“Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed”

As I was reading A People’s History of the United States of America this morning, I came across this interesting quote:

Times were hard in 1676. “There was genuine distress, genuine poverty…. All contemporary sources speak of the great mass of people as living in severe economic straits,” writes Wilcomb Washburn, who, using British colonial records, has done an exhaustive study of Bacon’s Rebellion. It was a dry summer, ruining the corn crop, which was needed for food, and the tobacco crop, needed for export. Governor Berkeley, in his seventies, tired of holding office, wrote wearily about his situation: “How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed.” (p. 40)

As the author Howard Zinn points out, the “phrase ‘six in seaven’ suggests the existence of an upper class not so impoverished.”

Indeed, all records indicate a large income inequality between the “Jamestown elite” and the poor white frontiersman who were forced to move westward into Indian territory to find land for themselves.

Anyway, I found Governor Berkeley’s statement quite profound since it seems to mirror circumstances in America today.

The “Wall Street elite” continue to grow richer at the expense of the average citizen. Jobs are disappearing as quickly as childhood innocence. With every passing month, Americans become more “Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed.”

What will come of it? I can’t say for sure, although history provides a few unpleasant examples.

Here’s what I do know: The direction our nation is going doesn’t look good. The train is headed toward the side of a mountain, the brakes are out, and everybody is arguing over what color we should paint the caboose.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. Here’s a little insight into what’s happening in America right now (and if you don’t know anything about derivatives, you should)…