America Is Back At Valley Forge

It’s December, 1777.

General George Washington stops his horse on the side of the road to watch his army march past. “March” is a loose term for what the soldiers were actually doing. Many didn’t have proper shoes. Most didn’t have coats or blankets. Many had to be supported by their comrades as they walked.

The enemy — the British Army and Navy — had taken the capital of Philadelphia and sent the Continental Congress into exile. These Congressmen weren’t the heavy hitters of 1776 — John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were in Europe desperately trying to get loans and alliances. Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock had gone home. The ones who were left were unable to raise money or keep the army supplied. Their priorities were foreign money and foreign alliances — not the army. And once the British drove them from the capital, their priorities narrowed down to their own survival.

Washington had 11,000 men left, and they had spent most of the year getting beaten by the British. Their enlistments were running out, and without food, clothing, or shelter, they wouldn’t stay. A powerful enemy force was twenty-five miles away, waiting out the winter so they could crush them once and for all in the spring.

There wasn’t much hope.

Washington tells Congress that the army will “starve — dissolve — or disperse” for lack of supplies. He and his soldiers have retreated to Valley Forge, shoeless, hungry, sick, and dying. All the revolutionary ideas and flowery phrases of 1776 will mean nothing if the army doesn’t survive the winter.

If it goes, the cause of American freedom and independence goes with it.

We’re still talking about Valley Forge in the winter of 2024, two hundred and forty-six years after the Continental Army took refuge there. We know the Americans prevailed. The war was won, independence was attained, and America went on to take first the continent, and then the world.

So why do we keep coming back to a time when the light of America was just a flicker, and when the cause of the United States was in most danger of being lost?

Because we know, somewhere deep down, that centuries later, America is back at Valley Forge.

If you’d rather listen than read, check out the podcast episode:

https://shows.acast.com/628a4d31c2b25700124b366d/episodes/65c619eb80a02500157e1060?

The United States has the world’s strongest armed forces. It has the world’s largest economy. The stock market is in record territory, unemployment is down, wages are up, and our citizens are among the most productive in the world. Everyone wants to come here.

You might therefore think that my Valley Forge comparison holds no water, or, in keeping with the metaphor, has no shoes.

Hear me out.

The last time Americans banded together for commitment and self-sacrifice for the good of the entire nation was from 1929 to 1945, the period of the Great Depression and World War II. Every other concern took a back seat to economic disaster and a massive worldwide war effort. Americans worked round the clock, rationed food and supplies, had their wages controlled, and sent their sons and daughters to front lines around the globe.

We got out of the economic calamity and won the war. That’s when everything changed.

***

There’s always a splurge after a time of self-denial (like a cheat day when you’re on a diet), and this was true in post-war America. Lots of babies were born, returning soldiers got free educations and high-paying jobs and then bought houses and cars and backyard grills. The American Dream, which had up till then been defined as having nothing, taking advantage of the opportunities America provided, and thereby achieving success, became more…let’s call it…coin operated.

Success in the previous century had meant self-reliance, the freedom and security to make your own choices, to chart your own course, to defy norms and expectations, to define yourself in your own terms. There was an implication that you would use your success to become a contributing member of a larger society, as Benjamin Franklin had done. Even the robberest of robber barons — the titans of evil capitalism like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie — spent their fortunes on philanthropy, finding ways to improve the lives of as many Americans as possible.

No matter who you were, there was virtue in being part of a whole while retaining the rugged individualism Americans were famous for.

Not anymore.

The post-war American Dream was all about money — how much you made, how much you had, and what you could buy with it. Americans kept the individualism, but it became isolationism. You couldn’t fully join a community of people that you were competing with for higher wages, bigger houses, better cars, and more extravagant vacations.

In order to succeed on your own, you had to leave everyone else behind.

***

American companies jumped on the bandwagon, throwing themselves parades for high profits while cutting wages, benefits, and pension plans. At the same time, they began to see their employees as expendable, disposable, and replaceable.

The concept of advancement through hard work and talent (the previous American Dream) was replaced by the prioritization of production — quantity mattered more than quality. Competition in the ranks grew fierce, and so any notion of shared corporate community or teamwork went out the window. Efficient and conscientious employees got punished for their hard work. Their reward was more work and more responsibility, often without the pay increase they might expect, while their underachieving colleagues were accommodated.

The dog-eat-dog mindset of the boardroom trickled down to the rest of the company. Everyone grew isolated and territorial, knowing that if they didn’t look out for themselves, no one else would. The same mindset percolated its way into society — Americans more and more saw their fellow citizens as competitors, not teammates.

We retreated to our nice homes and stayed inside. The advent of the Internet and social media helped lock us in. With instant electronic communication, entertainment of our choice beamed right to our TV’s and phones, and food and supplies delivered the next day to our doorsteps, it became possible to avoid that most essential component of citizenship and community — looking your fellow citizens in the eye.

