What is America? How does She differ from all the nations that went before her? What is so special about Her?

People came to America to escape from the tyrannies of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State Church.  Take a look at the pamphlet that launched the Revolution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense.  In particular, consider these remarks, taken from Part III, "Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession".  Paine being a man of his century reminds his contemporaries (and the powerful Christian voting block of today) that Israel offended their God by choosing to have a king over them, and how Samuel the Prophet warned them of the folly of such a choice.  But they were too weak and undeveloped to stand up straight, and grasped at a straw instead.  

Then having exposed from a scriptural perspective the fundamental unsuitability of monarchy as a means of government, Paine addresses hereditary succession — a thing separate from monarchical rule, though we might forget that they are not one and the same.

To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.

Treating the subject of dynasty, isn't he?  Dynasty is a feature of families less than royal also.  The scripture from the Fifth Chapter of Isaiah comes to mind

[7] For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

[8] Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

The Divine Right of Kings was done away in America.  But the old families still hankered after their old advantage. 

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The Founding Fathers of our dear country had a different idea.  They created the first government on earth where the common man was given equal franchise with the rich.  Though only white men of property could vote at first, still the redirection of sovereignty from the powerful to the average citizen was the true dawn of a new day of hope.

The Boston Tea Party made famous the phrase, "No Taxation without Representation!"  But is this great historical event all about taxes in the modern sense?  Are Samuel Adams and his fellows in Indian costume the antecedents of today's giant corporations and multi-millionaires who lubricated Bush's tax cuts with lavish contributions to lawmakers?

Quite the opposite: The victims of the Tea Tax and the Stamp Act, which effectively unleashed the Revolution were the lowest classes most of all.  And the insufferable offense was the Parliament subsidizing its pet corporation, the East India Company, with monopoly by virtue of being tax free (think, "Cayman Islands tax shelters") while local importers faced high duties on their tea.  Favoring those at the top over the average guy.  Sound familiar?

By contrast, those crying for tax cuts now are those who intend to have Representation Without Taxation -- to control the policy of the Empire while they pay nothing to support it.  The whole thing has been turned on its head.

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A slight adjustment is required in the previous paragraph: the small business owner is one who can be ruined by taxes disproportionately loaded on his or her shoulders.  Small businesses are under greater and greater pressure in the ongoing climate of merger mania.  Stockholders in publicly traded companies are usually not interested in the long-term health of a business,  but only the bottom line in the current quarter, because they can sell their shares in a minute and put their money somewhere else, dragging that money like the heavy chains of shrimp trawlers that desolate the thriving ocean bottom, leaving it devoid of life.

But the small business owner is personally invested in the long term health and well-being of his or her immediate community, a member of it in a very real day to day sense.  There is a natural vested interest in a good outcome.

JS Carpenter — to be continued . . . .