Given the American Movement of 2016, the following excerpts from an 1889 article by Lewis James in “The Westminster Review” on Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle and 19th century America are of interest:

“’Do right!  Get yourselves wise and strong masters and rulers.’  This is [Carlyle’s] panacea for social and industrial evils.  He fails to see, however, that only by becoming themselves relatively wiser and stronger can the people have either the will or the purpose to get themselves wise rulers….  This seems to us as true of monarchies as of republics.  No great, wise, and noble monarch ever reigned long over a besotted and ignorant people; nor will any intelligent, liberty-loving people indefinitely tolerate the rule of a tyrant.”

James goes on:

“Seeing that neither the [political] ‘boss’ nor the [party] ‘caucus’ inclines to rule any more justly than a selfish regard for continuance in power renders necessary, we may confidently prophesy that sensible and intelligent communities will in due time assert their ability and intention to get along without ‘boss’ or ‘caucus,’ as readily as they now manage to dispense with autocratic rulers.  Meanwhile, the wise and independent voter, not waiting for the slow movement of the majority, will proclaim at once his own emancipation from party dictation, and thus help by his counsel and example to liberate the majority.”

Amazing… given the current rising unity across America in breaking away from Mainstream’s desire to keep the people stuck in bipartisan mentality….

“All government rests on intelligence and morality” and education seems to be the key in producing “a high average of moral and intellectual ability” to protect republican institutions… “the causes of the decay of nations are to be sought in the characters and habits of individual men, rather than in the physical conditions of their environment….  The descendants of the Aryan tribes who peopled Europe manifest widely different characteristics from their Asiatic cousins in Persia and India.”  Carlyle was a pioneer in tracing “the ancestors of the Teutonic [Germanic] people to the shores of the Black Sea, and discovered in their language” their Asiatic origin long before it was widely accepted by scholars….

So, according to James, what lesson may America learn from Carlyle?  

Carlyle states that “Aristocracy of Feudal Parliament has passed away … [to] Aristocracy of the Money-bag….  An infinitely baser, the basest yet known [Aristocracy]…like Anarchy itself, it cannot continue…the beginning of all Thought worthy the name is Love; and the wise head never yet was without, first, the generous heart…The Heavens cease not their bounty; they send us generous hearts into every generation.  And, now, what generous heart can pretend to itself, or be hoodwinked into believing, that Loyalty to the Money-bag is a noble Loyalty?....  Know this also, that out of a world of Unwise nothing but Unwisdom can come.  Arrange it, Constitution—build it, sift it through ballot-boxes as thou wilt, it is and remains an Unwisdom…Who can bring a wise thing out of men unwise?  Not one.”

[pic source Gutenberg:  An image of a relief from 6th c. BCE spiritual city of Persepolis in Iran… Ancient Iranians called heroes, those who are sent with a big heart to reset a destructive situation, Saoshyants… it seems that Carlyle was of similar views given his extensive knowledge of history…for educational purposes only]