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All Along the Watchtower

~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

All Along the Watchtower

Tag Archives: Declaration of Independence

What is America for Mummy?

04 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on What is America for Mummy?

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Declaration of Independence, history, Holidays, Jessica Hoff, United States

633701545The main part of this post is one of the first posts Jessica wrote for my blog. It’s still one of my favorites, and I think it explains why there is something a bit special about America, that has drawn so many to our shores.

Not long after wwe met, Jessica asked me in an email, 

Perhaps the parallel goes beyond just the early pilgrims? America is either a vision of what can be, or it is nothing.

That is the choice we face, and it’s a stark one. Either we are who we have always said we are, or we are just another slave state like Europe.The question must be answered by the American people, we already know what the government thinks, don’t we?

Churchill said, in the Grand Alliance

But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before—that the United States is like “a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is ignited under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.

That is true, we are Americans, we can do anything, if we choose to. Is the fire under the boiler lighted? If it is not, the dream is over. If it is, anything is possible for us.

It strikes me that we often become bogged down in detail, in theory, in the mundane day-to-day stuff that we deal with. We tend to forget what it’s all about, and we shouldn’t. Almost from the beginning, America has been a dream; a dream of freedom above all, but also of material prosperity.

It was such a potent dream that Italian peasants told each other that the streets were paved with gold, although they knew what really awaited them was hard work, and bias against them because of their language and religion but, they came anyway, and if they didn’t have much but hard work and cramped tenements, their children did. And that’s really what the dream has always been: for our children to have a better life than we did. In the nineteenth century, Russian immigrants who had never had anything but black bread, except maybe on holidays, wrote home ecstatically that “in America, we eat wheaten bread every day.” And that too was part of the saga of America.

That’s what we have built over the last 400 years, a dream of freedom, of individual liberty, yes, but also of freedom from material want by virtue of hard work. And you know, as Jess is going to tell you again here, that is really pretty damned heroic as well. Here is Jess’ post. Neo]


When I was ten, I lived in America for a year – in the mid-West. I remember when we got to O’Hare airport looking at its size and marvelling; it seemed bigger than the town in which we lived in Wales. I recall going to St. Louis and seeing the Arch, and going up it and looking across the vastness of the city and asking my mother: ‘What is America for mummy?’ I can’t remember what she answered – she probably thought it was me trying to be clever; but it was a real question, and one I came to ask a few times whilst I was there.

I think I asked it for the reason many foreigners ask – there is something different about America.  I remember going with my mother to a Kiwanis Club and being struck by the way everyone put their fist on their breast as they swore the oath of allegiance to the flag. Indeed, I was so impressed that I memorised it so that the second time we went, I could do it too. I remember a nice man smiling but saying that I couldn’t do it because I was not an American citizen.  ‘How do you get to be one of those’, I asked? ‘Well, little lady, you could always marry an all-American boy’, was the answer.  I think I said something about ‘smelly boys’ and never wanting to get married because I wanted to be a nun. But a bit later I recall thinking that maybe the kind man had a point.  America, the very idea, seemed Romantic.

My father was fifty when I was born, and his tastes in movies became mine. When other teenage girls were swooning about Kevin Costner (really???), I was dismissive. John Wayne was my hero – and remains so. He summed up America for me. Strong, but never boastful about it. I remember crying when I saw ‘The Man who shot Liberty Valance’ – it was so unfair – it was Tom Donovan, not Ransom Stoddard who shot Liberty Valance, so why did the latter end up with the girl? Huh, I remember thinking, if I had been ‘the girl’ there was no way I’d have chosen Jimmy Stewart over John Wayne – what was she thinking?  But, as Tom Donovan might have said: “Whoa, take ‘er easy there, Pilgrim”.

The film’s message, which passed me by in my indignation, was about the passing of the old West, and the place of myth in the making of a nation. America is a nation built around myths and legends. That is not to say they are wrong, it is to say that those movies told a bigger story about the making of a great nation and what made it that. All nations need myths, and the point about the American one seemed to be encapsulated in my second favourite John Wayne film – ‘She wore a Yellow ribbon.’ Captain Nathan Brittles was the quintessential quiet American. A man who, having lost his family, was married to the army, and who did his duty, no matter what. My teenage heart went out to him, and I was very sniffy about the heroine going off with those ‘boys’ rather than a ‘real man’.

What John Ford caught in those films – especially the great trilogy which began with ‘Fort Apache’ and ended with ‘Rio Grande’ – was the very idea of America.  Call me a Romantic (no, do) – but that idea of America remains with me to this day. God Bless America – the land of the free.


