The Events Preceding the American Revolution and Their Parallels to Today.
I read everything I can by historian and biographer David McCullough, and the last several evenings, I have been entertained by his Pulitzer Prize Winning biography of John Adams, the second President of the United States. In his own fashion, McCullough writes what I think will be viewed historically as the definitive biography of this great contributor, along with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, to the intellectual foundation of this country. Along the way, he articulates the birth process of what became this country, and it clearly states the events and circumstances that defined how a revolution created a surviving country based on representative democracy.
I must tell you that as I read of the events preceding the forced movement of a request for change into a violent revolution, I was seriously disturbed by the recurring parallels to the situation today here in the United States. Great Britain took an arrogant and condescending attitude towards are serious concern about taxation without representation, one that led to increasing bitterness between the colonies and Britain, and the eventual coalescence of that bitterness into a full blown revolution. The seminal events were begun with the Stamp Taxes of 1765, and progressed towards the eventual determination of a tiny handful of incredible intellects reluctantly deciding that only total independence could resolve the issues.
Benjamin Franklin encountered the arrogance of the Mandarin classes of colonial Britain when he went to Parliament to plead the case of the colonies, only to be met with disgraceful and destructive scorn and derision. He entered these meetings a committed Englishman, of genuine world renown, and he left the last of these meetings a committed revolutionary. He came home to the Colonies, and with the leaders of the various colonies formulated and implemented the grand plan that led to this country as it stands today, if not much longer.
Today, our US Government officials treat the Constitution as a target for derision, the rights of the individual as delineated for over 200 years to be irrelevant and people who question and criticize this country as lunatics, radicals, and worse. They polarize with a casual arrogance that can only be born of historical illiteracy, and worse judgment, both mirrored by Great Britain in driving it most valuable colony to violence, bloodshed and worse. What is even more staggering is how few real men led this literal earth change: No more than 3% were active in the military actions of the revolution, supported by only 10% of the core populace. Another 10% partially supported the revolution, 20% sat on the fence, and more than half favored a resolution that would leave the colonies as subject of the British Empire.
Over the past 15 years, we have seen situation after situation, not the least being the decimation of our financial strength destroyed by a relative handful of greedy men with the morals of pond scum. They have managed to damage the very fabric of our legal system, to destroy respect of the Government for the American people, and to attempt to alter the very foundations of this country without civil discourse, or rational political action. We now stand on an unsteady platform, one that discourages invention, job creation, individual creativity, asset preservation, trust in Government and worse. That this has happened with the tacit cooperation of our leaders, representatives, government officials, and legal systems, leaves little hope for rational reconciliation, but rather insures something much more terrifying.
Our bureaucrats seem convinced that they owe the American people nothing, not even the courtesy of honoring their oaths of office pledging them to protect and defend the US Constitution. A running joke in this period was that we might consider giving our Constitution to other countries running out of control. As one mountebank said, “Give them our system of Government and our Constitution. They were produced by some pretty smart guys, and we aren’t using them anymore.” Therein lays the crisis.
Millions of Americans have given their all for this country’s system of democracy and capitalism, and they have pledged their solemn oaths to protect and defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Clearly, the greatest threat to this country today is from the inside. I think for anyone to think that these millions will go silently into the night without a word surpasses delusion, and more, borders on treasonous sociopathy.
We will face choices about the critical economic elements of this country either remaining independent, or coming under socialist control. We will face a radical minority imposing taxes on this society and its people, taking over control of their ability to individually make informed choices, and even the dissolution of democracy in the end.
I have never seen so many reasons for fear here, but at the same time, I am not certain that those who should be afraid are. That scares the hell out of me. If we allow this country to be taken over by a bunch of bitter illiterates without governing experience, this country as we know it will fall, more likely from rot on the inside than to any external force. I for one can’t stand by and watch that.
Where to you stand?
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