Nation of Exiles (AKA "People Stew)

Okay everybody, let's talk this out. Let's admit some hard truths that might be hard to admit. Let's look at all of this realistically. Any who disagree are always more than welcome to challenge this, and I encourage you to do so in the spaces below this.

I'd like to carve this up into two or three pieces, but I'll try to keep each one relatively short.

Tonight: WHAT IS AMERICA?
First, America is not a "melting pot". It's a stew. In a melting pot, everything combines. That doesn't happen when you throw together the descendants of almost every global society into one single system. A "stew", on the other hand, has a completely different connotation. It indicates that, even though your family has been here for hundreds of years, the big chunks of identity that they've passed down to you still haven't combined into some sort of...sauce. However, contrary to what the media is desperate for you to believe, this is NOT a nation of immigrants.

We are, my friends, a nation of EXILES.

It's an important distinction. "Immigrants" are like cattle, who wander for better pasture and cleaner water. No, our ancestors left their homes and came here. Generally, because they were malcontents who didn't like the conditions in the motherland that had nurtured their ancestors SO MUCH that they told everyone they knew to get bent, picked up all they could carry and came to this country. Or the government took notice of them and sent them here to shut 'em up. Or, in my case, they had enough debt on the books to be sent to the debtors' colony in Georgia. Or they were impressed into slavery and sent here. Why is this important? Because, this created an environment where they were protected from all of the shitty propensities that governments have, by virtue of them being citizens of this nation.

Oh, and they could buy all the guns that they could afford.

So, instead of a "melting pot" of people sauce, you've got a people stew of wildly different flavors of backgrounds and histories, bound together under a social contract roux that is based in the Constitution, and everything tastes EXACTLY like mistrust and suspicion of authority. With guns.

Meanwhile, ALL of those countries that expelled our ancestors kept all of the folks who would just accept their lot, sit down with the other kids, and color inside the lines.

But without any guns.

These two sets of people have been breeding and teaching their young what society means for hundreds of years. Whatever it is that makes us suspicious of authority has been concentrated. Whatever it is that made them docile and accepting of control has also been suffused.

This is what makes us different.