The Founding Fathers imagined a nation of people unified by their shared dedication to the primacy of the individual, free to pursue his interests. Is this idea incongruous with man's tribal nature?
Wow - very thought-provoking in an excellent way! Thank you!
Thrilled to hear about your ancestors!
(I just finished serving as an elected HoA board member for 24 months in a community of 230 single-family homes with common areas). One of the most “tribal” experiences I have ever had - with some of the most entrenched, nasty people I have ever met…Immature, ego-centric, authoritarian, vile-mouthed, & terrible fiduciary responsibility to homeowners footin’ the bill.
I did likewise a few years back, even agreed to be president for couple terms. Same experience - "educated people" who had difficulty seeing, thinking, advocating beyond their own sphere of existence, presence, function for the good of the neighborhood and all members. Disappointing and depressing experience, but redirected focus and energy in more positive directions.
What a wonderful essay and Wow - such an impressive lineage!!
I descend from Swedish immigrants who came to America in 1900 - and who believed in “the idea” of an America that offered opportunity to those individuals willing to work hard. Ive recently been reading my grandfathers memoir - unpublished except for family members. He had a deep faith in God which sustained him through many hardships. He was my only grandparent that I knew - and I believe he instilled in all his children and grandchildren Faith in God and faith in the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers. I still believe and I still care but I am very worried.
Today - we have gone so far astray - and through my “deep” reading and paying attention, I believe all of humanity - America in particular - is under attack by purely evil globalists who quite literally want “it all” for themselves.
Seems it is a battle of good against evil and so many of us are asleep and have no clue…
I pray to be a part of the solution and pray that many more will wake up to what’s really going on.
. . . because their family has no father, not disciplining children.
. . . because their schools spurn all God-based facts and teaching while celebrating tribal (race, color, sex) roots and values; giving passing grades for failures.
. . . because mass media(TV, Movies, news) blind their parents to God while illuminating violence, race, sex.
. . . because synagogues and churches are hardly attended and their pastors have no courage to stand up for Abrahamic morals in public while opening their tent to abominations of morals.
Around 586 BC there was a remedy for such. . .
Perhaps one does not have to be of Jewish origin to see a future quite unlike the Golden years of yore.
Try asking someone with chronic and acute TDS, which is 100% of leftists, what they are for. The question will surely catch them by surprise. Very few can answer the question with any reasonable amount of articulation that would reveal forethought. You might hear “I’m for getting Trump the hell out of Washington DC!!”
What you are for is more important than what you are against. If all you stand for is what you are against, if you have no systematic or coherent worldview based on truth and the permanent things, the things which are good and have stood the test of time, you cannot contribute to moving the world to a better place.
I have been amazed by my neighbors on either side of me. One side can’t even abide anything of Trump or even Musk. The other side adores MAGA but dislikes the gay guy down the street. I suppose I’m in the middle. My late wife and I had political differences but could agree about most things and allow each other to be as they wished. But the anger of some is troubling. Trump is not forever. The pendulum swings. I personally think Trump is trying to improve the economy but is often ill advised. His ego gets in his way. But even a flawed Trump has been better than the alternatives we’ve been given.
This adherence to total partisanship I sense is harmful to our society. Where did tolerance go? Our Congress often gets deadlocked over trivia. Politicians often forget they serve the public not their party and by being totally partisan they discard nearly half their public. Please some compromise from them.
The founding values have been lost, I believe, due to the removal of civic eduction and practice from society. The Declaration of Independences 2nd paragraph, the Bill of Rights, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Pledge if Allegiance, field trips to city council meetings need to be part of all children's education through high school.
Dennis Prager has thought about this and discussed it in different terms - the ideal of liberty versus being taken care of. "The American Founders were so successful in launching the American experiment because they understood the deep “correlation between God and human freedom.” They understood and said, “we are free because God wants us to be free.”
Benjamin Franklin - Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither. Thomas Jefferson also said: He who gives his freedom for safety gets none of them.
To me, being an American means being free and using that freedom to lead a meaningful life.
I don't think one needs to be religious, but it does help greatly to have some set of strong convictions/principles if one hopes to not get sucked into the madness and destructiveness that certain elements are trying to impose upon our country.
Unfortunately I agree with this comment. Of those of us left to rebuild, well, we'll see how we get along. All I can say at this point is, we do have a Bill of Rights, let's defend it.
PS A person doesn't have to be dead to be out of the game. Among those I know who took the mystery juice, I'm seeing a lot demented and otherwise debilitated people in my circles, and I am also seeing a lot of people whose lives are now crippled socially, professionally, and financially for having to care for demented and/or sick spouses and/ or family members.
