Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 7
Before weaving my personal experiences into the fabric of America, I must first share
my personal version of how “concept America” developed. A description of the blending
of freedom with the rule of law, as it affects me and all other Americans is the first step. I
start by tracing the origins of both freedom and the rule of law with illustrations of broad
and sweeping examples from history. I choose the examples from ancient history
almost at random, moved only by their usefulness in the making of my points. As I move
through time, at the Middle Ages I turn my vision in more detail to Iberian Europe,
simply because it was the cradle of my ancestors. From among many social changes
that these examples produced, I pick out only one or two significant forces from each
historical instance. Again I select them guided only by the need to use them in my
narrative as support for my commentaries on public policy. Then I proceed to explore,
again by intentional selection of specific instances, how the public policies engendered
by the historical events discussed affect my life.
Thus, before my personal story can be gleaned, the book takes on a character of a
study of the origins and effects of public policy in America. Because of the impossibility
of reducing the staggering magnitude of applicable history to a single book, my narrative
is limited to samples that affected my life only. But they serve well enough to illustrate
how America’s genius to retain and attract self-reliant visionaries emerged. So, slowly at
first, to make my points about how well we are protecting, or endangering, the genius of
America, I intersperse my historical recollections with related present day situations that
affect our lives now. From the second chapter on, I overlay personal experiences on the
framework of policies that are our rule of law.
Where are the roots of the American system? There is no fast date for the earliest
civilizations that left remnants of their existence or information about how well organized
they were. We cannot safely point to any ruin or record as being the first of human
history. But it can be very safely said that it took at least 8,000 years of recorded
building of the pyramid of progress to arrive at the proper time, the proper system, the
proper place and the proper people to achieve such momentous accomplishments as
the American Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. We know
that the social freedom that ensued as a result of their universal and lasting acceptance
by the American people ushered the most advanced civilization the world has ever
known. The universality of the acceptance of these documents by Americans is
matched only by the emulation they receive by most non-Americans. How did we get to
this point?
Humanity has been experimenting with a wide range of social organizational systems
since about 4,500 years before Christ. King Hammurabi in ancient Babylon codified his
first set of laws about 1,300 years before Classical Greece. It appears that his dictums
were mostly unwritten laws that had been in existence for more than 300 years before
him. Despite the fact that they had to be chiseled in stone, the resulting code was longer
than the American Constitution. However, though promulgated from the top, it contained
provisions for the protection of each individual, giving rise to its popular acceptance by
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