Republicanism Hitting the Wall

     A propositional nation... Sounds adventurous, right?

     However, in the long run it can lose its luster and be very well potentially exhausting. Well, there you have it, ladies and gent's. The first finger in the eye. But, let's deconstruct it a little further, alright?

     In the beginning you had a ship, it was followed by another and another, until the whole virgin territory was set up with enough critical mass of then-modern society members that society itself was first allowed purchase on the verdant shores. Only one tiny problem... the land itself was already inhabited. A tiny problem, yes, because the previous inhabitants were of Stone Age technology. What were they to do against gunpowder and top-of-the-line war-fighting technologies? Nothing but give way, that's what.

     At that time, the settlers colonized and colonized. As a consequence, they grew and grew. Their cities (our cities) were established at places were transportation was easiest, and outposts pushed further into what is naturally called the hinterland - or frontier. With so much available land, resources were easy to find and exploit, and much trading business was formed and proved succesful. Meanwhile, the resources moving through the government also found their niche - aggrandizing and protecting the interests of these merchants.

     Meanwhile, 17th century Europe was changing, as well. An established feudal structure, comprised of different classes of people, was adjusting. The first class was the highest to God - the Church, the second - the nobles, and the third class - merchants. Nobles, who had risen to power during prolific military campaigns, were headed by a monarch. He wasn't, an- ymore, ruling absolutely but he held power in both the imagination as a figurehead of State, and above the military generals as an integral source of political aspiration (those who were knighted could make it into the lower rungs of nobility). But the three classes of people did keep to their designa-ted roles as a rule. (The serfs, of course, were the lowest subjects of the realm, but as they did not have political power, they are omitted from this discussion.)

     An interesting dynamic emerged, back in the colonies. Without pressure from warfare's constant threat, the third class - the merchants - were able to leapfrog the churchmen into the power vacuum left in the absence of a valued nobility. "Not valued?", one might argue... "What about the Tories?". A weak and marginalized group, would be the response. In the co-lonies, this was because: with no military campaigns to put much value on a comparitively rigid hierarchy where the king would many times serve as the general of generals (who could forget the Crusades?) the merchants, instead, formed powerful administrative structures... Colonial toryism was idealist romanticism, and was crushed in the English and Spanish colo-nies during the revolutionary wars. It had been progressively weakened as the power flowed into the trading groups of merchants who had capitalized on resources that flowed to them unchecked by any military resistance from the, again, Stone Age fighters of the N.American continent.

     Since this had happened on one side of the Atlantic Ocean, the other side's - the Europe-an side's - merchant class was emboldened and galvanized into action. Power grabs were made continentally, most notably in the French nation, as revolution finally toppled the nobi-lity and Church there. The guillotene and appropriation of the government and ecclesiastic buildings by the nascent State left an indeliable mark... However, republicanism was just beginning for the Occident...

     Indeed, the new-found power for the merchant class proved to be never enough. It ine-vitably was proven that the former hierarchies had been instituted for a reason, and as un-occupied land ran out, the merchants began to cannibalize on the citizenry. Throughout the 20th century, consumerism, brought upon by high pressure marketing techniques, gutted the nuclear family and caused large Church denominations to buckle under the pagan motiva-tions of Mammon. Holidays were abandoned, and the child-bearing half of the marital con-tract was encouraged to "sally" forth into the workplace. At this point, morality and tradi-tional respect for hierarchy has been discouraged by "rebels without a cause"... and upon such a weakened societal structure, it is clearly only a matter of time. There is a distinct sensation that we are waiting for the next phase... can you feel it too?

J.P.O.