Musings on history...

 Every year, between supper and time for fireworks, we set the kids up on the couch and have them watch 1776.  They're usually really excited for it.  They've watched it every year for the past five or six years.  

Every year, they catch more of the jokes, learn a little bit more that our nation's founders were...very human.  Salacious, sarcastic, petty, vicious, desperately angry and frightened humans.  Every year, they comprehend a little more just how much of a miracle our country's birth actually was.  How close we came to that continental congress being deadlocked...or how close we came to independence not happening.  

Every year, "Mama, Look Sharp" makes me cry.  

Every year, I am reminded how little has actually changed in the American political landscape: we have neo-feudalists, fatalists, and a few (very few) liberty minded that everybody either ignores, makes fun of, or tries to shut up.  

This year, I caught onto something: as Rutledge attempted to shout down a proposed discussion on the idea of independence, there was a pointed reminder from Steven Hopkins, the delegate for Rhode Island (as he was getting more rum), ""Well, I'll tell ya, in all my years, I never seen, heard nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous, it couldn't be talked about. Hell yes, I'm for debating anything!"

Without that pointed reminder, Adams--and the United States as a sovereign nation--would have been cancelled by the forefathers of today's Democrats: a man who insisted that feudalism and slavery was morally correct.  

Unfortunately, by and large, we seem to have more than one John Adams, but we seem to lack both a Ben Franklin and a Stephen Hopkins in either house of government.  And a Rutledge runs both the House and the Senate.

(For now, at least.  We'll see what happens in November.)

And thus...honest debate and discussion are shut down before they can start.