PART I PROLOGUE

Part I

Prologue

What is America? Is it not, more than anything, a concept, one kept and nurtured in people's minds? The best way to fathom this concept is to study Americans, and the way they have lived it. America is not her ancient documents, but the ideas born in them- and witnessed today in our lifestyles. And those lifestyles are so diverse, and so complicated that the concept has begun to evaporate. Grandiose and revolutionary, yet deeply personal, this magnificent United States, this uniquely humanitarian concept of society has endured and prospered in a hostile world. But it is not invincible. In fact, the concept is dying before our eyes.

The majestic, totally unique "experiment" of our wonderful country is dying for one simple reason. We have stopped the generation to generation instilling of our American values in our children. We began to trust our schools, too much, to educate our children about these foundations of our culture. But our ancestors knew, these values had to be taught from birth. And our mothers were our first social studies instructors. Our mothers demonstrated daily the simple lessons of citizenship, duty and representational government; The balance between God-given freedom and man-made rules; The consequences for our actions; Where our "rights" began and where they ended. It was every mother's job to train up good Americans. To raise patriots.

Thomas Jefferson was once the scribe of this brave concept, then just a fragile whim of an elite minority. A true academic with advanced ideas in science, philosophy and culture, Jefferson was tragically bound and flawed by the American institution of slavery, yet he still pushed himself and his country into a clever paradigm, where his fledgling nation could experiment with democracy and constantly improve upon itself. In his curious yet compromised intellect, Jefferson's idealistic vision of America was built on the noble, untried ideals of equality and justice and class advancement, and those things required unmitigated freedom. It is hard for us to remember, that when he wrote those famous words, even he did not enjoy those things himself. America was a dream. It has always been.

At the center of Jefferson's utopia were magnificent assumptions about mankind and its creator, a Supreme Being whom Jefferson himself studied but of Whom was not yet convinced. Still the truths which he proposed about God-given human rights and “Natural Law” were “self-evident.” Jefferson could write a beautiful and powerful preamble, which inspired the world, but deep down the whole thing was a mystery to even him. His own theology and convenient morality seemed to defy the very documents he is famous for authoring.

Still, those first Americans, the founders of the United States, loved Jefferson's poetic if not ambiguous approach, and agreed with him about man's basic God-given rights to pursue happiness, with freedom, and to do it without oppressive government, or repressive laws, or crippling taxation. And they were soon willing to fight for those concepts. Sadly and not surprisingly, after they seized their freedom, they immediately fought among themselves, and failed repeatedly to agree on the details of a collective concept of America, its structure, its laws, or its lofty ambitions and grave responsibilities. In the total history of man, no country had ever done this before, and our founding fathers almost did not either.

Today America is still in a bitter struggle over the same things. To Conservatives, America is the collection of cherished concepts drawn up by Jefferson and his colleagues, and their mission is to preserve and implement that body of concepts found in inspired documents from our past. The Constitution. The Bill Of Rights. America is Jefferson's vision, Washington's magnanimity, Hamilton's genius, all couched in Franklin's wisdom. But to Liberals, America is the grand experiment, with undeniable potential, and unfinished business, constantly growing and adapting and even changing in order to achieve the goals set forth long ago in order to remain relevant in our changing world...

And mothers are caught in the middle. Today they must do what they have always done, ignore the madness of American politics and focus on the basic truths. But today, those truths are not quite so "self-evident." A great deal of essential knowledge is falling between the cracks.

Conservatives love America for what it was designed to be; Liberals love it, or might love it, for what it could and should be, with their supervision and altruistic modifications. One group fiercely holds on to the past, and precedent, while the other rushes trustingly into vicious currents in an openm sea. Of course both are right... Our venerated founders designed the American system to be somewhat flexible, never dreaming that they were to be the last word on the subject. But they also could never have dreamed of the quandaries we would face, or the socialistic modifications that would be applied to their noble experiment over the past century. Just as in its beginning, “America” is a stumbling, self-contradicting surprise to the world. And still, in spite of all its bluster and confusion, it endures.

The concept, now almost 250 years under construction, is deeply rooted in each individual American's heart. Right where mothers have put it. But our diversity and lack of common vision has led to conflicting concepts of our nation. Yet our image and charm is universal, and has never been stronger or more magnetic. Throngs of people naturally migrate, and immigrate to our land, more than ever, sure that this is the place to plant their hopes. Like our ancestors, they still throw caution to the wind in hopes of something better; something their hearts crave- a life they would sacrifice and search the world over and take great risks for. Undeterred by our failures and disappointments, which Liberals especially obsess over, America still represents hope and even salvation for them. In fact, it is the greatest beacon of hope in this world.

Meanwhile, Conservatives still rally behind their popular radio spokesmen, who daily stand at the wall of Washington's grid-lock and wave the tattered flag of Jefferson's vision. And Liberals still insist that America, although a worthy project, is far from perfect, and in fact needs emergency surgery- immediately.

The only intelligent way that our mothers can indoctrinate our future generations- and light the way Americans will use to carve their future, is to truly relate to our founder's original concept. To embrace it in our souls. Each individual parent cannot invent his or her own country... There would be no purpose- Our foundations are still very relevant. The conditions which shaped Jefferson and his iconic verses still dominate the world. And the only way present-day Americans can relate to and embrace that concept is to see inside the founder's hearts and minds... and perhaps distinguish between the genius and the naivete, and appreciate its qualities while they forgive its shortcomings- and maybe then fully conceive our beginnings. And how precious and fragile they were. And then they can wisely choose America's future.

