Is the United States an exceptional country? What I mean is, this country seems to be founded on individual rights, something that most other countries seem to ignore. In most cases, other countries operate on tribalism, where individualism is abandoned in favor of the community.
As far as I can tell, the United States was the first country to be formed in the wake of the Enlightenment. At least that is the history I was taught. But given what happened during the French Revolution, I suspect that the Enlightenment had little to do with what this nation’s government was founded upon.
In any case, it was clear that this nation’s founders, while largely divided on many issues, felt that tribalism was not the way to go with government. It was a government that was meant to represent the people rather than to be a country ruled by a king or despot.
These days, however, our government seems hell-bent on letting the foreign tribes in. Be they Mexican, African, Chinese, Korean, or where ever else, our leaders, both Republican and Democrat alike, seem to want tribes to come here.
Unfortunately, this will not end well. A lot of these people come from countries where Statism is supreme, where the leaders are to be trusted, and where the individual is to be shunned in favor of the tribal needs.
Governments, in all of history, have thrived on tribalism. By being the leader of several tribes, most leaders were able to leverage their influence to cause infighting in order to ignore the leader’s own failed policies and mandates.
Today, we simply have political parties that seek to blame each other for the problems but offer no solutions. In doing so, they distract the dumb masses and trick them into failing at thinking critically. Of course, many people do recognize the problem, but still vote because they think they can change how things are. And while a few good men do come along every now and then, most of them are overwhelmed by the corrupt system that has been established and maintained by the people in the State.
The United States was founded as an exception to the general rule of humanity: that you need not be part of a tribe in order to live. But that has long since been abandoned by the Statists in order to maintain power over the naïve who don’t realize that politics is just a game without winners, just losers.