Obama’s “Forward!” Heralds the Horrors of the Past

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Modern Marxist Police State that we have become, is not a future world of progress, but a nightmare of death from the past.  A Republic rots while a Caliphate rises.

This blog post from Daniel Greenfield was so excellent – I’m reposting it here with link to his blogspot Sultan Knish.

Those that forget history…. have no clue that the past is is being thrown in our face as the future.

The World of Tomorrow

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 

The slogan under which Obama hopes to win the next four years is “Forward”. “Forward” is the quintessential progressive slogan, progressives being people who are so forward-thinking that they want to remake the 21st Century in line with their 19th Century ideas. Progressivism, like so many other flavors of futurism, is so new it’s old. It’s the world of tomorrow as imagined by men with top hats and full beards whose Twitter-wielding descendants are still shouting, “March Forward!” at us  150 years later.

The last century has represented a great love affair with the future. A hundred years of spring cleaning accompanied by the resounding cry, “Out with the old, in with the new.” Everyone was a progressive now. The one thing that all the participants in the Second World War had in common was that they were all dreaming of the future. A Thousand Year Reich, a United Nations or Communism: millions died for the sake of a wonderful future.

The Germans died for a Nazi superstate built out of Albert Speer’s monstrous concrete towers of babel, a technocratic revival of Mad King Ludwig’s castle building projects. The Russians died for collective agriculture and inspiring posters of grim workers hoeing the earth and electrifying the countryside. Everyone else died because they were either in the way of one vision or the other. Then they died so that a United Europe and a United Nations might usher in a better world.

The world of tomorrow has seen better days. The West is still in love with the future. If you doubt that, stop by an Apple Store and marvel at all the shiny surfaces. Try not to notice that the aesthetic is a retro futurism because even our future has become our past. Forty years after the Soviet Union tried to land a Mars rover and fifteen years since the first time we did it successfully, we landed a bigger and better rover on Mars. We may not be able to reach the ISS without taking a ride on Soviet Soyuz tubs, but the parts of NASA that aren’t dedicated to proving that science and technology are burning up the planet through Global Warming, can still execute an occasional engineering triumph.

But the future is not so much a place as it is a state of mind. It is a fervent faith in the inevitability of human progress. Men have died for this faith and men are still dying for it.

Britain’s Olympics opener celebrated the journey from the industrial revolution to the NHS euthanasia bed. While capitalism killed workers randomly and unscientifically, the progressive state kills them scientifically and methodically. Any old factory can kill a worker by dropping a load on his head or allowing him to inhale fumes that in retrospect turn out to be toxic, but it takes a genuinely progressive turn of mind to leave him lying in bed for three days begging for a drink of water while he dies because he has become, in the fine German phrase, “Lebensunwertes Leben” or “Life Unworthy of Life.” That is true progress, which also happens to be the name of the unmanned Soyuz cargo ship that keeps American astronauts from starving or dying of thirst up on the ISS.

The Nazis and the Communists believed that certain races and classes had to be wiped out to make the future possible. We, the modernists who communicate through shiny slabs of white and black plastic, who use the flag of the United Nations as our background image and John Lennon’s “Imagine” as our ring tone, don’t believe in such barbaric things. Instead we kill people because they are too old or too sick and use up medical services that are always short in a collective system.

WW1 and WW2 were fought over regional ambitions, but we have gone beyond them. Our scientists can measure every atom of carbon in the atmosphere and assign responsibility for it to individuals. “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?” Yeshayah’s prophecy asks  These are the territories that now concern us.

When our modern institutions aren’t starving retired workers to death in soiled hospital beds, they are rationing out water and air, earth and sky. They warn us that there are iceberg shortages, shortages of soil and swampland. Our rationing has gone planetary. We imprison men for filling in wetlands and cap and trade the heat of the planet. Our collectivist world state allows no sparrow to fall without charging someone with unlicensed hunting.

But their taking ownership of the planet may be a bit premature. Outside a few enclaves where the smooth and shiny still predominate, the barbarians are at the gates of the empire of tomorrow. While the West is still in love with the future, even if it is a future of rationed everything where everyone is entitled to a tofu turkey in every microwave oven and a whopping tax bill to pay for the tofu turkey’s carbon footprint, the rest of the world is in love with their past.

