A House Divided...

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The man is never as big as the movement. Students of history are quite aware of this fact. Seldom does the man who starts the fire hold a candle of character to the myth that follows for it is the fire that is important and not the man. But we, as humans, want to relate so we latch on to the man and create the myth. Thomas Paine was a horrid creature to many that knew him. Marx was a despicable father. Hitler was a drug addict and probably mostly insane. JFK was a womanizer and involved himself in organized crime. Lenin was evil incarnate. Mussolini was reviled by those who knew him best. Reagan's second son hated him. There are no heroes.

Yet we yearn for heroes. Oddly enough the true heroes are sometimes reviled eventually. Think Jesus, Luther, Patton, McCarthy, North, or more recently Assange, Snowden or O'Keefe. Think what these unrelated characters all had in common; they spoke the truth. Again with one exception they were all imperfect men, flawed...normal. Truth is the first victim of tyranny.

The United States of America. That used to mean something to me, in my short lifetime. It is a lie. Perhaps it always has been and I was too naïve to note. Just look at the electoral college map of any recent election. We are no more united than Jews and Muslims, Abortionists and Pro-Lifers, Military and Pacifists, Doers and Takers, Patriots and Instigators.

The history of America is a history of a nation that mostly got along and occasionally divided violently. We, as a supposedly advanced people, have mostly rejected violent opposition. This, however, was predicated on the ideal that we were all Americans and generally had the same ultimate goal of preservation of the republic. We find ourselves in a time where that is no longer true. We have a nation in which almost half of same reject our founding and it's principles. This is the reality that exposes itself in our current political circumstance. We don't argue over the nuance of how Liberty manifests itself in each or our lives, we now argue over whether Liberty is even worth praise or preserving. A nation that hates it's own history is destined for destruction.

The natural state of Liberty is regression. Contemporary events such as wars or economic downturns tend to fool the people into believing that an all-powerful state is necessary for security. While temporarily true, the implementation of required power is always over played and exploited by those who gain financially; think big corporations, politicians and media moguls. The people are always the victims of this altruistic lie. Liberty, once lost is exponentially harder to regain.

So here we are.