IntroductionIn his Rights of Man Thomas Paine wrote, in 1791, something
that rests heavily on my mind as I write this in the year 2000:
When it becomes necessary to do anything, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.
I wish the Congress of the United States had remembered those
words when they impeached the occupant of the White House with a
censure accusing him of disgracing the office of President, and
then, incredibly, lacked the political will to get rid of him. Now,
in the last presidential election of the twentieth century we have
witnessed candidates of both parties vying with each other to see
just who can be the biggest Santa Claus, the Republicans with tax
cuts, the Democrats with "universal" health care. And behind them,
snug in their entrenched agencies, lolled the bureaucrats with their
regulations, obeying the latest whims of the recipients of all that
largess—the self-styled minorities, those victims of history and of
their own lost commitment to responsibility—needing, yea, demanding
endless care, as if we are a nation so burdened with Puritan guilt
that we require a constant supply of oppressed, downtrodden,
disenfranchised and suffering generations to receive our cathartic
mea culpas. And what better group (because their generations
stretch endlessly into the future) than THE CHILDREN? Yet where are the parents? Where is
the notion of accountability? In the midst of plenty we seek
socialistic reasons to go bankrupt--if not here, all over the world.
The Great Santa Claus.
People who remember history need not be reminded that it was
bureaucracy, not barbaric invasion, that destroyed the Roman Empire.
And debilitated the Ming dynasty in China, and the Mayans, and
Egypt. Thomas Paine had a word for bureaucrats: "men holding
themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by
anybody." Yet they are our masters, shifting props backstage, while
we, the audience, like the chained people in Plato’s cave, gaze on
shadows, on images thrown up on a wall, thinking they are real.
In all this confusion we seem to be standing on the brink of a
great precipice in this first year of a new millennium. Below us a
chasm swoops away, a bottomless pit, a black hole deeper than any
fissure split apart by an earthquake. A stab of adrenaline tells us
we are in danger of losing our balance, of falling into some vision
of Hell worthy of Michelangelo or Hieronymus Bosch. How did we get
here? We thought we were the freest people on earth, enjoying a
liberty and an economy which constantly reminds us that "the United
States of America is the greatest power on earth."
When Thomas Paine wrote those glorious passages praising the
energy and integrity of America, that fresh start among ALL
FRESH STARTS, relying on Nature and Society rather than oppressive
government, the idea of Freedom ran like wildfire up and down our
coasts, across our mountains, through our forests and along our
rivers. And in our blood. Those men, the men at Valley Forge
and Yorktown, knew the meaning of freedom, but more, the shackles of
tyranny.
Why, then, have we put on--gladly--those shackles again? Why have
we become a nation of slaves, with our hands held out for any goody
promised by a Federal Government in Washington? Why, in the 2000 presidential
campaign, did a group of "senior citizens" in Florida declare that
they would vote for the candidate who could deliver prescription
drugs? Was the United States of America founded on the premise that
it would become, as one Southern politician declared in the
mid-nineteenth century, "The Great Wet Nurse?" Or, to put it in more
recent terms, the giant "Federal Insurance Company (like pie) in the
Sky?" Where in the Constitution was it promised that we should have
"universal health care?" Or that every child in America would be
covered by "health insurance?" Or that all Americans should be taken
care of by the Federal Government from the cradle to the grave? What
has happened? And why? Have we forgotten that it was American grit
and determination that toppled the Soviet Union, and that
socialism--the first step toward totalitarian communism--simply does
not work. Here we are, about to step off into the next century, into
a new millennium, whining like deprived idiots. If we are truly that
"most powerful nation on earth" we had better examine some home
truths that our ancestors, the pioneers who founded this country,
knew to be indispensable and absolutely essential, not just for the
continuance of a government, but for life itself.
When I was little, going to school in a little town in north
Mississippi, we had a sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Parsons, who, if we
had been good that day, would read from Uncle Remus before the last
bell rang. I can still remember those stories, and the wisdom hidden
in the humor. The most lasting and memorable was "Brer Rabbit and
the Tar Baby." You will remember how Brer Fox used Brer Rabbit’s own
self-important temper to trick him into punching the Tar Baby, which
Brer Fox had placed in the road to annoy him. When the Tar Baby
didn’t answer Brer Rabbit’s "Good Morning," Brer Rabbit proceeded to
teach him some manners, and was stuck. But Brer Rabbit, being an
even shrewder trickster than Brer Fox, begged and pleaded with Brer
Fox to do ANYTHING to him but throw him into the briar patch. Which,
of course, was exactly what Brer Fox did, not knowing that the briar
patch was Brer Rabbit’s natural home.
What does Brer Rabbit have to do with the current dilemma?
Perhaps more than we think. We have come to believe, through the dumbing-down
of American education in the last thirty years and through the "entitlements"
held out like so many cookies to children, that the Federal Government is our home,
when in truth it is the Great Tar Baby in Washington. Created in the
last century during the war which was not a "War Between the States"
but, as Chief Justice Rhenquist recently stated, a "War Against the
States," the Federal Government continues to hold us in its clutches
in a velvet cage of promises where we find ourselves sinking into a
soft, sticky, enveloping mush more destructive than hard concrete,
for whenever we punch it we are pulled deeper and deeper into our
own self-deceiving desires.
But, still, we have not answered our own question. If we feel on
the brink of a bottomless chasm and helpless to do anything about
it, blaming the Federal Government and our own stupidity does not
seem to suffice. There must be a deeper reason--or reasons--for a
once-proud people to declare openly that they will only vote for a
presidential candidate who can get them cheaper prescription drugs!
Is this why the American Revolution was fought? Have we
become so petty and cringing that we can no longer take care of
ourselves? Where did this need come from? When did we
consider ourselves so helpless? It is my hope that this present
query--this lonesome effort to find, if not answers to those
questions, at least some basis for the beliefs or quasi-beliefs that
have led us to this impasse--will lead us to at least a glimpse of
sanity. There may by, I fear, deeper and bigger Tar Babies in our
psyches that, if we can become aware of them, might teach us
something of ourselves.
Thomas Paine warned us that politicians wage wars for one reason
only: as an excuse to create revenue. When enemies are not present,
the citizens of a country can create enemies by waging war on
themselves. How? By submitting to the double-edged sword of taxes
invented for the aggrandizement of those in power and for their
control of the masses. In the modern world an additional trick has
been added: We can now wage war against ourselves. How? Through our
own greed by succumbing to the lure of "Entitlements" and worse—the
delusion of our own power through the do-good double-talk of
"Peace-keeping" all over the world (usually beyond our national
interests) where --and here is the constant joke-- there is no peace
to keep and, in some cases, never was. Thomas Paine wrote, under the
pen name "Common Sense," a pamphlet called "The American Crisis,"
which began with these words: "These are the times that try men’s
souls." They still do.
