Sad news, my fellow Americans. The Republic has reached its tipping point, and well, it’s done tipped-- and there’s no way to put the spilled milk back in the bottle.
We are now a socialist country, complete with socialized banks and socialized medicine coming next. We’ve even nationalized some private industry.
How can this be? Those are tactics for Banana Republic dictators to prop up their failing nations, not national policy for the greatest nation in history—am I wrong?
Yes, I guess I am wrong. And I find the whole mess to be depressing, because it never should have been allowed to happen. Socialism is un-American. Period.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being a socialist if you live in a country that allows for socialism, but the United States does not.
The United States was, in fact, founded by some very independent, risk-taking, hard-working, leave-me-alone men. We know this because they left us some paperwork on the issues, primarily in the form of a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution of the United States.
In the event one of my readers is a socialist, and hasn’t really studied the timbers that were used to build our nation, here’s a little background:
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee presented a three-part resolution to the Continental Congress stating that the Colonies should be free states. Everyone liked the idea, but the writing lacked gravitas, so they sent it to a committee-- and everyone knows what happens there.
The chances are good that the document would still be in committee today, and we’d actually care whether Prince Harry is in rehab again, but someone in the committee had the foresight to turn the rewrite over to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wisely edited the original document with a match, and began over.
According to historian Alan Axelrod, Jefferson admired the work of English philosopher John Locke, and Locke had (years earlier) listed three “inalienable rights” in his writings: Life, Liberty, and Property.
Jefferson agreed with Locke’s first two, and listed them accordingly: Life and Liberty. However, Jefferson clearly did not believe “property” to be a true “inalienable right.” In reality, Jefferson believed them to be “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Get out your mental highlighter, because this is important.
We know that Jefferson got the idea of “inalienable rights” from Locke. We know he considered them at length. And we know he decided that, in America, listing property as an “inalienable right” was not necessary.
Why?
Here’s my take: Locke was an Englishman, and in England your personal property was not safe from the “Above the Law” King. If you owned the nicest horse in the kingdom, and the King decided he wanted it, he could send someone over to just take the horse, and rape your maid. (Or rape your horse, and take the maid, if he preferred).
Why? Because he’s the King and the King is above the law-- even if it’s your property. In Locke’s English mind, this was a violation of “natural law,” and the English people deserved to feel safe in their ownership of property.
Jefferson, already formulating in his own mind what “the United States” would be, knew that there would be no such thing as a thieving, untouchable King, and that people might be truly free.
Because of this, Jefferson specifically deleted “property,” and replaced it with “the pursuit of happiness.” If owning a ton of stuff makes you happy, you were free to “pursue property.” If owning nothing and living a Grizzly Adams existence was what you desired, grizzle away.
According to Jefferson, your pursuit of the good life is what deserved protection.
Note, however, that he specifically wrote the “pursuit of happiness” and not just “happiness.” Why? Because failure and unhappiness are both potential outcomes of any pursuit. So here in this country, all the Founding Fathers wanted to offer was an equal shot at happiness—and in Colonial America, “happiness” was pretty easy to define-- you either achieved some form of happiness, or—Anyone? Anyone?
Correct! You starved to death. And that was that. You either succeeded in fending for yourself, or your failures were buffered because you were part of a supportive community or church, or… you died. Period. Three options.
Is this nice? Compassionate? Kind and gentle?
No, it is not. In fact, it’s too mean for even a cold-hearted conservative to stomach. So, over the centuries, we slowly (so very, very slowly) built a nation that offered a safety net for the sick, handicapped, oppressed, and even the lazy. We became a country where the government would support you if you were nothing more than lazy!
From 1981 to 1989, our nation was led by a President named Ronald Reagan. Despite a very conservative platform, Reagan was a fairly popular President—even his detractors respected his leadership, and he and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill waged ideological skirmishes over the path of the nation—back and forth, give and take. It was a pair of strange bedfellows who made America a better and stronger nation. It was a time when it was fun and interesting to discuss politics with those who held different views.
I would say it was the high-water mark of the empire.
George H. W. Bush, Sr. followed Reagan, and it’s been downhill since then. At some point in the past 20 years, politics got uglier. Meaner. Disagreement gave way to hate.
And as politics found its way into the gutter, gutter dwellers found their calling-- and thus they have worked their way up in the ranks, as candidates and consultants and media pundits. Political Action Committees got into the business of king-making, an industry greased by billions of dollars in crooked fundraising and payola. It got bad, fast.
And during this century, the wheels have come off entirely.
Our government grew so out of control and corrupt that it enabled a charismatic young newcomer named Barrack Obama to arrive on the scene, and successfully pitched the message, “Let’s change everything. Let’s become a nation where we take from the rich and give to the poor. Let’s proclaim health care as right. Let’s dispense with the tough guy act, and try to understand and embrace with our enemies. Let’s stop acting so sovereign, and act more like members of the global community. And let’s grow the government to the point where we can deliver to every man, woman, and child the one thing that they deserve: Happiness.”
The masses elected that young newcomer, because they want that happiness.
And now they have hope—hope for a future that will offer not a level playing field, but a playing field designed to cater to the average instead of the exceptional. America will now be a nation that doesn’t reward achievement, but instead will spread the wealth around.
It’s all quite lovely.
Except that it’s un-American. I’ve got the paperwork to prove it.
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