“Freedom is never more than one
generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the
bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the
same.” – Ronald Reagan.
Into his simple statement, Ronald
Reagan distilled the greatest threat and the greatest strength of America: the
ideas of it. We could forget them. We could become so enamored of the false
idols of socialism that we finally fail completely to pass along the meaning
and significance of America. The Prudent
observer already recognizes that a large fraction of U. S. citizens are far
down that path.
What makes this possible? Obviously, education is worth examining; so is immigration; so, too, is ghetto-ization. Let’s look at the last. Ghettos form somewhat naturally, primarily for ethnic reasons, which is to say, cultural reasons. They form economically, as well, but where the only shared “norm” is poverty… or substantial wealth.
Religious ghettos are well recorded and well-storied in
history. Most were either harmless or
threatening to a power-structure. Some
were left in peace, most eventually destroyed for their “other-ness,” and the
implied threat that represented.
Most ghettos engender resentment, or cohere because of
it. Shared resentment is a political
tinderbox, to which outside intrusion, however legitimate, can provide the
explosive spark. In and of itself,
ghetto-ization is deconstructive of the greater society, corrosive and
segregationist. There is no good reason
to encourage the growth or even the existence of ghettos – of any sort, at
least not in a democratic, free-enterprise republic.
In its perpetual confusion, religious sectarianism both
creates and attempts to integrate, ghettos.
Part of Judeo-Christian teaching is to “…come apart and be a separate
and chosen people.” It is not dissimilar
to many other faiths. The direction
seeks purity of body, mind and soul.
When the rest of the “world” is deemed impure and immoral, “sickly” in a
sense, quarantine appears wise, and temporarily it is. Enlightened sects both separate themselves
and purposely integrate themselves, hoping to attract some – if not all – of the
impure and immoral to adopt their ways of belief and of life.
Mere enlightenment can easily evolve into messianism,
causing religious groups to send missionaries out to dissimilar, and therefore,
“heathen” lands who are living in sin for no other reason than ignorance of the
one, true path.
But ghettos, religious, ethnic, economic, tend to inhibit
understanding – understanding which is essential to cultural/social survival
based on shared mores and standards, habits and language. Those “inside” tend to mostly talk to one
another, share distrusts of outsiders with one another, hear only opinions from
one another and, eventually, for some, reinforce one another’s hatreds for
outsiders.
Hatred is unhealthy, especially so for relatively “open”
societies, where there is freedom of movement, speech and expression… and where
there are politicians. Hatred spawns a
rotten sort of political power… a sort that is happy to ply ghetto hatreds with
pandering postulates, even to the point of social revolution. That is, every form of “establishment” power
is besmirched and derogated until the cravings of those seeking votes are but a
shade away from the hatreds of the marginalized.
It would seem unwise to spur the creations of more ghettos,
and unwise to feed the ones that exist such that they need not integrate and
come to better understandings.
In effect, the United States has permitted, encouraged and
protected the formation of new ghettos, both through civil tolerance of the
rights of homeless people to remain drugged while living animally on
appropriated public lands, and by importing enclaves of aliens whose cultures
and belief structures are not only unlike our own, but antithetical to our
own. The great “melting pot” of quickly
assimilating immigrants is a quaint notion.
Immigrants today come, in part, to show Americans how inferior our mores
are to their “superior” ones, from which they have fled to our shores. This is unhealthy.
At the same time our social welfare industry strengthens and
feeds the original, “black” ghettos, feeding their politically powerful support
to those in government who feed the welfare industry. More recent ghettos based on Central and
South American attitudes and language(s) actually compete for the support from
the welfare industry that was largely delivered to blacks 50 years ago. The United States literally fights to grow
those ghettos in contravention of our own laws.
This is doubly unhealthy since it cements a disregard for law amongst
our fastest growing minorities, many of whom reside here illegally. Very unhealthy.
Very few within the ghettos described share understandings of our Constitution or of our common law and standards. For these growing sub-cultures, there is no need to forget our heritage: they come or are born without it and there is no requirement to adopt it in order to enjoy our land and protections, legally and honestly or not.
For the rest of us, upon whom the survival of the ideas of America
rests, many of our youth are ignorant of, have forgotten or have been
instructed away from those ideas. One
generation is all it will take to lose everything.
America’s accelerating trend toward denial of reality – and of codified law – is and should be worrisome. Unfortunately, large segments of the polity see no reason to worry because the gulf of unreality has yielded political power, or comfort, and promises more. Confronted with claims of actual, or imminent, damage linked to the rush toward unreality, those who find the unreality comforting are compelled toward hatred of the claimants, even to the point of attacking them. One should wonder whether the trend alluded to is comprised of innocent reaction to “reactionary” opposition to “progress,” or is it the fruit of evil, aggressively transformative attack. Why would the latter be so?
The prime question, of course, is who benefits from the
disunity of the United States and following that, the discrediting and
dissembling of the ideas of
America? The unimaginative can readily
suggest that “the RUSSIANS” or “the CHINESE,” or “IRANIANS,” would want to destroy us, but those peoples
actually like us well enough, and respect and love us enough to come to the
United States for a better life. There
are relatively small subsets of both Russia and China that definitely DO work
toward our failure, but not because of their, or our, nationalities. The forces who would revel in our spiritual destruction are, themselves, spiritually
motivated, unrecognizably in some instances, even in their own mirrors.
America is a spiritual invention. Prudence would cause us to not call it a religious invention, given the many ways
religions have so distorted the inherent purity of spirituality. The waves of peoples who sacrificed to come
to the “New World” to begin America, did so with strong spiritual
underpinnings… essentially Judeo-Christian.
Were they perfect? Clearly not,
as we look back and judge them from today’s sensitivities, but at their times
they were doing their level best as they strove to make a better civilization
than the corrupted ones they left behind.
And religious freedom was – and is – crucial to the new form of
self-government that evolved from their sacrifices, and repeatedly since.
We should wonder why Judeo-Christianity is the prime target
of attack in the U. S. over the past 60 to 70 years. As the basis of our laws and social order –
conscience, if you will – its destruction is the most rapid way to destroy
“America” and all of its quaint ideas of individual sovereignty and
responsibility, private property, charity and sacrifice. Who would want to do that?
If we concentrate on the enemies of America – or of our
Constitution – as competitors for oil, or food, or land or military power… or
competitors for limited budget resources who disagree on how to make life
“better” for all of us, we will miss the point, tragically and
historically. Our misdirected concerns
expose our failure to comprehend American exceptionalism. It exposes, as well, the danger of
relinquishing public education – and much of our administrative ‘state,’ and
even parts of our law-enforcement and judiciary – to people who agree with our
enemies.
“America” does not, and cannot, run or survive on its
own. President Reagan observed that we
are only, ever, one generation away from losing it altogether. This powerful country? With this military? With our wealth? All these McDonalds? One generation? Surely not.
Let’s open our eyes.
America can survive only so long as its citizens believe in
it… simple. We have to believe in our
Constitution, in our founding, in personal liberty as well as personal
responsibility, and in what we term, “Judeo-Christian” tradition. Unfortunately, as more and more people are
attracted to dis-belief in God, they are encouraged to disbelieve in the United
States. No one outside of the United
States is going to carry the burden of believing in the ideas that sustain it
for us. It is our test of citizenship
and no one’s else.
“We the People of the United States, (they were people with quite similar moral compasses, if not religious upbringings)
in Order to form a more perfect Union, (consider
the capitalized words to this point: We, People, United, States, Order, Union)
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
(sic) promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain (wonderful
choice, there) and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.” These words cannot be improved
upon.
The intent of Americans, then, was incontrovertibly NOT to
create a more powerful central government… or to create a new monarchy…
certainly not to establish a theocracy or an aristocracy of inherited baronies
and dukedoms. It wasn’t even to create a
more powerful military. Americans wanted
to live and let-live; develop their nation and prosper without wars. Wars have always vexed the “New Jerusalem,”
some completely from outside, some as would tear us asunder, but all that was
desired for the first 8 generations or so was a “return to normalcy” after each
conflict was over.
For a like period “we” had no interest in dominating other
peoples or re-shaping their societies and governments for them. But almost from the start, and more
specifically following the second Civil War (“The” Civil War), forces – or A
force – has arrayed itself against the ideas
of America, against the dream of e pluribus unum. Why?
