"The more thoroughly one can view the past, the more clearly one can envision the future." (ANON)

The historical record of America seems, to me, at least, littered with minor revolutions that have, for better or worse, fundamentally changed the Founding Principles. Additionally, these tremors appear to occur cyclically, on a 40-50 year pendulum. It is the purpose of this discourse to examine this phenomenon.

We can go back further, but (for the sake of brevity) let us confine our survey to the last 150 years or so. In the late 1800s, there was the silver and gold rushes that drew American’s westward and expanded the national interests - and built personal fortunes - that forever changed the landscape of the nation. In the early 20^th Century, there were three agitations in short succession (World War I, followed closely by the "Roaring Twenties" and then the Great Depression) that introduced the U.S. to the world stage and shook the mores of the Republic forever. In the 1960s, there was the Civil Rights Movement and the youth rebellion of Woodstock, women’s liberation and the early seeds of today’s drug culture. Once again, the core views and values of our civilization was seismically shifted.

A half-century later, I have lately come to believe that we are in the midst of another of these rhythmic tremors to our social underpinning. The specter of creeping government power, a monumental fiscal deficit, what has come to be called "political correctness" (which silences hard truths and muddles debate) and the tomorrow-be-damned attitude of much of America are only a small survey of these ills. The ultimate outcome remains to be seen but signs, to this observer, are clear that America will, just as it was after the earlier quakes, emerge from our present tumult fundamentally different. In my personal opinion, the changes will not be to our ultimate benefit. Exactly how different and what will remain of the strengths and graces of American culture is the apposite question.

It is an inquiry that troubles me, probably no more or no less that those who lived through earlier agitations, but personally disquieting, nevertheless. And in times when I feel the earth moving beneath my feet, I often turn to one who understood well how fragile a thing civilization is and how quickly man can revert back to his savage nature. Edmund Burke, that remarkable Irish philosopher/politician (1729-1797), wrote often and with an unearthly prescience about the ultimate path Homo sapiens followed to climb out of the trees and live an upright life. In times such as these, when I begin to question the ultimate consequences of our cultural decline that I find a measure of solace from his words.

No one more than Burke knew that all the advancements of the animal we call "man" are parchment-thin and easily ripped, revealing the true nature of the beast within us all. He knew that all that lifted us up and, more to the point, kept us from reverting back to the caves and the savannah were three pillars, constructed with great care over millennia: the rise of religion, responsible but limited government and what he called, in the manner of his day, the aristocracy. [Before you label me an elitist snob, his root meaning was more "gentlemanly manners" than a strict division of classes in society.]

His greatest hour came at a time which was, in truth, not very much unlike ours in contemporary America. The French Revolution had erupted in reaction to a faltering economy, an over-reaching government, and high unemployment. (Sound familiar?) Fueled by the populist, demagogic fire of "the enlightenment" and the abstract philosophers of "the rights of man" (most famously by Rousseau and Paine), discontent boiled over into revolt. As the ancient French society was torn asunder by the metaphysical and futile quest for a chimerical "perfect liberty, equality and fraternity", Burke thundered forth with his most enduring work, "Reflections on the Revolution in France". Would that we had a Burke, today, to write an update: "Reflections on the Revolution in America".

As France fell in chaos, the citizens drank in the Kool Aid of the grandiose promises of a Utopia. As the guillotine working feverishly to establish it’s foundation - equality - upon the heads of the aristocracy, Burke saw nothing but great calamity and disaster ahead. He wrote of ancient truths and the legitimate privileges citizens can expect in a civilized society:

"IT is no wonder, therefore, that with these ideas of everything in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have "the rights of men". Against these there can be no prescription, against these no agreement is binding; these admit no temperament and no compromise; anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of competency and a question of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtlety of their political metaphysics. Let them be their amusement in the schools...But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter to sweep the earth with their hurricane and to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us.

Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention." [Emphasis mine]

Admittedly, to the modern ear, these words ring obscure. But, the underlying truth has lost nothing of its validity today as it was in 1791. The key passage is clear enough, even today: "Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things." Do these words not shine brightly enough to light our way, even today?

There are those today who speak the very same words of the false philosophers of 18^th Century France: They say to us that "Americans have rights that have yet to be granted: The right to free and equal health care. The right to a ‘living wage’ and full employment. They have the right to cross our borders, unfettered, and become equal beneficiaries of all our labors, collectively. Americans have the right to be housed,. fed and otherwise provided for even if they have chosen not to avail themselves of a free education and acquire the skills necessary to be gainfully employed." Et cetera, ad infinitum. And ad nauseam.

It is this abstract philosophizing that threatens to undermine the 220 year compact we have had with our government. This sort of insensate abstraction of "the rights of man" obscures the hard work that allows a people to grant rights in the first place, namely, duties. Without the other half of the equation, the social contract is turned on its head and, with this disjunction, becomes null and void. The artificial declaration of "rights" without the burden of duties to balance society can only lead to discontent, anarchy and, finally, despotism.

For proof, one only need leaf through the pages of our "user’s manual" - history, wrote large.