No sooner did mobs gather in Cairo, Tunis and Damascus than Western foreign policy analysts began dusting off their history books and drawing analogies to the 1848 European Revolutions. But there was nothing modern about these revolutions even if they relied on Twitter flash mobs and Facebook posts. It isn’t the future that the Muslim world wants, even if the modern Albert Speers fill Dubai with horrendously futuristic architectural vomitoria, it’s the golden past.

In Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, Hamad Jebali, the new Islamist Prime Minister of Tunisia, proclaimed, “My brothers, you are at a historic moment in a new cycle of civilization, Allah willing. We are in the sixth caliphate.”

For the Islamists who inherited the Arab Spring and their eager supporters, the future was the past, a return to the glories of the Caliph and his harem, to an era where Christian and Jewish Dhimmis knew their place and he Islamic Empire stretched across the world. The Arab Spring, which began when a Muslim man was so intolerably humiliated at being struck by a woman that he set himself on fire, culminated in gang rapes and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. A revolution which began when a man was humiliated by a woman ended with the ritual sexual humiliation of women at the hands of revolutionaries and the regime, and the restoration of the old patriarchal order of Imams and Islamist Neo-Caliphs.

So much for the future and so much for the world of tomorrow where all men will be brothers so long as they can beat their sisters.

Western liberals are still pretending that Caliphate is just United Nations spelled backward, but their faith in the progressive future of no nations, no borders and no freedom can only be sustained for so long by Benetton ads and cheerful multicultural sitcoms. Outside their enclaves the future looks nothing like them. While they parcel out the carbon atoms of the North Pole, their capitals are being carved up into tribal enclaves where the future is as much the past as it is in Cairo or Tunis.

Our present future is defined by the spillover of violent chaos. In the throes of Egypt’s revolution, Bedouin tribes in the Sinai are violently asserting their rights and the Kurds are rising in Syria. As the fall of the Czars and the Austria-Hungarian Empire devolved sizable portions of Russia and Eastern Europe into violent chaos, a violent chaos that repeated itself several decades later when the Nazis pounded through on their way to the Thousand Year Reich, the fall of the last modern states in the Muslim Middle East has ushered in its own chaos of bandits, tribalism and terrorism.

The West has been marinating in that chaos for some time now. It is the reason why we have a police state, a massive military with no equal and social welfare spending that is through the roof. It isn’t, as the modern progressives would like us to believe, because people are living longer, but because of a domestic instability rooted in tribal violence and cultural chaos. And no amount of euthanasia set to a tune from Paul McCartney, who unlike John is still free to imagine that there’s no heaven, only an earth where they stop feeding you if your illness gets too expensive, will fix that.

But the architects of our future still can’t see the present for the future. They also can’t see that the present has become the past. In the urban mosques it is not to the infidel Queen or the Republic that allegiance is owed, but to the Caliph and the Mahdi, to the martyrs who give their lives in orgies of death so that the wheel of time may turn back and that yesterday may replace tomorrow.

Their own native culture is equally decadent. In art and literature, in film and fashion, the new is still the old. The two biggest summer films are based on characters that debuted in 1939 and 1963. Stop by Broadway and you can choose between a musical based on Abba, another based on a Disney movie from twenty years ago, and Sister Act, Ghost and Bring It On, musicals based on more movies from the last twenty years. We are remaking remakes with tongue firmly in cheek to show that we don’t really mean it, that we aren’t truly culturally bankrupt, only ironic connoisseurs of the past.

Liberal websites denounce the 1950′s in retro fonts painstakingly designed to look like they are from the 1950′s. Clothing brands aimed at young people aim for that same retro look. Abercrombie and Fitch’s popular Hollister brand is pegged to 1922. American Apparel is rooted in the 70′s. There is nothing modern because there is no modern. Only bits of cultural appropriation to give the retro a more exotic flavor.

The progressive sneers at the past but cannot escape it. Whatever creative energy his assaults on culture unleashed have long been spent. He has nothing new to offer, only rationing plans for the old. Our technocracy has made us into sophisticated communicators, even if we have nothing new to say. Institutionally we harvest and wield massive amounts of data and use it to manipulate people. We cheered so loudly for Curiosity’s arrival on Mars because it has been a long time since our culture did anything noteworthy. Even if it isn’t truly new, it’s new to us.

There is no world of tomorrow because there is no tomorrow. A decaying culture has no future. Only a stasis that is easily ruptured by internal and external enemies. To have a future we must have a culture again and to have that we must rebuild an identity by meeting challenges. We can discover who we are through what we can do. It is not futurism that makes futures, but a people striving to make something because they believe that the future is worth making.

