Justice Clarence Thomas to College Graduates: It is Better to Aim to Be ‘Good Citizens’ Than to Chase After Lofty Ambition

[Idaho_Cowboy]

Justice Clarence Thomas to College Graduates: It is Better to Aim to Be ‘Good Citizens’ Than to Chase After Lofty Ambition
May. 15, 2016 2:37pm
Carly Hoilman
The Blaze
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/05/15/justice-clarence-thomas-to-college-graduates-it-is-better-to-aim-to-be-good-citizens-than-to-chase-after-lofty-ambition/

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a commencement message Saturday at Hillsdale College, a conservative liberal arts school in Michigan.
 
Justice Thomas insisted that graduating students who wish to “preserve liberty” should aim to do so by being “good citizens” who complete the duties that accompany their daily vocations, rather than chasing after lofty political goals.

“At the risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty in our form of government, I think more and more that it depends on good citizens, discharging their daily duties in their daily obligations,” Thomas said.
 
Thomas expressed sadness regarding the modern state of higher education. He described the tendency at colleges and universities to take pride in having “grievances rather than personal conduct” and to focus on individual rights as citizens, rather than responsibilities.

In other words, because of the direction in which society has moved, it is easier than ever before for someone to claim victimhood, and it is harder than ever to hold individuals for the ways in which they contribute to their own problems.
 
“Hallmarks of my youth such as patriotism and religion seem more like outliers, if not afterthoughts,” Thomas continued, adding, “Do not hide your faith and your beliefs under a bushel basket, especially in this world that seems to have gone mad with political correctness.”
 
Thomas included a personal reflection on how the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a fellow Conservative and man of faith, showed him kindness “when it mattered most,” referring to his confirmation to the Supreme Court after the Anita Hill controversy.
 
Hillsdale, a rare institution that combines liberal learning with Conservative American values, has an outpost in Washington, D.C., which Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas helped found when she was an associate vice president at the school.

Words to live by from a great American.