(Written and
posted 10 December 2012)
A coworker of mine has made it his mission to save my poor, blue soul, so he gave me a book to read in the hopes I will see the error of my ways and repent. The book is Mark Levin’s “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America”, his latest creation. If you don’t know who Mark Levin is, he is a conservative commentator who served in the Reagan Administration. As I read further and further into the book, I get sadder and sadder for our country. First, people actually have paid good money for it; second, they actually believe it. This book is a work of fiction of which even Tolkien would proud!
Levin, like most of the conservative “philosophers”, paints a portrait of the Founding Fathers as altruistic Christians who sacrificed everything for the common good. In reality, the Founding Fathers were rather petty, selfish, were looking out for their own self-interest, weren’t afraid to betray their friends if it benefited them, and changed allegiances as often as they changed clothes. Benedict Arnold was the rule, not the exception. Given that fact, it is that much more incredible that not only did we win the Revolution, but we somehow managed to keep it all together. Unfortunately, since teaching history is not a priority in schools, and most history classes are taught by coaches who would rather be coaching and really don’t make an effort to know or teach the subject, most Americans are historically misinformed and easily misled by demagogues like Lavin. To put things in context, let’s backtrack and talk about some history.
The American Revolution was basically a mistake, by both the colonists and the British. Neither side really wanted a conflict, but when tempers flare things happen, demagogues use blustery rhetoric, and neither side wants to lose face and back down for fear of looking weak. We like to think that our country was founded by those pure of heart who wanted to escape “oppression”; unfortunately, that is not the case. We want to think that the British were the superior of the three major colonizing powers, who wanted to expand enlightenment and civilization to those who were considered to be savages, but that is not the case, either. Why did the Puritans sail to Plymouth Rock? Basically, they were throwing a hissy fit because their vision for the Church of England was rejected.
When the Pope did not allow Henry VIII to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Ann, and Henry did it anyway, the Pope excommunicated him, and in retaliation, confiscated all properties owned by the Catholic Church and forced Catholics, under penalty of death, the renounce the church. (St. Thomas More, one of Henry’s most trusted ministers, refused to renounce the church and was executed.) After Henry died, the throne eventually passed to his eldest child, Mary, who was Catholic, daughter of Catherine and granddaughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Christopher Columbus fame, and who subsequently gave back to the Catholic Church all of those properties that had been confiscated by Henry and her younger brother. When Mary died, the throne passed to her younger sister, Elizabeth, who undid what Mary did and re-confiscated the Catholic properties. When Elizabeth died, the English throne passed to her distant cousin James, the King of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, the widow of Francis, King of France. James, a Protestant, was succeeded by his son Charles, who converted back to Catholicism and subsequently was executed by Oliver Cromwell and his followers for being Catholic. The Cromwells then engaged in a civil war with the monarchists, who eventually restored the Catholic Stuarts to the throne, who after another Charles and James, were once again deposed, and replaced with Protestants. To ensure Protestant dominance in Britain, they imported a non-English speaking German king, because a German Protestant king was better than an English Catholic one. Of course, German monarchs were much more authoritarian than English ones, so the Catholic-Protestant conflict was quickly replaced with a monarchist (Tory) versus parliamentarian (Whig) one. Throw in the world-wide conflict between Catholics and Protestants, the Catholic nations of Austria, France, and Spain, versus the Protestant Germany, Holland, Britain, and Sweden, and the entire colonial period of our history was one of constant conflict and purges. It is important to understand the worldwide dynamics to understand how America came to be, as we were not created in a vacuum.
You have Pennsylvania, home of the Quakers, who were pacifists who did not want to be involved in the ongoing melodrama and conflicts. You have Georgia, which was a penal colony. The Puritans thought the Church of England was a bit too Catholic for their taste, so they bolted. (Ironically, one of the most Catholic cities in America is Boston, which was founded by vehement anti-Catholics.) The crown’s solution to the pesky Catholic problem was to ship them off with Lord Baltimore – no more Catholics, no more problem! Virginia and Carolina were purely economic endeavors solely for the enrichment of the colonists. Interestingly, even traveling across the Atlantic did not end the conflicts, as the colonies themselves ended up in conflict, with new colonies being formed from the old. Even the pacifists in Pennsylvania were not immune, as the three southeastern counties split off to become Delaware. Interestingly enough, it was the Jesuits of the two great Catholic powers, France and Spain, who were the most altruistic of all, especially in their treatment of the natives as equals rather than savages.
Because of all the conflict going on inside Britain itself and worldwide between the Protestants and the Catholics, the colonies were ignored and left to fend for themselves. If you were the in the British government at that time, would you deem it more important to focus on your mortal enemies who are trying to defeat you, or some misfits, malcontents, and losers, who ran away to or were banished to a far away land? Of course, the answer is obvious, and that is exactly what happened. Until, of course, the conflict turned into a world war, and involved the misfits, malcontents, and losers. That is how the French and Indian War, a forgotten war, begat the American Revolution.
Several things happened as a result of the French and Indian War. First, the British crown gained vast new territories that they were now responsible for, a very expensive proposition. Second, the crown figured out that they had subjects who demanded to share in the spoils of the British victory over the French without having help achieve it. Yes, the Founding Fathers were those freeloaders.
