Beautifully written and uplifting! We need more historians around like you to remind us that our country's biggest struggles are nothing new. Your analysis has presented me with an entirely different perspective of today's political rivalry.
One of the motivating questions involved how society made the big shift from individuals or groups merely fighting for freedoms to society as a whole implementing equality before the law. The experience with religious freedom had a lot to do with it, and then we can see that the "separation of church and state" was wrapped up in a much bigger problem.
The big thing that I got out of John Barry's book seems so obvious once one thinks about it: The Reformation in England involved making the king the head of the Church of England. That may sound like a mere technicality, but it amounted to fusing church and state and (the real point), it gave the state a lot more capacity to infringe the rights of individuals. So, ... even one is not religious, one should care about this matter, because it is an example of how the state arrogated power and then abused it.
Here's something we should probably keep an eye on: Right now the developed countries are contemplating "Central Bank Digital Currencies" (CBDC's). So, the US government might replace the dollar with a digital dollar -- and it could then track every transaction. And what if the government disapproved of one's politics or demanded that everyone get a "vaccine"? Might it then cut individuals off from their own money? Might it bar them from buying plane tickets or groceries? Wouldn't CBDC's constitute a central aspect of the architecture of a Social Credit System?
CBDCs would definitely aid in facilitating a social credit system. However, methods for implementing social credit score tracking are being developed now without the help of a central bank; e.g. Mastercard has already introduced their own. US Government currently has the capability to insert itself into virtually any field, whether it be nongovernment sponsored finance or consumerism or media; as evidenced by today's climate, the private sector will dutifully oblige. The pandemic of the last 2 years has been used to spawn an intentional conditioning of thought that government knows what's best for us and deserves our trust, while we allow our liberties to be sacrificed for the common good.
Yes, the citizens' experience and the government's level of self-imposed authoritarianism brought all this WAY too close to home, literally and figuratively. Tragically, most US citizens don't believe this could ever happen here.
Beautifully written and uplifting! We need more historians around like you to remind us that our country's biggest struggles are nothing new. Your analysis has presented me with an entirely different perspective of today's political rivalry.
Many thanks! I appreciate that.
One of the motivating questions involved how society made the big shift from individuals or groups merely fighting for freedoms to society as a whole implementing equality before the law. The experience with religious freedom had a lot to do with it, and then we can see that the "separation of church and state" was wrapped up in a much bigger problem.
The big thing that I got out of John Barry's book seems so obvious once one thinks about it: The Reformation in England involved making the king the head of the Church of England. That may sound like a mere technicality, but it amounted to fusing church and state and (the real point), it gave the state a lot more capacity to infringe the rights of individuals. So, ... even one is not religious, one should care about this matter, because it is an example of how the state arrogated power and then abused it.
Here's something we should probably keep an eye on: Right now the developed countries are contemplating "Central Bank Digital Currencies" (CBDC's). So, the US government might replace the dollar with a digital dollar -- and it could then track every transaction. And what if the government disapproved of one's politics or demanded that everyone get a "vaccine"? Might it then cut individuals off from their own money? Might it bar them from buying plane tickets or groceries? Wouldn't CBDC's constitute a central aspect of the architecture of a Social Credit System?
CBDCs would definitely aid in facilitating a social credit system. However, methods for implementing social credit score tracking are being developed now without the help of a central bank; e.g. Mastercard has already introduced their own. US Government currently has the capability to insert itself into virtually any field, whether it be nongovernment sponsored finance or consumerism or media; as evidenced by today's climate, the private sector will dutifully oblige. The pandemic of the last 2 years has been used to spawn an intentional conditioning of thought that government knows what's best for us and deserves our trust, while we allow our liberties to be sacrificed for the common good.
The experience in Canada last month certainly was (is) illuminating.
Yes, the citizens' experience and the government's level of self-imposed authoritarianism brought all this WAY too close to home, literally and figuratively. Tragically, most US citizens don't believe this could ever happen here.
"recurring episodes" - History repeats wearing different garments.
Thanks for the many parallels.