Some additional observations about American independence would have to include first, that the United States is the first nation ever founded not on race, religion, nationality or conquest but on an ideal, that being egalitarian liberty.

The founders intended, not in the George Bush fashion, but in the fashion of creating a model to emulate, that the entire world adopt this principle. They were very much anti-imperialist, anti-monarchist, anti-authoritarian, and believed that free people could govern themselves without the need of a professional governing class.

Oops. Here we are 233 years later and once again we have a professional governing class. They’re not called royalty and nobility these days, but they exist in the form of career politicians and life-long civil service bureaucrats, and their grip on power is every as real as was that of King George and his mandarin minions.

We are already in danger of forgetting the central lesson of Barack Obama’s election, and that was, in a system where relatively free elections are held, any autocratic tendencies can be reversed.

That we have not done so is evident in the extremely high re-election rate of congressional incumbents and legislators in many states.

America’s full promise has yet to be realized, but it will not be realized by an increasingly powerful non-elected mandarin class, but by a new form of radical restructuring that returns power to people and prunes back the buds of an evolving latter-day aristocracy.

Either that, or we can start reading Frank Herbert’s Dune series as a guide to what’s in store for humanity during coming decades and centuries.