From the viewpoint of the crown and Parliament, it was not fair for the people of the British Isles to have to pay the entire cost of defending the colonists from the French. During the conflict, most of the colonists stood by and allowed the British Army to do all of the work for them. There were some, like George Washington, who actually joined the British army to fight the French, but for the most part, most of the colonists stood by and let the Redcoats defend them. This irked the British government and the British people to the point that Parliament, with the blessing of the crown, decided that the colonists should pay their fair share and started collecting taxes, that, because of the distractions, had not been collected. Of course the colonists, not wanting to pay taxes, refused. We hear the phrase “Taxation Without Representation”, but in reality, it was more like “We Don’t Want To Pay The Bill”. In our history books, the narrative is that the colonists were offended that they did not have representatives in Parliament, but in Parliament, you can represent a district in which you do not live, so that isn’t entirely true. We just weren’t represented by people who lived in the colonies. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Parliament had given each of the colonies representatives who actually lived in the colonies; those representatives would have been outvoted, so the outcome would have been the same. Would we have rebelled because we didn’t get our way? Of course we would have, because we did less than a century later when the South threw a hissy fit because they didn’t like who was elected President.
So, over the course of a decade, riots broke out, mobs vandalized and destroyed property, government officials were terrorized, and the crown had to send in the troops to keep the peace. Of course, the troops were not happy being sent to the backwater of America, and projectiles were thrown, the troops fired on the crowd, and the Revolution was born. What our history books gloss over is that the Patriots committed brutal acts of violence against those who disagreed with them, burning properties, destroying businesses, assaulting civilians – by the time of Yorktown, loyalists were in such fear for their lives that most had either fled to Canada or to Manhattan Island, as the city of New York was under the control of the British military.
As the Revolution wound down, the Patriots wanted to ensure that there was no dissent to their vision of the future. The Articles of Confederation, and later, the Constitution, were radical. The Founding Fathers restricted political power to a chosen, few, and they determined the chosen few. Only white males over the age of 21 who owned land were allowed to participate. In other words, the minority would rule over the majority, and the majority would have no say-so. Since the surrender at Yorktown included a provision confiscating the property of all loyalists, the Founding Fathers, the Patriots, by limiting involvement only the landowners, limited it only to people who agreed with them, as the loyalists were no longer landowners. Since many of the city dwellers who were apathetic at best, and hostile at worst, to “The Cause”, they were disenfranchised as well, as many of them did not own property. The Founding Fathers created a government in which only those who thought the same, only those who did not dissent, would rule. From among these few, a committee would be chosen to enact laws, keep the peace, and carry out justice. Many of these committee meetings were held in secret so the populace would not know exactly what laws were passed and what justice would be meted out. Each of these committees would then select members to a regional committee, who would then select members to a national committee, who would then select a leader.
In Revolutionary America, the white landowners would select local leaders, who would then help select legislators, who would then select members of Congress, who would then select the President. This was deliberately set up this way to ensure uniformity in thought throughout the government, as the Founders did not approve of political parties such as they had in Britain. The ideal, as envisioned by the Founders, was a state with no political parties and with no dissention. In the Articles of Confederation, bills only became law when approved by EVERY state; there was no majority rule, only unanimous rule, and the only way to achieve unanimity is if everyone has the same view.
Levin in his book claims that Obama is leading America toward utopian communism, he has abandoned the principles of our Founding Fathers as established in the Constitution and that he must be stopped before it is too late. His whole thesis is flawed and contradicts himself – since Obama does not slavishly follow the Founders, then he is not a communist, as the system designed by the Founders is, for all intents and purposes, the system currently in place in China. In China you have a select few who are enfranchised (Party members); these members elect regional committees (analogous to legislatures), and these members elect a national committee, who then elects the leader. As with the United States, there is no titled aristocracy, and, theoretically, all members of the ruling class have the opportunity to be the leader. The Soviet Union had a similar political structure. What the Founding Fathers envisioned, a classless society ruled by an elite few, was communism!
What America has learned in two centuries, a lesson that other countries are starting to learn, is that the system envisioned by the Founders cannot be sustained. Before the first president even finished his term in office, the country was already starting to divide in two groups – the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians. We had our first secession threat not long after, with the Hartford Convention, and the threat of the New England states. We have had dissent and conflict from the beginning.
Levin is right- this is not the America envisioned by the Founders, and we should be ever-thankful for that. This is the America where all adults over the age of 18, regardless of race or gender, have a right to have a say in how they are governed. A black person is no longer considered three-fifths of a person; a woman is no longer treated as not-quite-a-citizen. My daughters have as equal of a chance to be President as my sons. The election and re-election of Obama has shown us that anyone can make it to the top if given an opportunity. Those who have studied Obama’s philosophies know that it is not about communism or socialism but about making sure that everyone has the same opportunity to succeed, regardless of race, class, gender, or who your parents are. And that is the way it should be.
As for Levin and those like him who long to live under the form of government envisioned by the Founders- well, I suggest they move to China.