How did I know they took the jabs? Because in 2021 it was all, ALL, I mean ALL, they could talk about.
Husband took two at the beginning of "covid era" because the kids made him...Now he can barely walk or feed himself. I refused them and will refuse them until I am lowered into the hard cold ground.
Kathleen have you considered the Ultra Spike Detox from Dr McCullough or simply just natto and lumbrokinase supplements? I have been but yet to take the jump. . .
PS I remember the pressure to take the mystery juice, it came in heavy, and even like thunder, from all sides. It was understandably very difficult for many people to resist, and even today, very difficult for many people to believe there ever any reason to resist. Your kids meant well, I'm sure, that's the sad thing.
yes truly it is sad...I wish they would take the detox themselves as well. Everyone of us that has been cognizant for the last four years is experiencing this tragic scenario. We watch as our friends and relations are threatened with tragedy and it is as if an invisible glass shield surrounds them...they can't hear us...they are still listening to the SAFE AND EFFECTIVE bs from Tony Fauci and Dr.Rochelle Walensky i.e. the nominal head of the monstrous globalists that hope to take over the world. The usual alphabet suspects...WEF, CDC, HHS and the US military. God Help Us.
A very noble tribute to your ancestry, John. My simple answer to what Should define what it means to be an American has already been penned. One Nation. Under God. Indivisible. With Liberty and Justice for ALL.
it is shocking and unbearable. How 2 such different past and current histories (if history can be defined as one day old event...) can exist in the same time?
YES, so you are comparing John's amazing founders legacy vs that of a poor trafficked immigrant girl abused to levels unbelievable(yes, I watched most of it, could not bear it all).
I was NOT COMPARING the 2, I merely asked how comes that such EXTREME contrasts slowly but surely bring the current society. I actually thought more about what those amazing ancestors missed to do, to make this country 'great again'.
Man has a dual nature: as an individual and as a member of a group.
As such, a political and an economic system that is able to bring out those instinctual traits are the ones best suited to man's intrinsic nature. Capitalism and democracy are the two systems that best fits man's natural instincts.
The organizational attributes of the Constitutional Republic of the United States are the democratic embodiment of the political system that allows individuality yet tempers it with group controls.
Capitalism is the economic pairing of the Constitutional Republic political system.
The two together have created the ability for life, liberty and the pursuit of property to the greatest extent possible of all socioeconomic systems devised to date. That pairing has created the greatest prosperity for the largest number of members of any civilization the world has ever known.
The success we have enjoyed has created a complacent series of generations that will soon be tested by the forces of tyranny and authoritarianism that deign to take our success for themselves.
It remains to be seen if the US will rise to honor the words of Thomas Jefferson to fight tyranny, or has it become captured by other ideals of Socialism or Communism. The path of history is littered with great civilizations that have fallen to greater powers.
Tribalism as a country will be needed to rise to the challenge.
I truly hope that we can get back to an enlightenment period. One that supports the individual expression and choices along with supporting those who are less fortunate. When we champion those who are ambitious, clever, determined and allow them expression and their inventions they go along way to support society as a whole.
The current divisiveness born of Marxism with its simplistic and damaging binary of oppressor and oppressed is not going to last long-term. It's a phase we are in, started in the 1960s which was perhaps inevitable even though also pushed by the wretched propagandizing Soviet Russian regime. It has to burn out and will never return, in my view. A superior and more authentic self-identity will take its place, marked especially by its LACK of divisiveness and superficiality, fake social justice ideals etc... That is my vision anyway.
Your Good Essence (Spirit) often comes out in your writings John!
The idea of America is Beautiful, though there were huge problems with what was done by those in power to the Native Americans and Slavery, but I believe the reality is America is a Zionist Occupied country since 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated. So America is hijacked. The Crown has been trying to take back America for 250 years and it is likely they are behind the Zionists as they and the Rothschild's made Israel. There are other Power "Families" fighting for control of America and the world, though they work together against humanity but fight each other for ultimate control.
In the end I believe those of the same Essence will unite and many of these Essences are very dark and will fight each other and those of Good Essence will be caught in the middle . . . but there is a twist!
He probably means Zionists, not all Jews. Zionists have had control of the U.S. government for a long time, at least as far back as the Bush II administration (And it has been reported that JFK was not cooperating with Israel's plan to keep its Dimona nuclear reactor secret from inspections). The US invasions of Iraq and of other Middle-East countries are part of the Zionist plan known as the "Greater Israel Project," which envisions the expansion of Israel by conquering and annexing its neighboring countries - all with U.S. assistance. Lebanon is thought to be next, and eventually Iran. Most Americans don't know that their tax money is funding all of it.
