In the 21st. century, in the news, you will currently hear how America has harmed it’s allies and itself by spying on them through NSA programs, sometimes with the government in questions knowledge, and sometimes without. Mostly with, as all countries value intelligence, even sadly enough on their own citizens private communications. However, I prefer to take a look back to the 1700s when the United States of America first became a nation in and of itself. This idealistic time has been superbly explained in a book that I am currently reading by historian R.R. Palmer called ‘A History of the Modern World‘ in (pg. 339-341, Ch. VIII) it he writes;
“The establishment of the United States was taken in Europe to prove that many ideas of the Enlightenment were practicable. Rationalist declared that here was a people, free of past errors and superstitions, who showed how enlightened beings could plan their affairs. Rousseaunist saw in America the very paradise of natural equality, unspoiled innocence, and patriotic virtue. But nothing so much as impressed Europeans, and especially the French , as the spectacle of the Americans meeting in solemn conclave to draft their constitutions. These along with the Declaration of Independence, were translated and published in 1778 by a French nobleman Duke de La Rochefoucauld. They were endlessly and excitedly discussed.
Constitutionalism, federalism, and limited government were not new ideas in Europe. They came out of the Middle Ages, and were currently set forth in many quarters, for example in Hungary, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Parliament of Paris. But in their prevailing form, even in the philosophy of Montesquieu, they were associated with feudalism and aristocracy. The American revolution made such ideas progressive. The American influence, added to the force of developments in Europe, made the later Enlightenment more democratic. The United States replaced England as the model country of advanced thinkers. A school of radical reformers appeared in England itself. On the Continent there was less passive trust in the enlightened despotism of the official state. Confidence in self-government was aroused.
The American constitutions seemed a demonstration of the social contract. They offered a picture of men in a “state of nature,” having cast off their old government, deliberately sitting down to contrive a new one, weighing and judging each branch of government on its merits, assigning due powers to legislature, executive, and judiciary, declaring that all government was created by the people and in possession of merely delegated authority, and listed specifically the inalienable rights of man–inalienable in that they could not conceivably be taken away, since men possessed them even if denied them by force. And these rights were the same rights that many Europeans wanted to secure for themselves–freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom from arbitrary arrest at the discretion of officials. And they were the same for all, on the rigorous principals of equality before the law. The American example crystallized and made tangible the ideas that were strongly blowing in Europe, and the American example was one reason why the French, in 1789, began their revolution with a declaration of human rights and with the drafting of a written constitution.
And more deeply still, America became a kind of mirage of ideal vision for Europe, a land of opportunity and of new beginnings, free from the load of history and of the past, wistfully addressed by Goethe: “America, thou has it better; Than has our Continent, the old one.”
The United States for over a century, until great changes came within itself, and until a new revolutionary movement set in in Europe, stood out as the utopia of the common man, not only for the millions who migrated to it but for other millions who stayed home, who often wished that their own countries might one day become more like it, and who would agree, with Lincoln, in calling it the last great hope of earth.” – Book excerpt from; A History of the Modern World by R.R. Palmer (pg 339-341 Ch. VIII) First Edition 1950.
I hope that you also see the brilliance in R.R. Palmer’s writings.
I believe that America can restore itself to a great super power once more, as long as our Constitution is protected, and we end spying on innocent U.S. civilians private communications and those abroad, as long as we don’t give so much into greed, and we maintain our rights, freedoms, and economic spirit we shall prevail.
- Read the Constitution of the United States
- Read the United States Bill of Rights
- Read the Declaration of Independence
- Write Your U.S Senator
- Write Your U.S Representative
Write your representatives whether you be left, right, or center and let them know how you feel about the current state of things in America. Get active in your government affairs, and vote regularly.
by Cynthia Yildirim