How are we doing today?

I would like to rip the lips off every principal of a public school because as liberal, bureaucrats they spout drivel about the value of their educational programs, but in the spirit of our founding revolutionary fathers, I’ll reminisce on what initially made America great. We still function (hopefully) on our unalienable rights of life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness.

In 1810 a Prussian, Friedrich Gentz contrasted the American and French revolutions. He said that the "American revolution escaped the most dangerous of all the rocks, ... the deadly passion for making political experiments with abstract theories, and untried system." "Never in the whole course of the American revolution were the rights of man, appealed to, for the destruction of the rights of citizens..." "The preciseness of objects, the uniformity of means, and the moderation of principles, "... "distinguished the American revolution..."

Gentz observed that the French revolution, "wished to tear up the world from its poles, and commence a new era for the whole human race." It attempted to use the "sickle of equality."
"The absolute indefinitude of object, that inextinguishable character of the French revolution, discovered itself in a new and terrible light. The republic ...was a word without definite meaning..."

What’s apparent is that America succeeded, where other revolutions have failed, in maintaining a system of representation in which not a too great discrepancy exists between the privileged and the poor. Gentz puts it this way: "The most easily one of the constituted authorities can resist the other, by its appropriate weight, the less will be the necessity of appealing to arms. On the other hand, the more imperfect the balance is, the greater will be the danger of civil war."

Even before Gentz’ analysis of our successful experiment, in 1788 the Marquis de Condorcet noted that America guaranteed four rights of man: 1. safety against force and a guarantee against transgressions of others, 2. security and enjoyment of private property, 3. a system of laws applicable to all citizens and 4. the right to contribute through representation to the enactment of laws.

How are we doing today? Rich, elitist politicians are increasingly removed from the lives and interests of common men and women. The gap leaves too many citizens without representation or remonstration. Also, socialism awaits. The sickle of equality is on hold in Obama’s left hand until he takes office in 2009. The moral fabric of our society slowly unravels, unalienable freedoms erode and the prospect of the oppression of higher taxation looms. How are we doing today?