Our true heritage
The United States is a fundamentally revolutionary nation.
The world we live in is the beneficiary of countless successful revolutions the world over. Without them, we would have a world characterized by miseries and countless affronts to human dignity. With them, we have a world characterized by the ability to overcome that nature.
Now that our revolutionary societies have reached some stability, many would like to erase this memory, to tell us that our forefathers were not revolutionary, or that if they were, they only slowed the march of progress. Not the American Revolution, but the American War of Independence. The Terror as the true nature of the French Revolution.
I do not write this blog to correct the historical record, but to revive the revolutionary and progressive spirit, whose blood is thinned by newer ideas such as laissez-faire fundamentalism, technocracy, nationalism, and even Marxism. Even as our leaders, in theory, hold power only at our sufferance, and speak only of making our lives better -- revolutionary principles -- their kind now has subtler ways than simple repression to see that we do not exercise our power over them.
I also mean to combat the pretentious pop nihilism which says the world never gets better, and specifically that government can never be improved. This view, patently false, is common among the young but has also become an insidious part of our national discourse.
If you believe the world must be perfected, you have no hope but heaven.
If you believe the world must be bettered, you are a revolutionary.
Let the people of the earth rise up and tell the high mucky-mucks that they will not be trod under a velveted sole. If the rulers resist, they must be removed by the legal authority of the People Sovereign.
That is the true twin spirit of July 4th, 1776 and January 21st, 1793.
The world we live in is the beneficiary of countless successful revolutions the world over. Without them, we would have a world characterized by miseries and countless affronts to human dignity. With them, we have a world characterized by the ability to overcome that nature.
Now that our revolutionary societies have reached some stability, many would like to erase this memory, to tell us that our forefathers were not revolutionary, or that if they were, they only slowed the march of progress. Not the American Revolution, but the American War of Independence. The Terror as the true nature of the French Revolution.
I do not write this blog to correct the historical record, but to revive the revolutionary and progressive spirit, whose blood is thinned by newer ideas such as laissez-faire fundamentalism, technocracy, nationalism, and even Marxism. Even as our leaders, in theory, hold power only at our sufferance, and speak only of making our lives better -- revolutionary principles -- their kind now has subtler ways than simple repression to see that we do not exercise our power over them.
I also mean to combat the pretentious pop nihilism which says the world never gets better, and specifically that government can never be improved. This view, patently false, is common among the young but has also become an insidious part of our national discourse.
If you believe the world must be perfected, you have no hope but heaven.
If you believe the world must be bettered, you are a revolutionary.
Let the people of the earth rise up and tell the high mucky-mucks that they will not be trod under a velveted sole. If the rulers resist, they must be removed by the legal authority of the People Sovereign.
That is the true twin spirit of July 4th, 1776 and January 21st, 1793.
posted by Minivet at 7:03 AM
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