Part VII — Why America Repeated the Mistakes of 1621 and How to Break the Cycle

by Darius A.  Lecointe, PhD, JD 

If the crisis of 2025 feels familiar, it is because the United States is reenacting the unresolved contradictions of 1621. America has repeated the same pattern for four centuries: identity confusion, improvised governance, fading fidelity, and rising force. Understanding why this happens is essential to ending the cycle.

1. America Never Resolved Its Foundational Identities

The three identities at Plymouth — Wampanoag, Separatist, and non-Separatist — were never reconciled. Instead: the Separatist story became national myth, the economic motives of the non-Separatists faded into the culture, and Wampanoag sovereignty was erased.

A nation that suppresses its origins repeats them. Our identity confusion comes from an identity myth built on omission.

2. We Inherited a Habit of Improvisation

The Mayflower Compact was a short-term solution treated as a founding moment. Americans learned to celebrate improvisation instead of seeing it as a warning. This habit resurfaced in: constitutional shortcuts, emergency powers, judicial overreach, and political improvisation replacing fidelity.

Improvisation became tradition.

3. We Confused Power With Responsibility

Early settlers equated authority with moral right. Modern America still does. We assume: elections grant broad power, institutions may act until stopped, and the Constitution matters only when courts intervene.

This is constitutional drift.

4. We Misunderstood the Constitution as a Tool, Not an Identity

For generations, the Constitution was taught as a rulebook or manual. But it describes who we are, not just what government does. Today’s disputes feel unwinnable because they are identity conflicts disguised as legal arguments.

5. We Entrusted Responsibility to the Wrong Branch

Judicial supremacy completed the pattern. Once Americans believed the Court defined meaning: citizens disengaged, Congress abandoned resistance, presidents stopped exercising restraint, and the Court became the focus of national desperation.

Responsibility shrank to one branch.

6. Breaking the Cycle Requires Returning to Identity

To stop repeating 1621, America must do what the early settlers could not: acknowledge competing identities, fuse them into a shared constitutional identity, restore the sequence identity → governance → fidelity → force, and return responsibility to all branches and the people.

The Lesson for 2025

America repeats the mistakes of 1621 because it never learned them. Breaking the cycle requires recovering the one thing the Constitution cannot supply on its own: a unified, honest national identity.