Posted on 07/18/2004 10:03:00 AM PDT by saquin
I pray we wake up to what Red China is doing and how they are taking abject advantage of us in climbing towards true superpower status.
If they achieve it, we will either be in the fight for our lives...or we will have turned things over to the socialists and elitists in our own country to the point of either being much like them...or civil war.
You got it.
For later.
Joanie, thanks for your fine post, and to you and saquin and First_Salute for bringing this article to our attention. My only objection to it is that the article assumes that the America hating was something new in 1993.
Certainly, the Tories weren't terrifically psyched about an independent America, although I don't know that they can be called "America haters." Their sympathies, certainly, weren't loving of the American ideals. That God endows individual man with equal liberties to all other men was unthinkable to stratified, aristocratic England. Still, it was revolutionary only insofar as it denied devine rule. King George was amazed when Washington resigned his commission, for the King realized that Washington could have been king. He didn't. That was revolutionary.
That all men are created equal was yet concept. Therefore, there wasn't much objection to it.
Andy Jackson broke through the American aristocracy with his comman man's revolution. Indeed, into the early 20th Century, Democrats could brag that their party brought suffrage to all white men. This was true.
I say this as an aside to the next movement which was knee-jerk anti-American, for it was of the effort to extend the ideas of the revolution to all men, but was unaccepting of any delay or failure in it. I believe that the America-hating purists do so from their self-generated disgust that those ideals are not bestowed upon anyone anywhere. That is, any failure, anywhere, is the failure of the American revolution itself. If there is a starving, betrayed soul in Palestine, it is America's fault, for America's promise wasn't fulfilled. Same for anywhere and everywhere else, except, of course, here, where that dream is available to all who are willing to do what it takes to make it happen (such as following the advice of late of Bill Cosby). Sadly, they don't see that in America, those who succeed do so because they do that which creates success, and those who don't succeed don't do what those who succeed do, and -- and this is what makes America unique -- there is nothing in the political America that denies them that opportunity. Critics fail to understand that it is defeated culture that creates defeat, and vice versa.
In the 1840s and 1850s, the abolition movement arose under the proposition that the ideals of the Declaration ought be extended to all men. This, indeed, was Jefferson's triumph -- that which made him a hypocrite -- that "All men are created equal." Had he not written it, he'd be no hypocrite. That he wrote it made for the idea of abolition. The abolitionists, though, as today's fools who denigrate Jefferson, got impatient fast, and denied him of his right, and denigrated him for the particular failures of the Declaration rather than applauding him for making those failures failures as opposed to social norms. So, when slavery wouldn't just go away at their word, the abolotionists turned on that which first empowered their movement, the Declaration. The radical abolitionist Wendell Phillips said -- and believed, that the Constitution was "a league with death and a covenent with hell."
Leftism is impatience. It is right as is the clock, twice a-day, and it is only so right in history.
This appeared again in the 1880s and 1890s in the populist revolts against the railroads the banks. And again, most prominently, in the election of 1912, when the socialists took almost 900,000 votes, taking therein the highest pure socialist portion of the vote ever in America. Now, before you go saying that the socialists in those days were more pure, and that socialism has taken hold of one of the two major parties, so every election they yank a good part of the electorate and American sentiment, regardless, I put to you that while the socialists of 1912 polled 900,000, the "Progressive Party" of 1912 polled over four million votes and 88 electoral votes -- while standing very directly for such things socialistic as that written by its major press organ, The Outlook,
"You may go on with your business so long as you conduct it subject to the regulation of the Government, make goods which conform to its standard, pay wages and provide conditions which are satisfactory to its superivising Bureau, charge no greater price for the product than the Government regards as just, and take no illegal measures to crush your competitors."
This was the party of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
I'm no expert on the New Deal, although I know enough of it to know that the lesser ideas of the 1912 progressives were enacted into law by FDR and his Congresses under the agency of extreme crisis. I also know that that period, as with the progressives, had no patience for the American Founding. And, as with the progressive period, it was hardly beneficial to American blacks, and, in its attempt to mandate equality, it evaded core matters of equality of opportunity. The great 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement was a product of the American Founding more than anything else, except its success in bringiing equality and justice to more people across a people than any other political system in history. As in sports, when the team is getting beaten like a dead mule, it acts like one; but when the team gets closer, it tastes victory, and fights for it more heartily and more successfully. Civil rights in America are a product not of dissatisfaction but of success.
Socialism and Leftism and anti-Americanism is bastardization of Americanism. Without Americanism, however, there is no complaint.
To the Left, when Americans die, it is the fault of the success of America; when others die, it is because America has failed to meet its promise. They are so foolish.
Thanks for the thoughts and the article.
Excellent embellishment of the author's fine analysis...
In one short paragraph you have struck sham socialism at its core -- which is anathema to "God, family and country," as well as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- in one fall swoop.
