July 6, 2007
by Clay Barham

The paths in life people take results from their beliefs in the existence of borders, boundaries, laws and morality.  Otherwise, they are lost.  Those limits on behavior are usually impressed on a child in the family and, later, by the community and its culture, as well as what works for the benefits sought by the person.  External threats of reprisal and internal guides of what is right or wrong are learned from others, observation and experience. 

Although, for the most part, we start out as self-serving creatures, we learn to coexist in community in positive ways.  Behaviors that serve our needs by how we serve the needs of those closest to us, for whom we have deep feelings of love and willingness to sacrifice, are usually good.  In the Old World, which is everywhere except America, the limits on behavior were established mainly out of fear.  People feared retribution by the monarch or the church.  Through that fear, people kept their place, unable to think or act out of the box.

From the time of the English Separatist landing on the shores of Massachusetts, after the elimination of a disastrous theocracy, the new Americans established, from their personal morality, new borders, boundaries and laws.  Their basic morality came from the Bible and based upon two sets of laws, the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. Taught to children in the family and reinforced in church meetings, tent revivals and behavior, those moral boundaries spread across the new nation. The primary internal border, boundary and law limited behavior. It put no restrictions on the creative genius and efforts of these free people.

There were few limiting laws restricting behavior. They were to prevent and punish the injustice one person brings on another.  Courts and a jury system decided whether one's conduct was unjust under written law.  Governments they established never meant to manage community, or take from some to give to others.  These were the responsible choices of free individuals in community, and it worked well.  It worked so well that the new nation attracted more immigrants to its shores to participate in something better than what they had.  The unrestricted creative genius and productive efforts of the new Americans built the most prosperous nation in the world.  They proved only individual freedom can provide prosperity and the greatest happiness for the greatest number.  It was not that poverty ceased to exist, but that those who chose poverty had a better existence in America than the masses of impoverished people in the Old World.  The generosity of the new Americans saw to it that people did not go without the basics.

This is not just an American whitewash, because there were growing pains and some Old World behaviors brought in, such as slavery, kangaroo courts and privilege of the few with power over the many without.  When compared to what they left behind in the Old World, these negatives were not as widespread and destructive here.  They were a nuisance and a problem that needed a solution.  We even fought one another over the issue of slavery.

Our nation established itself by contracts and constitutions.  The earlier ones, from the Old World, such as the Magna Carta, were not deeply rooted in anyone emigrating from England.  King and parliament had ignored it for the most part.  The Bible was the major first constitution, followed by the Mayflower Compact.  Every community had a charter establishing it and its boundaries.  Those were local constitutions. Every corporation, of which cities and counties are, had their chartering constitutions.  Letters calling for Colonial delegates to accomplish certain acts formed the first and second Continental Congress. That led to establishing the Articles of Confederation, our first national constitution.

One founding document stands above all others, and not as written law.  It was a declaration of who Americans were up to and at that time, and what grievances each had against King and Parliament.  It stated very clearly that God created us equal and gave us certain rights.  He gave us a right to life, liberty and the ability to pursue happiness. Neither King nor Parliament gave us those things, but attempted to take them away.  It stated that government should have one purpose only, which is to secure those rights and punish those who would try to take them away.  It cited case after case of what King and Parliament had done to wrong the English Colonials.  It said that people, when offended in such ways by its governors, should be able to replace them.  It was the Declaration of Independence of 1776.

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Following the intense times and tribulations of the War with England, to separate the colonies from the mother country, the Articles of Confederation fell short of the needs of the colonies as states united.  To form a better, "more perfect union," delegates met in Philadelphia to draft a new constitution.  After forty days in the sweltering heat, the delegates completed a draft and agreed to submit it to the states for ratification.  Ratified, it then replaced the Articles of Confederation in 1789.  America was now a nation.  To insure it did not create a potentially tyrannical government, and by the efforts of James Madison and the pen of Thomas Jefferson, the first Ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights, was passed and later ratified.  We now were free from the Old World, on our own, with boundaries, borders, laws and morals reflecting how life grew in the previous 170 years in America.  The kind of life Americans scratched and carved out of a new continent, rejecting that of the Old World from whence they came, was finally established. 

Like a rocket soaring into orbit, the Americans took off.  Personal and economic progress grew rapidly, sucking the rest of the world into a more modern age of miracles, which they could not stop.  Monarchs and dictators began to feel the pressure brought by what Americans were doing in their own nation.  The word got out and many from other nations swarmed out of the Old World to experience some of what Americans experienced.  Americans introduced a massive social and economic engine of progress to the rest of the world.

Many in the rest of the world, the Old World, did not appreciate the unsettling of their own borders, boundaries, laws and morals.  They began to challenge America.  Immigrants from those opposing nations flocked to America to disrupt it.  They wanted to bring America back into the Old World community of nations, where the few lead the many.  Wars in the Old World slowed them down.  Having to appeal to America for help also slowed them down.  Agents of the Old World ideologies took control of labor unions, schools, media and entertainment.  They began a concerted effort to re-educate Americans, starting with those who have the least in material wealth, knowledge and maturity.  They needed to convince Americans to accept leadership by men and women who care about them.  They appealed to envy, anger and depression to assault the creative and progressive individuals who build an ever-growing economy and provided employment opportunities to so many.

We have arrived at a time when Americans must look back and decide for themselves if individual freedom still works best, or no longer belongs in a well-ordered world.  It is time to rededicate ourselves to our New World, or dismiss it to return to the miseries of the Old World.  The second growth of the Islamic World threatens to alter our ways of life and take us back to the Old World on the desert at a time and place where the Prophet walked.  From what we should know about America in contrast, can we really allow that to happen?

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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.