In his story, Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past”. The history of the United States testifies to the truth of that. Just as it is with individuals so it is with nations – at least with the USA. The events and circumstances of infancy put their indelible stamp on the rest of life. The American nation was an uneasy alliance between the radical democrats of Massachusetts and the aristocratic grandees of Virginia. This alliance and rivalry endures today.
The American War of Independence, or Revolutionary War, was begun by the radical democrats of Massachusetts, Sam Adams, Paul Revere and the rest of the Sons of Liberty. They were joined by radical democrats in Virginia including Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. But the war was won by George Washington who became the first President under the new Constitution in 1791, the constitution of the United States of America still standing today. Few today realize that this was the second constitution. The Articles of Confederation was the first constitution of the new United States.
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 put a formal end to the war and the stamp of approval by Britain and France on the independence of the United States. But even by 1783 the first constitution of the United States was already proving to be a failure. Under the Articles of Confederation the federal government had no power at all to be a nation among nations, no power to tax to support itself or pay its war debts. The individual states printed their own money, flooding the country with worthless paper. Inflation was bankrupting those of modest means most of all.
The Constitution of the United States that we know today was drafted by 55 delegates to a Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, a convention which was urged and politically assembled by George Washington. Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams were not part of it. Those who had drafted the new Constitution agitated for its ratification by the States principally by the series of essays called the Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. The 13 States ratified this new constitution and the United States as we know it was truly born.
The first presidents of the new US government were men of this party and called themselves Federalists. But the radical Democrats pushed back; Sam Adams managed to get the Bill of Rights included as the first 10 Amendments. By the time Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated as the third President of the United States in 1801 the controversy between the moderate and wealthy Federalists and the still radical and still aggressive Democratic Party was vicious and even violent and the Federalists were losing the popular consensus. By the time Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828 the Federalist Party was extinct. But the denial of a voice in political affairs by the wealthiest Americans only drove them underground where their resentment festered and grew.
During the Jackson administration (1829 – 1837) the French magistrate Alexis de Tocqueville toured the new and radically democratic United States and published his observations in 1835.
From "REMAINS OF THE ARISTOCRATIC PARTY IN THE UNITED STATES" – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835:
"It sometimes happens in a people among whom various opinions prevail that the balance of parties is lost and one of them obtains an irresistible preponderance, overpowers all obstacles, annihilates its opponents, and appropriates all the resources of society to its own use. The vanquished despair of success, hide their heads, and are silent. The nation seems to be governed by a single principle, universal stillness prevails, and the prevailing party assumes the credit of having restored peace and unanimity to the country. But under this apparent unanimity still exist profound differences of opinion, and real opposition."
"This is what occurred in America; when the democratic party got the upper hand, it took exclusive possession of the conduct of affairs, and from that time the laws and the customs of society have been adapted to its caprices. At the present day the more affluent classes of society have no influence in political affairs; and wealth, far from conferring a right, is rather a cause of unpopularity than a means of attaining power. The rich … submit to this state of things... one often hears them laud the advantages of a republican government and democratic institutions when they are in public. Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them."
"Mark, for instance, that opulent citizen... His dress is plain, his demeanor unassuming; but the interior of his dwelling glitters with luxury, and none but a few chosen guests, whom he haughtily styles his equals, are allowed to penetrate into this sanctuary… it is easy to perceive that the rich have a hearty dislike of the democratic institutions of their country. The people form a power which they at once fear and despise. If the maladministration of the democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis... the truth of what I advance will become obvious.”
That could have been written to describe the wealthiest Americans of today. Some of them have some prominence in the media but they mostly operate behind the scenes and beneath the notice of the ordinary working people.
People like the Rockefellers have their own family values, values that are violently opposed to democracy. The Rockefellers (and their friends the Fords and the DuPont brothers) funded and armed Hitler in the 1930s in order to conquer the world and meanwhile destroy the Constitutional democracy of the United States.
Today these dynasts, allied with older dynasties in Europe, are newly armed with digital technology never dreamed of by the ordinary working person even 20 years ago. Their hand is mostly hidden behind a false front of democracy but they hate democracy and the Law and Constitution that sustains it just as much as their forebears in 1835 or 1861 or 1935.
The Democratic Party of today has been seized by revolutionaries every bit as violent as Sam Adams and every bit as determined to upend all of society in the name of absolute equality. These radicals on the street and in Congress do have a common goal, to overthrow the Constitutional Republic. The Democrats have already proposed to abolish the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court, bloat the Senate by declaring Washington DC to be a State, and remove from the president the authority to declare war. They have also used fraud to instal Biden as president. Their thrust is to destroy the Constitutional republic.
These radicals and their wealthy allies in Congress are contending for control of public opinion against those who would keep and defend the Constitution and these conservative minded people call upon the ordinary working American people for support. The new political forces have no proper party names yet but already it is obvious that the old parties are no longer relevant. This is a new civil war and a new revolutionary war; the end of it is not in sight though violence is already in play.
How strange is the United States! The past of its history is never dead. It isn’t even past.