Here here! His will enact his Gen 12:3 promise on this who continue to denigrate them. As for the exaggerated and hidden reality of slavery and many of those "peaceful" Indians, try looking into the truth.
I never said all Native Americans are peaceful - that's a ridiculous premise, but many were. I have been searching for the Truth for over 4 decades. You are a cover-up artist.
throughout ALL ages-- eons of mankinds existence on this planet, there have been wars for territory and treasure in which those invaded are abused but, the stronger invaders win. . . for a while. Subsequently, virtually ALL civilizations have fallen while being abused just as their ANCESTORS did. There are no aboriginals.
Trying to understand which party to slaughter, abuse, torture, and genocide is worse is a waste of time and serves no purpose. BOTH were terrible.
I won't support either the Indians or the settlers as unthinkable acts were committed by them both. The Indians committed genocide and cannibalism on other Indians before any white dude showed his face. The immigrant Europeans repeated almost all of that; I don't think any cannibalism!
Wow - very thought-provoking in an excellent way! Thank you!
Thrilled to hear about your ancestors!
(I just finished serving as an elected HoA board member for 24 months in a community of 230 single-family homes with common areas). One of the most “tribal” experiences I have ever had - with some of the most entrenched, nasty people I have ever met…Immature, ego-centric, authoritarian, vile-mouthed, & terrible fiduciary responsibility to homeowners footin’ the bill.
HoA’s - a failed, collective mess.
I did likewise a few years back, even agreed to be president for couple terms. Same experience - "educated people" who had difficulty seeing, thinking, advocating beyond their own sphere of existence, presence, function for the good of the neighborhood and all members. Disappointing and depressing experience, but redirected focus and energy in more positive directions.
Same here! Thanks for sharing!
Frost was right about the fences.
Hear ya , lazy People suffer a mental & physical "atrophy" conditioning, there is no "trophy" in atrophy conditions !!!!
Nothing good ever comes from HOAs.
What a wonderful essay and Wow - such an impressive lineage!!
I descend from Swedish immigrants who came to America in 1900 - and who believed in “the idea” of an America that offered opportunity to those individuals willing to work hard. Ive recently been reading my grandfathers memoir - unpublished except for family members. He had a deep faith in God which sustained him through many hardships. He was my only grandparent that I knew - and I believe he instilled in all his children and grandchildren Faith in God and faith in the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers. I still believe and I still care but I am very worried.
Today - we have gone so far astray - and through my “deep” reading and paying attention, I believe all of humanity - America in particular - is under attack by purely evil globalists who quite literally want “it all” for themselves.
Seems it is a battle of good against evil and so many of us are asleep and have no clue…
I pray to be a part of the solution and pray that many more will wake up to what’s really going on.
🙏🙏🙏
alot of people in America don't seem to know what "good" is anymore.
They have no anchor for their soul. They are wandering
barbara
Don't forget the root of good is God. When you evict God from society you also evict good.
Amen to that
. . . because they have no faith in God.
. . . because their family has no father, not disciplining children.
. . . because their schools spurn all God-based facts and teaching while celebrating tribal (race, color, sex) roots and values; giving passing grades for failures.
. . . because mass media(TV, Movies, news) blind their parents to God while illuminating violence, race, sex.
. . . because synagogues and churches are hardly attended and their pastors have no courage to stand up for Abrahamic morals in public while opening their tent to abominations of morals.
Around 586 BC there was a remedy for such. . .
Perhaps one does not have to be of Jewish origin to see a future quite unlike the Golden years of yore.
Try asking someone with chronic and acute TDS, which is 100% of leftists, what they are for. The question will surely catch them by surprise. Very few can answer the question with any reasonable amount of articulation that would reveal forethought. You might hear “I’m for getting Trump the hell out of Washington DC!!”
What you are for is more important than what you are against. If all you stand for is what you are against, if you have no systematic or coherent worldview based on truth and the permanent things, the things which are good and have stood the test of time, you cannot contribute to moving the world to a better place.
I have been amazed by my neighbors on either side of me. One side can’t even abide anything of Trump or even Musk. The other side adores MAGA but dislikes the gay guy down the street. I suppose I’m in the middle. My late wife and I had political differences but could agree about most things and allow each other to be as they wished. But the anger of some is troubling. Trump is not forever. The pendulum swings. I personally think Trump is trying to improve the economy but is often ill advised. His ego gets in his way. But even a flawed Trump has been better than the alternatives we’ve been given.