I think Jess is very right, America is romantic, and yes, you can call me one too. But if we take the romance, and yes the legend and the saga out of our history, we are left with a strip of dirt, and just another group of people. That’s not my America, either. Here’s a piece of the legend. Neo

Happy Independence Day

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Freedom’s Week

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by Neo in Church/State, Politics

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

American Revolution, Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence, English Civil war, Philadelphia

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe first week of July, should be celebrated by us all, for this week, above all others has made our world, under the leadership of the English speaking people, free.

Don’t think so? Let’s look at it.

1 July is Canada Day. The Canadians aren’t nearly as noisy as the rest of us, granted, but they may have done more, per capita for freedom than any of us. Not for nothing did General Eisenhower, himself, say that the best troops under his command were the Canadians.

2 July has two events.

In 1776 the Continental Congress adopted Richard Henry Lee’s (Virginia) motion that “These colonies are, and ought to be, free and independant States.” We’ll speak more of this later.

The major event of 2 July was 132 years before that day in Philadelphia was the Battle of Marston Moor, where the English Civil War turned irretrievably toward Parliament’s victory, thereby assuring that the end of extra-legal rule by the King.

And of course, 238 years ago today, the Continental Congress signed Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration that starts

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Marston Moor and the Declaration are in exact alignment with each other. This was really not much more than the English Civil War moved to the New World. The causes were the same (arbitrary government) and even the names were the same. Many, many colonists had returned to England to fight with their families in the Civil War.

Other dates can be added of course, the signing of Magna Charta, Henry VIII’s break with Rome, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, even the ancient memory of King Alfred the Great’s Charter, but what they add up to is the separation of the English speaking people from the authoritarianism of Europe. And the supremacy of the people in in Parliament (or Congress) assembled.

All through our history we have fought against tyranny, and for the  Rule of Law. What do we mean by that? We mean, and we have always meant, the objective rule of law, not men.

But we need to be careful, we have done well over the last thousand years but, we will never win this war, no matter how many battles we win. There are always men who would rule as absolute monarchs, and they often repackage their tyranny in what looks like new and shiny packages. So it is now.

Philip Hamburger is the Maurce and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He is a distinguished scholar of legal history and the author, most recently, of Is Administrative Law Unlawful?

But what is administrative law, and why are you talking about it now? It’s a quite simple answer, and I’ll let Professor Hamburger tell you.

[…]Administrative law is commonly defended as a new sort of power–a modern power that developed mostly in the twentieth century to deal with the complexity of modern society. And, at first glance, there is some truth to this story.

The federal government began to exercise administrative power only in the late nineteenth century and gradually made it a central mode of governance during the twentieth century. For example, it expanded administrative regulation in the 1930s and again in the era since the 1970s. Administrative law thus seems to enjoy legitimacy as a modern response to modern society.

Sociologically, the message is one of modernity and necessity–that administrative law is a novel type of power, which is needed to handle the complexity of an advancing society. It thus is anti-modern and Quixotic to resist this power.

Constitutionally, the message is that administrative law developed after the adoption of the Constitution. Administrative power thus (allegedly) could not have been anticipated by the Constitution. From this perspective, although this sort of power is not constitutionally authorized, neither is it constitutionally barred. It therefore (supposedly) can be lawful as a necessary and modern addition.

Such is the conventional history of administrative law. And it is a reassuring story, if you believe it.

~~~~~~~~~

In reality, administrative power has a much older and darker history. Far from a novel and modern response to modernity, it revives what used to be called prerogative or absolute power. Put more concretely, it revives extralegal power. It thus is exactly what constitutional law developed in order to prohibit.[…*]

And so we see that administrative law is nothing but the return of feudalism in all its capriciousness. Seems to me that those 56 mostly young men in Philadelphia back in 1776, very few of whom prospered and many of whom died penniless, had something to say about how we remain free.

Oh yes, this was it.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Emphasis mine

Why would we assume it will be any easier for us?

Do we still believe: “It is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees“? Or maybe we don’t…

Nor should we forget that the landmark study in economics, “The Wealth of Nations”  was published by that canny Scot Adam Smith in 1776 as well, and thus was provided for the incredible gain in living standards of the last 200 years.

Something else we have in common: This. Best known from Rorke’s Drift, it was also heard at the 1st of Ia Drang, and at the World Trade Center on 9-11-01

*  IS ADMINISTRATIVE LAW UNLAWFUL? A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

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a scrap book of words and pictures

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reflections, links and stories.

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reflecting my eclectic (and sometimes erratic) life

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A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you ... John 13:34

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