Crank Up Your Writing Skills: “A World Without America” Contest
January 12th, 2007 by xformed
Several weeks ago, I pondered actually sitting down and toying with a revisionist history piece titled something like “What If There Was No America?” The most difficult part, not being a sociologist, economist, engineer, historian, scientist, etc, would be to find a point in time to “separate” the American experience from the actual history and then commence to postulate on the path “history” would have then taken with some degreee of credibility for the purpose of the article/essay.
I guess it was all spawned by the History Channel “Engineering an Empire” series. What it took, and how nations formed and developed, and then had to come up with innovations to continue their growth is facinating. As I watched the episode “Britian: Blood and Steel,” I began to consider what we have contributed to civilization and the genesis of my essay idea.
Well, as luck would have it, some called about three days ago, while they were discussing the Sandy Berger song writing contest on the Bill Bennett show (this week – and you have until midnite tonight to get your entry in), someone suggested Bill write a book “A World Without America.” Bill’s response was to say he will set up and essay contest for submissions of 1000 word essays for this 4th of July time frame – $1000 to the winner.
So, the question is: Do you have a flair or passion for writing fictional history? Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get rewarded for your efforts…but…based on some of the lyrics submitted for the Sandy Burgler song contest, be ready for some seriously competent competition from the listeners to that show…
This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 9:22 am and is filed under History, Public Service, Scout Sniping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
January 12th, 2007 at 10:16 am
While my “storytelling skills” were much celebrated in my youth (I could come up with a “whopper” at the frop of a hat *heh*), I’ve never been one for writing fiction.
Howsomever…
Eric Flint is having a go at something like your project. He does depart from history with the War of 1812 in his 1812: Rivers of War but his historical departure leaves us with an America radically different to the one we see today, one where the “Trail of Tears” is avoided resulting in a separate nation state across the Mississippi resulting from an amalgamation of Indian nations and white settlers. The departure is followed up in the newly-released, “1824: The Arkansas War”… that I have not yet gotten my hands on.
I have often wondered what might have resulted had the American people been compelled by circumstances to pursue the Founders’ vision, rather than the scrapped Constitution/revisionist view we now have as a legacy of Lincoln’s War and other acts departing from the Founder’s hopes and dreams which have resulted in the growing anarcho-tyranny exemplified by a president who wants to make of America Mexico del Norte and an organization created by the fedgov as a full employment effort for subliterate bullies—the TSA—to harrass once-citizens (now subjects) of the fedgov.
What would the world be like without the America of the Founders’ hopes and dreams? We don’t need fiction for that, my friend.
And,
In the petty rebellions of never-ending “youth” (cf. “grups” phenomenon) and the growing tendency of government to harass citizens while letting real dangers to those citizens slide (how else to interpret Ruby Ridge, Waco or even the Martha Stewart case while allowing millions of invading Mexicans to continue their crime wave?), the danger de Tocqueville wrote about is easily seen as a clear and present danger in our society today.
Of course, the world is better off for having had America, even as it has been corrupted. But how much better would we be for the world as w whole–and for us as well–were we to start back toward our roots and having retraced our steps some 200 years, rediscover what we could have been…
Utopian? No, conservative. AND liberal (the real kind, not today’s nihilistic socio-communism masquerading as liberalism).