The Democrat governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, is being taken to task for expressing regret that America is a free country. I'm pleased that it was a Democrat who said it, otherwise it would be all over the news. I hope he suffers for it.
But it was a slip of the tongue that a lot of people could make. To imagine that human beings are naturally comfortable with people they dislike getting a chance to speak and gather and act, etc. is beyond naive. How many "free countries" have there been in history and how long does that freedom last? That is no accident.
The American political structure is quite particular and it requires indoctrination into a particular way of looking at people and the world. We all want to be free ourselves, but very few of us who are honest or not nihilists really enjoy that fact that we have to put up with all sorts of other people acting freely. Things like the Bill of Rights actually stress human nature. Liberals are very big on certain kinds of freedom, certain kinds of First Amendment stuff (except "hate speech") but would be very happy if the Second Amendment never happened.
That's why I have said that it would be very hard to find another group of people in history aside from Anglo-Saxon Protestants who could have pulled it off. It requires, in fact, a kind of intellectual effort and a personal asceticism to really subscribe to the Constitutional arrangement that our Founding Fathers left us.
If I were King of America, believe me, things would be different. Not necessarily better, but different! But I assume that those old dead white males were smarter and better men than I am and we will all be spared my monarchy. Whether the Republic will survive the massive demographic and cultural changes this country is undergoing is an open question. Deval Patrick is not the only person who wishes America weren't a free country.
1 comment:
That's why Madison call'd it a "Bill of Frights."
jpm
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