NEXUS

There are times in the lives of nations when circumstance and governmental actions breed popular dissatisfaction. There are times when this dissatisfaction grows to sufficient proportions to produce an outcry and demonstrations. Finally, there are times when the confluence of unacceptable actions and circumstances all come together at a nexus that breeds rebellion.

By 1776, popular anger at the actions of the British Crown and a parliament uncaring of the situation in the American Colonies, led to a popular uprising. The “shots heard round the world” were fired at Lexington and Concord, officials homes were burned, they were hung in effigy, tea was dumped into Boston harbor and true patriots pledged “[their] lives, [their] fortunes and [their] sacred honor” to the cause. It was an event like few others in history, and was destined to change the colonies into a nation, and shake the rest of the world to its foundations.

During the recent past, we’ve watched as the “Arab Spring” removed government after oppressive government in popular uprisings that echoed the movie line, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Whether we liked the governments that followed or not, they were not the ones each country began with and, after all, that was the point. Throughout the 20^th and now the 21^st Century, popular uprisings from Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East to Tiananmen Square have toppled governments or, at least, brought about a seismic shift in governmental behavior.

The United States is in the early stages of what may one day be called the American Spring. Recession, increasing income inequality, increasingly displaced and homeless people including veterans, wealthy politicians cutting back on safety nets like food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment and Social Security so that their corporate sponsors can make more while people starve and die, and now the undisciplined police brutality, including unindicted homicides of unarmed people appear to be approaching that nexus point where things will  come together and our Congress, responsive only to the needs of their corporate patrons and uncaring of the needs of the remaining ninety-nine percent of the people will find itself being forcefully reminded of the words upon which this nation was founded, and to which we must ultimately return;

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

The days of the new aristocracy are numbered, and when “We the People” become sufficiently aggrieved, we will arise and return, once more, to a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” More than 680,000 Americans died in the American Civil war to assure this and thousands more died through the years to maintain it. I sincerely hope we do not need to add to that number to return us to it but, as Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “[t]he tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”