As I began the class on suburbia today the quote sitting on the front page of the unit reader was this one:
“One of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and garden which is ours, to which we can withdraw, in which we can be amongst our friends, into which no stranger can come against our will”
Sir Robert Menzies, ‘Forgotten People’ speech, May 1942
In this speech during WW II Menzies was speaking about the ‘forgotten people’ who he considered to be the middle class or the ‘backbone of the country’.
He went on to define & describe the middle class as he saw them:
“First, it has a “stake in the country”. It has responsibility for homes – homes material, homes human, and homes spiritual.
Second, the middle class, more than any other, provides the intelligent ambition which is the motive power of human progress.
Third, the middle class provides more than any other other the intellectual life which marks us off from the beast; the life which finds room for literature, for the arts, for science, for medicine and the law.
Fourth, this middle class maintains and fills the higher schools and universities, and so feeds the lamp of learning.”
If you want to chew thru what he meant by those statements (and you would need to before you critiqued them) then you can read the entire speech here.
Well worth the read.free transmorphers