Who would care how we live or govern ourselves? And even if “they” didn’t like how we chose
to do things in our own country, what would prompt “them” to infiltrate us and
attempt to tear us apart? Something,
apparently.
Is it not apparent that “they” are not simply envious
churls? Looked at from a position of
Prudence, the impetus to destroy the first nation founded on anti-tyranny seems
spiritual, not material. Indeed, the two
competing philosophies, or faiths,
dare we say, if one is represented by the ideas of America, would be
essentially Judeo-Christianity and socialism-communism. Which, from a broad perspective, still begs
the question: why bother to destroy America?
Socialism has proceeded on its destructive path quite well despite the
presence of the United States.
In a way we are engaged in the ultimate, and perpetual,
struggle between darkness and light, good and evil. Our enemy can survive only by weakening the
strong, sapping our strength. It
behooves us to acknowledge that we have the seeds of “goodness” and the
strength of Light, and that it is high time we reinforced and nurtured those
things, and defended them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, rooting
out the latter.
The ability to “conduct” politics is critical to the survival of democratic republics, most specifically, to the survival of this one, into which we have been most fortunate to be born or naturalized. Prudence teaches that, as Benjamin Franklin wisely observed following the Constitutional Convention, we have “…a republic (only) if you (we) can keep it.” What is required for a citizenry to “keep” its republic?
First, obviously, is citizenship, itself… a fascinating
quality, uniquely so for the United States of America, and the most valuable
quality for the nation’s education system to impart. Before joining a political party, our citizens should all be members of the “U.S. of
A. party,” in effect. That is, we all
should share the principles of “America.”
How is that accomplished?
First and foremost, we must agree on the meanings of words
and, simultaneously, on the meaning of laws, starting with our bases of right
and wrong. Just suggesting such a
radical idea will generate heated argument, if not violence in certain venues,
today. Here in 2019, just 220 years
since the Constitution was ratified, Americans no longer agree on very basic
word definitions, starting with “nation.”
Those who now want to defend the borders of their “nation”
are called “nationalists,” a term so pejorative as to be synonymous with
Nazism. Clearly the use of the word
“nation” is close to the word “national” and the NAZIs were “National”
socialists, meaning that they were transformed from socialists into
right-wingers bent on either lynching a brown person or gassing some Jews. I mean, “Duuuhhh.” It is the same as owning slaves to be a foul
“nationalist.” It’s just like, ummm…
Republicans.
So, principled conversations have become both tedious and
more difficult. Another bad word is
“abortion” or, even more prejudicial: “infanticide,” or, “life,” itself. Abortion is the epitome of goodness and deep
caring about civil rights, in today’s lexicon, when it used to mean the
premature and usually violent ending of the miracle of life in the womb. So clearly it can neither be worried about or
discussed, since it is settled civil rights “law.” People with the temerity to question the
beauty of abortion or who might suggest that the effects of rampant,
profit-making abortion could be somehow bad for the “nation” or for our social
communities, can be attacked physically, spat upon, kicked, thrown down to the
ground and even worse. No one will make
much of a stink.
Governments have even created safe zones around abortion
mills (sorry), “clinics,” so that those preparing to accept the sacrament of
ending their child’s life, will not, themselves, be made uncomfortable. I mean, “gosh,” after all.
States are finding their voice regarding abortion, passing
various restrictions on when it is legal to kill unborn children. One is based on whether a heartbeat has
reached detectability, which is somewhere around 6 weeks after conception. Others use a “principle” called “viability,”
which is when modern technology can enable the fetus to survive outside the
womb, generally successfully, while the, now, baby completes gestation and is
able to mature with normal maternal care at home. Viability seems to be around 24 weeks after
conception, or two-thirds of a normal pregnancy “term.”
Opponents of these concerns, and these are among the most strident of advocates America has ever heard, pooh-pooh all of these calculations about life, and insist that death is somehow better and better serves everyone involved, but to do so they have to change the definition of “life, unborn, baby and offspring.” Those words are relatively meaningless if the confused or weak-minded “mother” doesn’t “want” the child, baby, offspring.
Consequently craven politicians make what they think are
legal laws based on the feelings of the weak-minded or weak-hearted proto-mothers. The ramifications are grievously
complex. In the case of a new mother who
takes her baby home from the birthing center but, for some reason, loses
control under the new stresses of motherhood and kills the new child: she has
committed a crime and will be arrested.
But, in the case of a new mother whose child survives abortion, which
happens when abortion is performed late-term by a “doctor” who hasn’t practiced
snipping the baby’s spinal cord before complete delivery, for example, she has
no responsibility to the baby who, despite his or her automatic citizenship,
may be allowed to starve to death on a table someplace near where it was
delivered and NO ONE has any criminal liability.
Prudence wonders if those tables have a special, descriptive
name, like every other piece of “medical” equipment.
At one time, doctors swore to “first, do no harm.” Indeed, they became doctors and joined an industry the mission of which used to be helping people overcome… oh, injuries, diseases, old age and other life-threatening conditions. Unfortunately, politicians are unable to allow big economic functions to carry on successfully, and this politicization of medicine is reducing the money that can be made doing all the things we thought doctors were sworn to do. The big money is in abortion, now. Politicians are urging each other to send more money into the abortion industry, and then fight off every attempt to limit abortions, while placing restrictions on top of restrictions for the life-saving arena of doctor-activities.
Doctors, of course, worked their fingers to the bone, so to
speak, to become doctors, and figure that the rewards should be commensurate –
they’re not stupid, obviously.
Consequently, many are learning and practicing how to help the
almost-born overcome LIFE. Life is now a
disease that doctors can cure. What did
you think you knew?
Fascism and Fascist are two words we can’t seem to agree upon
the meanings of. Those who are acting
exactly like, umm… well, fascists, seem to believe that they are courageously
fighting fascism. This disconnect
interferes with useful discussion and, unfortunately, interferes with sworn “peace
officers” actually defending public order when faced with “Antifa” chaos, lest
they “enflame” the situations. When
government policy is senseless, the sensible are left speechless.
Some Americans – and other residents – are unable to accept
the meaning of “immigrant.” While it is
true that native-Americans (which is a meaningless term, itself; indigenous
peoples got here before Europeans did, but there was no “America” then, making
the term, “aborigines” the only accurate one) were able to roam around as far
as their war-making prowess enabled, they had no concept of “immigration,”
today a distinct and legal condition.
They understood “invaders” though, by whatever words they described
unwelcome “others” who threatened their lands and way of life. They understood ethics better than many “others”
do even now, and the concept of “theft.”
“Others” stole their lands and lives and very ways of life, often by creating treaties that aborigines agreed to, but which were quickly abrogated by their “other” treaty-creators. Those sensitive to honesty, today, are painfully aware of the lies told against aboriginal peoples. Lying is the distillation of not agreeing on word meanings, and it can threaten everything a people holds dear. Back to “immigrant.”
We no longer live in a society where people can just slide
onto one another’s land or appropriate their means of living. The concept of private property is the basis
of economics and social order, itself.
The need to strive to obtain the means to survive, protect and shelter
oneself and one’s family, also provides the opportunity to be charitable toward
others – often to sacrifice for others.
In order to “emigrate” to another country, a person must accommodate the
legal strictures of his or her intended new home country and, in some cases,
the strictures of his or her present country.
It is part and parcel of adopting a new “citizenship” which carries with
it significant legal sanctions and benefits.
It is not a simple condition of location.
So, an “immigrant” must have a status defined in law, else
he or she is simply a law-breaker… which is to say, a criminal. The legal adjudication of that criminal’s
status is a matter for the illegally adopted country to perform. Otherwise, that person is not an “immigrant”
at all, but a thief.
These are but a few examples of words the definition of
which – specifically the disagreement over those definitions – threatens the
existence of the United States and some other nations, as well. Words have meaning, tied to the meaning of “truth.”
One other example is the word, “racism.” Racism is a social concept that is based on
an undefinable term, thus yielding a meaninglessness that enables the epithet, “racism”
to be used with little connection to any of the circumstances that inspire its
use. Racism, epithetically, infers some
group membership, of those so accused. That
is, the accused must be prejudiced against another group, presumably based on
surface, observable traits.
