History has long shown that great civilizations rise and fall. Philosophers, historians and social scientists, wiser and more learned than I, have speculated on the grand, as well as the light and transient causes of a civilization's demise. In my humble opinion, the most obvious and simplest cause is one of apathy.
We are allowing (and have allowed) the United States of America to become something different from what it was designed and intended to be. Our system of government was designed to allow us citizens to have multiple methods of preventing the destruction of our liberties, but it has gotten away from us. The controls that were in place have been usurped, modified, or blatantly disregarded by our elected government, as well as the tens of thousands of apparatchiks who seem to rule and lord over us. Many of us now believe that we are powerless, and that sense of powerlessness leads to our collective apathy.
There is a faint possibility that we citizens will find a way to change the direction. The tea party protests, as documented by Instapundit, could manifest into a political revolution, but for now they are only a distant, disorganized mob, shouting stop! at the tide of statism and destruction that is overwhelming and consuming our last bit of liberty.
Our Posterity
In the eightieth century, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur wrote a series of letters called, Letters From An American Farmer; therein, he intended to document our social history. Aware that historians would document our War of Independence, our formation, and our political history, de Crevecoeur sought to document who we are as a people, defining What is an American for posterity:
LETTER III.
WHAT IS AN AMERICAN.
I WISH I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. He must greatly rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily feel a share of national pride, when he views the chain of settlements which embellishes these extended shores. When he says to himself, this is the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed by factions, afflicted by a variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient, took refuge here. They brought along with them their national genius, to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy, and what substance they possess. Here he sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new manner, and traces in their works the embrios of all the arts, sciences, and ingenuity which flourish in Europe.
Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated! What a train of pleasing ideas this fair spectacle must suggest; it is a prospect which must inspire a good citizen with the most heartfelt pleasure. The difficulty consists in the manner of viewing so extensive a scene. He is arrived on a new continent; a modern society offers itself to his contemptation, different from what he had hitherto seen.
It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess every thing and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their power, because they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself.
If he travels through our rural districts he views not the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the clay-built hut and miserable cabbin, where cattle and men help to keep each other warm, and dwell in meanness, smoke, and indigence. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations. The meanest of our log-houses is a dry and comfortable habitation. Lawyer or merchant are the fairest titles our towns afford; that of a farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of our country.
It must take some time ere he can reconcile himself to our dictionary, which is but short in words of dignity, and names of honour. (There, on a Sunday, he sees a congregation of respectable farmers and their wives, all clad in neat homespun, well mounted, or riding in their own humble waggons. There is not among them an esquire, saving the unlettered magistrate. There he sees a parson as simple as his flock, a farmer who does not riot on the labour of others. We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world. Here man is free; as he ought to be; nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are.
He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit. The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, who before in vain demanded of him a morsel of bread, now, fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those fields whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed and to clothe them all; without any part being claimed, either by a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord.
Oh, how far we have come from de Crevecoeur's America!
There are many who will document and speculate on the many reasons why America failed. In this humble blog we shall attempt to document and describe the events that lead to the failure of the American Experiment, for posterity, providing experiential evidence of what it felt like to witness the once great beacon of liberty, and the last great hope for the world, collapse into the dustbin of history's once-great civilizations.
If we have gotten it wrong, if our great nation endures, somehow able to alter our course, we will happily accept that our efforts here will have been in vain.
If some future people who forge a new civilization find themselves in a similarly precious decline, these experiences should guide them away from the dangers we faced, but did nothing or were powerless to stop, to prevent the apathy that we now face.
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