USA: private & public behaviors

History is built by a succession of apparently occasional events whose interdependence is often just the product of fancy intellectually sophisticated ideologies that rarely find evidence of their correctness in the concrete aftermath. Catastrophists have always been proven faulty and shortsighted since Malthus (a scientist) to Al Gore (a fake Nobel price and Oscar award laureate). Revolutionaries have been proven as well faulty in their political theories as emblematically shown by the sixth Marx Brother with his ‘scientific’ forecast of the fall of capitalism. Any ‘revolution’ either acts in the intimate of each man (as all eminent gurus have made clear from Buddha, to Socrates, to Christ, to Gandhi) or is condemned to become a mere instrument of new despotic dictators (like always in history from ‘zealots’, to Jacobins, to islamic hashishiyyins, to anarchists, to Trotskyists, to Sandinists, Che-Guevarists and the like).

The flow of history seems apparently driven by occasional events in a chain of action-reaction steps.

It tends namely apparently to follow repetitive patterns that have been postulated intellectually by famous thinkers in any age.

However, if an attentive look at history is given trying to get rid of the ‘background noise’, one can perceive the trace of an ‘intelligent design’ linking together a few events that build the landmarks of a growing order and enhanced ethical content of the human society. A sequence of military and political landmarks that gradually and unconsciously have built what we may call ‘the western Civilization’.

Just to be specific and politically incorrect!

One’s Country can either be the one where his past history has decided to host our birth or the one where we responsibly decide to become a fellow sharing a common cultural faith disregarding the diversity of our roots and education from those owned by our chosen peers.

Anyone can become a new member of the American nation, disregarding his formal status of citizens-hip. Only him who is born somewhere is endowed of the citizenship delivered him by his parents.

Being a ‘nation’ means two different things for him who willingly selects to share a national spirit and for him who naively accepts sharing values he believes more advanced than those still prevailing in his native country.

It’s attractive for any observer of human history to check the permanent diversity ruling the private and public behavior of the two kind of ‘nation’ in the centuries.

The best example of a country where citizenship was based upon ‘shared values’ was Rome. It grew by a constant inclusion of fellows of alien culture if only they were willing to share his citizenship’s spirit and to reject any citizen who showed despising the ‘civis romanus’ spirit. Remo was the first to learn it for his felony against the very first statement of loyalty to the spirit of Rome; safeguard of state limits.

Romulus, his brother and co-founder, delivered that mythological public punishment.

A few other countries absorbed that spirit of citizenship that was anyway always partially hidden by the ‘national’ cultural ‘superstructure’ originated from the fall of the roman empire.

The countries that aimed the objective to expand the roman ‘spirit of citizenship’ had the willingness to impose as well their country’s supremacy upon the new peers.

So did the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. So did too the excellent Habsburg’s Austro-Hungarian Empire. So did the hatred British Empire from Elizabeth I to Victoria before the loss of the Commonwealth was brought to an end by the several bloody ‘European civil wars’ of the twentieth century.

The only country that absorbed fully the roman spirit of citizenship was the USA and his constitution that established the ‘spirit of ‘76’. The native-american has been entitled the citizenship or sharing their ancestor’s culture within the specific boundaries of their Reservations. Anyone immigrant was given to share citizenship just by sharing the oath to the constitution and the flag; in Rome’s spirit. Citizen who have been found disloyal to the given oath have been deprived of the citizenship and rejected out of the country limits. Nazi-criminals, mafia-members and anyone who had proved disloyal by committing forgery of acts or perjury. Personal responsibility starts at the very start of citizenship.

The private virtues of the American peers are based upon the most individual bottom-up spirit of responsibility as the true benchmark stating loyalty to the ‘spirit of ‘76’.

Not links of blood or ancient roots feed the vitality of the USA-nation (exactly as it happened in ancient Rome). ‘Rome’s civilization’ is constantly revitalized by new blood supplied by newcomers if they freely adhere to the ‘spirit’ of the roman-greek-christian civilization. New vitality to the common faith comes from the ‘barbarians converted’ to share the common oath.

Rome diffused all over the world thanks to the ‘celtic german’ barbarians who fell in love and absorbed the basic ‘spirit’ of roman citizenship.

Italy since then had fulfilled its mission in history. Italy couldn’t ‘convert’ to the new fashion of the Nation State. The many town-states of Italy absorbed any ‘barbarian’ newcomer while the rest of the world built the age of the Nation State around sectarian legitimacies such as language, religion or ethnical purity. Concepts alien to Rome’s citizenship. Latin remained the common language along all the Italian peninsula but was never accepted as the legitimating element. Nor was religion disregarding the reformation and counter-reformation struggles. The many town-states rejected religion intolerance by declaring faith in Catholicism though practicing that common faith in ‘creative’ and personalized ways to the ‘local’ way of life. Basically religion staid out of politics. Diversity of opinion and behavior inspired the Italian culture along both the Humanism and the Renaissance ages. Even Popes behaved oft more as Princes than religious shepherds. That caused namely the ‘rebellion’ of the Celtic, German peers who had instead ‘converted’ to the spirit of Rome that imposes division of power between the King and the Pope. Between crime and sin. The Italian ‘dissolution’ of behaviors that blended again the two items into an apparent fundamentalism but really a cynical abuse of that unification of moral and ethical powers was abhorred by the newly ‘converted’. Machiavelli could only be morally born in Italy though he could only be useful in the Nation States which were struggling on the widening geopolitical scene.