Lol, ain't it the truth? Always d@mn if we do; d@mn if we don't.
Btw, tremendous post.
Certainly, the Tories weren't terrifically psyched about an independent America, although I don't know that they can be called "America haters." … That all men are created equal was yet concept. Therefore, there wasn't much objection to it.
You said a mouthful, Michael.
The concept of all men having been granted life and liberty (and, by extrapolation, equality) by God – and, therefore, that the power to remove any or all of those conditions does not lie within the authority of other men, was indeed only conceptual in the late eighteenth century.
But it is still conceptual today. We are still attempting to transform that concept into a workable reality. What has stood in the way is … put simply … human nature.
You talk about ‘purists’ (understandably in a negative light, in the context in which you use it). But ‘purists’ of the kind who genuinely comprehend and revere the Founders’ vision are, sadly, in short supply – and have been so, to varying degrees, depending on the era and the circumstances, since the ink dried on our founding documents.
The concepts of the sanctity of individual liberty, and equality, have proved to be the most difficult to define, and the most cumbersome to enforce, mainly because there have always been those among us who choose to stretch their definitions in countless directions.
In a civilized society, individual liberty must be ‘violated’ in many ways in order to prevent one man’s ‘liberty’ from turning into another man’s torment (the old ‘my freedom to swing my fist ends at the other man’s nose’). And therein lies the concept/reality conundrum. There will always be those who obsessively advocate – sometimes to the exclusion of all other ‘liberties’ – the sanctity of the right to swing one’s fist. And there will always be those who are obsessed with assuring the safety of noses. And there will always be a certain, practical, striving-for-purism cadre of common-sense thinkers sandwiched in between.
Over the past two-plus centuries, depending on the resolve and endurance (or lack thereof) of the common-sense thinkers, the fist-obsessed-faction or the nose-obsessed-faction have often enjoyed pre-eminence. It has been during those times in our history that we have wandered farthest from the concept.
And just as the definitions, and defenders, of ‘liberty’ are myriad, so too – and maybe even moreso – are those of ‘equality’.
To my mind, the most flagrant bastardization of the definition of ‘equality’ occurs when the inferred ‘ … of opportunity’ is ignored. That particular severed interpretation opens a Pandora’s Box of societal mazes that result in anything but the ‘equality’ the Founders sought to ensure and defend.
You talk about the unacceptance of any delay or failure in the ideas of the Revolution.
Because of the historically unprecedented noble nature of our founding concepts, we are always in an evolutionary(/devolutionary) process.
And because of the nature of man, I believe that, should we continue to survive with our original foundations reasonably intact, the striving for realization of the concept will be endless. And those who criticize the fact that we have not yet ‘arrived’ -- at a goal that, to my mind, is unattainable -- are of two types: (1) the genuine America-haters, who do not want the experiment to succeed anyway, and who seize every opportunity to illustrate the fact that it is ‘failing’, and (2) those who revere the concept, and who want to continue along the path our Founders laid, no matter the detours taken – believing that, detours and all, it is the most noble and satisfying path ever blazed.
I believe your ‘any failure, anywhere, is the failure of the American revolution itself’ is the core tenet of advocates of (1). And your ‘those who follow the advice of late of Bill Cosby’ are generally advocates of (2).
You talk a great deal about ‘patience’ and ‘delay’. If I am reading you right, I agree with your take on both.
The extremists -- the fist-defenders, the nose-defenders, and those who grasp every opportunity to prove that the American experiment has failed -- consistently use impatience, delay, and crisis to their advantage. They would have us believe that the fact that the concept has not been fully realized is evidence of its failure ... or that crisis provides a reason to abandon it.
The path that was laid out for us more than two centuries ago is noble. Man is not. It is only when we recognize that, just as with personal faith, the genuine attempt to simply remain on the path should be viewed as success enough – especially when the ultimate goal, in its purest sense, may be unattainable. In order to persevere, it will be necessary to rein in the fist- and nose-extremists, acknowledge the distorters for who they are, and focus our attention and allegiance on the concept, while avoiding their extremist detours. Then, when history records the beginning, evolution, and end of the American experiment, it will record that there was a great, glorious, historically unprecedented measure of success in achieving that alone.
~ joanie
Kudos on two excellent posts.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. When I speak of the "purists" I mean those for whom expectations and reality never meet. The reason we believe in the American Founding is not because its ideas are nice, or beautiful, or happy -- and they are. I mean, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" -- can it get better than that? I suppose so, if we add "Twelve Points" or maybe "Four Points" to it, or an entire manifesto of proletariate joy.... whatever.
No, we do not believe in the Declaration and the Constitution because it is beautiful, we believe in it and with purity in our hearts because it works.
Please forgive leaving here of some other excellent ideas and points you've brought up -- in the midst of a huge paper that's sucking away my summer.
Oh, this: the American experiment endures, and will continue. I am not afraid for it.
Thanks!
An awesome analysis.
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