By Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Chief@ComeOnSense.com
www.ComeOnSense.com
Towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century it is easy to lose track of the motivations which lead Europeans to make the difficult and dangerous journey across the Atlantic and to a new world full of dangers and unknowns. We might want to think that they saw the promise of a new life – a country to build – and unlimited opportunities. But that was, for the most part, not the case. These people were leaving the unacceptable for the chance that what they would find might be better. In other words, they had decided that getting away from what they were leaving behind was worth the risks.
So what was it that they were leaving behind? Here are just a few of them:
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Religious Persecution – the political correctness of the time – states which insisted that one religion among many was the ‘correct’ one and that all who did not accept that religion were outsiders to be marginalized and persecuted. In 1792 Thomas Jefferson provided a clear framing of the alternative which the newly formed country offered. “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” The founders, many of them Christians, believed that the evils of state religion – or the proposition that one religion was the only one proper within a country – were corrosive to society. They founded the country on the idea that religion and government were two separate ‘estates’ and that mixing them would result in the same kind of persecution and cliques that abounded in Europe of the time.
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Ruling Elites – many of the early colonists were fleeing systems which were dominated by ruling elites – professional political classes aligned with moneyed interests and aristocracies. They found themselves trod down by governments which had little interest in the rights of their subjects and indifferent to the burdens which they were pressed to carry. These governments were able to take away rights at the whim of the monarch or a simple majority vote of a parliament. Minorities had little or no recourse with such systems – and many of them decided to flee to a country which might give them a better break.
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Continual Warring – Europe of the time was dominated by monarchies and governments which were dedicated to continually waging war on each other. They conscripted the peasants into the army and sent them into the meat grinders of insane and useless conflicts in which the only real winners were the merchants who profited from them. People also fled their homelands because the huge accumulated debt from these senseless adventures oppressed the economies and left the monarchies with only the option of squeezing the peasants harder to pay for the unending foolishness of their foreign policies.
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Restricted Opportunities – with the best of the opportunities reserved for the ruling elites and their allies, emigration was driven by the dream that somewhere there might be a place where the ordinary person had a better shot at a better life. The colonists left societies where the wealthy and connected received the best opportunities for profit and advancement – they left it in the hope that the ordinary citizen in the struggling colonies might get a better shake.
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A Vision of Another Path – The Declaration of Independence stated this hope as well as it can be said. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” The founding fathers believed that the monarchy of King George and the Parliament was such a government. That is was a government which had become ‘destructive of these ends’ and that it was incumbent upon them and the citizens of the new colonies to abolish it and put a new one in its place which was built upon “such principles most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
So what kind of government does American citizens now live under?
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A government which is lead by a ‘pastor in chief’ who seems to support the proposition that there is only one valid religion. A president who has stated his allegiance to a ‘higher father’. More like King George – and less like George Washington – a man who believes that the bible trumps the constitution when it comes to governance and that acting under the banner of religions prejudice exempts him and his government from the need to comply with the laws which govern the land.
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A government of ruling elites who believe that the principal benefits of power are to drain the public coffers and deliver the ‘spoils’ to their supporters and allies – a government which believes that a monarchy – in the form of an ‘imperial presidency’ – is essential to the functioning of a society.
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A government which has involved the country in one war after another – conflicts which benefit the profiteers but tear the country down in the eyes of the world and makes her citizens pariahs and targets if they should venture abroad. A government which has resorted to hiring mercenaries because they can’t manage to convince enough citizens that the cause is worth the bloodshed. And one that is planning the next war while the country is mired in the current one – and the armed forces are stretched to the very limit.
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A government which has plunged the country into massive debt – mortgaging its future to foreign governments and speculators – and passed those debs on to future generations of Americans. A government, unable to convince the current generations of Americans to pay for these wars and policies, which mortgages the countries future and passes on the insanity of its policies to future generations.
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A government which provides opportunities to the ‘politically loyal’ while withholding them from the qualified – sending the inexperienced into complex situations simply because they were willing to swear loyalty to party and man. A government which flushes away billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money – seeking only to consolidate their power and pay off their allies and supporters.
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A government which takes away fundamental American rights with the stroke of the president’s pen – eviscerated the constitution and the bill of rights – spies on its own citizens in the name of ‘national security’ – and all without the consent of those very citizens. A government of republicans, democrats and independents which stands against the citizens of this country and tells them that they have only the rights which their government determines them to have.
How far have we come since the visionary days of the Revolution, Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It does make me wonder if those colonists, seeing what has become of this country and the government that rules it, would now think that the dangerous journey and the terrible burden of birthing this nation was worth it. I rather doubt that some of them would. But I’m sure that they would recognize the places which the fled from in the headlines of newspapers of the time. And that is an American Tragedy – our government – our society – or economy – we have become what our forefathers were fleeing when they journeyed to a new world in the hope that they would find a new way.
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Dr. Smith is a political and social theorist
who lives in Georgetown, Washington, DC
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