On Americanism
In 1787, Benjamin Franklin designed and commissioned the creation of the Fugio cent. Upon it read the inscription, Mind Your Business. There has been a long historical debate as to the exact meaning of this phrase, Mind Your Business, some arguing that is it meant literally, as in mind your finances, while others have argued it was meant as we know the phrase today, as in stay out of others business. Either way, Mind Your Business, in many ways, is the first unofficial motto of the United States of America.
I like both meanings of the phase, because both are applicable to the core of Americanism.
Now what is Americanism exactly?
Americanism is the radical idea that the individual is capable of determining what is best for them in any given situation, and that the rights of the individual are supreme over all other rights. It comes from the idea that you, yourself, and no one else, knows what is best for you.
This is indeed radical. Look upon the time period where this idea was spawned out of. Europe was still in the dark ages of authoritarian governments. Their leaders believed they were Gods gifts to the world, and that their rule was ordained by God himself. Virtually all Europeans were not allowed to criticize their leaders, unable to own land, and even unable to own a knife with a sharpened point, let alone a fire arm. The vast majority of European people were nothing more than slaves.
Then came the English Colonies in The New World.
Armed with these ideas of the enlightenment, and the mind virus that is the word freedom, a group of wealthy, business owning, learned individuals, knew they could do better than what was offered to them by their authoritarian leader across the Atlantic.
Thus started a revolution.
After the revolution was won, then came time to craft a new order in the New World. The men who crafted this order, took the idea of individualism, and the political ideas of Locke and Machiavelli (not The Prince, but The Discourses), and created the United States of America.
This became one of the grandest experiments in human history. At its core, the experiment, and truly most of American history, is based upon the conversation of the individuals place within a greater community identity. Never before had such a radical idea, the supremacy of the individual above all else, had ever been tried in a political setting. No one honestly knew if it would succeed.
It did succeed.
Now, nearly 250 years since the beginning of the experiment, the idea has forged the most powerful nation that has ever existed. The United States has the dominate world currency, the dominate world culture, and the dominate world military able to project itself across the entire planet.
How did this come to be?
It is quite simple really. It came to be based upon two simple concepts crafting the most efficient societal system the world has ever seen. The concepts are the supremacy of the individual, and then the individual minding their business, focusing solely upon themselves, in the process bettering themselves, and further, bettering society as a whole in doing so.
America is filled with nearly 350 million individuals. All making choices they see as best for them. From a societal perspective, this is nothing short of complete and utter chaos. Yet from this chaos, comes the most efficient societal order possible.
Where one individual sees opportunity in a market, they themselves have the power to cease that opportunity. Where one individual falters, another individual gains. Where one individuals business becomes bloated and lumbering, another newer business rises to overthrow them in their respective market. Where one individual becomes lax, another, harder working individual fills in the gaps. Where one individual collapses into dishonesty and corruption, another comes in with integrity and honesty, filling the void that is created. This system creates fierce competition, and from that, supreme efficiency at a massive scale.
This is the order that comes from an individualist society.
No centralized society can compete with the levels of efficiency born from individualist thinking. The centralization itself prevents it, due to the lumbering and cumbersome nature of the system. A society that empowers the few, will always be out matched by the society that empowers the many.
Thus an individualist society will ALWAYS out pace that of a centralized society simply due to these principles.
For this, Americans should feel pride in the system they live in and help perpetuate each and every day. Americans should feel pride when they wake up in the morning and choose to do whatever they they do, because they know, each and every other American doing the same thing they are, are helping create the greatest society that has ever existed. Americans should strive to make their society more individualistic, more focused on protecting the rights of the individual, because such a society will always produce the most efficient outcome.
The most efficient society will always be the most powerful.
So take pride in your Americanism, dear reader, and know you are one individual in a community of individuals, crafting the most perfect system ever conceived.
With that, I offer my fellow Americans a sincere thank you for doing whatever it is you do, each and every day you do it.
Thank you all!