Posted on 06/14/2022 3:31:09 AM PDT by MtnClimber
America has always been an accommodating home for misfits, loners, and others who have drifted outside the mainstream of society. One of the more appealing aspects of the American experience is that you don’t have to belong to get along. You can make your way in the world or find success and happiness without the approval of your fellow man. That type of independence is a rare commodity and has long been a sore spot for the purveyors of “group think.” The overbearing pressure of conformity has been, to a large extent, the way of the world before 1789 and the ultimate freedom manifesto—the Constitution of the United States.
Throughout history, men have been ostracized, banished, exiled, or destroyed simply for not fitting in. For not conforming. As with all things, there were exceptions to the rule but it was a rule nonetheless. America turned that rule on its head when the emphasis changed from the top down to the bottom up for the purpose of governance. Authorities and dictators no longer arbitrarily conferred and revoked privileges. We have rights that are now acknowledged as having been endowed by God. They can’t be taken away by men.
Thus did the individual find his rightful place as the nexus and primary force in society. This was no small accomplishment and it empowered people to strive for success and personal betterment no matter what their station in life, their level of education, or their social skills. This historic change in the role of the individual has driven the prosperity, accomplishment, and the monumental attraction that has always been America.
The resurgence of the authoritarian state was, however, inevitable and the Founding Fathers anticipated its occurrence. Their solution was limited government, which they then built into the constitution. Limit the “necessary evil.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Our government seems to hate the constitution. That is fine. The Constitution was meant to protect us from them.
How long has this wokeness been going on?
I disagree with the author on this one. It’s not the “elite” that are destroying individualism. It’s the complexity of the modern world. It’s pretty much impossible to be a “rugged individual” once you leave an agrarian world and live in a society where 99.99% of the things you need to survive are made by someone else and sold to you.
The other founding document, The Declaration of Independence, has as much or more importance than the Constitution to me. It tells us that it our duty as free Americans to restore liberty when it is corrupted by tyrants. Basically by force if necessary.
“... where 99.99% of the things you need to survive are made by someone else and sold to you.”
And the “someone elses” are in faraway, untrustworthy countries. This dependency, however, is the result of our communications and transportation revolutions.
It is impossible to invent constitutional devices which will prevent the popular will from being effective for wrong without also preventing it from being effective for right. Our aim must be the moralization of the individual, of the government, of the people as a whole. We desire the moralization not only of political conditions but of industrial conditions, so that every force in the community, individual and collective, may be directed toward securing for the average man, and average woman, a higher and better and fuller life in the things of the body no less than those of the mind and the soul.
If all my advisors are telling me the same thing, I don’t need them all.
Read later.
Hey nicollo,
It’s incredible that the more that gets discovered of Theodore Roosevelt’s actual policies,(Policy proposals) you know, things of more substance than just that he shot a lion. The more anti-constitutionalist he obviously was. Obama could have said this, what you quoted from that speech.
But I wanted to ask you something different. I noticed something, let me know if you have noticed the same thing.(now that I’m mentioning it)
Have you ever noticed the aversion amongst conservatives to look at the progressive era from 1900 to 1920? There seem to be three primary camps:
1) Those who absolutely refuse to look at anything older than 1960. “Those damn hippies, it’s all their fault!” - or, The Weather Underground, or however you’ve seen it worded. All of the evils of progressivism begin in the 1960s and they’re proud to say it.
2) Those who cast it all to FDR. Both of these eras are problematic, but neither are “the source”.
3) Those who try to make arguments about progressivism before progressivism even existed. This group is highly disorganized. They’ll blame the Enlightenment, they’ll blame Abraham Lincoln, they’ll blame several other weird and kooky things. I get surprised sometimes when a new one appears.
But all three have the same problem. They all do everything they possibly can to avert their gaze from the actual literal progressive era. The era was so progressive it’s actually named the progressive era and yet they refuse to look at it. They’ll bend forward, they’ll bend backward, they’ll twist into knots and all sorts of other pretzel shaped formations. They cannot be moved. They will not look. The progressive era is 100% off limits. The progressive era is a protected species.
You may have noticed this, maybe not. But now that I mention it, have you seen this formula?
Why do you think there is such an aversion to discussing the era where progressivism was born?
I honestly think that if Conservatives could get off the TR train they’d better see what was going on.
Of course, the man himself cultivated the image of the Colonel, the Hunter, the man’s man, blah, blah, but, in my mind, it was cover — triangulation, as Clinton called it.
(One of Archie Butt’s private letters describes him as rather effeminate in his tennis play, btw — which brings to mind that TR’s overly-masculine image was more than just manliness, perhaps compensation... but I’ve never documented that, just a sense.)
So there’s much of that aspect of TR in Reagan and Trump, which people like, so they see only that. Isolate that comparative and Reagan and Trump have very little in common with Roosevelt.
Those same conservatives who see only FDR or LBJ/ Carter would more clearly see TR if they could remove that blind. The dude was a political genius, but so were Clinton & Obama — not necessarily a good thing (and neither of those two will fare historically as well as TR).
Despite his supposed several progressive excursions (which I don’t see as much different from the prior late-19th century Republicanism), Taft stayed the course and upheld the Constitution and the Rule of Law — both of which TR trashed. Taft would fare far better if TR were properly understood.
There have been reconsiderations of TR by conservative writers, but nothing with traction. I think that is because TR successfully appeals to all sides — a contradiction he planned out most carefully.
We think alike on this.
I have yet to see any better answer than audiobooks as the best way forward to break this formula, simply because it affords opportunities for popularization where none existed prior.
Actually, it’s the only answer I’ve seen. When I can get thousands or even tens of thousands of people to listen to something, that is by far the single furthest reach.
Any single conversion is worth all the effort. You’ve discovered an incredibly effective and important means to it. God bless you.
I have argued for many years that Woodrow Wilson was the worst US President ever.
He brought us into an insane overseas war (really a bloodbath) that was a battle between incestuous European Royals claiming he was going to “make the world safe for democracy”.
He created the Income Tax promising it would just be a tax on the very wealthy.
The Federal Reserve was created on his watch—supposedly to prevent market panics and economic collapses.
Human life, liberty and property have been in grave danger ever since.
He owns all of it.
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