Sunny Days in Heaven
Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven


Monday, March 08, 2004  

State's Rights

It is difficult for Americans now to understand how the colonialists could identify as strongly as they did with their particular states.

Yet, a patriot today goes to Europe or elsewhere, and his heart swells when he sees his nation's flag flying, and argues with others because he knows his country is the greatest nation that has ever been.

That is how a Virginian felt, or a New Englander about his state. Each colony was fairly unique in its structure, identity, vision, and practice.

It was a bit like different, but very successful corporations with their own mission statement located in a single territory which, by familiarity, they loved.

When you realize what we have lost with the amalgamation of states into one federal megalopolis, then you might begin to see the genius that was America at the time of the Revolution.

I was telling my wife about the Puritan accomplishment the other day based on the late Daniel Boorstein's book,The Americans: The Colonial Experience.

I mentioned how the Puritans are tagged with stupidity and ignorance because of the Salem witch trials and executions. That and The Scarlet Letter is all anybody seems to know about them.

Yet, I pointed out, all the enlightened intellectuals and law enforcement people of the 1980's were able to convince juries in many states that pre-school owners, and their teachers had satanically abused children in the most hideous manner. The defendants were found guilty and sent to jail for long sentences amidst this legal travesty. (See McMartin pre-school case. Many are still in jail.)

Sociologists and psychologists swore that children could not make up such stories as secret tunnels that led to dungeons or ranches miles away in which horrific sexual abuses occurred.

Yet, the same people would claim that the Puritans were fools and idiots. Go figure.

Each colony was unique, and yet some were far greater than others. Massachusetts and Virginia created a culture and reliance on the moral individual as the basis for democracy which has never been equaled anywhere in the world (unless you consider the Swiss and their success as a nation).

When this culture or understanding of Man's place in reality is lost, the world may not find it again for a thousand years or more. The accomplishment of America was an incredible cacaphony of variables, opportunities, visions, trials, and race that such circumstances will never happen again.

But other situations may foster the chance for Man in a millenia hence.

We are lsoing the nation, but the glory that was ours, and which my people created will echo for thousands of years even more than the "grandeur that was Greece, the glory that was Rome."

posted by Mark Butterworth | 12:31 AM |

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