Ah, Revolution.
Romantic thought, isn’t it? Taking an untenable social and political situation and hitting the big ‘Reset’ button on the old Nintendo. Start fresh. Start clean. Do it RIGHT this time. Certainly, it worked for our Founding Fathers.
You see, I’ve been hearing the ‘R’ word bandied about quite a bit in the last few weeks. Casually, as if people were trying it on for size, or as a rhetorical caper: “Do __________, and you’ll have revolution in the streets, Mr. Chairman!”
As Peter Griffin would say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa….whoa….whoa!”
Take a step back and THINK for a moment what revolution would mean in modern America. We are no longer a decoupled society of self-sufficient frontiersmen, able to handle the gamut from Native American attack through plague through famine in stride. We’re 300 million “entitlement” people without basic survival skills other than driving to Kroger to buy fuel.
Glen Beck said it best this weekend: You don’t get 1776, you get Katrina 2005 or Robespierre’s reign of terror in France. Riots in the streets, pogroms against disliked minorities (or the rich, take your pick), and demagoguery:
Yeah, so put the pitchforks down and let Democracy work. It survived the Great Depression. It can’t turn this country on a time, no, but you don’t WANT THAT.