"Thomas Jefferson once said that 'every man has two countries -- his own and France.' Today every man has two countries -- his own and America," write John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in The Right Nation [via Clive Davis]. The latest example would be the 40% of Mexicans who told a pollster they'd rather live here than there. But what about those fellow Americans of ours like Cindy Sheehan & Company -- not to mention all those moonbat celebrities who declared they'd leave the country if GW won the election -- who tell anyone who'll listen that America "isn't worth dying for"? America may be their own in the sense that they are citizens of the good old US of A, free to enjoy our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms without fear of a friendly visit from the secret police in the middle of the night. But the question is, where is their other America, their shining city on a hill that persons unlucky enough to be born elsewhere risk their lives to aspire to decade after decade?
Not to worry, thinks the blogosphere's favorite history teacher, Betsy Newmark of Betsy's Page. She's one American who's studied her history -- big time -- and delights us by drawing comforting parallels between then and now [plus ça change and all that]:
Are conservative and liberal blogs so very different today from those publications two centuries ago? Except just not as well written? Seeing how blogs are starting to both mold and reflect the news, I could almost think so.
Maybe, because I spend half my time reading and thinking about American history and the other half devoted to blogging away on current news, I start seeing intriguing juxtapositions. The 18th century was a time of a tremendous outpouring of public writing. There are literally hundreds of pamphlets and long essays that were printed in newspapers leading up to the Revolution. These writings, with the biggest example being Thomas Paine's Common Sense, helped prepare the minds of Americans in the decade leading up the Revolution. They served to begin the process to unite the disparate elements in the 13 colonies into what John Adams described as "13 clocks striking as one." During the 1790s, as the country split into two deeply passionate factions, each turned to newspapers and pamphlets to "get their message out."
Don't you wish you'd had a teacher like Betsy in high school? Maybe you did, but we had a vapid recent grad of the local teachers' college who had swallowed whole hog all the latest trendy leftist pablum re how there was no such thing as human nature and such. As we've blogged before, we knew it was wrong even then, but how about all those other kids -- today's swing voters -- who didn't have a clue and just did and thought as they were told? Betsy continues:
There is a similarity in the impact that blogging is having on political discourse. It is getting ugly and passionate. It is helping to both inspire and reflect a deep divide in this country. Jefferson wrote of how people in Philadelphia of the late 1790s crossed the street to avoid having to tip their hats to someone of the other faction.
The election of 2000 has nothing on the shenanigans in the election of 1800. This was a time when our country was as deeply riven by politics as any time except prior to the Civil War. And fueling that divide were hundreds of newspaper writers and pamphleteers. Reading a Federalist paper you can see a totally different take on current affairs than you would get from reading a Republican paper.
Where is it all heading in the current iteration of this timeless dynamic? Betsy cites Hugh Hewitt's pleasingly persuasive post about the relative impact blogs of the left and right seem to be having on the parties and the media in "The Information Reformation," where Hewitt quotes Michael Barone:
The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans.
We like the sound of that. Maybe some of our fellow Americans are studying history after all.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. It always amuses me to hear people talk as if "people have never acted like THIS to THIS degree"... or "people used to be so much more civilized and nicer"... and other forms of twaddle.
People are people. The methods may change (blogs instead of pamphlets - television instead of oratories in the park) but humans continue on in their usual fashion, some good, some bad. Thus civilization lurches onward.
Posted by: Teresa | August 19, 2005 at 09:27 PM