Usually this refers to “white” people who are accused of a variety of wrong feelings, or thoughts, toward, usually, brown-skinned people. Now, brown skin covers a broad swath of human beings who cannot by any measure be considered racially singular. Anthropologists have tried dozens of ways to “define” races and every classification system immediately is challenged by freshly observed biological distinctions that must be shoe-horned into the supposed standard classifications. In short, there certainly are biological “races” but it is nearly impossible to identify them, so “racism” is reduced to mere political advantage, today.
This is not to say that terrible actions haven’t been taken against people – of all shades of skin color – by countries, states, counties, towns, mobs and, in truth, individuals. But, except for individuals , official, legalistic discrimination and worse bad actions have ceased in the United States. Why has “racialism” increased? Why have the accusations of “racist” and “racism” become more commonplace? Politics – not logic, not biology, not science, not group connection – politics, through which racialist grouping by the most superficial of distinctions, can produce a sort of “groupthink” that yields “group-voting.” For shame.
Our Constitution embodies the greatest spirit of individualism ever made nationally
foundational in human history. Individuals are required to be responsible to
themselves and to others, a radical idea.
It marked the intentional, codified rejection of serfdom… the rejection
of monarchy… the rejection of tyrannical control of others, altogether. In other words, individuals are sovereign
under the Constitution. As a result, the
government was formed by communities of individuals, each of whom relinquished limited amounts of that sovereignty so
that all may benefit. The government was
formed to serve its sovereign citizens, and
not the other way around.
Now, we see our democratic, individual political powers being defined by false connection to
arbitrarily defined groups. Nothing more
threatens our national cohesion and our nationally protected individual liberties. Group membership yields group responsibility,
the fundamental destruction of individuality and individual
responsibility. It is antithetical to
our Constitution. Billions call it socialism.
“Doctors” learn this procedure from one another to become “good” at it.
The battle over a “border wall” on the southern, Mexican border is a symptom of larger and more significant hatreds motivating a large minority of American residents. One hopes, and prays, that those same will step back and reconsider their desire to feed such ugly motivations. Led by Democrat leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, Barack Obama and now, Andrew Cuomo, and many others, these new political haters appear to share several common traits:
They hate the Constitution as it was designed
and written. The intent of the founders
cannot be accepted, in their views, because some of them owned slaves, a
grievous custom, without question, but totally irrelevant to the ideas and
philosophies they espoused. In fact, the
designers and compilers of the American ideas were ALL opposed to slavery and
did their best to help it phase out of American life. Read Frederick Douglass; he understood.
They are deeply ignorant of American and of
European history, and of the Bible, itself.
The underpinnings of American
culture are ignored by them, even reviled.
The institutions of government are trusted by
them more than any individual’s motivation, and the seeming ability to
legislate or regulate – doesn’t much matter – people to act as their fellow
thinkers wish, is so tantalizing as to distort the presence or even the
perception of liberty.
They view America’s existence as an affront to
all non-white, non-European people, and therefore not deserving of defense,
even of its borders, and that the history of America should be erased from
people’s minds and certainly from educational systems so that America’s
evilness and corruption can never again interfere with universal sharing of all
wealth or with individual freedoms to play, fornicate and indulge as Gaia
intended, under the careful watch of the Smarter Ones. They’ll identify themselves.
So, politics is not the actions of a free people to choose
their leaders and governing philosophies; it is the benign control of wages,
prices and production so that everyone is EQUAL, with brownish people being more
equal than white people. Skills-based education
will no longer be required for most students, so long as there are enough very
smart people who should be compensated for making everyone else comfortable.
The quaint chaos of individuality and “freedom” can be
avoided.
The majesty of American citizenship is unique in the
world. There is no system like
ours. Anyone… anyone, anyone who can
honestly swear to uphold the Constitution, obey civic law, pay his or her bills
and act responsibly, can become an American – an actual, living, breathing,
American. One wishes those born here were held to the same
standards, but still, it’s impossible to sign up for a French residency and
ever, ever become, well, French. The
same is true for Japan, China, Japan, Korea, or India or virtually any ethnically defined country.
You might get to live in other countries legally, but you’ll never
become one of them. America, including Canada, is different. America is defined by the ideas that formed
her, and by geography. That’s it. No matter how hard racists of every shade
attempt to say America is defined by white skin, it has never been so.
This is not to say there haven’t been some terrible ideas
held by “Whites.” There are terrible
ideas held by every race. The tendencies
to gain power or wealth or women by whatever means can be devised, legality and
justice be damned, is pretty much universal.
The religious / ethical belief structures that lead us to contain those
desires, to channel them for greater goods, to construct families that produce
good adults from the children they are responsible for… those we are tearing
down by every means possible, even through new laws that give status to the
most twisted perversions and hatreds.
Hatred of America is readily evidenced by laws – LAWS – that permit partial-birth “abortion” and even infanticide for the most temporal purposes, even convenience. Since Roe v. Wade was given Supreme Court justification, we have killed-off 61 million Americans while importing 30 million non-Americans to “pay for our Social Security.” The trouble with Americans is they might become infected with individuality, Constitutionalism, responsibility and freedom! So, we destroy those who might make America stronger and import, illegally, those more likely to be dependent upon the whims and pleasures of the Smarter Ones, made widely known by their widely parroted self-declarations.
Trump, for all his flaws and imperfections, is trying,
almost alone, to restore the mighty engines of freedom. If we are waiting for perfect, flawless leaders to
arrive before we follow them away from rot and debauchery, we’ll wait forever
while the last great hope of mankind is pissed away.
Things just aren’t the same, anymore… have you noticed? On the other hand, it’s not Prudent to say
they ever were – the same I mean. Strong
societies like the United States, remain strong because some things are the
same, in fact; to protect ourselves, our grandchildren and their grandchildren,
the strong fibers in our culture must be defended and inculcated in our
children as well as in ourselves. There
are too many who should understand their presence and purpose but appear
ignorant of them.
One such fiber is our Constitution. Conservatives revere it; leftists unceasingly
circumvent it. Since its adoption the
Constitution has held strong, but has no effect on national direction when
governance simply steps into the shadows and ignores it. Most of that determined ignorance includes
big tax-funded payoffs to politically significant segments of the citizenry,
cementing the synthesis, into the new
thesis that the Constitutional limitation on this or
that governing act actually could be interpreted in a different (socialistic)
way. Later there is always the new antithesis that, couched in terms of “equal protection
under the law” and “non-discrimination,” must, “constitutionally” be applied to
still more segments until there’s a permanent acceptance of that much socialism
by the very conservatives who believe they are defending the Constitution! It’s a strong, inelastic fiber that’s been
stretched, nevertheless, over the past 150 years.
Conservatives believe that pulling back from the severe
strains on the Constitutional fiber, is the only long-term solution to the
survival of the American idea.
Religion, churches (church-communities) and religious
education form a fiber that is perceived as “quaint” by the leftist elements on
the East and West coasts and urban pockets in between. Anti-religion is strong on college campuses,
as it is in public grade and high schools.
Being at least agnostic, if not atheistic, is worn as a badge of
intellectual status, certainly since the 1960’s; those still attending are being taught that
the Bible and the words of Jesus somehow fit socialism. In response, churches are failing to define
the difference between worldly comforts and holy purposes of life. Government, under a Constitutional guarantee
of non-interference in and by religion itself, has proven feckless and works
harder to divest itself of moral responsibility at every level. This “fiber” is threadbare and undependable.
Family cohesiveness is the core strength of any society. In no culture has the strength and identity of mores and traditions been separated from widespread, if not complete, adherence to the family “pattern,” until the degradation of “Western,” culture, now entering its seventh decade. It is quickly becoming America’s greatest weakness and we have repeatedly elected representatives who facilitate it with misguided welfare programs. Without succeeding generations of “America”-acculturated citizens, there will be no “nation” and worse, there will be no one to defend it. Electronics and computerized health-care are not substitutes for strong, morally straight families, for only they form the “fiber” of freedom and self-government enabled through the Constitution.
