Our recent presidential candidates have faced unprecedented criticism:
- Hillary Clinton, outwardly liberal, inwardly too tight with Wall Street operators;
- Donald Trump, womanizer and all-around arrogant hard-ass with no tact and a take-no-prisoner attitude toward associates, as well as enemies;
- Joe Biden, a confessed plagarist and dishonest self-promoter who faces declining mental-health;
America needs better leadership than this, but we have to ask: who but amoral outliers wants to be President of the United States? Normal, decent Americans couldn't stand the hassle of constant criticism and back-stabbing that characterize politics in our modern nation.
As a result of all this, I have become, at heart, a revolutionary in regard to the future of my country. I want to launch a revolution--not to overwhelm my enemies, impose my will on others, or confiscate anyone's wealth and power, but to allow the opposing sides to function independently of each other. I want to do what the Founders did, step away from the oppression caused by the status quo and create new nations that reaffirm the Founders' own intentions.
The Founders were, to a large extent, resident aristocrats who had a yen for new ideas about how to govern the nation. They wanted to frame the government within the terms of a constitution, governed by a President and a Congress with fixed procedures and areas of responsibility, elected by citizens who had to prove their fitness to participate in the elections.
The British royal government, however, did not want to allow the Thirteen Colonies the distinction of gaining independence on their watch; so the Colonists had to fight Great Britain to gain it.
History has termed these events "The American Revolution." Each July, we hang flags on our doors and windows to celebrate this Revolution as a once and only occasion--over and done with! We commemorate July 4th for the American Revolution, but no one wants to start another one.
If the Founders themselves could speak, however, they might say that the time has come for another revolution. The Founders--these aristocrat-intellectuals--understood better than most people the narrow strait through the extremes--an authoritarian monarchy, on the one side, and a vindictive democracy on the other. The 18th century British artist James Gillray illustrated the risk in a political cartoon, showing Prime Minister William Pitt steering the good ship Constitution past the two extremes--the cap of the French Revolution on the Left; the whirlpool caused by the spinning crown of monarchy on the Right,
The Founders knew they did not want a monarchy, nor a democracy. They wanted their nation framed in constitutional law, with a President and a Congress elected by citizens who had to prove their fitness to vote. They had to win the right to vote.
But no matter how noble the Founders made the intentions or benefits of a revolution, it enables more mischief-making than most people will tolerate. To this day, I really don't know how the Founders pulled it off, except that they were pretty persuasive.
The parameters of a nation's status quo have to degenerate pretty far before anyone will risk a revolution. You might as well give firearms to children and awaken every nut-case who ever lived, because you are gambling your nation's future. It remains the ultimate "turn of pitch-and-toss," as Rudyard Kipling expressed it. The only reason you should undertake it is because the circumstances leave you no choice.
While educated people can sympathize with Tolstoy's disgust with government, his determination not to serve any government is impractical and counter-productive. We need to always think about ways to improve it--our own government in the present, as well as our future governments, and those of other nations.
To start with, America needs that ultimate "pitch-and-toss" now. We need to take the risk because not taking the risk presents us with a near-certainty--the degeneration of the country into civil war and chaos, with a dubious "return to normalcy" after one side subdues the other. Don't expect charity to guide anyone's intentions toward the losers.
John Adams, the nation's first constitutional scholar, knew that it would happen. He had studied historical democracies and knew that the opposing political parties would turn on each other and start the oppression. Democracies murder themselves, he said--and it's happening now!
America's political parties have so little common-ground--thanks in no small part to their emergence as independently functioning entities with clearly-defined agendas, enabled by partisan public-interest groups. The Congress has to compromise by throwing a few leftovers to the losing party. It has to maintain a minimum of overall satisfaction; but the watered-down results fail to adequately address the demands and concerns of voters or assuage the hurt and resentment of the losers.
We like to think that threats to our nation--an economic crisis, glaring case of corruption, or political subversion, will alert us in plenty of time to act appropriately. But if something like that happens--the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back--the opposing sides of our nation will battle each other into oblivion. Ukrainian and Central American refugees flee their countries and come here, but where will we go?
We need to plan our exit-strategy internally, so that refugees won't have to go anywhere. The formally-divided America will remain our home, and our political enemies' home. We can only do that if we divide the U.S., so that we can all stay home--but with separate borders.
To start the revolution and also maintain the peace, let's introduce the subject wit a popular referendum, like Quebec, Scotland, and Great Britain did.
