Looking at History: Determining Our Future Part 3

This series is using world history to help us, as Progressives think about, discuss,plan and carry out actions and activities as activists within 12 blocks of where we live. We have a very short time to become the citizen patriots our nation calls us to be during this November's elections.  

History can inform, illustrate, and highlight both causes and effects from a national or international perspective. In case you missed it, 3/4 of the entire world population is looking to America as their last, best hope for freedom. Tyranny is very much alive and well, and many would claim that statement to be true right here in the USA. Can history inform us? Will we dare, as citizen to look at, evaluate, process and understand our history well enough, soon enough to make our future history reflect our current realities, goals, plans and dreams as Americans? 

November's election will surely answer that question. Which answer do you wish it to be, and which answer should it, in fact, be? In this episode, we are going to frame our discorse around the Victorian and Eduardian eras in Great Britain to inform us, and help us understand that along with the emergence, around the planet, of the Industrial Revolution came a new definition and diagnosis to English speaking peoples around the world: the crime of Poverty. England had a very unique solution to this disastrous reality, and more than 15 million people alive today, more than 1 in 10 British (and American) citizens are directly related to someone who felt the pain of this particular solution: The Workhouse (Poorhouse). 

Many in today's American Society talk as if such a solution would be preferred for those who find themselves financially embarrassed today, living somewhere between poverty and destitution. Are they right?