You can’t tell me he’s actively running the country. He’s in charge of everything, really? The border? The economy? Our military? The nuclear arsenal?! For the love of God and country, let him retire and pursue his dream. He can sit by the pool; Hunter’s illegitimate children can rub the hair on his legs and call him grandpa corn pop. Jill can bring him ice cream cone after ice cream cone as he teases all the grand kids about all of the pudding cups he has in the house, they can’t have any. That’s how president corn pop rolls, don’t get angry. Now he can look confused in the privacy of his own home without the whole world watching.
I’m going to make a bold statement, (I’ve made it before) I don’t believe that this is what our founding father’s envisioned for our nation. As we approach the day that we celebrate our nation’s independence, let us reflect on their lofty ideals for our nation and compare that to our current situation.
One of the things that makes the United States of America so great is that our founding fathers started a nation from scratch, unlike anything else that preceded it. Can you imagine starting your own country? Yes, there are aspects of our government that resemble others, but no other nation, in its totality, can say that they completely influenced the United States. Certain individual ideas and ideals guide our nation from infancy to the global power it is today. From thinkers like Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard of the Commonwealth Men, (I promise to write in more detail about them in the future), Montesquieu with his separation of powers, James Harrington's Commonwealth of Oceana, Sidney's Discourses on Government, Vattel's Law of Nations, John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government and others, all were a great influence on our burgeoning constitutional republic. As a quick sidenote, if I hear one more Democrat whine about something being a dire threat to our democracy, I am going to scream. We are not a democracy. A democracy can perform any number of atrocities as long as the people carry more than half the vote. That’s a scary thought. Imagine that a charismatic orator dupes an unsuspecting public to relinquish their individual state rights for a centralized oppressive government that immediately pushes them into a civil war that could have been avoided had actual diplomacy and statesmanship been used. Sound familiar?
When it comes to the rise and fall of civilizations I have taken much from the likes of German philosopher Oswald Spengler, British historian Arnold Toynbee, and American theorists Carroll Quigley & James Burnham. But, I would like to focus (briefly) on another often overlooked writer that predates all of them, professor, and judge from Scotland, Alexander Tytler. Tytler did not hold democracies in high regard but saw them more as a veiled monarchy, elected by the people to relinquish their freedoms. In his criticism he found a cycle that had repeated itself in other nations over centuries. Tytler’s cycle of nations begins in bondage, then from bondage to faith, from faith to courage, courage to liberty, liberty to abundance, abundance to selfishness, selfishness to complacency, complacency to apathy, apathy to dependence, then finally dependence back into bondage. One could argue, legitimately, any number of positions our nation could occupy today. Complacency? Apathy? Dependency?
Citizens can and will embrace entitlement to a point that they willingly relinquish all personal responsibility and forfeit their independence that our forefathers fought so valiantly for. We cannot abandon these founding principles with such a cavalier attitude. If conservatives don’t stand up for individual rights and responsibility, how soon can we expect the government to force the burdens of the idle citizen onto the diligent and industrious minority? The problem isn’t helping the poor or the destitute, but that we are forced to help those who are unwilling to help themselves. You cannot adequately distribute taxes to make the poor wealthy, but it does feel like you can tax citizens into poverty.
So, as we celebrate the founding of our great nation this week, remember that our nation began from a place of weakness and soon prospered because of an unquenchable resolve to be free from a government run by tyrants and despots. Imperfect though it may be our nation thrives because of the ideals penned in Jefferson’s magnum opus the Declaration of Independence. Reflect on where we are in Tytler’s cycle of nations, and what individual responsibility we might incur to reverse the cycle and recover from our complacency and apathy to once again find our courage to embrace the liberty that so many fought for yet far fewer deserve. This 4th of July celebrate, barbeque, have an ice cream cone to celebrate the end to “Corn Pop’s” illegitimate and brutal reign. Try to understand the courage and sacrifice that it took to establish a nation. Whether we work tirelessly to regain a standard for our republic or we can watch branches of our government degrade before our very eyes (‘cough’ justice system). Either way, eventually, we will get what we deserve.
Stay Aware My Friends,
Aaron from Georgia