America’s Trying to Become a Real Nation

And everyone is trying to stop it.

People have to understand, the colonies didn’t really want a national government, they barely wanted any federal government at all. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison had to use PR through the Federalist Papers to get the colonies on board with a federal system. Now in the 21st century, we’re faced with the stark fact that while we’ve had to get it together for foreign policy, domestically we’re still a gaggle of 50 states, loosely tied together, who really want to be separate and most importantly, don’t want to be told what to do.

America is a pretty spectacular place. Our system accommodates a state as liberal as California and as conservative and wacky as Texas or Louisiana. Our system balances Federal oversight with local control and while some would like more states’ control, over all, our system works, as long as you believe in individualism and don’t want too much community.

A nation of individuals not a nation of citizens. We have to draw together, we are not drawn together. We have an ethos about not invading each others space or lives. We are the people who left old Europe to go our own way. How does that fit in, in the 21st century? As the world comes together, we just don’t need a country like ours anymore. It is lovely to live here and have certain freedoms and self regulations but the simple fact is that the 21st century is about cooperation and community. Those are things we don’t do well and never have, have never wanted to do and most likely won’t be able to fix in the near term. This is the central struggle of this country right now. Forget Republican and Democrat, that’s not important. What’s important is that, on one side, there are people who want raucous individualism with little community and government involvement as possible and on the other side are those that want much more community based solutions that include the government and making sure that the system works for everyone, not just those lucky enough to have things go their way.

When you look at American politics through this lens, things begin to make more sense. One part of society wants autocratic solutions, and the other wants less government (on some matters) so that they can continue to do as they like with as few consequences from the community of the whole as possible. The real question then is this, Community or Individualism?