Where's The Character of 1776?
Posted by BradHarrington 9 years, 1 month ago to Politics
This piece ran in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on July 4, 2014 - my tribute, if you will, to the shoulders of the tremendous giants I stand upon.
Brad Harrington
brad@bradandbarbie.com
********************
July 2, 2014
Where’s The Character Of 1776?
By Bradley Harrington
“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.” - Thomas Paine, “The Crisis No. 4,” 1777 -
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress ratified the most radical document ever penned in man’s history: The Declaration of Independence.
That was the fateful day when the United States of America became an individual nation - the time, nine generations ago, when our forebears fought, bled, lived and died for the right to be free, for the right to live their lives peacefully and independently of King George III’s pervasive control.
“Character,” according to Webster’s, is “one of the attributes or features that make up and distinguish an individual… The complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group or nation.” Character - our very personalities - lies at the heart of who we are, what we think, what we choose and how we act.
A country, too, has a character, a style of living, a dominating influence in its institutions that drives its culture. What, historically, was ours? What was the character of 1776?
Immigration gave us a tremendous advantage, a natural filter, right from the start: It takes an unusual person to pack up, ship out and get dropped into a new land, knowing they’re going to have to improvise, adapt and overcome in order to achieve their dream of success.
Most of Europe, given the choice, decided to continue slowly starving to death. But America? We got the cream of the crop, the people willing to face adversity and handle challenges, to jump into life with both feet and gamble their wits and ability against the fortunes of the world around them.
It was predictable, looking back, that the pattern of such a society would ultimately run afoul of the powers-that-be: King George III and his minions. Consequently, by 1776, we had real battles on our hands coming at us from every angle.
What kind of dream can motivate men to gamble everything they own, including their very lives, in an attempt to bring it about? The dream of liberty: That a country could be established on sound principles of social organization where no man or government would have the right or power to control the free interaction of free individual minds.
This was the character of 1776, our country’s vision and dominating idea: The belief in individual rights. Honesty, self-reliance, independence, integrity, ingenuity, responsibility and productive capability were our virtues, and observe where they led us: By 1900 our good old “American know-how” had laid the foundations for the modern industrial world.
And then… What of that character now? How fares the character of 1776 today?
For many decades past we have chosen to abandon the constitutional principles we were founded upon, dramatically increasing the size and scope of government authority in our lives instead. Hosts of petty political fiefdoms now clutter the land, ruling and throttling our social and economic discourse. We’ve had our honesty corrupted by “pull-peddlers,” our self-reliance eroded by the “welfare” state, our independence battered by the centralization of political power and our integrity polluted by disintegrating standards of human value.
Consequently, adrift with no moorings, we find ourselves beset by crisis: Our phony paper dollars, which were once gold, become more worthless with every passing year. Our economic productivity, once the wonder of the world, is in the outhouse. Our educational system, once the pride of the nation, is now a wasteland of conceptual destruction. And our cities, once marvels of engineering and achievement, now resemble war zones.
If ever there was a time of need for the character of 1776, this is it: Where are our modern-day Thomas Paines, Patrick Henrys and Thomas Jeffersons, the men and women who are not afraid to pledge their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” for the resurrection of individual liberty, the men and women dedicated to the sovereignty of the Rights of Man?
America, today, is in desperate need of leaders who can successfully define and illustrate the principles of freedom - who can, as did the Founding Fathers before us, spark the imaginations of our citizenry and guide us through the potential pitfalls of a Second American Revolution.
It might just be too late, you know - Americans may have misplaced their spirits for good. That could be the problem: That our souls are dead and the character of 1776 is little more than ancient history.
Maybe… Maybe... But I don’t think so. I can’t help but believe that somewhere, buried under that onslaught, lurks still the fiber of the men and women who built this place from scratch. And, once we have awakened, would-be dictators and bumbling bureaucrats will reckon with us at their own peril.
Yes, but…will we wake up?
That’s our call, isn’t it?
Brad Harrington
brad@bradandbarbie.com
********************
July 2, 2014
Where’s The Character Of 1776?
By Bradley Harrington
“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.” - Thomas Paine, “The Crisis No. 4,” 1777 -
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress ratified the most radical document ever penned in man’s history: The Declaration of Independence.
That was the fateful day when the United States of America became an individual nation - the time, nine generations ago, when our forebears fought, bled, lived and died for the right to be free, for the right to live their lives peacefully and independently of King George III’s pervasive control.
“Character,” according to Webster’s, is “one of the attributes or features that make up and distinguish an individual… The complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group or nation.” Character - our very personalities - lies at the heart of who we are, what we think, what we choose and how we act.
A country, too, has a character, a style of living, a dominating influence in its institutions that drives its culture. What, historically, was ours? What was the character of 1776?
Immigration gave us a tremendous advantage, a natural filter, right from the start: It takes an unusual person to pack up, ship out and get dropped into a new land, knowing they’re going to have to improvise, adapt and overcome in order to achieve their dream of success.
Most of Europe, given the choice, decided to continue slowly starving to death. But America? We got the cream of the crop, the people willing to face adversity and handle challenges, to jump into life with both feet and gamble their wits and ability against the fortunes of the world around them.
It was predictable, looking back, that the pattern of such a society would ultimately run afoul of the powers-that-be: King George III and his minions. Consequently, by 1776, we had real battles on our hands coming at us from every angle.
