Taking a request

Not really knowing what to write a blog about, I asked a friend of mine what he wanted to hear my thoughts on. He came back with the wussification of America. Not really what I had in mind, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I don’t think this is necessarily a new phenomenon. There had to have been somebody out there that caused Sam Adams make his famous statement, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” So it’s been with us from the very beginning. It’s human nature.

If we really look at history, it seems that the tranquility of servitude is a lot more common than the contest of freedom. Europe had been settled for centuries, and had a lot of peasants serving for a lot of years before enough of them got animated enough to cross the Atlantic. They left everything they knew behind to get away from it. They were brave, but once things got settled, some of them settled down enough that when the Revolutionary War came, some were looking fondly at servitude, at least if Ol’ Sam is to be believed.

Fast forward a few more years, and you find people pushing out on the frontier looking for freedom and liberty, and people staying in the settled lands trying to simply maintain the status quo. Texans fighting for their freedom, and their American cousins back east arguing about if they should support them, or cut them adrift so as not to upset international opinion. Coincidentally, there was less support the farther you got into settled territory. Belligerent Alabamans and freedom loving Kentuckians poured over the Sabine to stand with Travis and Houston, while politicians from the north east spoke against them.

Alaska, “America’s last frontier” became a state in 1959. Gun control laws there are in line with the Constitution as written by our founding fathers. New York City is probably the most settled place in America, and they’ve outlawed transfats. In relatively unsettled Alaska, the people exercise their liberty. In New York, the government tells people what they are allowed to eat.