Mr. Strakon,

I am fascinated by these words from Mr Fields' essay:

If a powerful state were not created soon it might be too late. The people might decide, definitively, that state power was neither needful nor desirable. Fortunately, from the perspective of the respectable elite, the secretive Order of the Cincinnati, comprised of Revolutionary War officers, had long been plotting for an aristocratic dictatorship of the United States under the auspices of George Washington. They were well organized and could act in concert throughout all the States. And war had given them a taste for bold measures.

 

At the website of The General Society of the Cincinnati I discovered that this is true. When George Washington "resigned his commission to return to his farm", you can bet that the image conjured of a yeoman farmer sweating behind his ox and plough was really quite different from what actually happened: Imagine, instead, the slave owner Washington astride his tall white horse supervising the slaves toiling and sweating in his fields. That without doubt would resemble Cincinnatus the Roman, himself. The Roman Republic was for the patricians who owned everything. Rome was definitely not for the plebians and the slaves.

One architectural theme of the city of Washington that we can still see today is the architecture of Paris at the time of the French Revolution — no accident as it was designed by a Frenchman of the period. The U.S. makers of gunpowder came from France too: the duPont family. "Old Ironsides", the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy was in service in the War of 1812 — part of the Napoleonic Wars. How ironic that today's neocons, the heirs to the Napoleonic tradition, sneer at the French military without which there would be no United States! The other architectural theme of official America is borrowed from the Roman Empire.

Mr. Fields is correct: With President George W. Bush and his cabal of crazies, things are going exactly the way they were planned right from the beginning.

- Morley Evans

P.S.: contrast this hubris to the humble beaver, the national symbol of your neighbour to the north.

Visit me on the Web
http://www.morleyevans.com
Accurate Solutions to Complex Problems