Home The Struggle for America's Soul - a Nation of Laws or a People of Pop Culture
Home The Struggle for America's Soul - a Nation of Laws or a People of Pop Culture

The Struggle for America's Soul - a Nation of Laws or a People of Pop Culture

When Benjamin Franklin was asked at the close of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, "What have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”, the learned gentleman answered both wisely and cynically, “A Republic, if you can keep it.

Can we keep it? That's the question at the heart of the great struggle for America's soul. Are we a nation of laws or a people of pop culture?

The 2008 Presidential election saw a race between an American war hero with decades of political experience and a man with virtually no political experience and no talent besides posing for photographs. The larger struggle that took place was between America as a nation of laws and the mass media and the internet distilling everything into digital entertainment. And America lost.

When Tony Blair ushered in the New Britain, the Cool Britain, the one detached from its many centuries of wars and history, in favor of one defined by screaming pop stars and brazen tabloid covers-- he did to England, what Obama's backers would do to America. It was not America that crowned Obama, but the New America, without standards, without laws and with no values beyond bread and circuses.

A republic if you can keep it. Rome couldn't. In the years ahead, it will become finally clear whether there will be a United States of America that derives from the laws and values of over two centuries of history-- or Obama's New America, a conglomeration of design skills, reality tv shows, iPod commercials, magazine covers and celebrity hysteria. Not a nation of laws, not even an empire, but a decaying bewildered collapsing oligarchy, where gawkers hawk merchandise with the great leader's photo, where bribery and graft control everything-- and where the biggest employer is the government and the only other employers worth mentioning are overseas companies.

Call it Putin's America. Call it Obama's America. 

The panic, the chaos, the devaluation, the defeatism, the depression and the dumbing down of America all serves a purpose-- to make certain that we can't keep the Republic. To make certain that there isn't even a Republic left to keep.

America, the original Ownership Society, is swiftly becoming the Owned Society. The Ownership Society meant that Americans were one of the few citizenries that actually government themselves, because they owned their country. The Owned Society by contrast rolls everything together into one massive bureaucratic pyramid that owns everything and controls everyone, from cradle to grave.

The way to turn one into the other is through disempowerment and devaluation. And by causing people to forget that they are owners, by promising them that life as slaves will be so much easier for them. Why bother working hard when your new bureaucratic masters promise to take care of you instead? Universal health care, unlimited immigration, universal laws, universal everything. Come for the free chains, stay for the 16 hour ditch digging in the volunteer community corps.

Finally and most of all, a Republic is based on reason. So reason must be shouted down with crude slogans, with emotionalism, with biased narratives and memes... and through recreating language itself into a Newspeak mockery that no longer has any objective meaning.

Promise the impossible, speak in grand terms and wait for the applause. Propose what can reasonably be done and let your proposal be debated. That is the difference between the monarch and the President of a Republic. It takes men and women of reason in an ownership society to conduct business in a Republic. But any mob with any figurehead can march around, shout, wave banners and thrill to the demagougery of an egomaniac with a microphone. That is how most of the world is run.

America has been dumbed down, through the public miseducation system, through multiculturalism, through second language immigration, through racial grievance mongering, through the lowest common denominator of entertainment-- all leading to a society eager to give up its rights and freedoms in exchange for a chance to gather in a mob and cheer hoarsely while they're promised a new Golden Age just around the corner.

The Constitutional Convention was the product of a citizenry willing to work for a Republic. The 2008 Presidential election was the work of shills and salesmen playing to a public that no longer understands any of the values or agendas of 1787. Instead a poverty of the intellect and the spirit holds sway disguised by splashy design schemes and carefully orchestrated marketing programs.

The American Experiment was not built on catering to the rule of an ignorant and greedy mob. It was built on the rights and responsibilities of American citizens as individuals. Mob rule negates the Republic, the Constitution and America itself. As Lincoln himself said, a nation cannot survive half-slave and half-free.

Today America is half-slave and half-free and the balance is tilting toward slavery. The slavery is not quite as dramatic, but it is every bit as real, in the political, moral, economic, intellectual and spiritual sense. The nation is half enslaved to a state of enforced mindlessness and ignorance.

The Civil War came about because America could not survive as a free nation if it was half-slave. A society where rule is in the hands of the citizenry cannot exist as a free nation if it is half slave, given time it will become a slave empire, ruled by a handful over the groans and whimpers of the many. The Free Power that the Union Armies fought for, was to be the power of Free Men in industry and politics... over the power of slavery.

Today we once again face that struggle, to submit to slavery, to a nation of slaves chained to a vast government bureaucracy, lashed by endless media propaganda and driven to cheer their own enslavement. Or to reject slavery and to choose freedom.

The Constitutional Convention was the work of men who would not be slaves, it was the heritage of Patrick Henry's warning of the chains that had been forged by a monarchy for the binding of free men, it was that same Republic which Franklin understood could only be kept by free men.

And so the New America of Obama must fail to swallow and forever destroy the United States of America, a nation ruled by laws, a Constitutional Republic in which rights and freedoms are vested in the individual.

Comments

  1. Anonymous14/4/09

    I was always proud of USA and looked up to Americans. I thought they were the best and the greatest people on earth. That was before the 2008 elections.