We even abandoned our extended families, exchanging social media or video calls for in-person visits. We no longer had to tolerate, understand, or empathize with anyone anymore.

***

Governments are a reflection of their people. As we became more coin-operated and looked out for number one, the American government did the same. All those corporate profits and personal fortunes translated into political power. You could hand money to a candidate for Congress in exchange for favorable tax policies and lucrative government contracts. American foreign and domestic policy began placing a priority on money — whether American companies could turn a profit around the world and at home. And since these companies could essentially buy the policies they wanted, that’s what happened.

We sent our military to protect resources like mining rights and oil fields and shipping lanes. We lowered tax rates for the rich and gutted legislation that kept financial institutions in check. When they were in danger of failing from freewheeling risk-taking, the government spent our tax money to bail them out. The masterminds of these calamities not only didn’t go to jail, they still got their bonuses.

The competitive isolation recent generations of Americans have taken on found its way into our politics. Partisanship ceased to be the coalescing of groups around policy ideas and became more about winning, or at least about the other side losing. Political victory was the only endgame for modern politicians. What they would do with all that power and money we gave them was none of our business. All that mattered was that their team was in charge. Political campaigns became about money — how much the candidates were bringing to their states and districts, and how much they were going to put in your pocket. The other side — well, they just wanted to take your money away from you.

Depending on which team it was, the tax revenue of the world’s largest economy went to either tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations (the distinctions between the two eventually disappearing) or handouts to certain segments of society in exchange for a reliable voting bloc.

The same way people saw each other as the enemy at work and in their neighborhoods, politicians and their supporters began to see each other as mortal opponents. The other side’s victory meant the end of everything good, so demonization of Americans by Americans ratcheted up, until we are at each other’s throats.

While all this is happening, very little governing in the national interest is going on.

If you’re starting to feel like a shoeless and hungry Continental soldier on your freezing way to Valley Forge, abandoned by your government and your fellow citizens, then my analogy might just be holding water.

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***

In a society where money is all that matters, money is all you need.

Wealthy individuals banded together to form well-funded groups who used their money to found organizations dedicated to their own narrow aims.

They funded universities so that their partisan talking points had the credibility only ivy-covered academia could give them. College professors and departments need money like anyone else, and if a grant comes your way, you’ll do what they want in return, the same way an elected officeholder will reward the people and groups who finance their campaigns.

These wealthy groups figured out two key things at the same time — they no longer had to combine money with persuasion to get the laws they wanted. Because they could just write the laws. They handed them to their bought and paid for legislators who, very often, passed them intact without reading them. They could give a list of names of appointments to judgeships and state and federal agencies and sit back and watch the appointments get made with less and less vetting.

They simultaneously realized that the people with all the power in our Republic — the citizens of the United States — had all gone home and left the decisions and the governance to someone else. We rarely turned out to vote, and when we did our knee-jerk lever pull was for our favorite political party. It became cheaper and easier to just buy the political party than to buy individual candidates. Big party donors could make clear what they wanted, and the party twisted arms and offered perks down the line to make sure the necessary laws and appointments got made.

The point of all this? Well, whatever the people writing the checks wanted.

Tax cuts, deregulation, government contracts, easy merger approvals, and at the bottomest of bottom lines, no consequences for their mistakes or crimes.

The money they spent was mere pennies compared to the rewards they got from our tax dollars.

In order for all this to work, they needed elected representatives who could stay in office for decades. No point in arranging all of these shenanigans only to find out that the Senator you groomed to do your bidding got replaced by some idealist who won’t take your calls or, more importantly, your checks.

So Congressional districts got drawn on maps along party lines, making most seats safe. Quite a lot of Congressmen wake up in their election years to find no one running against them, or at least a challenger with no chance of winning.

When you stop working for your votes, you stop working for your people.

***

If the cause of America really is in danger, as I keep harping, what’s really at stake anyway?

Freedom and opportunity. They aren’t just intangible words. They have very real meaning that most of us don’t think about.

Freedom and opportunity means choices.

Like Benjamin Franklin and Abe Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower and John D. Rockefeller and that guy down the street who started a plumbing business when he was twenty years old, America is a place where you can chart your own destiny. You can learn and build and explore all you want and use the tools America provides to pursue happiness, as the Declaration of Independence said you had every right to.

Freedom and opportunity takes a real beating in countries with dysfunctional governments and societies. When it is impossible to get anything done, whether through petty partisanship or treasuries emptied by years of political payback, choices dwindle down to nothing.

