How wonderful it would be if historical events gave only positive results, if the combined efforts of the participants always resulted in a giant leap forward for all and every mortal. Quite patently, such is not the case, for not all men, and historically, unfortunately, it is the male gender that has controlled power in their vice like grip, are free of malice, greed, and self-indulgence, or indeed possess the foresight and sense of natural justice that produces a fair and equitable society.
A whole litany of happenstances resulting in apparent advances, commercial and social for nations, have also created the most egregious faults and errors, most problematic to lately readdress and painful to contemplate, often resulting in horrendous repercussions of violence and misery. I will briefly touch on three interrelated cases that immediately spring to mind, not in an accusatory way but simply as illustrations.
The English civil war, a historical event that in many ways paved the way for the precepts of what we now consider the fundamental building blocks of democracy. The crux of the matter was the divine right of sovereigns, that a monarch, male or feminine, was appointed by the very hand of a god and their word and will were beyond any mortal challenge. The argument was finally resolved by Charles First being decapitated and no retaliatory rain of fire and brimstone descending upon the perpetrators. The door for a citizens overthrow of demagoguery was now forever opened, with the heavy proviso that any mortal, single or in supposed good company, is just as likely to nonchalantly abuse power as a king or queen.
Few constructs through the ages can challenge the British Empire as a monolith of utter Usery. A fabrication of undoubted genius, whose only purpose was to syphon the wealth of any conquerable countries to fill the national coffers of the British state. The Empire was successful piratical commercialism taken to the ultimate zenith. You will note I stipulated wealth for the national coffers, the average British citizen saw little personal benefit beyond an ever-increasing array of produce they could never hope to afford. The empire was the test model for modern commercialism, benefitting the politically powerful, who became rich and bigoted, contentedly oppressing anyone they considered beneath their social status.
The Empire crested a worldwide network of administration, of taxation, of semi-independent local government, which quite naturally caused an outcry for self-government in many quarters by those who recognized the home country for what it was, a far distant pariah. Quite logically revolts followed, one of the first, and the most successful in shrugging off the cloak of colonization, was the American war for Independence. The Declaration of Independence, the bill of rights and the constitution all manifest the triumph of enlightened intellectualism over monarchical imperialism. The constitution also unfortunately is the first obvious indicator of the dangers of compromise in the construction of any form of fixed government. Many of the political trade-offs intended as purely temporary came to settle like a lead yoke upon the nations collective neck for the next sixty years.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 