Yesterday we, along with most normal Americans, celebrated the birth of our nation. Most celebrated by enjoying family, friends, and reflecting on the history and traditions of our great country. Most appreciated what we have and remembered those who made it possible.
But others in the country celebrated in other ways. Violent lunatics celebrated with the murder of innocents and rioting. The media celebrated by sensationalizing the acts of violent lunatics for profit. Clueless celebrities celebrated by hating America and the very system that made everything they enjoy possible. Democrat politicians celebrated by leveraging the murder to call for more gun control. Cowardly, dim-witted Republican politicians did nothing.
What is happening in our country? The murder of innocents will continue, these events are not going to stop anytime soon. Our society is creating the monsters who commit these acts and has been for the past 20 or 30 years. Our elected representatives would rather use these acts to further their political agendas than to address and solve the problem. The public has grown too disconnected and misinformed to demand otherwise.
But this is about much more than the level of violence exploding across the country. What is happening in our country? The answer is that we may be losing our country.
John Hinderaker writes that the country may be on the path to breaking up. Hinderaker cites the following numbers from a poll conducted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics:
· …28 percent of voters, including 37 percent who have guns in their homes, agree that “it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.” That view is held by one in three Republicans, including 45 percent of self-identified strong Republicans. Roughly one in three (35 percent) Independent voters and one in five Democrats agreed.
· A majority of Americans agree that the government is “corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me,” including 73 percent of voters who describe themselves as a “strong Republican,” 71 percent who called themselves “very conservative” and 68 percent of rural voters. A bare majority (51 percent) of voters who call themselves “very liberal” also agreed. Overall, two-thirds of Republican and Independent voters agree that the government is “corrupt and rigged” against them, while Democrats are evenly split.
· About three-quarters (73 percent) of voters who identify themselves as Republican agree that “Democrats are generally bullies who want to impose their political beliefs on those who disagree.” An almost identical percentage of Democrats (74 percent) express that view of Republicans. A similarly lopsided majority of each party holds that members of the other are “generally untruthful and are pushing disinformation.”
I’m currently reading First Principles – What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks. Ricks examines our first four presidents, the ideas that shaped them, and how those ideas influenced the founding of our country. Included within the book is the Declaration of Independence.
If it’s been a while since you’ve read the Declaration, I urge you to take a few minutes and do so. You’ll find a surprising number of concerns voiced in the Declaration are applicable today. You’ll also find, unsurprisingly, that most of the points made are still valid today. Consider the following excerpts:
· We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
These words are as true today as they were when they were written, unfortunately many Americans have forgotten them or never really understood them to begin with. The fact is the people should control the government, not the other way around.
The following from the Declaration reveals the thinking of Americans in the time leading up to the revolutionary war:
· Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The Declaration goes on to list the grievances of the colonies against the King. Many of those grievances could be leveled against our government today.
We’re seeing the results of an intentionally degraded public education system. Many Americans seem to have little knowledge of our nation’s history and even less understanding of our government and how it is intended to work. Cornell University, for instance, has removed a bust of Lincoln and a copy of the Gettysburg Address from their library due to a complaint from an anonymous individual. Taxpayer funded National Public Radio (NPR) ended their tradition of reading the Declaration on the 4th of July and instead offered a discussion on “what equality really means”.
I’ve read several books on Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and the period leading up to the civil war. Looking at that period in history reveals it took the American people fifteen to twenty years to conclude that war was the only option. Looking at the time prior to the revolutionary war indicates a similar fifteen to twenty year timeframe for the colonists to come to their conclusion.
We may be entering into a similar fifteen-to-twenty-year period today. Maybe it started during the Obama years or maybe with the election of Donald Trump but there are certainly indications the country is moving in that direction.
Hinderaker suggests that America may be on the path to breaking up. Hinderaker may be right. The question is will it be a peaceful breakup or a violent one?
©2022 Joseph T Drammissi
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