Quite a lot of Americans are paralyzed, stuck in high-paying jobs they can’t give up because of their debt load or need for watered down health insurance or the simple notion that this is their path to future security. They work all hours of the day and night, thanks to the same mechanism that delivers their food and entertainment. Most of them have no retirement savings. Most of them are unhealthy. Most of them don’t take meaningful vacations because the thought of being away from work makes them uneasy. Weekends mean catching up on work, not catching up on rest. Our purpose in life becomes something imposed on us instead of something we define for ourselves.

These are the things that reinforce our isolation from each other. We may be trapped in a gilded cage, but it’s still a cage.

Politicians and their handlers couldn’t be happier that we’re all so distracted. We’re so busy looking down that we’re not looking at them. As they continue on the path of narrow agendas and partisan goals, the good of the nation as a whole isn’t even on the table. Tomorrow burns to ash on the altar of today’s quick buck or hasty law that benefits only a small part of the country.

You can’t sustain that for long. Just ask the ancient Romans.

Oh wait. You can’t.

The citizens of Ancient Rome watched as the people who were supposed to speak for them got bought and sold like cattle. Tax revenues got siphoned into other people’s togas, so there was no money left to build things or fix things or keep the enemy outside the gates.

The people of Rome spent all their time and energy on simple survival. They left the running of the empire to those who had taken their power away from them. It was only a matter of time before the gutted Roman Empire collapsed.

So do empires fall.

***

It may take a long time for America to collapse under the weight of its own dysfunction, but anyone who’s studied history can see the signs. If you think your life is hard now, imagine what it will be like for your grandchildren.

You can count on Social Security and Medicare. But with millions of Americans retiring with no savings, there’s no guarantee it will be around for future generations. Healthcare is massively expensive and relatively ineffective, so lifespans and quality of life will actually go down. High prices will put things like homeownership and education out of reach. We can look forward to a population of citizens who own nothing and learn nothing more than what they need to do their jobs, expending their lives and talent to break even while their government scrambles to borrow enough money to fund the next few months of operations. We have the money to build the world’s largest army but we can’t afford to send it anywhere. Other countries know this, and are using our inattention, dysfunction, and empty Treasury to have their way in the world.

It sounds pretty grim. As grim as, say, the British holding America’s two biggest cities of New York and Philadelphia, an army without food and supplies holing up for the winter while the soldiers either freeze to death or head for home in the dead of night, a Congress that can’t save itself let alone the cause of American independence, and the brief relief of better weather coming with the certainty that the enemy will attack and you won’t be in any shape to stand up to them.

You see what I did there, didn’t you.

***

The soldiers of Valley Forge didn’t like each other. They were from different parts of the country and had their own ideas about how to fight the war and what to do with their new country when they won. But they knew they’d never get to do any of it if they lost. Washington’s generals and other officers squabbled for what few perks there were and had their own ideas about tactics and strategy. Like us, they separated themselves from each other.

The biggest threat we faced during the winter of Valley Forge was the loss of hope. The feeling that all of this is for nothing and that the cause, no matter how well-intentioned, is doomed. Most of us believe that our votes don’t matter, our work has very little reward, and that our politics and our government are completely out of our control. We’re already exhausted. Hopelessness makes us just give up and go home.

This was precisely the thing George Washington was trying to stop at Valley Forge.

***

So how did it turn out?

George Washington kept up the pressure on Congress until they sent representatives to camp to see the situation for themselves. The Congressmen were so ashamed by the condition of the detachment sent out to escort them to headquarters that they took off their own shoes and handed them to the soldiers.

It was in that moment that the Congress remembered who they truly worked for and what their purpose was.

After that, food and supplies found their way to Washington’s camp.

Washington brought in a crabby, foul-mouthed, stubborn Prussian named Baron Von Steuben to teach the army how to army, all the way down to digging the latrines far enough away from the drinking water so that the men stopped getting dysentery all the time. He taught the soldiers how to work together, to move in formation, and to stand in the face of the enemy, whether they came from the same part of the country or got along with each other or not. He staged demonstrations for the commander in chief so that Washington, his officers, and the men themselves could prove all they had learned and take pride in themselves as a unit and an army.

Washington put on productions of the famous play Cato, about the last ancient Roman who held out against tyrants for the sake of democracy, to remind everyone that sacrifices do have meaning and can change the world. He was able to remind his troops, the Congress, and the people of the United States that they were all that stood between freedom and tyranny, and the message was received.

The American army marched out of Valley Forge and started winning.

***

How does all that help us, two hundred and forty-six years later, in the beginnings of an election year that looks distressingly familiar? How does the inspiring tale of Valley Forge inspire us, because we all have shoes and blankets and food and no one has dysentery? There’s no enemy holding the capital and ravaging our land and taking our stuff.

Or is there?

The Americans left Valley Forge with three things they didn’t have when they went in: purpose, unity, and hope.