The great progressive project of the future is a rotting stench that blows across the Atlantic. It is a formless dream that died. It is a future without a future. It is a million conferences and a billion regulations. It is a world where everything is known, where each atom is weighed and every man is found wanting. It is a closed room and a white bed on which to lay down and die on while the machines count off the seconds.

If we are to have a tomorrow it will not come from those places. It will be not be the Everycity or the eternal conference. It will not be from the men and women who have appointed themselves the rulers of the earth and all that is within it.  Rather it will come from those who defy the decay, who cope with the chaos that the progressive program has spawned, who hang on to their homes and their businesses and fight for their dreams.

Obama Executive Order Is Legal Precursor To Totalitarianism

History repeats itself because people choose to forget the lessons of history.  Thankfully there are a few left who are crying aloud the warning this blog has been screaming about since 2008 regarding the current regime that is assigning itself dictatorial power over all life in the United States.

It is not lost on this author, that the country I return to in a few months, will not be the same one I left.  How long do we have before the fullness of night descends upon a nation that has become lost and forgotten the God whom blessed it?

From Ann Barnhardt:

WHY THE NDRP E.O. OF 3/16/2012 IS DIFFERENT

POSTED BY ANN BARNHARDT – MARCH 18, AD 2012 8:46 PM MST

I’m getting really, really sick of these pundits and talking heads on the so-called “right” clucking their tongues at the unwashed masses and telling us that we’re crazy and paranoid to be the least bit concerned each and every time the Obama regime takes another stride toward totalitarianism. And it is EACH AND EVERY TIME.

Let me break it down for Ed Morrissey, and all of the other pundits in that social circle so that you can get your heads around this. We are concerned and even, dare I say it, panicked, because we can see the big picture of the Obama regime for what it is. We can take the totality of the dataset and draw not just a logical, reasoned conclusion, but a conclusion that is supported by centuries – nay millenia – of past precedent.

We are, as Patrick Henry put it, “willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

Why is the 3/16/2012 Executive Order worthy of grave concern? Simply put, because of the man and the regime who issued it. This is a man, and a regime that has done the following:

-Sent the Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta) to Congress to put them on notice that despite the explicitness of the Constitution, the consent of the Congress to wage war will neither be solicited nor required by the Commander in Chief or his regime. The CiC and SECDEF may, if they feel like it and can find the time, MAY inform the Congress of “kinetic military actions” henceforth.

-Declared the First Amendment null and void by mandating that every American must, as a condition of legal residency in the United States, pay for abortions. Mr. Morrissey, being a Catholic, you should understand that what the Obama regime has done is demand your very soul. In order to remain corporeally “free” in the United States of America, you must enter into mortal sin, reject Jesus Christ in totality, turn your back on your Crucified Savior, excommunicate yourself from the Church, and consign your immortal soul to eternal hell. If that isn’t the prohibiting of the free exercise of religion, then nothing is or ever could be.

-Committed acts of war upon the sovereign nation of Mexico and her people, willfully arming narco-terrorists with the intent of using the optics of hundreds if not thousands of brutally murdered Mexicans in order to stir up and justify the overthrow of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. This is textbook sedition.

-Has coordinated with regime cronies in the Legislative Branch to enable the Obama regime to operate for an entire term WITH NO BUDGET WHATSOEVER. In this time, the Obama regime has looted the United States Treasury and debased the currency of the United States to the tune of SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS, or roughly one-half the gross domestic product.

This is just a very, very, very short list. Additionally, with each passing day it is being further revealed that EVERY SINGLE PERSON Barack Obama has ever associated with has been not merely a Marxist, not merely a Socialist, not merely a Communist, but a TOTALITARIAN hellbent on the destruction of the United States of America.

I’ll concede the point that if this Executive Order was issued by – get this – Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton, I could buy the idea that it was merely an emergency protocol housekeeping item of some sort geared toward the reaction of the Federal Government after a nuclear attack. I’d be skeptical, but I would be open to the argument.

Not so now. These people are totalitarian tyrants who are no longer even trying to hide their intentions. See the bulleted items above. There comes a point where you have to pull your head out of the sand, synthesize a massive dataset into its obvious, coherent output, and be willing to know the worst, and to provide for it.

