In the past, I have told you all that there are only two periods of history I consider worthy of studying (speaking personally here) and those are 1763-1783 in Colonial America and 1919-1944 in Germany.

But I want to amend that statement to include a third period, equally important to the other two: 1860-1864 in America. That's right, the Civil War and what led directly to it.

Here's my justification for this hypothesis. I believe that the entire present state of human culture and its immediate and long-term future are intimately tied to these three periods of history.

Yes, these historical periods are very America-centric and if that makes me an ardent nationalist, so be it. But hear me out for a moment. Prior to the 1760s, there was never a civilization in the history of world founded upon the precept that the individual human being was inherently free from the tyranny of an earthly power, be it parliament or king. Prior to the United States, no man was above the rule of law and the rule of law was ordained by God.

But after America, laws became an extension of the rights of individual human beings instead of slave cages to herd masses of nameless and faceless human forms through history in service of the state or church.

But America was a loose union of idealism from the 1790s up to the 1860s. Prior to the Civil War, we used to refer to our country as "These United States." The state was the organizing principle of government and the federal government was little more than a frame drawn around the states to ensure they stayed within the bounds of the Constitution which laid out how the inherent rights of mankind were to be protected from infringement by other men or by the institutions of men.

And like a dysfunctional marriage where one spouse is constantly looking to cheat--states prior to the Civil War were always threatening to secede from the Union. The Federalists tried to secede back when Jefferson, Madison and Monroe pulled off the three-peat to keep Virginia planters in the White House for a generation. South Carolina was close to seceding under Calhoun when Andrew Jackson was in office but he shut that shit down quicker than a gay man being offered a hand job by a female stripper.

And then there was Lincoln. His very election caused half the American South to secede and the other 45% followed shortly thereafter, prompting old Abe to initiate a campaign of warfare that led to the death of thousands of his own countrymen in order to keep the frame drawn around the states intact. Could you imagine what the world would be like now if that frame hadn't been fought for and had hundreds of thousands die for in order to preserve? North America would be Europe all over again and the Civil War would have only been the beginning of wars of aggression and outright politic on this continent.

And the Industrial revolution truly blasted off in an age of cheap immigrant labor and monopolistic cartels with the money and resources to direct towards society building in America and you come to the First World War which as we all know was perhaps the most ridiculous war ever fought in the history of mankind and which directly led to the Second World War and totally redefined the United States government's power over its citizenry and the further shrinking of the law as protector of the rights of individuals--moving further and further back towards the cage of restitutional demands upon the individual in servitude of unscrupulous men and the systems they create to dazzle and bewilder denizens who know no better than to bow to the will of what seems like natural authority.

What happened in Nazi Germany is a litmus test for the tyranny of man run rampant in a massive social setting and the dichotomy of what brilliant and powerful men can accomplish when opportunity, circumstance and raw will conglomerate together could not be more diametrically opposed than in the men who pulled off the Revolutionary War in America and the men who pulled off the mass murder of 11 million human beings from the face of the earth in a reign lasting less than twelve years.

History has many truths which reveal themselves only to the lucky and patient among us but there are also many truths as plain as the moon in the sky on clear and cold night.

LINKS:

• Watch the trailer for this documentary about a group of frontline soldiers during the 1994 American occupation of Fallujah (hat tip to Fantastic Bastard because this looks like it will be a great movie well worth watching)
  

• Lazy Dork (hat tip to Glardon)
  

• Where the hell were co-ed naked parties at when I was in college?
  

• Don't mind the man behind the curtain--it's just President Bush and his 100 billion dollar nuclear warhead
  

• Did Judas Iscariot get a bad rap?
  

• Did the Carl Sagan Martian probes from the 70s actually kill off the microbial life they were sent to search for?
  

• A great documentary about the BGNews (my newspaper in college where I wrote an opinion column for a couple years)