Public education is the second greatest acculturation
mechanism and process we have. By
default public schools and teachers are charged with the responsibility to
educate succeeding members of our society and culture: new “Americans,” in truth. Since the 1970’s, certainly, teachers and
their unions have cemented themselves into codified bailiwicks where they can
teach almost anything without fear of being fired, while rewarding those
elected “representatives” who protect their “bailiwicks,” with solid political
support. Unthinking – or lightly
thinking – citizens vote for said “representatives” and vote further to
“support” public education with tax increases and overrides to prove their
great morality in defense of an American tradition. Meanwhile, “teachers” are increasingly
producing less-literate graduates who distrust, if not hate, the United States
and the true traditions of sacrifice, thrift, personal responsibility and
Judeo-Christianity, while embracing socialism, of all things the most
antithetical to American success and strength.
As a culture we are failing miserably to make the fabric of our nation
stronger, and we grin as we reward those who facilitate our internal
weakness. This “fiber” is now almost
invisible, maintained mostly in private, church-connected schools, and not all
of those.
Finance and wealth creation have been, and should be, strong
fibers in the fabric of industrialized societies, of which the United States is
one, like it or not. Both are tightly
connected to honesty in our legal structures, honesty in our contracts, honesty
in our “money,” fair debt creation and destruction, and private property. In short, the economics of the Bible, both
old and new testaments, like it or not.
Proto-socialists rail against “unfair” wealth “distribution.” They are simultaneously right and wrong. Wealth is not “distributable,” per se, and
“fairness” is irrelevant, but the accumulation and possession of “wealth,” is
certainly uneven, leading to strong feelings of envy and raw hatred of the “greedy.” These feelings are political minefields and
rich fodder for politicians whose beliefs are fundamentally anti-American… or
anti-family: same thing. But back to
“money”:
Financially, the federal government is a failure, unable to maintain its own household within a budget and even to create an honest budget through anything close to honest legislation. Because the Congress can, and the U. S. is in a global position to enable it, the federal government borrows more than it can (ever) repay, every fiscal year. Despite these well-known facts of financial incompetence, American voters continue to elect “representatives” who believe – and require by legislation – that more and more of every American’s personal financial security should depend upon or be in the hands of, the federal government. This “fiber” is a misconstrual of the “strings” that federal intrusion always includes – strings that could strangle us.
Debt is a tool of growth, investment, liquidity, defense, achievement, construction, infrastructure, public health and more, much more. Yet it is also a weapon, threatening and weakening whole nations, indeed, every nation. Instead of leading the world economically, proving the superiority of free enterprise and freedom itself, the United States has succumbed to banking globalism and to the blandishments of socialism, under which “investments” are made in daily necessities for large fractions of our population. Economically there is no “R.O.I” – return on investment – where debt is incurred in the furthering of dependency. The U. S. carries a “current” debt liability that is approaching annual G.D.P. Our productivity cannot generate sufficient surplus to even “service” that debt (pay the interest on it) without borrowing other debt to do so, given the nature of our entitlement budget and bloated pension commitments. Weapon-wise, debt allows international banking to FORCE the U. S. to borrow to meet its commitments for interest payments. Every dollar of debt is a dollar of weakness, not strength; of obligation, not freedom. Our “representatives” are doing this type of budgeting “for” us since it’s too complicated for us to understand.
Money is real. That is, “money” has intrinsic value: gold, silver, platinum or other “hard” currencies, or the notes that stand for a set value of real money so long as those notes may be traded for real money on demand. We don’t have “money” any longer, although we have currency that we are still willing to work for, sell for, buy with and “save up” for those rainy days. Written on the notes in our pockets are official dictates that this or that piece of paper shall be accepted as “legal tender” in all transactions, public or private. Someone famous and/or important has his or her name printed nearby affirming the quality of the banknotes we hold. They are no longer U. S. Notes, they are Federal Reserve Notes, a private bank with a public name. Instead of having the U. S. Mint simply print U. S. Notes when we need more liquidity in the economy, we incur a debt to the Federal Reserve bank, and others, including foreign countries – debts we have no hope of repaying in principal, while our obligation to “service” those debts is unending. The government prints U. S. Bonds, however, which are accepted as good instruments for the loans their purchasers are making to the United States. The question, is, therefore, if the bonds are good, why not skip the growing interest cost and just print our own money? Hmmmnnnhh.
So, our money is not honest. It is, instead, merely confidence notes that we and most of the world, accept. Federal Reserve Notes may be exchanged at any so-called bank only for other Federal Reserve Notes… not for gold or silver or anything of intrinsic value except, if inclined, for modern pennies, the content of which cost more than 1 cent. Melting them down for the intrinsic metal value is a crime, of course. More and more we exchange our “cash” for magnetic bubbles on a hard drive, trusting the federally regulated “bank” to protect the record so that we may access it at gasoline pumps, hardware stores and websites that will trade books and electronic gizmos for a share of those magnetic records. We are now a couple of layers of separation from real-value-money and yet fully confident that “our” money is both safe and safely “ours.”
Our entire economy is based on, and priced on, debts and interest. Think about it. Our rush to “cashless” commerce carries a very high price, whether one makes use of credit cards or not. First, the merchant/ restaurateur who accepts your card, must pay the transfer or remitting agent a fee for that privilege – a fee based on a percentage of the transaction amount, including taxes. This may be 1.5%, 2%, 3% and occasionally more depending on total flow of “credit” transactions for that single location or for the total transactions for a chain of locations. Many card-holders use “Rewards” cards to obtain fractional cash-back or “miles” or other goodies marketed as though free, simply as a thank-you for using the card. In reality those “rewards” raise the fees to the vendor/merchant for the privilege of accepting the card. Those costs are recouped entirely from the cost of goods sold – there is no free lunch. Later, the card-holder receives a bill from the “credit-card company” (bank) for all the stupid latte’s, Big Macs and smoothies he or she has enjoyed during the month preceding. Smart card-holders pay that bill in total the minute they receive it, but a large and growing percentage do not, allowing some of the balance to carry over to the next billing cycle, incurring upwards of 20% or more interest! Some even pay only the minimum suggested to keep the collection process at bay – this figure leads to maximization of the total interest the cardholder will eventually pay to the bank that has, in effect, loaned him or her enough money to buy lunch… or gas… or movie tickets… or even subway rides. As above, so below, when it comes to debt-consciousness. In effect then, our entire retail economy and large segments of wholesale purchases carries a “vig” of 2% or more on average; that is, 2%, say, on about $6 Trillion in retail sales and 25% or more than that in wholesale/raw-materials sales. The interest cost on costs of goods, is approaching $200 Billion. Where does that money go, one wonders? We’re all paying for it.
The once-strong thread of thrift and sacrifice has
disappeared, leaving all of us – and our supposedly “rich” nation, indebted for
life, our children’s lives, their children’s lives and the lives of further
generations than they. What an
inheritance.
Suffice to say that our nation is adrift. One political party/movement: liberal,
progressive, socialist, Democrat, is prostrating itself before the twin altars
of unrestricted abortion and legalizing drugs and other crimes, and the altar
of outsiders: non-citizens unwilling to provide for themselves or to follow our
most basic national laws. The other is
tripping over its shoelaces trying to remain relevant to media that share the
liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat viewpoints – and philosophies – while
trying to overcome 60 years of feckless education (also liberal, progressive,
socialist, Democrat-leaning) that has separated 3 generations of Americans from
their history, heritage and founding majesty.
Politicizing, even codifying, every feeling and hatred, has
not rendered ours a happier or more cohesive society. Indeed, it is not even “fairer.” Politics that channels hatreds requires the
aggravation of envy and jealousy; it requires the accentuation of differences
between groups rather than between individuals.
So-called “identity politics” leads to identifying each group’s enemies
and resisting, if not attacking them.
Civility as a tool for nation-building is not simply unemployed, it is
mocked.
When differences between individuals is dealt with – usually
in small, civil steps – what usually develops is an understanding of how much
more similar they/we are, than different. Individuals don’t usually hurl epithets at
unrelated, unconnected individuals, it takes a mob mentality to do so, and then
it is done in order to or because of some perceived membership in a mob-hated group.
Civility, and civilization itself, takes work, commonality, leadership,
both individual and social. A
Constitutional Republic like the United States is based on individual, not
group responsibility; it is based on self-control and individual
responsibility, not group control or group responsibility. Keep this distinction in mind. One need not be Christian to appreciate that
the New Testament was a covenant with individuals and not with tribes or
peoples. Ours is a “Christian” nation in
that our Constitution enables individual success and failure, and individual
responsibility to one’s community, family and self for the consequences of
one’s actions… and, perhaps, to God.