Denying the obvious, even when the obvious is horrific, is not some sort of virtue. Keeping people numb to reality and drunk on a sugary treacle of distraction and reassurance that “everything’s okay” even when every iota of data and experience tells us that everything is NOT OKAY is not a virtuous public service. It is a massive failure in charity, both towards those who are misled and falsely-consoled by your assurances, and toward those whose intellects and intentions you backhandedly insult.

Remember, people exactly like Ed Morrissey and his ilk were calling everyone warning of Hitler’s danger to mankind “alarmist”, “conspiracy theorists” and “paranoid” up until 4:40 am on September 1, 1939 when the Luftwaffe attacked Weilun. And before that mess was over, 70 million human beings were dead. The hell that the Obama regime is determined to unleash on the world will make World War II look like a mere bar fight.

Yeah, I’m sorry I can’t tell you the day, hour and minute that open war is going to break out, both overseas and here in the homeland. If that failure makes me non-credible and paranoid, then I wear that sash with pride, and am consoled and flattered by the caliber of the company of Jeremiahs and Cassandras that I join. But I do know that it is coming, and that the NDRP Executive Order of 3/16/2012 is, WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE DAY AND THE REGIME THAT ISSUED IT, entirely ominous and certainly tactical.

I’ll leave you with the video of Larry Grathwohl, which can never, ever be posted, spread and publicized too much. Recorded in 1980, when Barack Obama was nothing more than a drug-addled foreign student at Occidental College and not yet even a glimmer in the eye of the Totalitarians who would later adopt him as their public persona, Grathwohl recounts conversations led by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the founders and leaders of the Weather Underground, the Marxist-Communist-Totalitarian terrorist group that Grathwohl was tasked to infiltrate, and the eventual intimates, ghostwriter and political handlers of Barack and Michelle Obama.

The Totalitarian cabal that runs the Obama regime has intended, for decades, to collapse the United States, overthrow it, establish a Totalitarian oligarchy, and as a necessary corollary to that, murder at least ten percent of the population as “die-hard, unreformable capitalists.” In 1980, that 10% worked out to 25 million human beings. Today, it would be 31 million – but heck, what’s another Holocaust (6 million) give or take?

 

The True History and Real Meaning of Thanksgiving

It is a sad travesty that we are losing our true historical understanding and heritage of our national traditions. They are RICH with incredible meaning, purpose and understanding of our many national blessings that we take for granted.

When you understand our true history – the appreciation we should have for our Patriarchs and their relationship with God should serve as a model that we should once again emulate in terms of how grateful we need to be as a People before God.

The following is an essay from my mentor and friend, the late Peter Marshall, who understood our true religious history better than anyone I have ever had the pleasure of reading, hearing or studying under.

The First Thanksgiving

Why should we celebrate Thanksgiving? Is this holiday just the annual American fall holiday that President Abraham Lincoln put on the calendar during the Civil War, or does it have a special significance for us above and beyond its tradition?
For most of us, Thanksgiving is about family, feasting, and football—approximately in that order. If we think about God at all, it usually involves saying a few simple pre-turkey-carving prayers of thanksgiving for His blessings during the year which is now fast ebbing away.

But, had it not been for the hand of God watching over that hardy little band of Pilgrims that found themselves thrown up on the shores of Massachusetts in 1620, there would have been no first New England thanksgiving. And quite probably, no modern holiday to celebrate.

What keeps modern Americans from properly understanding who the Pilgrims were, and the pivotally important role they played in our history? That we are not taught the whole truth about why they came to America. Every school child has been told for decades upon decades that the Pilgrims came to America for religious liberty, or religious freedom. Not quite right. Shallow history teaching.

In reality they were missionaries, coming to the New World to plant the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the wilderness. As their great governor and chronicler, William Bradford, wrote: “They had a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation…for the propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.” Obviously, they had a strong sense of call and mission.

What is special about the Pilgrims is that these English evangelical Christian exiles actually layed the moral, spiritual, and governmental foundations of America at Plymouth (see our book The Light and the Glory, and my DVD “Pilgrims, Puritans, and Patriots,” and the DVD teaching seminar “Restoring America” — all available on my website). But it was only by God’s repeated intervention that they survived to accomplish their calling.

