Half of the country sees the 'soul of the US' as being the worldview, values and religion of early citizens of the US. They believe that the truest patriots are those who look at every issue through the same 18th century spectacles.
"What would an early American think about homosexuality?" They would hate it. Then that's the truly patriot…
Half of the country sees the 'soul of the US' as being the worldview, values and religion of early citizens of the US. They believe that the truest patriots are those who look at every issue through the same 18th century spectacles.
"What would an early American think about homosexuality?" They would hate it. Then that's the truly patriotic viewpoint. What do they think about religion? and so on. If we could just force everyone to live by these values, we'd be the truest Americans ... even if it means installing a king / tyrant to do it.
It's an easy mistake to make, even SCOTUS too often asks WW GWash D? But the TRUE genius of the US was the dismantling of the set rules that governed the people and pushing the source of power down to the collective citizens.
Remove the king (that all other nations at the time had) and de-centralize the power to the people. Further, install a triangle of antagonistic sources of power to keep the leaders from re-coalescing it.
Remove a national religion (that all other nations of the time had)- let every person follow the religious beliefs that he or she believes in. Further "build a wall" of separation between the state and the church to prevent the most popular one from taking over.
Embed into the small set of rules that govern the country a built-in mechanism to change them over time as the collective viewpoint of the country changes, because it's NOT the specific rules themselves that are the soul of the United States, but rather the extremely radical idea of making every one of them negotiable according to the group will of the governed.
Half of the country sees the 'soul of the US' as being the worldview, values and religion of early citizens of the US. They believe that the truest patriots are those who look at every issue through the same 18th century spectacles.
"What would an early American think about homosexuality?" They would hate it. Then that's the truly patriotic viewpoint. What do they think about religion? and so on. If we could just force everyone to live by these values, we'd be the truest Americans ... even if it means installing a king / tyrant to do it.
It's an easy mistake to make, even SCOTUS too often asks WW GWash D? But the TRUE genius of the US was the dismantling of the set rules that governed the people and pushing the source of power down to the collective citizens.
Remove the king (that all other nations at the time had) and de-centralize the power to the people. Further, install a triangle of antagonistic sources of power to keep the leaders from re-coalescing it.
Remove a national religion (that all other nations of the time had)- let every person follow the religious beliefs that he or she believes in. Further "build a wall" of separation between the state and the church to prevent the most popular one from taking over.
Embed into the small set of rules that govern the country a built-in mechanism to change them over time as the collective viewpoint of the country changes, because it's NOT the specific rules themselves that are the soul of the United States, but rather the extremely radical idea of making every one of them negotiable according to the group will of the governed.
Adam - Beautifully stated. "How to creste a USA in a nutshell." It sounds wonderful - what happened?