September 6, 2007
by Clay Barham

Tom Paine once said, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."  He spoke these words in the early days of what became the American Revolution.  Those who first settled in Massachusetts in 1620 should have spoken those words.  Furthermore, what we say is the American Revolution, should really be the American Resistance.  The revolution would have begun in the first half of the 17th century when immigrants established a New World that completely departed from the traditions of the Old World. The English separatists, who escaped England and the Old World, had to depend only on themselves for survival.  They had to stand on their own two feet.  They could look only to their God and live by the words brought with them in their Geneva Bibles.

For England, the 1600s and into the middle of the 1700s were years of internal turmoil. The British Monarchy had too many concerns at home to take a more deliberate hand in the management of their colonies.  In the meantime, people from all over the world were moving to those colonies and establishing their homes. People had to subsist on their own.  People were a hardier bunch than those left behind in the Old World.  They had no one to prop them up and had to stand on their own two feet in order to survive.  Survival tends to harden people, with back peddling and scape-goating having no virtue.  It was do or die, and they paid the "do."

In the latter part of the 1700's, the government of King George III began lowering the hammer and imposing stricter controls over the American Colonies.  He imposed heavy taxes, intervened in courts and legislative bodies, and the Parliament was about to impose a State-sanctioned religion on the Colonists, which went against all for which they had sought freedom. 

The resistance to England's heavy-handed edicts and rule began to heat up in 1775, erupting into a full-fledged war of separation by 1776 and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It was never a revolution, but a long-line of continued resistance that ultimately terminated in a war.  It could have stopped at any time in England's favor had the King realized his distance from the Colonies made prudence a better choice in dealing with such a hodge-podge mixture of subjects.

The people who settled the colonies spoke different languages and came from different traditions and cultures.  They had one thing in common, however.  They were escaping the Old World where the few ruled the many and they faced a New World where each man and woman had to rule him or herself in order to survive. As they succeeded in the task of survival, they created a new tradition and culture.  They used their own interests and aspirations most allied to their own nature.  They used their own respective skills and talents.  They created, invented, built and managed their own lives and prosperity. 

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As each family prospered, the communities in which they lived prospered.  They created their own legal systems, police, magistrates and governments to the extent the majority accepted them as needed.  They lived under their own law, home-rule, small governments, which allowed for freedom to live and prosper, manufacture, trade and reach out to neighboring communities for trade.  They trained themselves, by their own experiences to be independent, without any need for royal rulers.

This was the revolution.  This took many years of trial and error, life and death, strife and success, to get to the point where they were a free people.  Tom Paine's words would have best been said when the immigrants first began to arrive in the New World, that, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."  They did begin the world over again, and they sealed it with the kiss of war in the American Resistance Movement in the four years from 1775.

If one can look at America in this light, they would better understand why most people in this Nation think the way they do.  America is a nation that grew from the pursuit of legitimate self-interests, where the many ruled themselves.  Its institutions were small and closer to the people for whom they served.  Americans were outspoken and often rash, taking their own counsel in matters of community interests.  People in the Old World, still living under the traditions and culture established there for over a thousand years, have difficulty grasping the way an American thinks and acts.  The American tradition and culture has stood the test of time.  It has proven to the entire world that it best serves all of humankind, if only the rest of humankind would recognize it.

Americans have changed the world.  Through their blood, sweat and tears, the world has a model with which it can improve itself and its entire people.  Unfortunately, too many Americans and immigrants today see something different.  They see it as a time for many to take only what material wealth America has produced, instead of its gift of the benefits of freedom.

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Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC.  He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology.  He is the author of five books, with his latest being Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny.  Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com.