The Americans of 2024 could use all those things right now.

I started the Valley Forge Project to pass two Constitutional amendments: one to eliminate campaign and party donations except by individuals, and another to limit service in Congress to twelve years. My thought was that these two amendments would put a stop to what I saw as the biggest threats to American government as it had been intended by the Founding Fathers.

That was typically and unsurprisingly shortsighted of me.

Because it’s not really about the amendments.

Think about what it will take to pass two Constitutional amendments, especially ones that strike at the heart of all the power and riches currently enjoyed by the political class and their backers. Gone will be the ability for a private citizen to have their wishes made into law. Gone will be the ability of an industry lobbying group to get special treatment. Gone will be the ability for a small handful of people to decide who sits on the Supreme Court, regulates industries, decides tax policy, and enforces laws. The career politician who hails from a district shaped like a lizard will be no more.

It’s a lot. In order to change our politics, we’ll have to change the way we think about politics. We’ll have to abandon partisanship, whether it’s a habit we don’t give much thought to or a rabid and uncompromising belief. We’ll have to stop giving politicians a pass just because they’re on our team. We’ll have to remember that we’re the ones calling the shots.

And it will take, quite simply, all of us.

Politicians are cowards. It’s why they cave to pressure, whether that pressure is money, unfavorable media coverage, opposition groups, personal attacks, or peer pressure. Right now all that pressure is coming from the wrong places.

The citizens of the United States are supposed to be in charge. The only pressure an elected official should rightly face comes from their own voting constituents. If a couple hundred million Americans made it clear that no one running for office will win if they don’t pass these amendments, the amendments will pass.

If you look around in 2024, you’ll notice that nearly everyone is running for office. There’s no better time.

The hard part is getting hundreds of millions of Americans to agree on one thing at the same time. It’s why the goal of the political and moneyed classes over the last four decades or so has been to keep us divided, distracted, separate, and alone.

American unity is the most formidable force the world has ever seen. It’s why American unity is a threat to all those who are co-opting our politics and plundering our treasury.

We don’t have to agree on everything when it comes to politics. It’s a foregone conclusion that we won’t. But our nation has always been at its best when we speak in one voice about the big things that matter to the long-term good of the country.

We don’t have to like each other any more than the soldiers at Valley Forge did. But when the time comes, we all have to stand together. Because if we don’t, all is lost.

***

So what’s next?

It’s time for each of us to find the three things those freezing soldiers found at Valley Forge: purpose, unity, and hope.

Make your purpose your own instead of what’s expected of you. Take charge of your own life — it’s literally the American way. Realize that you have more in common with your fellow citizens than you’ve been told. Talk to people. Your fellow Americans are family, which doesn’t mean unconditional love or acceptance, but it does mean that we stand up for each other. Know that significant change is possible if we only choose to do it.

Stop waiting on events to go your way. Like the original American Dream, things work best when you take the course of your destiny in your own hands.

Write, email, or tweet your Congressman and Senator and ask them to pass the Valley Forge amendments. If they won’t, run against them. There was a time when average citizens sent one of their own — like the guy down the street who started his own hardware store or bakery or grocery store — to Washington, because it was important that the people who spoke for us knew who we were and what we cared about.

The citizens of the United States coming together to remind the people in charge that we’re in charge will up-end the rotten apple cart of American politics.

All we have to do is remember that we own the apples, the cart, the wheels, and the road.

And winter’s here. Time is running out, so start today.

***

Thanks for listening to me rant.

If you’ve been a longtime listener, this isn’t the first time I’ve tackled these subjects. In the past, the most common reaction to all this ranting was, “This is why my guy has to win the presidency this year and my party needs supermajorities in all the legislatures from sea to shining sea.”

If that’s your solution, I’ve got some bad news for you.

Half the country isn’t a member of your party, and they’re not going to just go away. Your team or your guy might win this time around, but the pendulum always swings the other way. Before long, the other guy will be in the White House and the other team will be running the Congress.

It’s one of the reasons we have more grievance politics than any other kind these days. Each new administration or Congress, once sworn in, goes on a Shakespearean revenge play where they spend a lot of time and our tax money undoing the policies of the previous administration or Congress for no reason other than it was the other team who did it. It’s way more pettiness and spitefulness than we usually like to see in the people in charge of trillions of dollars of our money, our institutions, and the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. That way of thinking says that the first purpose of power is punishment, and that’s just wrong. UnAmerican, even.

“Everything will be better if my side wins,” is what we’ve been doing so far. It’s why we’re in the shape we’re in.

It’s time to try something new.

Go to valleyforgeproject.org and find a way to get involved. Every little bit helps.

Don’t give up hope, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. Perseverance will win the day.

Just ask General George Washington, and the soldiers of Valley Forge.