We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. Romania did it the hard way. Moarte criminalului, death to criminals: armed revolution, then a series of epic Mineriads, with a mild-mannered IMF gent on hand to suck them dry. I was there after the revolution, in the long hiatus between the fourth and fifth Mineriads, and I was starving until someone told us where the soccer stars dine out.
It turned out the way it was bound to, with all the world-standard requisites of responsible sovereignty: The International Bill of Human Rights, the Rome Statute, and the UN Charter. Most core human rights, in fact, and an opposition that demands individual accountability of officials and police. Constitutional change by referendum. A restive and demanding civil society that leaves and returns to their country at will and assembles in public without fear. Rights and freedoms that you can only dream of in your US police state.
It happens again and again like a series of echoes. Leon Rosselson dug up the Diggers: The club is all their law, stand up now. We had San Francisco diggers back then too. But the time was not ripe. The world had not worked out how to help struggling peoples claim their sovereignty.
Now in the burble and slosh of another impending puke, in the countercultural hinterlands of the US a former governor’s son makes a so-so whiskey called Shay’s Rebellion and sells it for a hundred dollars a fifth. He may regret reminding us of it, because it looks…