Much is made of “division” in the United States. “Left” and “Right” are “far apart” on the
“issues.” Congress is “hopelessly”
divided, “races” are divided, the “middle class” is being destroyed. What is going on?
How has the America of World War II, of Eisenhower and J. F.K., Moon landings and even of 9-11, turned into a multi-cultural, deeply indebted nation that seems no longer to have common purpose or even common vision? The only nation launched on the distillation of ideas, philosophies and experiences about FREEDOM – freedom for individuals – has entered into an era of division, disagreement and hatred for opposing opinions and for those holding them. How did we get here? Why haven’t we arrived somewhere else… someplace where our better natures, better educations, better communications and greater technical opportunities would make us more unified, stronger, more capable and even more equally prosperous – free-er, one might have hoped?
There have to have been forces, perhaps “efforts” applied to divert the hope of generations, indeed to divert the “hope” of the “free” world– the dream of the not-free world – into a path of division and hatreds, a path of ultimate destruction and dissolution. What “forces?” It should be no surprise that the strongest forces applied against America’s future come from inside our borders. As always,there are and have been competitors, opponents and enemies from outside. How we have dealt and deal with all of them,comes from inside.
Have there been “outside” forces in our favor? One might count France among those, without whose assistance the bloody divorce from England’s monarchy would have failed in 1783. In an odd, sad way, The French revolution also instructed our fledgling nation as to the excesses to avoid in search of ephemeral purity. In a sense we owe much to both France and to England for the philosophical bases of America. Their joint challenges of World War I caused “America” to repay our debts, most specifically to France when General Pershing”s chief administrative aide, Colonel Charles Stanton, declared to France, and to the World in a sense, “Lafayette, we are here.” And America, having won the great internal battle for its soul in the 1860’s, had clearly grown to national adulthood,ready to play its part in establishing order and correcting injustice.
Although the influences of socialism had begun inserting themselves after the Civil War, it was our new international position during the first world war that enabled statist, Woodrow Wilson, to attempt to replace America’s national independence with a new global partnership, the League of Nations, including, he hoped, conforming our independence to that new order… such is the overarching dream of the strongest “outside” forces against American independence and survival.
To begin the process of bringing America down from its skyrocketing growth and influence, required financial brakes. The first Federal Reserve tryout resulted in the Great Depression and the installation of a social engineering president,FDR, and the great socialist program, Social Security. And, it began the new education of Americans, whose economic fears subsumed the promises of freedom and the duties of responsibility and even the lessons of the Bible. Dependence upon government taxing authority could be suddenly, slyly defined as the new INDEPENDENCE: a remarkable accomplishment over the span of just 11 years. These were inside forces, infinitely more powerful than the outside forces that encouraged and encourages them still.
World War II briefly delayed the socialist wave, even as communists embedded in the federal government prepared Americans for wholehearted embrace of the United Nations as the well-fertilized seedling of a “new world order.” Deeply flawed Joe McCarthy flared brightly as he exposed a number of communists in and near the State and Defense Departments… so did Congressman, Richard Nixon. In the 1960’s society and government were transformed. Government by the Great Society and the 3 assassinations; society by drugs, sex and rock-and-roll, but I repeat myself. Mixed among these social assaults upon morality were the retirements of the great educators – educators who taught more in high school than students learn in college it seems, today. Education became liberal and within the decade, socialist.
The Vietnam war, controlled in large part by the U. N., destroyed the nation’s trust in the rightness and righteousness of government. We were killing soldiers stupidly, without a goal or plan for victory. The hope of the world was dimmed, its trustworthiness diminished. Despite winning virtually every battle in Vietnam, The U. S. conceded defeat and crawled home ashamed. A process of military stalemate, begun in Korea, multiplied in Vietnam, has persisted to the current time, fulfilling the socialist lie that no nation is any better than any other, no culture is exceptional, no social structure is superior. September 11, 2001 came and… well, went, its lessons unlearned and turned against ourselves.
Government can no longer do enough. A president who believed the Constitution is fatally flawed with its “negative rights,” was elected and re-elected. Inside forces. Generations, now, believe that a Constitution without socialism is not worth defending and they don’t even see the dichotomy. Inside forces.
Now education is likely the most potent inside force that pushes and molds our supposedly self-governing citizens. Given the remarkable resources developed inside the United States, one might think that the education of American citizens would be wholly according to our own heritage and culture, yet we are turning out American youth who’ve been taught that every other culture on Earth is equal to or better than our own, and that our heritage and history is so flawed as to be indefensible. No history-changing, indeed, history-improving ideas about freedom and self-governance and governmental constraints, can be allowed credence any longer because actions taken by the respective thinkers 250 , 300 and 500 years ago, are disapproved-of in the 21st century.
One is stressed to imagine a greater waste of time or greater loss of opportunity. Instead of leading today’s students – inheritors of the exceptionalism of America’s founding – to grasp and then build upon, improve upon, the phenomenal break with history that our Constitution represented and represents, its lessons are rejected in favor, unbelievably, of socialism,and denigrated in preference for division and hatred. Is this accidental? Is the inexorably leftward, anti-constitutional drift of U. S. education all happenstance? Is it reasonable for a purposeful society to maintain some control over the imparting of culture to its youth? Or shall the freedoms we enjoy be defended only in terms of their allowance for the undermining of the foundations of that society?
Inside forces. Beware
of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
During a recent conversation, Prudence opined on the new trends of “body art” and unusual piercings, increasingly involving the bodies of young women. It has something to do with both feminism and socialism, Prudence suggests, and this view has caused demands for substantial clarification. Indeed. This line of reasoning could lead to a unified theory of wrong directions and unnecessary complexity.
Life is a test… a series of tests: momentary, hourly, daily, situationally – from birth to death. Humans, LIKE ALL LIVING THINGS, become stronger, more honest, more independent, by facing tests and “passing” them. What is the greatest dis-honesty, therefore?
It is denial of the test. It is humans’ penchant for convincing themselves that they might avoid the testing (which is the spiritual aspect of life) coupled with the denial of spirituality, itself. These fundamentals lead to lifetimes of failure, unfulfillment and even to widening circles of tragedy for other humans, particularly people the unfulfilled try to “love.” On the other hand, those tragedies are also tests that may be passed, leading to strength and growth.
Stated more simply, the worst lie is that which one tells to him or herself. We are in an odd time where such lies are celebrated, promulgated, codified and made, legally, into community-wide lies that form the new bases for anti-discrimination criminality. The hot one is trans-genderism. We call it an “ism” because it derives from belief and not from reality. Under it males tell themselves that they are females, in the preponderance of instances, and females tell themselves that they are males. It is the penultimate denial of human testing there could be.
It isn’t the absolute worst, any longer, because here and there are humans who tell themselves that they are not human, and who seek “rights” as this or that animal… often a dog: humans like dogs.
But, declaring oneself to not be what one is requires holding two conflicting ideas at once, ultimately leading, for most, to mental breakdown. This is not to say that some are not “happy” to be living outwardly as the opposite gender, but they are the minority. Still, they deserve their own happiness and other humans should not disrupt it. But the truth is that gender cannot be changed, only masked. Individuals who are emotionally secure may be happier adopting the mask. It is their mask, and by its artifice the individual attempts to avoid or deny the testing that his or her gender would otherwise face.
So, some would ask, what’s wrong with that? Lots of people avoid tests. We have an entire welfare system that purports to “help” them do so. And this shows the intersection of socialism as a construct of lies and the increasing lies of sexuality that some fight for as forms of “progress.” Both are means of test-avoidance, test denial, and both tend to leave the denier weaker spiritually.
What has this to do with tattoos and piercings? Both are forms of masks, are they not? Even homosexuality is a mask. It doesn’t mean individuals are not “happy” living as not being tested as a man or as not being tested as a woman, but it does mean they have made a choice to not face tests of emotion and feelings of one sort, and the growth their passing would provide. Because of anti-discrimination rules, declaring oneself homosexual means avoiding tests as either one’s gender or as one’s new identity.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s a big form of masking was hair. Girls would shave their heads or apply odd colors to their hair, for example, daring others to react to the change. In that way, at least temporarily, they could step out of the role of “woman” and be tested on the most ephemeral aspects of being rather than facing the tests of female growth and honesty. Boys at the same time would grow their hair to great lengths or shagginess, altering their “aura” as it were, too. Any troubles that came their way over rebellious hairstyling were deemed preferable to those that were associated with maturing in the role of “man.” Test denial. It’s what socialism promises to whole populations, inherently including a denial of spirituality.
