Are Americans Isolated?
I marveled, a day or so ago, as I read an article by Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post. The article was printed in my local/regional daily (owned by the New York Times) on Wednesday July 5th.
With all due respect, Mr. Mallaby, it seems to me, is very confused! Like so many folks reared in the old world, he does not seem to understand America not Americans. In his most recent article titled: “We have Isolated Ourselves”, he bemoans what he sees as a fact… that Americans have isolated themselves individually, from each other, and the world. He decries that as, somehow, bad! I, on the other hand, find it to be a hallmark of Americanism.
You see, before the socialists got hold to the Democrat Party, and infiltrated the US government, and before they managed to control Hollywood, and the so-called labor unions, Americans prided themselves in something called “individualism”. It meant we relied upon ourselves, and nobody else. That was a prized attribute and one in which we took great pride..
Then all the above happened (when FDR opened the door to socialism) and it has been a downhill slide ever since.
Our children have been indoctrinated, in the public school system, that they need to rely on others… that they NEED the input of others…that everything comes in shades of gray. In short, they are taught they must become a member of the mass known as society. Sorta like a beehive. You work and you die. Sound anything like socialism to you? Damn sure does to me!
Then we have those famous socialists who attained the White House, one of whom wrote a book telling us how it takes a village to raise a child. Not a mother and a father, a nuclear family, but a whole village! How nuts IS that?
So, now they are telling us that we are isolating ourselves. I certainly hope they are right! We need to return to a time when we were truly independent, when we truly valued individualism and had nothing to do with socialism. We were a great country then. Not rotten at the heart as we are now.
I think the movement toward isolation, or individualism, whichever you prefer, is a good thing for Americans and for America.
I truly think Mr. Mallaby has mistaken “aloneness” for “loneliness”. They are NOT the same thing.
I am an adherent of “aloneness”. I like it. I crave it; I revel in it, and, I do not recall a time in my life when I felt lonely. I don’t look to others for validation. I don’t feel a need for it.
I love to see America stand alone. That’s when she is at her finest!
This nation was created by individuals who felt stifled by European society. They came here to be ALONE. When the land, along the east coast, became too populated for them they moved westward. They finally reached the west coast. And that’s when things went bad. There was no place left to move to for individualist.
So where do the individualists go today?
If you were watching TV, at 2:38 PM, on July fourth, you have the answer. We are going to the stars! Why, because we have to… because we are being stifled here… because it is the destiny of man to be individualist, to reach out, to stretch himself, and to rely on his own resources, not that of a village.
You may not realize that when the Mayflower pilgrims reached the new world they decided, while still aboard the ship, that all agricultural products would be held in common. If other words, they instituted “collectivism”. We call it “socialism” today. Three years into their adventure as settlers in the new world, they found they could not grow enough agricultural products to sustain themselves as a colony. So they went looking for a solution. They found it. They allotted each person a parcel of land and that person was responsible for the food grown upon that parcel of land. All that grew upon it was his! That solved the food shortage problem. Thus ended the experiment with socialism in early American and… thus was the path set for “individualism” in America.
No, we do not look like the old world. No, we do not think like the old world. We are NOT the old world.
Americans are not nearly as individualistic as they used to be, nor should be, in my estimation. But we still cause the rest of the world to marvel at how we get things done when we set our minds to it. That, Dear Reader, is the result of confidence in oneself… as a direct result of individualism.
If Americans are isolated it is simply because the rest of the world can’t keep up!
Longstreet
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