The Next American Revolution

Since the founding of our nation, roughly 12 generations ago, the idea of America has been tested by war twice. We had two revolutions: the original freed the 13 colonies from the rule of a single man, who called himself king, who justified his powers as handed down from God. The second revolution occurred only four generations later, as this country fought its most costly war in which every drop of blood drawn by the lash were paid by another drawn with the sword, and slavery, which may not have been the stated purpose of that conflict but which ultimately became the reason, as Lincoln said, "All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war."

Lincoln observed at the time of his 2nd Inaugural Address that 2nd revolution was geographically defined, a sectional conflict: "One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it."  

Today our divisions are not so neatly defined.

It has been said that every state is like Pennsylvania:  Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Alabama in between.  Which is to say there are the cities and the country folk and two groups loathe each other, even though they are mutually dependent upon each other. 

The issue at stake in 1776 was a rule by one man, claiming all rights to himself and the assertion that he was just a man and that all men were his equal in the eyes of God and in the natural order of things. This was a radical idea: That all men are created equal. That no one man is more important, more entitled than any others. 

Europe had been struggling with this idea for centuries but now you had this upstart amalgamation of colonies with the temerity to actually say it, men who signed their names on a Declaration, risking hanging and worse, to say it.

The second revolution began with the election of Lincoln and the firing on Fort Sumter. The people of the South thought they had begun the revolution; they thought they had fomented revolution against oppression as their forbears had. But the fact is, the revolution came from the North. 

Fewer than 15% of all Southerners actually owned slaves, but Southerners typically took offense to being told they were tolerating an anathema. So they fought. 

We can never know, but it is likely many, if not most, of the men who joined the Union armies did not care much about the slaves or the original sin of the United States Constitution which embraced and codified slavery.  But as the war ground on, as farm boys from New Hampshire tread the roads and fields of Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, they came to see the reality of a horror they had no previous first hand experience with, and hearts and minds changed. 

Then you had a real revolution, not of guns and cannon but of values and will.

When Lincoln rose to speak at Gettysburg, the outcome of the conflict was by no means secure, and he felt he had to bring order to the confusion. Why had that horrific battle been fought? Why had so many battles been fought with so much carnage, not restricted to soldiers but to all inhabitants who found themselves in the way of armies from Fredericksburg to Sharpsburg?  If most of the Union soldiers were unmoved by the plight of the slaves, if there were draft riots in New York City, for what purpose was this bedlam pursued?

What was the meaning of this national calamity?

The answer Lincoln said  was this was a contest to determine whether such an audacious experiment, self government without a king, a government by the people, of the people and for the people could survive.

Or would self rule by the people, government which at its essence required men to cooperate with one another, to compromise, to see the point of view of the other guy, was that idea of "self rule" doomed? Would it, as Lincoln put it, simply perish from the earth?

The revolution in which we are now embroiled is nothing less than an re examination of that question. 

The people elected a President four years ago as they have done in the past, not really knowing the man they voted for, but taking a chance on him.

And they have discovered that he has no tolerance for compromise, or for personal rights or for tolerance. 

He has called human beings "an infestation."  He has reflexively defended his police, even when they have been shown for all the world to see shooting defenseless men or strangling them, and this President reacts by saying that law and order is more important than justice--as if the two were mutually exclusive. 

He has flaunted laws, turned the people's house, the White House, into his personal palace. 

He has called Nazis, "very fine people."  When, in all our discord, did it become all right to say that any Nazi is a very fine person? 

White supremacists have flocked to his banner, and he has pretended they just love him for his honesty and he cannot reject their love. 

He has invented "alternative facts" for any truth which demeans him.  

Whenever anyone accuses him of duplicity or callousness or hate mongering he simply replies, no not me, that's all you.

There can be no person in this country on the fence now. You would have to be asleep, in a coma or willfully ignorant to have not seen this President for what he is.

The trouble is, of course, things have changed in this country since 1861. If all those who really would prefer to live in a country ruled by a strongman, by a man who believes in white supremacy, lived in the Southern regions of the country, we could simply decide on war or a divorce.  But with Alabama in between in every state, we have to fight it out in each and every state all over the country.

We cannot simply cut off a gangrenous arm--the malignancy of hate, racism, anti government bile, anti social sentiment has spread throughout the bloodstream of the nation and implanted in every state.  We need voter chemotherapy now.

Maybe Lincoln was right--maybe the idea of self government is on the ballot. The survivalists, the militias, the Tea Party, the Libertarians and the Free Staters will tell you this is about individual freedom. But for them, individual freedom means living off the grid. It means an ultra nationalism which abjures trade with the rest of the world, which sees international trading partners as adversaries, which means if a man disagrees with you, he is a traitor, an-Anti Christ or worse.

Evangelicals will justify their bargain with devil as being the only way to eliminate abortion. But, of course, there are better ways, beginning (but not ending) with contraception.

Handing over real freedom to a strong man or to the mob is the easy way out.
Government by the people is never easy or clean. It is always messy. 

But it is better than every other form of government ever tried, or at least it was, until the people got tired, and whimped out. It is just so easy to stop thinking, stop arguing, to simply allow the bully to have his way.