“A staple of American self-esteem is that we Yanks are brave, free, independent, self-reliant, ruggedly individual, and disinclined to accept abuse from anyone. This was largely true in, say, 1930. People lived, a great many of them, on farms where they planted their own crops, built their own barns, repaired their own trucks, and protected their own property. They were literate but not educated, knew little of the world beyond the local, but in their homes and fields they were supreme.”
“A different America, a different culture. We really were free. You could come out of the house on a summer morning and let the dogs run loose in the fields, nobody ever having heard of a dog license. You could change the oil in your car or rewire your basement without the county meddling. You could shoot varmints eating your garden and no one cared. The government left you alone. This is not an unimportant part of the dispute over guns – wanting to be left alone. Nobody in America, ever again, is going to be left alone. Not ever.”
Here’s hoping the author is mistaken. But surely only a catastrophic collapse of society as it now stands will allow for that possibility.
Read it all …
A Different America
“A staple of American self-esteem is that we Yanks are brave, free, independent, self-reliant, ruggedly individual, and disinclined to accept abuse from anyone. This was largely true in, say, 1930. People lived, a great many of them, on farms where they planted their own crops, built their own barns, repaired their own trucks, and protected their own property. They were literate but not educated, knew little of the world beyond the local, but in their homes and fields they were supreme.”
“A different America, a different culture. We really were free. You could come out of the house on a summer morning and let the dogs run loose in the fields, nobody ever having heard of a dog license. You could change the oil in your car or rewire your basement without the county meddling. You could shoot varmints eating your garden and no one cared. The government left you alone. This is not an unimportant part of the dispute over guns – wanting to be left alone. Nobody in America, ever again, is going to be left alone. Not ever.”
Here’s hoping the author is mistaken. But surely only a catastrophic collapse of society as it now stands will allow for that possibility.
Read it all …
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