This adherence to total partisanship I sense is harmful to our society. Where did tolerance go? Our Congress often gets deadlocked over trivia. Politicians often forget they serve the public not their party and by being totally partisan they discard nearly half their public. Please some compromise from them.
The founding values have been lost, I believe, due to the removal of civic eduction and practice from society. The Declaration of Independences 2nd paragraph, the Bill of Rights, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Pledge if Allegiance, field trips to city council meetings need to be part of all children's education through high school.
Dennis Prager has thought about this and discussed it in different terms - the ideal of liberty versus being taken care of. "The American Founders were so successful in launching the American experiment because they understood the deep “correlation between God and human freedom.” They understood and said, “we are free because God wants us to be free.”
Benjamin Franklin - Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither. Thomas Jefferson also said: He who gives his freedom for safety gets none of them.
https://www.prageru.com/videos/people-would-rather-be-taken-care-of-than-be-free
And in modern times, it doesn't help that we have become increasingly secular. We have replaced God with the state.
Yes. It used to be that God was thought of as omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. That now describes government.
To me, being an American means being free and using that freedom to lead a meaningful life.
I don't think one needs to be religious, but it does help greatly to have some set of strong convictions/principles if one hopes to not get sucked into the madness and destructiveness that certain elements are trying to impose upon our country.
C19 vaxx will clear out 80% of the population here. Many who remain won't be able to feed themselves (they can't now). The rest of us get to rebuild.
Unfortunately I agree with this comment. Of those of us left to rebuild, well, we'll see how we get along. All I can say at this point is, we do have a Bill of Rights, let's defend it.
PS A person doesn't have to be dead to be out of the game. Among those I know who took the mystery juice, I'm seeing a lot demented and otherwise debilitated people in my circles, and I am also seeing a lot of people whose lives are now crippled socially, professionally, and financially for having to care for demented and/or sick spouses and/ or family members.
How did I know they took the jabs? Because in 2021 it was all, ALL, I mean ALL, they could talk about.
Husband took two at the beginning of "covid era" because the kids made him...Now he can barely walk or feed himself. I refused them and will refuse them until I am lowered into the hard cold ground.
Kathleen have you considered the Ultra Spike Detox from Dr McCullough or simply just natto and lumbrokinase supplements? I have been but yet to take the jump. . .
Kathleen Nathan— so sorry to read this. May he find healing.
PS I remember the pressure to take the mystery juice, it came in heavy, and even like thunder, from all sides. It was understandably very difficult for many people to resist, and even today, very difficult for many people to believe there ever any reason to resist. Your kids meant well, I'm sure, that's the sad thing.
yes truly it is sad...I wish they would take the detox themselves as well. Everyone of us that has been cognizant for the last four years is experiencing this tragic scenario. We watch as our friends and relations are threatened with tragedy and it is as if an invisible glass shield surrounds them...they can't hear us...they are still listening to the SAFE AND EFFECTIVE bs from Tony Fauci and Dr.Rochelle Walensky i.e. the nominal head of the monstrous globalists that hope to take over the world. The usual alphabet suspects...WEF, CDC, HHS and the US military. God Help Us.
they got people to take the poison through fear and ignorance of the facts. The following revealing interview with Gary Berntsen and Lara Logan
https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=1658626&post_id=179893456&utm_source=post-email-title&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=qsdtw&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0NDk5NDMwOCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTc5ODkzNDU2LCJpYXQiOjE3NjQwNzU3ODgsImV4cCI6MTc2NjY2Nzc4OCwiaXNzIjoicHViLTE2NTg2MjYiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.igmIzDf1-DAUbsxvLdWUN8v19bT1_NCS4uAZt7kokK8
Absolutely!
Thanks, John Leake. I for one would be delighted to see you keep going in this vein.
PS We may be related. I too have ancestors from the Massachusetts colony, early 17th c. Well, we're all related if we go far back enough, of course.
A very noble tribute to your ancestry, John. My simple answer to what Should define what it means to be an American has already been penned. One Nation. Under God. Indivisible. With Liberty and Justice for ALL.
That's very noble family history! Sorry to spoil this great post, but one needs to be aware of what is happening in America TODAY:
https://rumble.com/v7272lg-you-wont-believe-what-is-happening-in-america-right-now...-its-shocking.html?mref=5grgb&mrefc=2
it is shocking and unbearable. How 2 such different past and current histories (if history can be defined as one day old event...) can exist in the same time?
