America the Successful
For all her faults, and when compared to the reality of history rather than some mythical nation that has never existed, America works. It is successful – and pretty damn good at it.
I am a partisan, but I am not an ideologue.
While the GOP is an imperfect vehicle, especially when it comes to defending the very principles that allegedly form the basis for the party, at least they mostly try to defend most of them to varying degrees. I know that is damning the GOP with faint praise, but such are our times.
Even as a partisan, I am always willing to be persuaded. I want to hear other sides of arguments, I want to hear from people who oppose my positions because that is the only way I can test my hypotheses – oh, and by the way, that is how I apply scientific principle to my political and social beliefs.
Democrats were once that way. Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when debate was encouraged, the rules of debate were followed and facts, data, and truth mattered.
No more.
Democrats are ideologues first, partisans second. They now openly campaign for any opposition to be silenced, to the point they want any history that does not dovetail with their current objectives to be erased. They are openly campaigning for the media to drop any pretense of objectivity, to only show the “right” side of any position, yet they never question what that “right side” is. They only assume, most often in complete and total defiance of logic and reason, that it is whatever they say it is because that position supports something they want.
Perhaps the most ironic and frustrating aspect of all of this is that most of the Democrat agenda rests upon obvious contradiction, provable falsehood, and unsupported myth. In sort of an adaptation of the Costanza Rule (it isn’t a lie if you believe it), the Democrats have surrendered to the emotional reasoning of Dorothy’s “There’s no place like home” wishing and concluded if they believe it, it must be true.
But there is one thing they can never overcome.
For all her faults, and when compared to the reality of history rather than some mythical nation that has never existed, America works. It is successful – and pretty damn good at it.
The one question the left never asks is this: Why is America successful?
I’ve never really considered this question until it appeared that we could lose this special experiment in freedom to the envy, class warfare and selfish attitudes of the class of perpetual malcontents, professional dilettantes, and self-styled populists. The very people who claim to only be interested in “fairness” and “equality” are dabbling in Marxist theories without really grasping that they are plodding toward destruction with their collectivist desires. They think we need to fundamentally change the nature of our country because in their vernacular, the Constitution is hopelessly outdated, and America simply doesn’t “work” anymore.
I disagree.
America still works – it isn’t America that is the problem, it is the Marxist/collectivist parasites that are sucking the life out of it that are the issue.
So, why does America work? What makes it tick?
The answer is pretty simple. Look in the mirror – it isn’t our collective citizenry – it is THE citizen…the individual that makes America work.
This is a concept that is clear, especially in the Declaration of Independence. For an example, just consider these clear and concise words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
All men are created equal – each INDIVIDUAL beginning life is equal to every other INDIVIDUAL without dependence on what group, race, or financial circumstance in the eyes of America – we don’t do royalty or hereditary stations.
“…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – all three are concepts that can only be achieved and realized as an individual.
America believes that your life is your own to live as you choose, to worship as you choose to live where and how you choose. We owe this equality to our Creator, not to any elected official or bureaucrat and as such, these rights cannot be taken from us except by God – no government has the authority to do so.
Liberty – the condition of being free from restriction or control, the right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one’s own choosing, the condition of being physically and legally free from confinement, servitude, or forced labor – again, an INDIVIDUAL concept.
Happiness – only you can determine what conditions satisfy your sense of happiness, however you define it.
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
Government receives its powers from the INDIVIDUAL citizens, the citizens do not receive their rights from the government.
“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.”
The INDIVIDUAL citizens have the right to dismember government and re-establish it in such a manner to protect rights that we have already established are individual rights.
The Constitution is also written to empower the individual and exclude power from government:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
We the people – a collection of individuals coming together to form a union by choice, not coercion, with the express purpose of protecting individual rights and the security of the individual, to preserve the conditions for the free exercise of INDIVIDUAL rights as we see fit.
The concepts expressed by the Founders in the Declaration and the Constitution are not concepts of a collective. In order for our founding precepts to be effective, they must be executed at an individual level – these are personal values, not communal or societal. America depends on each individual citizen acting in accordance with the values expressed in our founding documents. Marxism, collectivism, and all the other leftist movements have no place in the design and construction of the United States of America. These precepts are absolutely and totally incompatible with the founding principles of the United States. No matter how the courts and politicians have tried to twist Marxism to fit, it is impossible to reconcile these two cultural, social, and economic systems – like the Law of Conservation of Matter, the two cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
America doesn’t depend on any president decreeing that society will be “equal” or that the rich will “pay their fair share”. The success of America does not depend on some top-down decree of collectivism to enforce the aforementioned “fairness” or “equality”. America depends only on an individual sense of goodness, justice, and fair play. America has been successful for these reasons – not that our citizens are defined by an “American” culture, one enforced by some government or collective, it is rather that the American culture is a reflection of the INDIVIDUAL, with each embodying and expressing these uniquely American characteristics.
America will only fail if it chooses to ignore that our greatness rests in many individuals believing in our founding principles and erases that individuality by succumbing to the false prophets of collectivism and their high priests in the Democrat Party.