With other Puritans, they had endured vicious religious persecution in England, having been arrested often by the King’s soldiers and imprisoned by sheriffs. Finally, fleeing for their lives to Holland, they settled in the town of Leyden. There they enjoyed religious freedom for 12 years. But, toward the end of this time, it became increasing clear to them that God was calling them to leave Holland and come to America.

Consider the fact that, if their motivation had been primarily about religious liberty, they could have stayed where they were. They already had it. But what compelled them was much deeper than that. They were missionaries. They weren’t running away from anything when they came to America — they were obeying the call of Christ on their lives!

Leaving Leyden in mid-summer, they traveled in barges to Delfthaven, and boarded the small ship Speedwell for the short trip to Southampton, England. There they met the Mayflower, the larger merchant vessel they had leased for the occasion, and additional English passengers whom these “saints,” as they called themselves, quickly dubbed “the strangers.” Delayed by leakage problems with the Speedwell, they finally had to abandon her in Plymouth, England, and there all who remained committed to the expedition were crowded on the Mayflower. It was early September as the last glimpses of England faded from view and the Mayflower gamely launched out into the vast North Atlantic ocean.

The first few weeks at sea proved to be balmy sailing weather, but then the voyage turned nasty. Their delays had put them squarely into the fall storm season. The old freighter soon found herself battered by fierce gales and towering waves of sea-green water. While the crew tied themselves with ropes to the masts and rigging to stay on board the tossing ship, their captain, Master Jones, had ordered below the 102 men, women, and children passengers. They were confined in the “tween-decks,” the cargo area of the old ship — about 90 feet long, and 25 feet wide, with only 5.5 feet of head room. In these storms, with people being simultaneously thrown from side to side and violently pitched up and down; with children crying and adults throwing up; with the stench of vomit, animals, and unwashed bodies; and with the sea water leaking through the deck above, the conditions must have been almost unbearable. The passengers tried to cope with their fears as best they could by chanting Psalms from the Bible, which welded saints and strangers alike into a praying congregation of desperate Pilgrims.

They had good cause to be afraid. In the midst of one terrible storm, there was suddenly a loud crack! One of the large beams that held the mainmast in place had snapped, and now was dangerously sagging. Should that beam give way, the mast would fall and the ship would surely founder, with the loss of all passengers and crew. By the grace of God, the Pilgrims had brought with them a large iron screw, which was found and quickly hoisted into place under the beam. Buttressed with other pieces by the ship’s carpenter, young John Alden, the beam thankfully held.

In the midst of yet another storm, John Howland, a young twenty-something indentured servant of the Pilgrims’ first governor, John Carver, found himself unable to take the confinement any longer. He lifted the hatch and stepped out on deck. In seconds the next huge wave washed him overboard, and Howland found himself in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Only minutes away from freezing to death, as he was going under the waves, one of the ropes from the ship’s rigging just “happened” to snake across his wrist. Instinctively, his hand closed on it, and the crew managed to haul him back on board.

Just luck or a coincidence? I don’t think so, and neither did the Pilgrims. God’s hand had intervened once again, and John Howland knew it. He became one of the leading elders in the Plymouth colony.

After enduring storms for 44 days out of their 66 day voyage, the weakened and sick passengers at last sighted land on November 9th, 1620. It was Cape Cod. Turning south, toward their original destination in the northern part of the Virginia Colony (today’s New Jersey shore), the ship soon got caught in the shoals off the bottom elbow of the Cape. After fighting through this for a day and getting nowhere, the Pilgrim leadership prayed and decided that God wanted them to stay there and start a separate colony. Master Jones sailed north and anchored the Mayflower in the lee curl of Cape Cod’s tip, in what is today Provincetown harbor.

There they re-assembled the one-masted sailboat they had brought in pieces on the ship, and prayerfully launched a hand-picked crew to sail around the inside perimeter of Cape Cod Bay and search for the right location for their colony. Providentially, in the midst of a blinding December snowstorm, they were blown into Plymouth harbor. After spending a cold and miserable night on a small island, and resting the next day on the Sabbath, they came ashore at Plymouth to find the ground cleared and recently cultivated, but no Indians anywhere to be seen. Strangely, the area was littered with human bones.

Concluding that God had prepared this place for the colony, they sailed back across the bay to fetch the Mayflower. After anchoring the ship in Plymouth harbor, they commuted from ship to shore in the ship’s boat, and began construction on a common house. There they could sleep and store supplies until they were able to start building their houses.