YES, so you are comparing John's amazing founders legacy vs that of a poor trafficked immigrant girl abused to levels unbelievable(yes, I watched most of it, could not bear it all).
A horrible contrast.
I was NOT COMPARING the 2, I merely asked how comes that such EXTREME contrasts slowly but surely bring the current society. I actually thought more about what those amazing ancestors missed to do, to make this country 'great again'.
Old news. Been that way for a few decades but more pronounced now since major ops like Covid and health.
Man has a dual nature: as an individual and as a member of a group.
As such, a political and an economic system that is able to bring out those instinctual traits are the ones best suited to man's intrinsic nature. Capitalism and democracy are the two systems that best fits man's natural instincts.
The organizational attributes of the Constitutional Republic of the United States are the democratic embodiment of the political system that allows individuality yet tempers it with group controls.
Capitalism is the economic pairing of the Constitutional Republic political system.
The two together have created the ability for life, liberty and the pursuit of property to the greatest extent possible of all socioeconomic systems devised to date. That pairing has created the greatest prosperity for the largest number of members of any civilization the world has ever known.
The success we have enjoyed has created a complacent series of generations that will soon be tested by the forces of tyranny and authoritarianism that deign to take our success for themselves.
It remains to be seen if the US will rise to honor the words of Thomas Jefferson to fight tyranny, or has it become captured by other ideals of Socialism or Communism. The path of history is littered with great civilizations that have fallen to greater powers.
Tribalism as a country will be needed to rise to the challenge.
Well said.
I truly hope that we can get back to an enlightenment period. One that supports the individual expression and choices along with supporting those who are less fortunate. When we champion those who are ambitious, clever, determined and allow them expression and their inventions they go along way to support society as a whole.
The current divisiveness born of Marxism with its simplistic and damaging binary of oppressor and oppressed is not going to last long-term. It's a phase we are in, started in the 1960s which was perhaps inevitable even though also pushed by the wretched propagandizing Soviet Russian regime. It has to burn out and will never return, in my view. A superior and more authentic self-identity will take its place, marked especially by its LACK of divisiveness and superficiality, fake social justice ideals etc... That is my vision anyway.
Your Good Essence (Spirit) often comes out in your writings John!
The idea of America is Beautiful, though there were huge problems with what was done by those in power to the Native Americans and Slavery, but I believe the reality is America is a Zionist Occupied country since 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated. So America is hijacked. The Crown has been trying to take back America for 250 years and it is likely they are behind the Zionists as they and the Rothschild's made Israel. There are other Power "Families" fighting for control of America and the world, though they work together against humanity but fight each other for ultimate control.
In the end I believe those of the same Essence will unite and many of these Essences are very dark and will fight each other and those of Good Essence will be caught in the middle . . . but there is a twist!
Don’t blame Jews. That’s already been done!
He probably means Zionists, not all Jews. Zionists have had control of the U.S. government for a long time, at least as far back as the Bush II administration (And it has been reported that JFK was not cooperating with Israel's plan to keep its Dimona nuclear reactor secret from inspections). The US invasions of Iraq and of other Middle-East countries are part of the Zionist plan known as the "Greater Israel Project," which envisions the expansion of Israel by conquering and annexing its neighboring countries - all with U.S. assistance. Lebanon is thought to be next, and eventually Iran. Most Americans don't know that their tax money is funding all of it.
Here here! His will enact his Gen 12:3 promise on this who continue to denigrate them. As for the exaggerated and hidden reality of slavery and many of those "peaceful" Indians, try looking into the truth.
I never said all Native Americans are peaceful - that's a ridiculous premise, but many were. I have been searching for the Truth for over 4 decades. You are a cover-up artist.
You need look no further albert.
Please consider this:
throughout ALL ages-- eons of mankinds existence on this planet, there have been wars for territory and treasure in which those invaded are abused but, the stronger invaders win. . . for a while. Subsequently, virtually ALL civilizations have fallen while being abused just as their ANCESTORS did. There are no aboriginals.
Trying to understand which party to slaughter, abuse, torture, and genocide is worse is a waste of time and serves no purpose. BOTH were terrible.
I won't support either the Indians or the settlers as unthinkable acts were committed by them both. The Indians committed genocide and cannibalism on other Indians before any white dude showed his face. The immigrant Europeans repeated almost all of that; I don't think any cannibalism!
I never mentioned Jews. Not all Zionists are Jews and not all Jews are Zionists!
Tomato, tomato….