We are living at a time that is very similar to our nation's founding. The political animosity between different factions is nearly as ugly today as it was then, not quite as violent yet, not too many tar and feathings or house ram sackings going on today.
Our Founding Fathers, it could be said, were our first political bloggers. They were not people in position of political power, in fact for most the opposite. Yet they spoke out, but mostly they wrote out. They were pamphleteers, filled the letters to the editor's pages of the newspapers mostly writing under pseudonyms. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Benjamin Rush, and many more were prodigious writers, writing copious writings, helping us today understand their time and quest so much more clearly.
No one was more important in getting things started than Samuel Adams, who not only as a writer, but more so as a "community agitator" and Thomas Payne's booklet "Common Sense" as the driving force to start our quest for independence. It was also Thomas Payne's "Crisis" where he admonished the soldiers who were planning on leaving the fight during that cold hungry winter with "THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
Even then, those who were the Patriots who were clamoring for freedom and independence were in the minority. Most Americans at the time were either Tories, who supported the King, or were independent and really didn't care that much, they were more interested in their own day by day existence. John Adams told us about this when he said that Americans in any conflict would be 1/3 passionately for it, 1/3 passionately against it, and 1/3 in the middle. It was that middle third what must be won. Today is no different than at his time.
Today's bloggers are fighting the very same fight, today the battle is not so much in the newspapers but on the computer screen, the Founders would have loved Social Media, it was exactly what they were doing without the power to reach so many so quickly.
I am proud to try to play a part today, we are at a crossroads today in this country. This election will determine what kind of country we will live in, one that is what our Founders gave us, or one that they tried to free us from. If you have a voice, be it in type, or speaking out, come join the 1/3 who are trying to save this nation!
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