But, with no shelter, and immune systems weakened by the rough voyage, they began to get sick. Colds became bronchitis, and pneumonia set in. The dreaded killer of ship’s passengers—scurvy—and other “wasting sicknesses” ravaged their number. With no effective medicines, they began to die. In January and February the deaths sometimes reached two and three a day; 17 dying in February alone. At one point, there were only five people well enough to be on their feet, caring for the rest. Toward the end of March, when the worst was over, they had lost 47 of their number. Of the 18 wives who had come, 13 had died. Only three families remained unbroken. They were in real trouble, for the food they had brought on the Mayflower was virtually gone, and they were facing an unhospitable wilderness.

But God’s greatest miracle for them was on its way! On March 16th, 1621, a lone Indian, clad only in a loincloth, walked boldly up to them and said: “Welcome, Englishmen!” After the Pilgrims had recovered from this surprise, they had found out that his name was Samoset, and that he had come from Massasoit, a regional Indian chief who lived about 40 miles to the southwest. The following week he appeared again, this time bringing with him a Patuxet Indian by the name of Squanto, who as William Bradford would write, was “a special instrument sent of God for their good, beyond their expectation.” That was understating it a bit.

Squanto offered them his services, and they were invaluable. He taught them how to trap eels in the mud flats of the bay, what berries were edible, what herbs were good for medicine, and how to trap beaver, which would later become a source of income for the Pilgrims. Most important of all, he taught them how to plant corn, and plant it the Indian way — by burying dead fish with the seed, to fertilize the seedlings as they grew. He was God’s instrument for their salvation.

As Squanto’s story came out, the Pilgrims learned that his tribe, the Patuxets, had lived at Plymouth. But, in 1617, a plague, probably brought by French fur-trappers from the north, had killed every member of the tribe. That explained why they had found the ground covered with human bones, and evidence of previous cultivation. The plague had raced through the tribe so quickly that they had not even had time to bury all their dead!

Sqanto had escaped because he had not been there. They learned that he had been kidnapped in 1605 by an English fishing expedition and taken to England, where he had lived for nine years in the home of an merchant named John Slanie. He had learned to speak English well, and became accustomed to English foods and ways. In 1614, he had been brought back across the Atlantic on another fishing expedition, under the command of John Smith, of Jamestown, Virginia fame, who had gone into the fishing business. Squanto had enjoyed being home while the English filled up their ships with the plentiful cod in the bay. But, when it came time for them to depart, Smith had ordered one of his captains,Thomas Hunt, to stay behind and trade for beaver pelt. After Smith and the others left, Hunt got rid of the fish, but he had another cargo in mind. Tricking on board 20 young Patuxet braves, Squanto among them, he took them prisoner and sailed across the bay, stopping briefly to pick up 7 Nauset men. He set course for Malaga, a slave-trading port on the south coast of Spain. There, these American Indians were auctioned off as slaves!

When it became Squanto’s turn to be sold, a monk from a nearby monastery just “happened” to pass by at that moment. Looking at this forlorn Indian, he took pity on him, bought him, and took him to the monastery. Squanto lived with the monks for about a year, after which he obtained his freedom and worked his way up through Spain and France until he could cross the English channel and get back to England. He stayed with the English until 1619, when a Captain Dermer brought him back home on a fishing expedition to the New England coast in exchange for his services as a pilot in American waters. Dermer dropped him off on the tip of Cape Cod, but when Squanto got back to his village site at Plymouth, he received the worst shock of his life. All of his people were dead, killed by the plague that had struck two years earlier.

Heartbroken, he wandered among the ruins and the bones, and then walked the 40 miles southwest to the tribal seat of the Wampanoag and Chief Massasoit, who took him in. He stayed with them until March of 1621, when Samoset had returned from his village site to tell him that some English had settled there. Squanto suddenly had a new reason to live! He would go help these white people. And so he did.

In October, when the 20 acres of corn the Pilgrims had planted under Squanto’s tutelage had been harvested, they wanted to hold a celebration festival. They invited Massasoit and the Wampanoag, and of course Samoset and Squanto as well, to come and celebrate with them. Massasoit came a day early, with 90 braves, plus women and children. The Pilgrim women’s hearts must have sunk, because they were going to have to use the corn stored up for the winter to feed this crowd of Indians. But Massasoit had thought of that, and had ordered some of his men to hunt for the occasion. They brought with them five deer strong up on poles, and wild turkeys. There were fish from the bay, berries and other fruits, roasted corn, and the Pilgrim women supplied vegetables from their gardens. The festival lasted three days, complete with bow and arrow shooting contests, foot races, and relay races. It was a good and peaceful time for whites and Indians together.

