Opus 2024-286: Plow and Crown: American Uniqueness

I was thinking of how in the current political atmosphere what most of us want is primarily for the elites to leave us alone.  We want the government to stop trying to tell us how to live our lives.  Don’t you want the corporations to stop trying to control us?  We went the liberty to make our own mistakes based on our own decisions.

It then occurred to me that, at least, in American terms, wanting to be left alone was the basis of the American revolution.  The British government had their representatives here, but their main power source was across the ocean.  They were simply trying to rule us and run us.  We rejected that, and we basically said “Leave us alone.”  They refused, that led to war.

That took my thinking to the Civil War.  In our Civil War, it was again a case of “leave us alone.”  The South wanted to do things their way.  They did not want a faraway government of the North to tell them what to do.  Therefore, they tried to separate.  They did not try to rule the North, control of the North, or tell the North what to do.  It was simply a matter of “leave me alone.”

When I look at revolutions and civil wars in other countries, I don’t see the same pattern.  In both situations, I see a group reaching to be in control, trying to be the ones telling the others what to do.  What usually happens is the other side would want that too if they had the power.  So in our American Revolution and Civil War, it was a matter of Americans saying leave me alone.  Typical pattern for the world is a group saying, do what I say.

The worrisome aspect of that is the same sentiments are on the loose today.  We have the elites.  They have manipulated the economy to squeeze out the middle class.  They have learned all the ways to cheat in elections and, at least in this area, their creativity knows no bounds.  They have perverted the courts by bribery, threats or just appointing mind washed sycophants.  

Pray for a peaceful resolution that does not make us into the effigy of 1984.

homo unius libri