cawacko
Well-known member
Glad you asked.
Let's think back to the "type" of person the settlers were. Having lived under a strict system in England (bad-mouth the King and off with your head) and their religious upbringing their idea of freedom was not to do their best to rip off their neighbor.
For example, consider the following. (Excerpt) In 1629 a Puritan group secures from the king a charter to trade with America, as the Massachusetts Bay Company. Led by John Winthrop, a fleet of eleven vessels sets sail for Massachusetts in 1630. The ships carry 700 settlers, 240 cows and 60 horses.
Winthrop also has on board the royal charter of the company. The enterprise is to be based in the new world rather than in London. This device is used to justify a claim later passionately maintained by the new colony - that it is an independent political entity, entirely responsible for its own affairs. In 1630 Winthrop selects Boston as the site of the first settlement, and two years later the town is formally declared to be the capital of the colony.
This concept chimes well with the settlers' religious attitudes. They are Congregationalists, committed to the notion that the members of each church are a self-governing body. The towns of Massachusetts become like tiny city-states - each with a church at its centre, and with the church members as the governors.
This is oligarchy rather than democracy, but it is an oligarchy based on perceived virtue rather than wealth or birth.
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa80#ixzz1WkfaIiFL
As time passed and people spread out the same “philosophy” endured, such as wagon trains and setting up communities. While freedom and capitalism were present people were “judged” by their community members. Members helped each other and anyone caught cheating their neighbour was outed. Some small towns function in a similar way today. Once the local mechanic or storeowner gets a bad reputation his game is over.
Things sailed along quite nicely. People were free to pursue their interests but not at the expense of their community members and all were expected to help, when required. As the population grew and people started to move around more it was easy to start cheating others. The proverbial “snake oil salesman” emerged. The thief and the hustler moved on to another town. If caught, the chances were good they’d catch a bullet.
Then cities came into being. People realized they could cheat people, just a little, at least. There was, as one famous quote relays, a fool born every minute. Who better to attribute that quote to than a man who ran a circus and travelled from town to town never staying long enough to meet justice? (Whether Barnum actually said that is open to conjecture.) The point being the idea of community first, as a necessity of survival, faded to became “grab all you can”.
While ideas still flourished and, as you accurately stated, America become the most prosperous nation on Earth it was due to freedom, being left alone to think, for lack of a better definition. It wasn’t due to someone’s right to swindle his or her neighbour or otherwise endeavour to take advantage of others. If someone knowingly sold a sick horse they were liable to be shot. Today, (LLC) it’s close the horse shop, declare bankruptcy and start selling some other type of animal and the previous buyer loses their money. Or if ones reputation is in the toilet simply move elsewhere. Today’s society is geared to cheating people. Even Greenspan, after being warned about the bogus financial instruments, insisted once enough people lost money others wouldn’t invest and theinvisibleinsidious hand of the market would correct things. How well did that work?
In a sense America and other parts of the western world have reached a tipping point. It has gone from freedom with a responsibility to ones community to freedom with responsibility to oneself and it’s the former that made America great.
As a side note it’s most amusing to read comments from Dixie and others who rant about the dangers of social programs and the democrats passing laws without Republican input as if the government was an oligarchy. Where did we see that word before? Ahhh, yes. The original settlers! Who would have thought?
I can tell you in one sentence. The U.S. became the world's eonomic power because we have the most liberalized economy and we have created an entrepreneurial environment where the best and the brightest in the world want to come.
