For Old Worlders, much of the character of the United States can be summed up with one word: big. From the skyscrapers of New York to the mega-budgets of Hollywood, from the Navy’s super-carriers to the population’s super-sized waistlines, Americans just seem to do things on a larger scale than we do.

They have an unquenchable thirst for largesse, and nowhere is this better represented than in the monuments to the federal government, erected as ‘public’ works by the earkmarking endeavours of corrupt Congressmen. This was tragically brought home by the collapse of the Interstate 35W Mississippi bridge in Minneapolis last week, as one of these monuments came crashing down, with the loss of at least five lives.

The Washington Post has an interesting op-ed on the decline of the American efficiency at building such structures, and completing all other ‘big projects’.

The United States seems to have become the superpower that can’t tie its own shoelaces. America is a nation of vast ingenuity and technological capabilities. Its bridges shouldn’t fall down.

And it’s not just bridges. Has there ever been a period in our history when so many American plans and projects have, literally or figuratively, collapsed? In both grand and humble endeavors, the United States can no longer be relied upon to succeed or even muddle through. We can’t remake the Middle East. We can’t protect one of our own cities from a natural disaster or, it seems, rebuild after one. We can’t rescue our citizens when they’re on TV begging for help. We can’t even give our wounded veterans decent medical care.

And it’s all true; the United States doesn’t do any of those things particularly well. But there’s one thing that these ’simple’ tasks all have in common. Not only are all these projects stamped with the Stars and Stripes, Made in the United States, but they bear the hallmark of the government: Made in Washington DC. It’s not America that’s lost its way, but the government.

The private sector continues to be as inventive and productive as ever, particularly when it comes back to the super-size. American companies still make up 8 of the top 12 corporations worldwide in terms of sales. 5 of the top 6 films at the UK box office are American (and the other one - Harry Potter - is made with American money). Boeing’s 787 is raking up hundreds of orders, whilst Airbus struggles to flog its mammoth A380. And four-fifths of global software sales are racked up by US companies.

The biggest failings of the United States, as with all countries, are the failings of the government. The Sarbanes-Oxley regulations have destroyed the American finance sector; Wall Street gets the blame. The Food and Drug Administration blocks the development of new drugs, killing thousands; ‘Big Pharma’ gets the blame.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Washington Post misrepresents state failure as national failure. As a newspaper that builds its reputation on reporting about the federal government, it must equate the two. However, to do so does both themselves and their country a great disservice. The free market environment and entrepreneurial spirit of the United States means it remains the place to do ‘big things’, and do them right. Just don’t ask the government to do them; they can’t even tie their own shoe-laces.

Rarely is the most down-trodden man the most angry.  No matter what ideology they espoused, of history’s best-remembered revolutionaries - from Maximillien Robespierre to Sir Roger Casement, from George Washington to Che Guevara - a great many have actually sprouted from the ruling class that they sought to overthrow.  Disenfranchised even of their ability to fight back, rarely do the most abused rise up against their oppressors.  However, once in a blue moon, they do.

In 1839, one such group of disenfranchised and down-trodden did throw off their chains.  They were a group of trans-Atlantic passengers on a Spanish ferry, heading to the United States for a new life: a life of imprisonment, slavery, and inhumanity.  La Amistad carried a cargo of enslaved Africans, who had been illegally brought into the Americas despite a 20-year-old ban on the slave trade.

However, on the 2nd July of that year, the captives, led by Joseph Cinqué, rose up in revolt, killed the captain, took control of the Amistad, and ordered its return to Africa.  Due to deception by the ship’s navigator, the ship instead headed for New York, where they were captured by the US Navy and sold as slaves.  Only due to the Constitutional oversight of a free and independent legislature were the slaves declared as they legally always had been: free men.

The Amistad case is one of the most famous steps in the history of the abolition of slavery in the United States, and thereafter those parts of the world that still practised the barbarity.  Those that fought back on 2nd July 1839 were down-trodden and disenfranchised, the lowest of the low, but fought back because their slavery was so explicit and so complete.

However, all those oppressed by the power of the state, small and mighty alike, are enslaved as if held in chattel.  Just as the deprival of life by force is murder and the deprival of property by force is theft, so the deprival of liberty by force, always and everywhere, is slavery.