The American Conversation

It was Henry David Thoreau who said, "There are a thousand hacking away at the branches for every one striking at the root."  What does this look like?  Millions of "Americans" running around like headless chickens, ever perceiving but never seeing the problem, let alone the solution.  Who can solve a problem by treating a symptom?  Does not pruning a bush simply cause it to grow back fuller and stronger?  How will throwing money at a symptom not exacerbate the problem?

Although America may appear to some to be spiraling out of control, it is not. Rather, the American People are lost and need only revisit their roots. To do this we must understand that America is an idea expressed through conversation-a contrivance existing by agreement in our minds.  Is mere dissent to a conversation enough to trump it?  If so, the idea prompting the conversation was not persuasive to begin with, or those engaged were either not convinced of its merits or failed to understand them. 

America is a conversation about an ideal, the latest rendition of the principle of freedom, an ideal as far away as it is believed to be. Thoughts of freedom  precede the conversation of freedom.  The battlefield for freedom is not on earth, but ultimately in our minds. America is championed relative to our conversation about freedom.

Freedom is not the conversation of the present "Administration."   If freedom is lost, it is because Americans have a propensity of being seduced into abandoning the conversation about the ideal for a more enticing conversation, the most current of which is security via democratic socialism.

Some argue that the term "America" means "Heavenly Dominion."  This is consistent with the certain self-evident principles upon which America is established--those expressed by the First Continental Congress in the instrument known as the Declaration of Independence. I question whether the American conversation has taken place since the ink dried on this foundational document.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with Certain Unalienable Rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever a government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and provide new guards for their future security * * *"

Lest we forget, this is the American conversation.