Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 15
public office, the right to private property, the influence of religion and the intermingling
of peoples as crucial to the advent of freedom in America. These issues are not the only
important ones by any means, but they are very worthy of further reflection.
The essence of the genius of America is one word – freedom. But in early times,
freedom was available to only a privileged few. For the lowly born, freedoms’ precursor
was patronage. It became a pervasive substitute, but was, in fact, a camouflaged
enemy. Patronage is defined as the sponsorship by the rich and powerful of the talented
poor. I find that this practice, which history highlights time and again, has historically
served as a palliative for freedom. However, coupled to paternalism, it has been a
transition tool from total servitude to full freedom. It appears under every system of
social organization, and the more dictatorial the social environment, the more important
for progress it becomes. The existence of this practice, which the Romans made
common, runs through history like an essential thread binding one system to another
and one period to the next.
A more severe kind of patronage that encompasses whole classes of inferior persons is
known as paternalism. I define paternalism as the condescending grant of limited
privileges by the ruling class to oppressed majorities. It was the common way of living in
most societies of the world. It still appeals to many parties that see benefit from it, even
in America.
Paternalism and patronage maintained the status quo by making the powerful more
powerful and the recipients of their favor more dependent. All the great strides of
progress in the human story depended on patronage. With time, as individual liberty
spread through the world, what had been a tool for progress in the past became a
shackle for the millions who had dreams of self-improvement but had no connections
with the powerful. America offered the liberating alternative. With the advent of a chance
to pursue a dream without a sponsor, progress accelerated at rates never thought
possible before. Freedom begot self-reliance and consequently, the American system
was based on self-reliance rather than on patronage.
History reveals that this was a long and tortuous road. It started about twenty-six
centuries ago. The first recorded clamors for individual freedom resonated in ancient
Athens. They were heard through the voices of such historical figures as Pericles who
wanted to endow anybody who had a dream with a chance to achieve it (sometimes at
taxpayer’s expense), and Socrates who wanted everyone to become capable of having
a good dream (by learning personal virtue), and many others whose work brought
critical mass to the concept of personal rights.
The classical Greek’s ancestors, removed by time from them by about the same span
as Christ is removed from us, had already built several layers of the pyramid of progress
and left discernible records for our research almost 4,500 years later. The Cretan
creators of Cnossus and the builders of Minos dreamed strong enough dreams to lay
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