    What I see in America now is really depressing and disgusting. The citizens couldn't care less. An illegal alien sitting as POTUS, a usurper, an impostor... who cares?

    They claim "We Won" get use to it. And people shuts up like if they have no more right... like if the Constitution doesn't exist anymore. You feel like kicking their buts and scream at them WAKE UP!

    Even on conservative republican's blogs... its apathy wall to wall.... they whine all day but wouldn't lift their little finger to exercise their rights thru Citizen Grand Jury, Tea Party, petitions and marches, or writing to their Representatives or anything else. They laugh at lawsuits, Mandamus and Quo Warrento and think that these people are crazy idiots from the fringe, when in reality; they are the only decent American citizens who haven't lost their sanity in your country. They are proud and courageous patriots!

    It makes me sick to see these "Zombies" doing nothing to take their country back. They are indifferent and ignorant of their rights. They do not realize what they will lose. They have forgotten that the Constitution starts with these words; "We the people". You have all the power you want thru your Constitution, it was written for your protection against corrupted goverments. USE IT!

    I will be attending a Tea Party on the 15th... this is how much I care for your country. If your country goes down, the whole World will be doomed. Don't become a socialist country like Canada; you will regret it till the day you die. Here it is socialism... but in your country, with the most evil person of all time "Obama", it will become communism. You will have a dictatorship with this bum who will be your President for life. You will never get rid of him.

    Will you let this happen without a fight? Don't you care about your country and your freedom? Don't you care about your kids? What's wrong with you people? What's wrong?

    (French Canadian)

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  2. susan h14/4/09

    Dear French Canadian: Thank you for caring.

    I believe Americans do care but are very naive. So many are honest hardworking people and do not believe that others are as devious, deceptive and possibly evil as they really are. They still believe that if NBC, MSNBC or CNN tell you something, it is the truth. They still believe that if newspapers print something, it is fact. Just like in Germany, so many, even Jews, could not believe that their fellow countrymen were so evil, and therefore played down the threat from Hitler until it was too late, most Americans try to see the good and want to like Obama. They do not want to see him as evil or as having agendas which are detrimental to our country, rather than to our good. Wanting to see good in others even when the evidence tells you the opposite, is a strength and also a weakness.

    Last year there were many of us who knew from day one that Obama was not honest, not the person he pretends to be, having radical associates and hidden agendas which might hurt America rather than help it. Unfortunately, as hard as many of us tried, this information was suppressed by the main stream media, and often the only place we could go to give the information out was on web-sites like this one and a handful of others who were willing to print the absolute truth. News coming from the Huffington Post and Move-on.org drowned out the honesty of articles like those you find here.

    Personally, I tried to tell everyone I knew that Obama was/is dangerous at so many levels, and believe me, it cost me! This was like swimming upstream, very very hard. We were going against the mainstream and especially as a democrat, my friends and relatives were very angry and aggressively so that I was not falling in line and suporting the Chosen One. To this day, some people I thought were friends still will not speak to me regarding my stance on Obama. But I have not given up, and there are many Americans who also have not given up. There are people working behind the scenes who will not give up on the question of Obama's eligibility or lack thereof to be president.

    Thanks for attending a Tea Party. The size and scope of the tea parties have grown since the first one a few months ago.

    I am disgusted with a democratic party that I do not recognize and cannot support. The lies and corruption coming from the DNC and its representatives is something I have yet to recover from. We are all frustrated but don't give up on us. And again, thank you.

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  3. Great article. Is it any wonder that Mr. Hope (not Bob) is repeating at every chance he gets that this repression is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s? He's priming the pump, getting Americans to feel that he and his administration alone care for them.

    Lazy and cowardly Americans no longer want to work. The desire to achieve greatest is slowly being replaced with our quest for mediocracy.

    Not all of it can be placed at Obama's door. It's been insidious. Just a light hearted example--from 1964 to the 1990s the CBS classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer featured a brief song called Fame and Fortune. Hermey, the elf who gets fired and the outcast Rudolph decide to be "independent together" and sing about fame and fortune being their's one day and all it takes is know-how and committment. Hermey and Rudolph marching over a snowman sculpted like the evil elf master.

    In the 1990s the song was replaced with a cute but totally different in meaning song We're A Couple of Misfits."

    Have you wonder where the logic was in replacing a song in a child's show from a pro-Capitalist theme to a wishy washy theme about fitting in.

    Just another sign that the ideals of capitalism shouldn't be installed in children. It might actually inspire genuine hope and faith in the ideals of this country.

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  4. There are three categories of US citizens; those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. Sadly, it appears the third category has become dominant due to its sheer numerical superiority. However, there is a new category that is slowly evolving; those who see what is happening and who will step forward in an attempt to keep it from happening. They are the people whose consciences have been awakened. They are the ones who have stopped to question where values and morals have gone. Unless their numbers grow rapidly, the Republic will not survive. There will be a great test before this year is over. That test will require courage in the face of a government that has collectively lost its marbles. It is a government now run by a Kenyan Socialist, a Speaker of the House whose brain flat-lined long ago, and deep down in the bowels of the White House, a Chief of the Shaft, who is the most feared semi-politician in the country.

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