In the midst of the “sexual revolution” last century, society, institutions and families fairly consistently encouraged the reality of acceptance of one’s role as man or woman. Most youngsters “grew out of” their odd experiments. Not all, though. By the mid-seventies several large trends were underway:
1. Welfare was federalized and entrenched under the “Great Society.”
2. Feminism was aggressively undoing traditional roles and family structures.
3. Leftist media were celebrating their successful castration of the Vietnam War
and all efforts against Communism that it represented.
4. Leftist media were celebrating the destruction of Richard Nixon, a flawed
conservative at best, over relatively minor crimes.
5. Attacks against organized religion were becoming normalized even as churches
themselves were corroding innocence within their ranks.
6. The Federal Reserve was prosecuting economic policies without regard to
elections or even office holders like presidents in the exercise of new powers
elected representatives could not grasp or counter.
7. Homosexuality was exploding in Western societies.
8. Black families were disintegrating with the help of federalized welfare.
9. Faith in the American idea was fading as quickly as American History curricula.
America is reaping the corrupt crops, now, from mutated seeds sown for fifty years. Youth are in favor of socialism, politicians are proud of it while other politicians flail about in their quest for proper rebuttals to socialist mendacity. Just like homosexuality and its ragged cousin, transgenderism, socialism requires believers to hold, and defend, two diametrically conflicting ideas at once.
Socialism intends two conflicting outcomes: 1) People will become better humans by virtue of changes in their physical surroundings and LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY; 2) If people fail to become higher-quality people thanks to socialism, socialists-in-charge will happily control them until they do.
Prudence’s correspondent had recently visited the waiting room of a plastic surgery and facial reconstruction practice and was struck by the number of quite young people, mostly females, who were there for recuperative follow-ups for various procedures. This, too, is a trend: Young people are having one or multiple procedures done to, they, hope, cause fulfillment of a physical image that is more pleasing, more acceptable, more attractive to society. That is to say, they are living out a dream of comparison to others rather than living on purpose.
Just like body arts or fanatical workouts, plastic surgery provides a mask that the wearer believes is more ”beautiful” than the innate self; this work, often painful, is endured in lieu of making ones inner, true self more attractive or charitable or loving. It is a personal dose of socialism whereby the physical or worldly appearance forms its own replacement spirituality and belief structure. There is no surprise that such shallow, literal children are unable to discern the corrosiveness of socialism. It is no wonder that socialists, and most progressives, are not nearly as happy as conservatives whose belief structures are based in spirituality that leads them to accept and pass tests in reality.
Changing ones physique or physiognomy to fulfill the expectations of society is a means of sidestepping true tests in life. Like the long hairs of the ‘60’s, others will deal with the mask rather than the real person and, it is hoped, the tests associated with the original person will never need passing. Growth is avoided.
Perhaps the most anti-spiritual, test-denial of all is abortion. Despite playing a role in conception of new human life, women have been convinced that the tests of motherhood may be avoided and that they will be more happy and fulfilled as a result. Indeed, not only have they the right to avoid those tests, but all of society, through government theft of others’ earnings, ought to support that avoidance. Perhaps there is less stress temporarily, but little happiness obtains.
Instead of accepting the tests of womanhood and motherhood and the concurrent civilizing of more animalistic males, females are encouraged to exist untested and to a degree, unfulfilled and incomplete. Obviously many of these women will see a logic to socialism and to government “nannyism” throughout their lives. Who needs men in that future? Socialism destroys humanity and abject feminism is socialism’s handmaid. How bleak.
The constant undermining and outright attacking of Christianity feeds socialism’s ascension to acceptability. Not the old testament, but the new, defines man’s relationship to God as personal and an individual responsibility – not as one of God’s chosen people, but as God’s chosen person, responsible to him or her self and to God to take the energy of life provided, and to multiply it by learning and following the rules laid out in dozens of religious traditions.
There is no room for the spiritual in socialism. Socialism is based on groups and denies individual greatness. The infection of education by socialism is obvious in the moves to eliminate valedictorians and salutatorians, or to have multiples of each. Another is to avoid “F’s” or other negative marking, to give everyone a trophy, to (claim to) not keep score in youth sports. One can also observe the same rot supplanting historical knowledge resulting in America’s being no more exceptional than literally every other nation. Rampant egalitarianism provides another patine of legitimacy: no one can earn more, be more worthy, honorable or valuable than the rest. Apparently, only government officials are permitted to be smarter than others, or more morally pure.
Ultimately, Socialism is the avoidance of human tests and, essentially, the avoidance of personal growth. Humans become stronger by overcoming adversity – everything from discomfort, to hunger, to tyranny and lack of freedom. We call the triumph over adversity, “freedom,” not the avoidance of it.
Avoiding adversity is a form of self-subjugation, leaving the subject/practitioner in a jail of his or her own making: less and less likely to ever overcome adverse circumstances. Dependence is the only result. Dependents are the most malleable of clays for the potters of socialism who are more than willing to offer ever more complete avoidance of tests, gaining perpetual power for themselves. Perhaps this little essay is testing the reader, right now.
The mid-term elections of 2018 provide a vibrant graphic – Kodachrome – Technicolor – Cinemascope (old terms you can Google) of both the failings and successes of the American experiment. Every stress and resolution since King Philip’s War has contributed to how the U. S. was formed and how we arrived… here. Which is where, exactly?
Hard to say. We have paddled, splashed, kicked and floated out past the string of floats, out past the raft and out to where a dense fog obscures the shoreline so well that we can’t be sure from where on the shore we departed, nor are we sure if that’s the shore we wish to return to. The fog is Socialism, the raft is principled education and the string of floats that marked the edge of safety, is the Constitution. The barque we are riding is Progressivism, and if we sink, at last, the people on shore who can barely see or care about us, will simply say good riddance; we were more trouble than we were worth, us and our God and our founding principles.
From where we Faithful constitutionalists are, we must devise a way back to shore – the ideas of America – while we convince the socialists that Constitutional republicanism based on democratically elected representatives, within which individuals are responsible for their choices and duties… and failures… is the only true direction to follow.
The mid-term elections in 2018 are an obsidian mirror reflecting every dark political urge, lie, distortion and fraud either party is inclined to use to further its ends. It all stinks, albeit obscurely. There is very little truth at work this year. It appears that if several media outlets were not repeating and amplifying increasingly strident and unsubstantiated statements, particularly in reference to Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats would have a very thin campaign “platform.”
Republicans stand for a closer approximation of Constitutional strictures and forms, but fail to stand firmly on much beyond Defense and tax cuts. Their own adjustment of principle for purposes of re-election is no less corrupt than that of their opponents. Connections to Chinese moneys, subtle, legal bribes, in both parties but sizable among Republicans, distorts decision-making on a hundred policies and problems. Somehow these two groups of self-serving oligarchs deserve our trust in the fulfillment of our Constitutional form of government. Now they are both demanding a hold on Constitutional power, vested in the Congress. Their tools are neither truth nor justice, but belief.
Republicans believe in the direction Trump wants to take us, for example, even if they dislike him personally. Democrats believe he is evil and their enemy, worthy of any form of resistance and defeat. Yet, he was elected by sufficient states to become president. Most of the nation preferred his promises to Mrs. Clinton’s. Effectively, Trump is on the ballot in every state again in the mid-terms. His opponents and all socialists are focusing on Brett Kavanaugh in order to coalesce their ostensible “base:” minorities, those dependent on government support, illegal entrants, abortion-lovers and the abortion industry, angry – likely single – women and the ‘deep state,’ itself. Their utter lack of ethics and decorum during the hearings, however, may not create the groundswell they hope for.
Democrats are also employing the final tactic in the 150-year war against Constitutional republicanism: pure socialism/communism. In the wake of socialist upset wins in a couple of primaries, numerous candidates for higher offices have come out directly in support of pure socialism. Socialism and Constitutional republicanism are antithetical and diametrically so. One wonders what country’s offices these former Democrats think they are seeking.
