> It was the abundant crops that allowed some Americans to think about liberty.
The funny thing is that you even quoted the part of my post that shows that what you're saying isn't supported by the facts of the timeline according to a written historical record.
The first settlers who left Europe mostly left for Liberty -- religious and otherwise. These were people concerned about Liberty before there even were colonies. There was no great farmland available. There was no Mississippi. There weren't even any slaves to leverage as resources. Yet, if you read the historical records, those early settlers wanted mostly to get away from the oppressive States of Europe. Freedom was their issue and it was tightly ingrained in the American culture from the beginning.
Fast-forward to the American Revolution (all about Liberty, read the writings of the Revolutionaries), and you'll see that these people were fanatics about restraining the central government long before it even had any interest in anything outside of the 13 colonies.
> An Amerindian displaced from the Mississippi 200 yrs ago or a homeless Black 50 yrs ago won't understand any of the "liberty" and "rule of law" there's been.
Slavery was horrible and really the poison that was allowed into the US founding that led to the destruction of the notion of States' Rights when we fought over the issue during the Civil War. That original sin has pretty much cost us our Liberty, since after the Federal government forced its supremacy it broke the ability of States to protect themselves. It shifted the American power structure from being bottom-up to top-down.
Amerindians were killing and DISPLACING each other over primitive tribal issues long before we arrived. Unfortunately for them, the European technological advantage was so great. That said, I like to think that we've learned a lot as a society as we proved after World War I and beyond where we never tried to keep by force any land where we fought battles for some cause.
You bring up an unintentionally interesting point: If American resources and geography were such a societal advantage, then why isn't the Amerindian culture the most dominant in the world now? They had numbers, access to the same resources, geographic isolation to protect them from other countries for centuries, etc. But they never progressed and became "important" as a society. Even after Europeans showed up and allowed them access to our technology, they used some of it pragmatically (horses and guns), but they never embraced the cultural underpinnings that would have allowed them to challenge us.
The importance of liberty in American society _today_ is greatly overstated. You seem to acknowledge that in comments like "we've pretty much thrown away most of the restraints on the Federal Government spelled out in the Constitution" regarding the present day, and "That original sin has pretty much cost us our Liberty" regarding slavery until 150 yrs ago. But perhaps the original Mayflower and other migrations, and even the constitution, are not very different from other cultures also.
> Yet, if you read the historical records, those early settlers wanted mostly to get away from the oppressive States of Europe
This has happened throughout history many times, from the ancient Greek diaspora around the Mediterranean to the modern-day Chinese diaspora around the Pacific rim.
> There was no great farmland available
People from various European states went to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, which were fertile.
Where there's land to settle, people go there. The southern Europeans migrated to South America in large numbers. The Russians migrated across the steppe. The Polynesians rowed to New Zealand. The coast of North America was no different, just a lot smaller scale than the Mississippi, which came later.
> after World War I and beyond where we never tried to keep by force any land where we fought battles for some cause
why bother keeping any land when you control the world's oceans?
> why isn't the Amerindian culture the most dominant in the world now?
for the same reason humans didn't become dominant anywhere until they discovered agriculture.
> But perhaps the original Mayflower and other migrations, and even the constitution, are not very different from other cultures also.
To argue that, you'd really have to ignore thousands of documents written by the Founding Fathers as well as the Declaration, the Constitution, and the very actions the Founding Fathers. They could have granted themselves and their families royalty status. George Washington literally turned down the offer to be King of the new nation as well as the chance to reign as a perpetual President.
We have their words to read and their historical deeds to examine to show that they were nothing like the Greek Diaspora who folded themselves into the cultures they moved to. They were nothing like the Chinese Diaspora who had no culture, history, or even writings that I could Google that expressed even the remotest philosophy of Democracy or Individual Sovereignty.
> for the same reason humans didn't become dominant anywhere until they discovered agriculture.
But agriculture is just an idea. The main thesis of the article is that resources made America important. That's not true. The resources were here before the Euro-American settlers were. It was the ideas and the culture to use them that made the resources anything more than "worthless" empty fields.
> George Washington literally turned down the offer to be King
as did Mao Zedong, who could've turned China into a defacto Emperorship like North Korea.
Some countries/peoples talk about "Freedom" with religious fervor, others talk about "The People" with religious fervor, but it's all just a narrative constructed to unite a people.
>> George Washington literally turned down the offer to be King
>as did Mao Zedong
Okay, that's downright disingenuous trolling. Mao ruled for over 30 years and then handed over power to his hand-picked successor. Mao killed over 50 MILLION of his own people in order to hold on to his power.
Equating George Washington's action in turning down power to Mao's while ignoring the historical record of both of their actions has got to be intentional.
This tit-for-tat has gotten far away from what the article says. I stand by my previous claim that...
"The article specifically mentions the Mississippi River, and compares the cost of transport by sea, road, and rail. Control of waterways has always been key to great power status. Controlling the world's oceans, especially chokepoints like Panama, Singapore, and Hormuz, lets the US project maritime power. Controlling the Altantic slave trade gave England, France, and Spain the upper hand at various times, and big wars were fought for the prize. Joining the Yellow and Yangtze rivers into one via the Grand Canal around 600ad by the Sui/Tang dynastry is what propelled China to become the world's greatest power for a thousand years. The Romans took over the entire Mediterranean, settling the entire coastline, after smashing Hannibal. And of course, control of the Nile, Euphrates/Tigris, Indus, and Yellow river basins is what made agriculture viable in the first place. It was the abundant crops that allowed some Americans to think about liberty. An Amerindian displaced from the Mississippi 200 yrs ago or a homeless Black 50 yrs ago won't understand any of the liberty and rule of law there's been."
The funny thing is that you even quoted the part of my post that shows that what you're saying isn't supported by the facts of the timeline according to a written historical record.
The first settlers who left Europe mostly left for Liberty -- religious and otherwise. These were people concerned about Liberty before there even were colonies. There was no great farmland available. There was no Mississippi. There weren't even any slaves to leverage as resources. Yet, if you read the historical records, those early settlers wanted mostly to get away from the oppressive States of Europe. Freedom was their issue and it was tightly ingrained in the American culture from the beginning.
Fast-forward to the American Revolution (all about Liberty, read the writings of the Revolutionaries), and you'll see that these people were fanatics about restraining the central government long before it even had any interest in anything outside of the 13 colonies.
> An Amerindian displaced from the Mississippi 200 yrs ago or a homeless Black 50 yrs ago won't understand any of the "liberty" and "rule of law" there's been.
Slavery was horrible and really the poison that was allowed into the US founding that led to the destruction of the notion of States' Rights when we fought over the issue during the Civil War. That original sin has pretty much cost us our Liberty, since after the Federal government forced its supremacy it broke the ability of States to protect themselves. It shifted the American power structure from being bottom-up to top-down.
Amerindians were killing and DISPLACING each other over primitive tribal issues long before we arrived. Unfortunately for them, the European technological advantage was so great. That said, I like to think that we've learned a lot as a society as we proved after World War I and beyond where we never tried to keep by force any land where we fought battles for some cause.
You bring up an unintentionally interesting point: If American resources and geography were such a societal advantage, then why isn't the Amerindian culture the most dominant in the world now? They had numbers, access to the same resources, geographic isolation to protect them from other countries for centuries, etc. But they never progressed and became "important" as a society. Even after Europeans showed up and allowed them access to our technology, they used some of it pragmatically (horses and guns), but they never embraced the cultural underpinnings that would have allowed them to challenge us.