In Italy anyone is still a ‘civis romanus’ because anyone resident has ‘alien’ origins. Everyone is a ‘bastard’ carrying the blood of the most inhomogeneous ancestors. Along the roman tradition to fuse in unity any former enemy into an ally and then a ‘colony’ at full rights and duties. The very concept of ‘colony’ is different as it is perceived by the Nation States or by Rome (and Italy during the Venice and fascist ages) and by the USA today. A ‘colony’ is a part of Rome where ‘romans’ settle to establish the rule of their civilization and mix their blood with the once-barbarians living there. Rhodes and Cyprus were Italian since they had been Venetians and Romans before Italy was established as a mock Nation State at the very end of the Nation States age and at the inauguration of the ‘globalized’ age when the basic values of Rome have been revitalized by the USA ‘spirit of ‘76’, by the new-latin use of English as the common language and by the end of ‘colonialism’ as it had been interpreted by the old Nation States during their civilian wars to ‘invade’ the world.

Sicily could have become the 50th state of the union at the end of world war II, Puerto Rico could become the 52nd state of the union today if only they could share the bubble up spirit of government ruling the USA.

A spirit where the public officers are elected by free vote of the local community. The sheriff can deny anyone found disloyal entry within the ‘city limits’. So can the elected justice. No community shall previously apply the permit to install a new ‘local community’. A cluster of free men settling residence somewhere shall be entitled by natural law to elect a Mayor, a Sheriff, defend their property by bearing arms, elect a justice, create their school, their church, their clinics and criticize freely each others’ style of life free from anyone else’s intrusion.

Our western civilization (greek-roman-christian) has constantly advanced establishing its hegemony upon the globe through a bloody process of ‘trials&errors’ that, on the one side, helped to gradually adapt its basic values to the changing needs of the environment and, on the other side, helped to enforce its security against alien ‘polluting’ challenges.

The first sequence of historical events shape the political growth of the western institutional system.

The second sequence are the few, critical military events where history could have dramatically changed in case of a western defeat.

The few military landmarks that enforced successfully the expansion of the western civilization are sell known and can be quickly summarized in: Troy where Asiatic satrapies found their first mythological stop; Thermopiles, Marathon and Salamis where the Persian satraps got finally rejected; Roncevaux where Islam got its first stop in Europe; Wien and Lepanto where Islam got its final halt in Europe; the fall of the Wall in Berlin where the sectarian intolerance of the Nation States ‘nationalisms’ and of the secular religions injected in history by the French Revolution with its fake, reductionist interpretation of ‘Enlightenment’ as the denial of God and its replacement with ‘Science’ as the ultimate Goddess as a means for humanity to get rid of religious ‘superstitions’.

The few political landmarks mark instead the start and end of prolonged periods crossed to metabolize fully the discontinuities pragmatically imposed by history upon the western culture. Steps needed do reappraise its basic values and tailor them to the changing environment.

The few political landmarks can be exemplified by the following: Christ punishment accepted by the roman praetor in Jerusalem to humor the autonomy of the ‘local’ Jewish Sanhedrin court of justice that ended in the formal Constantine’s recognition of Christianity as the independent moral authority under Rome’s civilian right; Fall of the Roman Empire started in Rome around the 476 with Romulus Augustus and ended in Constantinople in 1473 with the capture of Constantine XI by ottoman Turks; Birth of Nation States that started gradually replacing the Emperor’s authority in the western world at the end of the first millennium with the eldest monarchies (Knud of Denmark 800 - and extended along the centuries until the birth of the last States still going on in the age of ‘globalization’ today) during this age the state institutions gained gradually through bloody world-wide confrontations and civil wars their ‘formal’ liberal-democratic values replacing ‘content’ with ‘formal’ complying to the law by any of the state ‘powers’ in their game of mutual check&balance; within that apparently ‘negative’ age the western civilization gradually specialized its institutions and gained for them specific independence with formal or informal respect stated by use through landmarks such as: Magna Charta Libertatum (1215); the Declaration of Human Rights (1776 in Virginia and then in the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, in 1789’s France and finally – after the final defeat of the NationState - in the UNO in 1948); the autonomy of the University started in the early middle-age with the first formally recognized institutions (1088, 1158 Frederick I), the media autonomy started in 1616 with the first newspapers and grew gradually until the formal recognition of the ‘media’ as the fourth power (Citizen Kane 1941) – not yet enclosed in the liberal-democratic institutions’ check&balance game.

The bloody struggles and wars have brought gradually to get rid of the Nation States’ age and to inaugurate the birth of a new supranational governance based upon global institutions ruled under a spirit of the western civilization as it started in Rome by merely replacing English to Latin, dollar to sestertius, jurisprudence under common law to praetorian jurisprudence under Rome’s rule.

History has extended the civilization to the whole world, we only lack today the technological infrastructures needed to translate the potential growth of welfare into a reality affordable everywhere in the globe; logistical, educational, communication networks available in a diffused way all over the world.