A New Country

The year is 2003. Four high-school students undertake a joint writing project in which they put themselves in the shoes of America’s founding fathers. If the date of the Declaration of Independence was July 4th, 2003 instead of July 4th, 1776, would a successful Revolutionary War be possible? Their thoughts are put forward in the following essay.

Awake America, rise and see

Your land now filled with tyranny.

There’s nowhere on earth to flee;

Shall we stand for liberty?

The influence of the writings of Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone; the moral and religious landscape shaken and revived by the Great Awakening; the specific gifts, skills, and resources of a couple hundred extraordinary thinkers and leaders; the courage of thousands to fight against the greatest army on earth with very little hope of victory; and the undeniable hand of Providence seemed to all come together in a perfect storm to birth a new country 250 years ago, the United States of America.

Even in the “simpler” time of 1776, the complexities of what brought about the independence of the 13 united American colonies are beyond imagination. In today’s world with vastly different technology, a much larger country in size and population, and a connected world population in which allies and adversaries alike could potentially access vast amounts of real-time information and virtually live-stream the conflict, a successful revolution seems as though it would be very unlikely.

In the present day, to what extent would the British Crown control the mainstream media? What narrative would be fed to the people? In what ways would the leading figures of the revolution be characterized in the media? Things are not as they seem. Rarely is truth the leading virtue of any system of information dissemination. If the Crown lost control of the propaganda machine, whether through the people losing trust in the media, through alternative media gaining prominence via the world-wide-web, or both, the landscape of the fiercest battlefield would begin to level: the battlefield of the human mind.

If those overtaken by a lust for power are able to control the minds of the masses, they are, to a large extent able to control their actions. If the power-hungry elite began to lose their hold on people’s minds, all bets are off: an even worse worldview and narrative could ascend from Hell to fill the vacuum, or truth could be revealed and clung to, at least for a season, providing the only genuine grounds for authentic liberty.

When people wake up to the