Monday, March 18, 2013

IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED!

Starting around the American Revolution-time, what was to become the United States of America was different;  it was exceptional.  Intelligent, generally successful white men who believed in God were tired of being second-class citizens, marionettes dancing for George III, the King of England.

The Declaration of Independence was written and submitted.  One thing led to another and the fighting and killing began.  General George Washington and his followers experienced hardship few Americans will ever experience.  For a cause.  The cause of freedom.  Financed by businessmen who risked all their assets and rounded up cash borrowed from foreign countries and investors as well, especially France.

It worked, they won. 

But then what?  A small handful of brilliant, independent thinkers (after one misfire) wrote and by virtue of brilliant writing, and convincing speeches got  passed the Constitution of the United States of America. 

It was a wild experiment in political and social constrution giving power to the people and withdrawing it from central power.  That it worked wonderfully well is beyond argument (except to power hungry politicians and their acolytes and lemming followers).  The country became the most free in speech, commerce and activity;  the most innovative in invention and application; and the most prosperous with a standard of living second to no other country in the history of the world.  But is was not (and a society can never be) perfect.  Some citizens were not as prosperous as others.  This discrepency was used as a basis for obtaining power through convincing arguments for Progressism.  Progressivism was a distant cousin of socialism.  While capitalists labored to create companies with jobs for others and wealth for all, the Progressives labored to infiltrate the government and redistribute power from those capitalists to the goverment to enable their goals to be met.  No doubt that the labor movement achieved nobel ends in protecting children and workers and balanced out the power of the businessmen.

Then came the Depression.