That obsidian mirror makes it hard, but not impossible, to see the shadowy actions of bad actors in the Department of Justice and elsewhere, as they strive to upset the result of a clearly-won presidential election. A perpetually compromised Congress, far more exposed in its work, attempts to expose illegal actions resisting the president, inside executive department agencies. It is not limited to Justice – far from it. Yet the demands of re-election distort the timing of their expository work.
Prudence would indicate that our biennial election “show” serves other-than-governance purposes, while it appeases, briefly, the unsettledness of the populace. People have followed, for decades… no, for centuries, political divisions. They followed them into civil war in 1861, and into other, bullet-less, civil “wars” since then, no less disruptive in a sense, including the current one. Now we must choose to continue towards restoration of Constitutionalism, or to hasten our descent into globalist socialism. For the aware, the mid-terms are how we’ll make that choice.
For everyone else, this is when we vote for more free stuff from Uncle Sucker.
The alligators are circling and the Democrats are circling at the same time. The former are circling the Trump administration and the presidency, itself; the latter are circling the cesspool drain of socialism. Both the alligators of the “deep,” or now referenced, “steady” state, and the Democrats/neo-Socialists use the same set of tactics: Fascism.
“Oh, no,” you might say, “Fascism is a tool of the far-right and of White supremacists (whoever they are), and the left tries to fight them off!” Well.
You, the alligators and the Democrat left are confused. Fascism is a tool of the left. You have been taught the opposite, but a simple reading of history instructs us that we need to properly define Left and Right, perhaps starting with a change of terms. The left has changed the meaning of words repeatedly, but again, let’s use the right terms for Left and Right. “Liberal,” after all, described the colonists who fought against the British crown – which was “right” and which “left?”
Let’s consider that one trend in history, indeed the most common trend by far, is toward tyrannical control of people and economies. The alternative, individual liberty and actual democracy, is rarer, and, in combination with republicanism, more so. These two large trends can, roughly, describe almost every organized nation, today, and even the United Nations organization. Here’s where the permanence of word definitions becomes crucial. For our discussion Prudence suggests that “Liberty” be the direction of one trend, the rarer one, and “Tyranny… no, too pejorative a term… Control” be the direction of the more common trend throughout history. Societies and nations are on either a path toward greater individual liberty or toward greater centralized control.
On the liberty path we mark events like the invention of democracy, attributed to the Greeks; the Roman Senate, Christianity – which is not to say the Catholic or any other church unequivocally – the Renaissance, the Magna Carta, the English parliament, the Reformation of Martin Luther, the U. S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and other key amendments, the Civil War, World War II and the breakup of the Soviet Union. An incomplete list, certainly, but milestones nonetheless.
The story of control has always been marked by stronger over weaker people, conquest, kings, caesars and czars. As economic freedom and rights to private property took hold, the rise of socialism, always lurking but strengthened by unchecked economic inequality, became widespread enough in the 1800’s to create the dominant political forces of the 1900’s, including fascism and its ugly brother, communism. The new colossus, America, was not and is not immune from their blandishments.
We cannot examine our current status and our future, without recognizing the organizing morals of religion, and the educational value of churches. For “western” civilization the chief organizing moral structure has been, first, Judaism and the Old Testament, and then Christianity and the New Testament. The result of the long sweep of the Old Testament was to usher in the New and the examples and teachings of Jesus, the Christ. It is not one path, it is two, the second of which proclaims an individual relationship with God, and individual responsibility, as well. No longer was the story of God’s chosen people told about groups, but about individuals. No longer was the possibility of ascension into Heaven reserved for a handful of prophets, but it was made the business of every person. It was no longer an arcane secret, but instead the path was described and illustrated by Jesus, himself: “Greater things than I have done you shall do because I go unto the Father.”
Okay, enough of that. Let’s at least agree that Jesus’ teaching was that every individual was responsible for his or her own salvation or refusal of salvation. The doors of heaven were open to every person not committed to or consumed by evil… and each of us is responsible for the path he or she chooses – not so different from the Old Testament lessons, but personalized. It is the fundament of the Constitution and the concept of liberty, itself, and at no time divorced from responsibility: “As ye sow, so shall (must) ye reap.”
We can’t sow lies and expect honesty and truth to spring forth, for example.
Does this background inform the present? Prudence suggests that it does. Which actors are motivated by the desire to control individuals and their economic circumstances? Are they not “Democrat Socialists?” How do they propose to exert control?
The methods and tools are a very long list, but here are the most obvious ways:
Universal health care, or “single payer” or “Medicare for all.”
Comprehensive gun control.
Lower education standards for American history.
Nationalized Welfare.
Aggravated racial tensions.
Paid “antifa” thugs.
Those should be enough to show the direction that the left is taking, none of which is strengthening for the United States.
At first it is hard to understand why Democrats of today would be so fired up about the short list of 6 tactics, above. It is because they are socialists and socialism is about control and little else. You can see from the lowered education tactic that socialism’s resistance to the American experiment in individual sovereignty is not new, and if it must take 3 or 5 or a hundred generations, liberty’s ugly plans must be thwarted. The only defense against socialism is an alert, educated, self-disciplined citizenry… one that shares basic moral codes.
We can’t deny that Judeo-Christianity has informed our entire legal code and common-law bases for organizing this amazingly successful (western) civilization. We need not delve into matters of faith to recognize the practicality and reinforcing values of our legal traditions. It is informative that lately all things Christian are derogated and mocked, attacked, in fact. At the same time government and education institutions remove themselves from moral guidance or enforcement and even punish expressions of Christian values.
In the streets and in current politics, resistance to laws and their enforcement – and to their enforcers – is rampant, and deadly. These are socialists and fascists who are tearing down our legal and moral codes. Socialism lives on rules that society needs our wonderful governors to enforce (fulfilling the control instinct) since non-elite people cannot be expected to do almost anything correctly without them. This includes raising of children, imbuing them with morals, teaching them how to strive and excel, instructing them on proper relationships with and respect for the opposite sex, economic responsibility for oneself and one’s family, preparing them for independence and enlightening them with patriotism. These are all responsibilities of a benign, socialist government, after all.
When the Founders assembled the Constitution from the greatest civil organizing philosophies of freedom, they initiated a unique challenge to the prevailing organizing principles of tyranny, monarchy and theocracy. No other nation had attempted the creation of a government based on the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. In the process, and following a bitter fight against arguably the most powerful empire in the world at that time, the “American Dream” was born. It is little understood today, but is defined by “E pluribus unum.” America – the United States – would be a nation where all kinds and origins of people can form a nation, live and work together under a regime of personal responsibility and shared morality, self-discipline and individual civic sovereignty. Remarkable, and the diametric opposite of socialist diffusion of responsibility – and morality.
Socialism is by origin and intent a system without spirituality. Every one of its tenets presumes that human-devised, rules-based micro-management will yield a better society than religious or faith-based moral structures have or ever will. Socialism, by definition, is antithetical to Constitutional republicanism, and this fact illustrates why socialists have been pressing socialist “solutions” to civic and economic problems in the U. S. since the post-Civil War era, an effort that gained strength with each World War, the Depression and the “Civil Rights” movements. The skids were greased by Lyndon Johnson, Ted Kennedy and “Watergate.”
Now we are faced with one of our two major political parties celebrating resistance to laws and to law enforcement, even as it cries for more regulation from a massive, unmanageable government. What sort of political future… what sort of governing future do its members foresee? Are they anticipating a society with better cohesiveness, or lower crime rates, perhaps? By what mechanisms shall order be assured after dozens, if not hundreds of crimes are deemed un-prosecutable? Even now attorneys general are fighting federal authorities in many jurisdictions; many candidates for those offices are campaigning on their willingness to overlook criminal prosecutions they don’t like. How, indeed, will order be ensured?
Disorder is far from the socialist model… control is its bedrock. These same who agitate and cry for legal disorder, swoon for ultra-left socialist candidates and for ‘antifa,’ itself. It is the grand disorder of freedom that they hate… the majesty of it left in the hands of a moral, independent people. We are socialism’s enemy and socialism is ours, if we have the mind to understand and the heart to defend, our Constitution.
We cannot sow socialism and expect freedom and individual liberty to spring forth.
