A uniquely American resiliance

[[Philosophical note: I consider myself to be a happy pessimist. I see the glass as half empty, but only a lemon (which life is apt to give) and some sugar away from lemonade. I generally expect things to go wrong and then try to position myself to benefit.]]

Pessimists and International Relations scholars don't make for pleasant company when topics like the global geo-political solution come up. However, one thing, on further reflection, has me feeling a bit more optimistic than usual. The history of government in the United States suggests that democratic institutions can be far more resilient than a survey of history would suggest. I will leave open the question of what about the people of these United States has brought us back from the brink several times in our history, but a quick walk through of our history suggests that we are either very lucky, or have some anti-authority quality in our institutions and leaders that causes government power to retreat after a small over-step.

Following the Revolutionary War, our generals decided to get out of government, a largely unprecedented step in the history of man. A more likely scenario would have been what happened in South and Central America, where the disparate colonies could not agree on a central government, and went their own largely autocratic ways.

The Articles of Confederation suffered the classic problem of representative government: insufficient will or authority to accomplish tasks demanded by the governed (Hayek writes a great chapter on this when discussing 1930's England). In response, a group of men got together to overthrow that government and replace it with a stronger, "Federal" system.

The first leader of this vastly more powerful national government decided that eight years at the helm was enough, and voluntarily stepped down, setting a precedent that defined our chief executive for 140yrs. The third man to hold the office peacefully surrendered it to an ideological opponent, the first time in history something like that happened.

At the close of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee told his army to disband and go back to being good citizens. This spared the country the prospect of a long guerrilla war and the curtailment of freedom that would entail over and above those lost during the war.

In 1917, the Alien and Sedition act was dramatically strengthened to account for the fact that popular sentiment generally favored going to war on Germany's side against England. Wilson's administration, however, allowed its war powers to fade.

FDR tried like heck, and almost succeeded. The most recent administration tried to establish a "permenant majority", but failed because of gross incompetence.

This many times is too much to explain with luck. We've got something good here. Time to bake a pie and celebrate.