American success hinged on the founders' ability to suspend their passions enough to find a compromise which served the greater good.

Mothers make these kinds of judgments every day. No doubt Washington and Jefferson, our co-founders, learned that kind of judgment from their mothers...and yet they were arch-enemies philosophically. Our founders argued, threatened, protested, and then signed on to a thing far greater than any of them; Something large enough to house conflicting priorities and world views. Their differences fell to the wayside, because it was the love of their common ideals which overpowered their personal opinions. Great debate and passionate pleading yielded to compromise which then could forge a great nation. Today we have completely lost that skill. These things start at home.

It was the devoted love of that fledgling government, the hope it represented to mankind, which compelled the founders to suspend their passions for another one hundred years, before the mortal arguments resumed. We have forgotten what great things can be achieved through respectful collaboration; Hearing every side. Tolerance. Democratric principles.

From the beginning, the inevitable had happened. Godly lifestyle became secondary to material pursuits; African slaves had been imported for one hundred years, by the thousands, when our country was still a British colony. Our economy became addicted to and dependent on cheap labor, and America, from stem to stern, was corrupted to its core; upon its inception a “Slavocracy.” Then as new states were formed and American agriculture relocated to the more profitable climate of the South, the Northern states enjoyed a cleansing and distancing from the contradictions and injustices of human bondage. And they became a bit self-righteous, even when, for many of them,  their own economic advancement had been propelled by slavery.

This wave of self-tighteousness evolved quickly into intolerance. Abolition became the popular cry and American politics became a battle between regions over morality. The Media, limited to newspapers in those days, whipped up emotions, and the country was soon split apart. Insults and demands were publicly lobbed back and forth. A courageous and prideful people on both sides chose war, and our politicians fed the fire. It was a shameful breakdown of what had been a predominantly Christian, civilized society.

There were other influential factors, which guaranteed a costly, bloody and game-changing conflict, that are rarely mentioned today. As the two regions, the industrial North and the agrarian South had both prospered, economic competition was at a boiling point, where entrepreneurial Southern banks and corporations and foreign investors were beginning to threaten a long-standing economic dominance in the North. New York bankers had always financed the government and the national economy. New England “captains” of Industry had always enjoyed access to the ear of the New York banks and comprised the unofficial oversight over the country's free market economy; the ebb and flow of money, of profits and interest rates. Southern cotton and textile mills now threatened to subsidize new economic centers in the South, such as Richmond or Atlanta or New Orleans. Southern financial independence was considered as much of a threat to the North, as the loss of slavery would have been to the South.

With most of the moral arguments on their side, Northern capitalists and politicians forced the issues to the front which would preserve their national economic dominance, either by legislation or by force if necessary. And of course, their wives and the preachers, for a totally different rationale, wholeheartedly approved. Here is where American mothers first discovered their power and their potential influence. In popular novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin, with strong female readership, Southerners were stereotyped as racist monsters with no conscience, and Northern mothers raised their children to hate slavery and the people who practiced it. Southern mothers raised their sons to protect their farms and their livelihioods- to the death. Abolition or negro enfranchisement were not simple paradigmns to implement. Many Southerners were transplanted Northerners who had moved their farm operations to the South, having purchased their slaves from Northern slave traders. They would fight before they would be stripped of their investments and bankrupted. American mothers were divided and inconsolable, and our men fell into an age-old solution to political differences- all-out war. The election of Abraham Lincoln was the death knell for Southern slavery, the solidarity of American motherhood, and American unity.

President Lincoln, unconvinced about African-American civil rights, or enfranchisement, merely saw slavery as a terrible evil and a contradiction in American values, which needed to end. He had no viable scheme beyond emancipation. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, soon to become Confederate generals, would have agreed with him, but did have personal plans for negro acculturation, and were executing them. But instead of continuing those programs, they were soon leading the South in its war for independence. These two Southern military men actually epitomized a growing part of the Southern population, who were already taking radical steps to end slavery and prepare their Negro slaves for American citizenship. And they understood better than anyone the delicacy and difficulty of that mission, which they believed might take a generation. Both men were breaking state laws, as they educated their local slave populations. Whereas the North criticized from a distance, clueless about solutions which they never effectively provided, these and other Southerners were addressing a social evil with their time and resources, and understood what efforts and strategies might eventually succeed- and simultaneously create a significant and free negro demographic in American society.

Freedom, yes. But only as time allowed acculturation and education. Otherwise the prospect promised only Negro vanquishment, which was the result. And for hundreds of years.

Southerners believed that each American state had the right to protest Federal meddling in State affairs, and reserved the right to secede from the Union if necessary- and so did some Northern states. Some like the state of Ohio had even discussed or tried to secede, for instance, in protest of the Fugitive Slave Laws enforced by the Federal Government. If sessesion was unamerican, or traitorous, it had been discussed by states on both sides.

The original concept of America was clearer then. To all Americans, “Freedom” meant the right to live according to your own conscience, within the laws of the land, and the Federal Government could not just arbitrarily impose evolving moral values on anyone... Still the impatience of the North and the insolence of the South, and the indignation of both, led to the most bloody war in our history, until the Vietnam conflict; A terrible civil war which became America's down payment on its sins. Towns, states and families were destroyed, fortunes and legacies lost, and blood vengeance replaced patriotism and goodwill. And before all hell broke loose, the mothers of this country trembled. While their prejudices became a thousand battle cries. That is where we will begin.