocaean into having one of these at some point.
I had written before about in person summer plans. Originally I thought that I could pull this off for the Summer of 2022. I am more confident about putting this together for Summer 2023. The idea is to have days with three phases: calisthenics/group work out in the morning; group discussion seminar in the afternoon; a lecture on a short work OR a lesson on a practical skill in the evening. For reasons beyond my comprehension, my daemon keeps telling me that Xenophon’s Anabasis is the right book for the seminar sessions—but, it is too far out for my daemon to decide this issue officially.
Thank you for reading and listening to Montana Classical College. Our goals are to understand nature, promote noble deeds, and to defend the nation state.
Best,
Brian C. Wilson