234 years after a group of officials gathered in a tiny room in Philadelphia and decided to turn the newly minted colonies into one big land of free agents, our country has gone up and down in popularity and effectiveness.
We keep building and breaking down what the founding fathers tried to do. Sometimes we take a step forward and other countries hate us. At other times we take a step backward, and other countries laugh at us (and still hate us).
We really shouldn’t base all of our decisions on what other people think. We started the country because we wanted to worship in our own way and make our lives without looking over our shoulders to find somebody coming our way wanting to take it from us. That hasn’t changed, only now the monarchy in England sends envoys instead of redcoats, and the true enemies come from other places that should know better than to mess with the American democracy.
Now that we’ve been here for awhile, we have established, challenged, and modified our documented rights to modernize our lives and try to maintain guidelines by which almost everybody can co-exist without much turmoil. Naturally some people don’t like rules, and some have their own rules which, within the confines of their own physical and psychological boundaries, may work for them but not for others.
People who don’t want to live by the rules have the choice to conform, deal with any consequences of not conforming, or leaving and finding someplace in which they can live by their own rules.
Even anarchy has rules, though they may differ with each person. The problem is, nobody knows anybody else’s rules, so everybody must break rules frequently in an anarchical society.
If we want to have co-existence, some rules are inevitable. Our original document–the Declaration of Independence–simply made it official that we weren’t going to abide by the rules of the place we left behind, and the Constitution set up the first of our own set of rules. They are not perfect, but they are necessary. If the people want to alter the rules, they can do so in a democracy with the popular vote. Those who don’t like the rules have the choices already mentioned. Anarchy did not get us to where we are 234 years later. Forgetting what we went through to get here won’t help either.
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