What kind of dream can motivate men to gamble everything they own, including their very lives, in an attempt to bring it about? The dream of liberty: That a country could be established on sound principles of social organization where no man or government would have the right or power to control the free interaction of free individual minds.
This was the character of 1776, our country’s vision and dominating idea: The belief in individual rights. Honesty, self-reliance, independence, integrity, ingenuity, responsibility and productive capability were our virtues, and observe where they led us: By 1900 our good old “American know-how” had laid the foundations for the modern industrial world.
And then… What of that character now? How fares the character of 1776 today?
For many decades past we have chosen to abandon the constitutional principles we were founded upon, dramatically increasing the size and scope of government authority in our lives instead. Hosts of petty political fiefdoms now clutter the land, ruling and throttling our social and economic discourse. We’ve had our honesty corrupted by “pull-peddlers,” our self-reliance eroded by the “welfare” state, our independence battered by the centralization of political power and our integrity polluted by disintegrating standards of human value.
Consequently, adrift with no moorings, we find ourselves beset by crisis: Our phony paper dollars, which were once gold, become more worthless with every passing year. Our economic productivity, once the wonder of the world, is in the outhouse. Our educational system, once the pride of the nation, is now a wasteland of conceptual destruction. And our cities, once marvels of engineering and achievement, now resemble war zones.
If ever there was a time of need for the character of 1776, this is it: Where are our modern-day Thomas Paines, Patrick Henrys and Thomas Jeffersons, the men and women who are not afraid to pledge their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” for the resurrection of individual liberty, the men and women dedicated to the sovereignty of the Rights of Man?
America, today, is in desperate need of leaders who can successfully define and illustrate the principles of freedom - who can, as did the Founding Fathers before us, spark the imaginations of our citizenry and guide us through the potential pitfalls of a Second American Revolution.
It might just be too late, you know - Americans may have misplaced their spirits for good. That could be the problem: That our souls are dead and the character of 1776 is little more than ancient history.
Maybe… Maybe... But I don’t think so. I can’t help but believe that somewhere, buried under that onslaught, lurks still the fiber of the men and women who built this place from scratch. And, once we have awakened, would-be dictators and bumbling bureaucrats will reckon with us at their own peril.
Yes, but…will we wake up?
That’s our call, isn’t it?
Where has that drive to succeed faded away to? And why would any person want the destruction of such a place, where success was possible with determination, hard work, and yes, failures along the way? No one stopped you from attempting the seemingly impossible, because that's how this amazing country came to be. Those who were willing to take a risk.
Now, the greatest risk is to be a free thinker, to be a voice of reason speaking out against the perpetual injustice churning out of the bloated federal government. It's snaked its way into every aspect of our lives, seeking to regulate the things which are choices, not mandates. Telling my kids what they can eat?? What they must learn? The EPA???
Time to take stock of what matters, and start thinking, and doing things for ourselves again. Time to take this country back from those who are using their offices of government as their personal fiefdoms. We have become sheep. Time to become Americans again!
Today, we have almost 240 years invested in what has been perceived as self government. It will take substantially more abuse of power to get the people with the intelligence and leadership capability to grasp the wheel and change our course abruptly. I think the quality of the patriots is far more important than the quantity. In 1776 there were more Tories and non-combatants than members of the Continental army. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, et.al. were not the first to protest but were the ones who made the difference. These were rich and successful men with a lot to lose and they campaigned for a rational solution which kept the colonies in the British Empire until they realized that it was not possible.
Brad
Many of us like to think that until circa 1900, the country was on the right track, but read what Jefferson had to say:
"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond, 1821
Many of us like to think that if only we returned to the words of the Constitution and reversed the changes in our government since 1913, that all would be roses. But the facts are that until the intellectually driven Natural and individual rights supporters take the step to become the deciders and opinion formers, we have no chance to become what we imagine we once were. Maybe this time, if we will learn our real lessons from our real past, we can do better this time around. But until we accept that at any time in our history, some 70% of our population have not believed in or even understood what we describe and have actively fought against the forms of government in which we as well as they could thrive, we only set ourselves up for continued and future failure.
YES, it IS true that the Revolutionaries were in the minority. Having said that, however, I think that even those who just wanted the fighting to stop and the problem to go away still had a more-than-halfway-intelligent outlook on the rest of life and what it took to make it happen successfully.
Without the bloated government that we have today, even the American Tories and Loyalists knew that consumption required production first. Their fundamental approach to life and existence was basically sound, they just had the wrong ideas about the Revolutionary War.
I would further assert that insofar as you can even assign a word like "character" to a nation as a whole, that that designation should include ALL of those mental/philosophical/psycho-epistemological aspects, not merely what side of the Revolutionary War the "typical" American immigrant/citizen stood on.
As for the idea that "many of us like to think that until circa 1900, the country was on the right track" - Well, I for one have never held that view, for I quite clearly realize that all of that which happened afterwards actually grew out of that which happened beforehand. Including, as both Jefferson and you point out, that the American Judiciary contained within its own creation the seeds of our destruction.
I actually believe the country's political freedoms were checkmated by Constitutional Ratification - most of us just haven't realized it as of yet - but that's a story for a different day...
As for the rest of your comments, I share them myself. As I quoted him just a little bit ago on a different thread, Lysander Spooner once remarked, regarding the Constitution: "The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it." And Spooner said that back in 1867 ("No Treason").
The question I always ask of people that think we simply need to "return" to the Constitution is: "Why didn't it work right the FIRST time?"
Thanks For The Thoughts
Brad