No. of Recommendations: 12
I’m a big fan of hers, and there are other, similar examples. An even more telling one came at the beginning of the Republic, to wit:
The French and Indian war began in 1754 and ended in 1763, as the French enlisted native Americans to fight the British, perhaps as part of the larger French/British so-called “Seven Years War”. The British enlisted some natives on their side as well, and it was a large theater fought over 9 years up and down the border between English settlements and French territories.
Now I mention that it ended in 1763. You’ll notice that 1775 - 1763 is a mere 12 years. In 1763 you could scarcely find someone in a British colony who didn’t consider himself, uh, British, yet a mere 12 years later they were declaring themselves “Not British” or “Fully American” or some value in between.
(While polling didn’t exist in those days, latter day estimates indicate that about 1/3 of the populace was full on “Revolution”, and 1/3 was “I don’t care, just leave me alone”, and 1/3 was still loyal to the Crown.” Many of that last group eventually decamped to Canada.
Think of it! Just 12 years from “loyal subjects” to “full out revolutionaries”. While HCR talks about the Civil War, surely the time of greatest strife in the country, the period just prior to the Revolution surely qualifies as another example of the great danger of demagoguery, and I dare say the period between 1929 and 1935 could have ended quite differently had FDR not gotten hold of the reins of the economy and at least started to show *some* progress. The growth of Communism as a possibly viable alternative grew apace, as did the Nazi movement overseas (and here!)
Anyway, Democracy hangs by a thread at some times, the madness of crowds and all that. Please vote; I know that past four years haven’t been perfect, but they’ve been pretty good, certainly better than the four years before that. Of course that’s a low bar, but that’s what we’ve come to.