The wasteland of American politics, amongst a hundred other logical and moral perturbations, is roughly divided into a party of life and a party of death, neither perfectly, of course. But… but roughly, yes. One party is aligned more with “pro-life” and one is aligned more with abortion, or “pro-choice.” Anyone can state which is which since it’s fairly well known where the two “parties” stand.
But it’s a circle and not neatly linear. The leftists, or progressives, infatuated with victim-identity-groups, exercise their dudgeon in support of “civil rights,” regardless of the effects on the group they describe as victimized by the denial of this or that civil “right.” In the case of abortion that group – and it’s a good, big one – is every woman. Rightists, or conservatives, are opposed to abortion because they think it’s evil and bad for individuals. They see the “right to life” as somehow the opposite of the freedom to choose abortion when pregnancy occurs, seeing the unborn child… and the mother… and the father, as affected individuals protected by the constitution. Leftists see the decisions about pregnancy, both the inception and the termination, as strictly the purview of the mother – so far always a woman. And so we divide.
It is impossible to avoid hypocrisy when it comes to other positions involving life and death. For example, progressives are both pro-choice and anti-death penalty, while conservatives are anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, very generally speaking. The latter would say that the unborn have a “right” to life but that murderers and other capital offenders have relinquished that right by their actions.
Progressive argue that pregnant women have the unique right to choose abortion, a right that must be protected, while those condemned to death at the hands of the “state” deserve a right to be rehabilitated from the conditions – many of those social – that caused them to kill or brutally rape and that the state should not become a murderer, itself. Both sides defend these “rights” and views with passion. Well, okay.
War – or defense – muddles the life or death arguments of both camps. Stalin, for example, caused the horribly painful deaths of millions of peasants (and intellectuals) in order to impose purer Communism, and he is regarded as a leftist exemplar and hero, today. After all, a thousand deaths are a tragedy; a million or more is a statistic. Hitler killed many fewer millions but the left declares him “right-wing,” although it is the right, today, that defends Israel. Hitler, a different-striped socialist than Stalin, the left has decided to hate; Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion mill in the world – and most profitable – they love. It can be confusing.
Progressives also fight for the “right” of illegal entrant women to have their babies (in the United States) so the confusion of leftists and of rightists trying to comprehend them, is understandable.
Giant business conglomerates that make armaments are identified with the right, although those companies, themselves, have literally no concern for parties or even nations. Their partnerships with governments removes them from the capitalist economy, in a sense, since they have saddled taxpayers with the burden of their success, not competitive customers. Both parties like these people because they are willing to support anyone financially, who will maintain them in power. It’s no longer recognized as corruption – just business, although it has little to do with the free-enterprise engine of capitalism that pays for everything.
To function over time armaments manufacturers need conflicts and threats of conflicts. Both parties come around the circle of life and death to where they bump into war and the manufacturers of the implements of war. The unpleasant side-effect of war, unfortunately, is death – death of soldiers, men and women, who despite volunteering for the military still didn’t want to die, and death of innocent civilians, no matter how careful politicians would direct the soldiers to be. Lots of death, injury and ruin, and both parties enable war in their own ways; both run in the opposite life or death direction from their opponents and inevitably bump in to the war business that puts the lie to most other philosophies each espouses.
Rightists tend to identify with “a strong military” and they use patriotism to the fullest for their advantage. Leftists, in very recent years, have come to despise patriotism, our anthem and the flag, itself, which rightists still can’t figure out. Conservatives see militarism as protection of the nation’s “life.” Progressives seem to have grown tired of the U. S. and patriotic references to it are of no value to them and may be readily opposed if only to aggravate the right. One might infer that the “death” of the nation wouldn’t upset the left nearly as much as it would the right.
Still, very generally speaking, the “right” tends to be pro-life while the “left” is pro-death. Like other destructive (of constitutional republicanism) movements based on “rights,” the right to destroy one’s fetus is defended as superior to the historic right to life. Indeed, the distinction between the two conflicting rights is a point of battle, not just opinion. As vital and fundamental as this conflict has been for 40 years (and for hundreds of years before Roe v. Wade) Society is now being sundered by the conflicts between “rights” unheard-of 40 years… or even 20 years ago.
Of ironic interest is the intensifying effort to grant Constitutional “rights” or “protections” to illegal entrants. While a pleasant-sounding attitude, there is no logical basis for giving such hard-earned rights to non-citizens. The Constitution was formed by American citizens in an era of freedom purchased by the blood of the first Americans. Citizens in the first thirteen states approved it. It is a benefit of citizenship whether by birth or by adoption, not of illegal residence or illegal presence. Yet there are large minorities in both parties – larger in the anti-Trump party – who are evidently quite happy to damage the nation, no matter how permanently, by breaking down immigration and border-defense laws. Many of these are equally enamored of Socialism… even of Stalin, himself, not because they understand what they are doing, but because they are willing to do anything to damage the United States. Make no mistake.
Many of the “no borders” zealots preach the “right of immigration” to improve one’s living conditions. It is a broad and ill-defined right that extends to everyone who is, first and foremost, not white. Like the right to abortion, when actually contemplated, the image of an immigrant or of an aborted immigrant to life, is covered in brown skin. Whites have been defined as oppressors in any and every instance, and are therefore entitled to almost no rights and chief among those so proscribed is ownership of private property. Thank you, education systems.
A more dangerous trend, Prudence teaches us, is “rights” codified based on personal, self-declared feelings. Our culture has been turned, if not twisted, by the 30-year fight for “gay” rights. Initially it was a logical, and reasonable push back against cruelty and discriminatory rejection of professed “gays” and “lesbians.”
Appropriating the word, “gay,” apparently applied primarily to male homosexuals but is sometimes used to describe lesbians as well.
But the “gay rights movement” quickly morphed from tolerance and non-discrimination towards unusual people, into demands for total acceptance and legalization of every permutation of sexual deviance – all of it self-declared. In other words, a person can declare him- or her-self to be “gay,” and come under constitutional protections now accepted as protecting every form of “expression.” That same person, however, can also choose to live as a heterosexual, self-declaring a non-gay status, and have, in effect, fewer rights or protections than previously.
This seems like a preposterous basis for application of the 14th Amendment. We have moved into a realm where people’s feelings are made the basis for anti-discrimination protections. More diaphanous is legislative logic for “trans-genderism.” With no physical evidence, men and women… and boys and girls… are permitted, if not encouraged, to live out their fantasies of being the opposite “gender.” The argument is based on “gender” being a linguistic designation of maleness and femaleness, and therefore nothing “permanent.” The lack of permanence is based on the fluidity of feelings and not of gender, itself, necessarily. Some exercise their convictions to the point of bodily mutilation and chemical distortion of their natural hormonal beings. The legitimization of these emotional incongruities has found its way into governmental responsibility for the emotional satisfaction and even physical or chemical balance of military personnel and even of prisoners who self-declare their identification with the opposite sex from that of their birth. Again, individuals are able to gain rights and protections based upon only their declarations and not on verifiable evidence. It is a dangerous path; parents keep your children safe – society no longer will.
Finally, and simply for the length of the essay, come the new “rights” to be offended. This amorphous body of social “rule-making,” stems from the concept of “hate crime” and its bastard child, “hate speech.” For a legal and judicial system that can’t define pornography, defining “hate” as an enforceable term seems a bit of a stretch. By some sort of arcane, subjective reckoning, a murder performed by a killer who keeps his feelings to himself is LESS of a crime than if he advertised his extreme dislike of the group he thinks the victim deserved to be part of. A dope who kills a fat person and who also hates fat people is in worse trouble than a murderer who loves them. You figure it out.
Academics and others who are ostensibly intelligent, actually nurture the concept of unbridled “offense” and attempt to set rules against “hate speech” (anything traditional, conservative or Constitutional… or critical of liberalism… or of Hillary Clinton), or insensitive pronouns like “his,” hers,” “he’ and “she.” By accepting the mythical “fluidity” of gender, colleges and other self-righteous arbiters of “education” buy in to the concepts of self-selected pronouns the meaning of which is decided by their inventors, with no connection to our common language(s). It’s another dangerous path, one that leads to hatred and confrontations initiated by the supposedly offended. Social and cultural adhesion are the victims… as is freedom, itself, in a country of rules rather than laws. Those are the tools of socialist fascism.
The loss of freedom our rabid quest for “rights” engenders (speaking of “gender”), is a form of death for every free person.
