Some things are easy to name. If something has never been seen before, like a creature netted in the depths of the ocean, we simply agree on a name, any sound will do. But some things are very difficult to name, they are obscure. Usually they are obscure because they already have a name but we can't think of it, like when a movie star shows up unexpectedly at a PTA meeting. Until somebody comes up with the right name, nobody can concentrate on the business at hand.

For decades, many people in the United States of America have seen something they could not name. The pulpits and the pews, the barrooms and the brothels, have been filled with people buzzing for the name of the unexpected guest they glimpsed in this nation. Writer after writer has tried to come up with the right name, but we all knew that somehow they hadn't quite got it. Let me put a name to it so we can get on with the business at hand. Call it Revolution.

A revolution occurs when a government long following one form is changed into a new form that is a direct contradiction, or the opposite, of the old form. When one form of government is replaced by another form of government that is the opposite of the old, revolution is the only name in the English language that accurately describes that event.

A Revolution has occurred in the United States of America that destroyed the foundation of the government laid by the Founding Fathers of this nation. It is virtually impossible to specify with total accuracy exactly when the Revolution occurred because it came not with the roar and the horror of war but with the slow acid dripping erosion of ignorance instilled in generation after generation and most of us--myself included--were totally oblivious to it.

But the ignorance the led to the latest American Revolution was no ordinary ignorance of the kind that dullwitted people exercise by nature. This ignorance is the understandable ignorance that afflicts extraordinarily intelligent people when faced with new and utterly unexpected phenomena. We have had a difficult time seeing that a revolution has occurred in the United States of America because the revolution occurred without altering the structure of government at all. Outwardly everything looked exactly the same as always. The governmental structure was simply moved lock, stock and barrel from its old foundation to a new, diametrically opposite foundation.

So what if foundational changes have occurred in the government of the United States of America? What does it matter?

It matters. To all of us. The survival of our species is endangered, not because there has been a Revolution, but because we don't know there's been a Revolution.

The government of the United States is designed to allow the people to make any changes in the government ordained and established by the people. But those changes are supposed to occur because the people consciously decide to make those changes. When revolutionary changes occur in the government of the Unites States of America without the people consciously deciding to make those changes, that is the most dangerous revolution imaginable because it is a revolution spawned out of ignorance rather than design.

Today we can no longer ignore the fact that the American Distinctive has been destroyed. Distinctives among members of a species have been identified as the key factor determining the survival of that species. For instance, some members of a particular species of eagle develop a beak that is one inch longer than the beak on the rest of the species. This longer beak is seen to be a distinctive of one particular group within the eagle species. In all other respects, the eagles are the same. Researchers have demonstrated that given natural changes in climate, habitat, and competitive requirements, the longer beak will prove itself to be either a handicap preventing the survival of those possessing the distinctive, or an asset ensuring their survival. If a distinctive is an asset to survival, in time the entire species will be composed of individuals possessing what was once a distinctive of a particular group or individual within the species; if not an asset to survival, natural attrition will eliminate the individuals possessing that distinctive. In this way species evolve through natural selection.

Distinctives operate in the survival of human societies in the same fashion as in the survival of a species. Individuals, societies, cultures, people-groups, and nations inevitably develop distinctives that, like the eagle's longer beak, are common to no other person or group of people on earth. When distinctives that are an asset to the survival of a society or a species are destroyed, destruction is inevitable.

The role that distinctives play in survival is a convenient way to approach a very complicated subject, namely survival itself. The people of this planet might not be expected to agree on much, but the need for and desireablity of survival is one of those agreements. People, the species homo sapiens, want to survive. If one accepts the validity of the theory that identifies the development of distinctives as the method through which survival occurs, one who desired survival would be obligated to do everything in one's power to preserve distinctives that are the actual instruments through which survival is ensured.

With this in mind it is possible to understand why an individual like myself could spend the time necessary to define what I believe is the foundational American distinctive. While the American Revolution contributed many ideas to the evolution of government on this planet--Constitutional Law, Popular Sovereignty, Checks and Balances--there is only one idea that qualifies as the foundational American distinctive, the structuring principle of the American form of government. Were that idea to be removed as the foundation upon which the government of the United States rests, what would we call such removal? What would be a reasonable name for it? As I suggested earlier Revolution is the only name that actually does justice to such a phenomenon?