I suspect that many times during those festivities the Pilgrims stopped to thank the Lord for His miraculous provision of Squanto. Had it not been for him, there would have been no cause for celebration and thanksgiving. God had sent this American Indian, who spoke English fluently, ate English foods, understood English customs and ways, and knew about the Christian faith because of his time with the Spanish monks: the right man, in the right place, at the right time. Only God can do something like that.

My friends, that is the true story of the first New England Thanksgiving; the real reason this holiday should be special in Americans’ hearts!

Copyright, 2007, 20011, Peter J. Marshall. All rights reserved.

More links to historical proclamations and declarations of America’s early history.

May all of you have a happy, joyous and THANKFUL Thanksgiving Day.

When America’s Leaders Called For Prayer and Fasting

From my friend William J. Federer – a look back at why America was blessed with victory over our enemies – and blessed above any nation before us.

When suffering the evils of tyrants, the first order of business was to call for a day of Prayer and Fasting.

In these dark days of tyranny from our own leadership – where are even the church leaders on this score?

Fast asleep and lukewarm in the comfort of pews filled with donors.

God bless us with Repentance.

Or this experiment in self-governance is doomed.

When our leaders used to call us to prayer and fasting

By William J. Federer
© 2010

To punish Massachusetts for the Tea Party, King George III decided to destroy its economy by blockading Boston’s harbor on June 1, 1774.

Thomas Jefferson drafted a Resolution for a “Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer” to be observed the same day. It was introduced in the Virginia House of Burgesses May 24, 1774, by Robert Carter Nicholas and supported by Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and George Mason, passing unanimously:

“This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension of the great dangers, to be derived to British America, from the hostile invasion of the City of Boston, in our sister Colony of Massachusetts … deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the members of this House as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights. … Ordered, therefore that the Members of this House do attend … with the Speaker, and the Mace, to the Church in this City, for the purposes aforesaid; and that the Reverend Mr. Price be appointed to read prayers, and the Reverend Mr. Gwatkin, to preach a sermon.”

George Washington wrote in his diary, June 1, 1774: “Went to church, fasted all day.”

Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, interpreted this resolution as a veiled protest against King George III and dissolved the House of Burgesses, resulting in legislators meeting in Raleigh Tavern where they conspired to form the first Continental Congress.

On April 15, 1775, just four days before the Battle of Lexington, where was fired “the shot heard ’round the world,” the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, led by John Hancock, declared:

“In circumstances dark as these, it becomes us, as men and Christians, to reflect that, whilst every prudent measure should be taken to ward off the impending judgments … the 11th of May next be set apart as a Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer … to confess the sins … to implore the Forgiveness of all our Transgression.”

On May 15, 1776, Gen. George Washington ordered:

“The Continental Congress having ordered Friday the 17th instant to be observed as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, humbly to supplicate the mercy of Almighty God, that it would please Him to pardon all our manifold sins and transgressions, and to prosper the arms of the United Colonies, and finally establish the peace and freedom of America upon a solid and lasting foundation; the General commands all officers and soldiers to pay strict obedience to the orders of the Continental Congress; that, by their unfeigned and pious observance of their religious duties, they may incline the Lord and Giver of victory to prosper our arms.”

At the Constitutional Convention, 1787, Ben Franklin stated:

“In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for Divine protection.”

Proclaiming a Day of Prayer, Ronald Reagan said Jan. 27, 1983:

“In 1775, the Continental Congress proclaimed the first National Day of Prayer. … In 1783, the Treaty of Paris officially ended the long, weary Revolutionary War during which a National Day of Prayer had been proclaimed every spring for eight years.”

Maybe Americans should once again, as Reagan concluded: “… seek His help for the challenges we face today and in the future.”

America’s Acceptance of It’s Own Decline and Demise

I know a man who served as a pastor in Rhodesia back in the late 1970′s-early 80′s who gave a startling seminar I attended in 2002. He gave a presentation that began with a slideshow of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 that showcased a massive coronation parade – all the nations of it’s empire were presented in a majestic show of both grandeur and power. It was clear to see by how many peoples and nations represented the British Empire how it was said that the sun never set on it.

