A half-mad John Brown always appears at the beginning of a revolution; a wild-eyed Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, spirit of the grizzly. But future establishments will forget the true origins: The February 2009 action by New Hampshire State Reps. Daniel Itse (R) and Paul Ingbretson (R) to bring a state-based challenge to ObamaCare when 30-some states spontaneously followed. The second benchmark was the Nov. 4, 2014 election after which it must be said that states had come to think for themselves.
The spontaneity of so many states directly following New Hampshire’s cue in a challenge to ObamaCare brings a paradigm shift. It was the moment in which a new American sensibility matured and translated into action. It can be said for certain today that we are at a turning, not in New York City or Washington, D.C., but in the American heartland.
The middle states in America — the red states — are today undergoing a transformation. With the Tea Party as a trajectory, this movement has now risen to a second stage with the new Congress. The first phase might have simply declared itself to be fed up, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) had written in his 2010 book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington. The second phase brings mature commitment.
{mosads}This is political evolution as Thomas Jefferson intended: A rising instinct of Emersonian self-will and determination by people in simple agreement with one another, as they appear to be in the middle of America since the Nov. 4 election. It might well be expressed by comments of Sen.-elect Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) who rises to the Senate in the new Congress.
“Washington, D.C. isn’t the center of life. It’s Kimball, Nebraska,” he wrote in a thank-you note to his supporters after his election.
His comment suggests that prophetic vision in the later 1800s which anthropologists consider a singular, American creation myth. Lakota shaman Black Elk, second cousin to Crazy Horse, standing not far from where Sasse stands today, pointed north to the great mountain. He was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and “round and beneath” him was “the whole hoop of the world.”
But America is not alone in this. Israel undergoes today — this year — a fundamental change in character with a new generation of conservative leaders raising Israel to a new destiny. And Britain undergoes a change as fundamental to its character as the Glorious Revolution.
In the wake of Scotland’s failed attempt to separate from Britain in the Sept. 18 vote, a report of the Smith Commission for further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament appears this past week. The report “sets out the agreement reached between all five of Scotland’s main political parties: Conservative, Green, Labour, Liberal Democrat and the SNP [Scottish National [Party],” writes Lord Smith, who led the commission.
“The recommendations set out in the agreement will result in the biggest transfer of power to the Scottish Parliament since its establishment,” he writes. “The recommendations are explicitly designed to create a coherent set of powers that strengthen the Scottish Parliament’s ability to pursue its own vision, goals and objectives, whatever they might be at any particular time.”
Brings a suggestion of Perry’s comments at the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) convention last March: “I am reminded this morning of words that speak to the American soul … words spoken by Thomas Jefferson, who said ‘a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.’ … So I have a simple suggestion: It is time for a little rebellion on the battlefield of ideas.”
Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.