A Mix of Sources

The more I look at what I'm doing, the more I'm realizing that there hasn't been much scholarship regarding the Patriot Act and Milton in an official sense, but there are a few people who have picked up the narrative.

As I will largely be constructing this narrative in the form of modern happenings, I will be utilizing a lot of newspaper articles and press releases and news clips. It will also take awhile to sort through everything I have found to utilize what I want. However, this is my start. If any of you have or come across something juicy, would you please let me know? Thanks!

Two Falls, One Redemption: The Fates of Satan and Eve

Here is it! The paper! So much to explore, so few pages to explore it all in. I finish it late last night and decided to sleep on it and read it again in the morning to make sure it make some kind of sense. Here's hoping! It was extremely interested to consider the similarities and differences in the characterizations of Satan and Eve in Paradise Lost. I feel like I only had the opportunity to scratch the surface of the discussion and hope to delve further into some aspect of it for my final paper. Enjoy!

Post-Colonial Paradise Lost Pre-write

The Motherland and her dependent colonial offspring
by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Thesis Statement:
Although Milton's Of Reformation and Paradise Lost still share many similarities with other works under postcolonial criticism, they ultimately condemn colonialization and predict the eventual dissolution of the English Empire.

Parallels between colonial history and Paradise Lost, Satan and colonizers both:

• Oppose higher power and cause a civil war
• Move across expanse to new, beautiful land
• Encounter beautiful, unintelligent, indigenous people
• Cause the downfall of the indigenous with words
• Return as conqueror
• NEW TWIST (main difference from many other works under postcolonial criticism): Satan (colonizer) is punished

Quotes showing Milton's prediction in Of Reformation:

"In all these things hath the Kingdome been of late sorely weakened, and chiefly by the Prelates. What numbers of faithful and freeborn Englishmen and good Christians have been constrained to forsake their dearest home, their friends, and kindred, whom nothing but the wide Ocean, and the savage deserts of America could hide and shelter from the fury of the Bishops."

Censorship in the Name of Security?

Why yes, this is very true. And a woman went to prison
 over letting her assistant know about a self-written search
warrant which was handed to her (see link to speech).

After the terrorist attacks of 9-11, America reassessed what it meant to be free, and that included the freedom to exchange ideas. One of the biggest things the terrorist attacks brought about was the Patriot Act. If you are interested in knowing more specifically how many of your rights (off of the Bill of Rights) you have lost because Congress passed this law, then go here. It is part one of three of a speech that Judge Napolitano gives describing the Patriot Act and the rights it infringes on. The law itself, he says, if brought to a court, would be deemed unconstitutional (specifically regarding government officials being able to write self-written search warrants). What our government is trying to do here is exactly what Milton, in his Areopagitica, deems impossible to do: manage to keep everyone safe from every idea that might point to possible terrorist acts.

CISPA: A Modern Censorship Parallel

Milton Areopagitica inscription in NYC Library.

Do we believe in our first amendment rights? While Milton wasn't radical enough to suggest that the people of England have complete freedom of the press, he did advocate for freedom to share and distribute ideas, because that's how we gain new knowledge. In his Areopagitica, Milton argues that you can't get rid of problems by censorship and monitoring. It does more damage to truth than it does good. And if you don't have all sorts of information spreading, how are people to grow and determine what exactly truth is supposed to be? "Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue. For the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike. This justifies the high providence of God, who though he command us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before us even to a profuseness all desirable things and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety."

Nowadays we don't have to worry about censorship, right? Think again.