About the Author

Richard Cochrane is trained in chemistry and metallurgy but is far more interested and practiced as a political and fund raising consultant, writer and amateur historian. He grew up in a Navy family and with his two younger brothers carried on its 500+ year tradition of naval service to Great Britain and the USA then enjoyed a career with one of the largest advertising and public relations agencies working with numerous Fortune 500 companies and many of America's premier educational institutions. He maintains friendships and acquaintanceships around the world. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

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Fiddling With The Founding

July 1st, 2009 • Richard Cochrane
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4th-of-julyThe afterword in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph J. Ellis’ best selling 2007 book “AMERICAN CREATION” is particularly prescient. “The American founding,” he writes, ” lasted for twenty-eight years, from 1775 to 1803. During that time the United States declared and won its independence, a gradual revolution in the social landscape was begun that, truth be told, has yet to run its course…”

Within that context Ellis had described America’s landmarks good and bad concluding by speaking about “perhaps the most creative act of the founding era as to make time as well as space an indispensible ally. In effect extending the founding moment everlasting into the future.”

If you subscribe to Ellis’ notions of creating time and space into an everlasting future contrast and compare that with the report of what Dr. Charles Krauthammer said to a private group at the Center for the American Experiment including:

  • 1. Pay no attention to what Obama says, rather watch what he does.
  • 2. Obama came to Washington to dismantle capitalism.
  • 3. Obama sees himself more a world ruler than just US President - standing above it all - orchestrating and coordinating various countries and their agenda.
  • 4. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures.
  • 5. His apology tour was a prime example that he sees America as an imperialist nation.

Assuming Ellis’ and Krauthammer’s theories are each at least partially relevant I believe then I can argue that 2009 will at least begin a reformation if not a revolutionary change.  But, not what most who voted for him thought.Revolution not in the shooting sense but as a time of major spasm similar to that which consumed most of that period between 1775 and 1803. . 

As America turns from a predominantly white country of Judeo-Christian Euro centric ethos to a tan one where Hispanics are much more prominent;  blacks less so in terms of numbers but disproportionately shoved forward by Obama.The reformation or revolution will NOT come easily or willingly. Exactly how that will happen is unclear.but it clearly is occurring.

What is most clear is that Obama has throttled up America to breakneck speed and put it on an umapped and contorted road of blind curves. What is also clear is Obama is disinterested in being a unifierunder any pretext and now has his 60th Senate vote in the person of admitted arch liberal Al Franken - so he need not be.  Rather he is about change as only he envisions fit.  

Obama’s domestic and foreign policy are a mixture of craps, Texas holdem’, chess and Russian roulette but with only one chamber empty and pointed at your head. Does America still heed John Adam’s admonition for a nation of laws not of men, or a man.

Happy ‘”INDEPENDENCE” day.

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