In a little over seven years from the coronation – Britain was HALF of what it was at the Queen’s coronation and had clearly fallen into decline. It’s world reserve currency was replaced by the Dollar and Britain took a back seat to world politics.

But it was an easy decline for the British people, because America picked up the slack and there was no harm put upon Britain herself. She was suddenly free to pursue the social experiments that consigned her to permanent satellite status and irrelevance.

This pastor explained how her colonies suffered a very different fate – and told of the horrors of Rhodesia’s upheaval, revolution, misery and genocide to the point of where it is today as Zimbabwe.

Then this pastor gave a warning, about how rapid America’s decline into ruin could occur. Even more rapidly than Britain’s collapse if our own people, like the British, accepted the shrinking of our super power status. The difference being, we will not have another Anglo/Western power to cushion our collapse and settle us down into Socialism easy.

We will have a violent replacement of our position by something entirely hostile to our very existence.

Amazingly – I read this piece by Mark Steyn today – and while it is lengthy, he makes the same case – with similar examples, and does a great job of highlighting the danger of being seduced into accepting our decline. 

THE SEDUCTIONS OF DECLINE

In a more dangerous world, American decline will be steeper, faster and more devastating than Britain’s – and something far closer to Rome’s.

Serious consideration should be given to where we find ourselves and what our near-future may end up becoming.

How To Kill 100,000 Iranians

By John Galt 

 

From the Iranian Protests

Care to wonder how this will happen?

I’ve seen this movie before and as a student of this region, let me warn you:

The crowds did EXACTLY what the mullahs wanted them to do. To provide a wee bit of perspective, let us flip back to 1989 in world history. Does everyone remember this guy?

No, that’s not former General Motors Chairman Rick Wagoner standing in front of Obama’s anti-capitalist armored division. That is one of the most famous pictures in history of a Chinese soul about to get pancaked by the iron boot of Communist forces. The students and others who assembled in Tienanmen Square had their moment in the sun, letting the “world” know that they were there and against the repression of the Communist Party hierarchy in China. The result?

You got it. A crushing oppressive blow to the freedom movement and worse, the United States just paid lip service, which realistically is all it could do and the people felt somewhat betrayed that after the eight years of Reagan and the crushing of the Soviet Bear that the best we could do is lodge protests and proclaim that “engagement” was the best approach to this regime.

Funny while the Chinese were slaughtering those yearning for democracy in their nation in 1989, the tyranny of the Ayatollah Khomeini was coming to an end with his passing. A council of Mullahs emerged to dominate the political landscape and from this the oppression continued up until the modern day. The regimes may have changed faces with deceivingly evil ‘moderates’ appearing at random occasions at the whim of the religious dictatorship to open relations with oblivious western powers and Sheikdoms in the Persian Gulf weary of having a large hostile Islamic nation in their midst. During this entire period of time from 1979 to 2009 the United States has paid a tepid amount of attention to changing the landscape of Iranian politics even though President George H.W. Bush considered direct aid to the underground movement at the end of his term. There was no follow through since that time and President George W. Bush had the opportunity to do the same but again passed, indicating to the masses that the only support they would receive is a poorly run radio broadcast outlet from the United States Information Agency.

Along comes President Obama in 2009, with messages of hope and outreach to the Islamic masses in the hope of bridging the differences between the radicals and the people to establish a new Pax Americana in the region, a foolish endeavor marked by decades of inconsistencies by the American Department of State. To think that we could change a mindset centuries old that obstructed and frustrated empires from all regions of the world is typical of the arrogance we are portrayed to display to the rest of the world and the election results in Iran this past weekend are no exception.

On Friday, June 12, 2009, President Obama proclaimed:

“We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran, and obviously after the speech that I made in Cairo, we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change.

Ultimately, the election is for the Iranians to decide. But just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well, is that you’re seeing people looking at new possibilities and whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there has been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways.”

Unfortunately for the rank amateurs running our foreign policy, again, at the State Department, Obama is used to dealing with and attempting friendships with tyrannical socialist to Marxist dictatorships and not Islamist zealots nor those sworn to destroy America. Iran’s mullahs have quickly and swiftly elected to eradicate the problem by first making a mockery of President Obama in the eyes of the citizens there and by extension, degrading or causing him to lose face on the Arab and Islamic street. While Hezbollah might have been defeated in Lebanon, the ideals of religious puritanism under the flag of Islam is still quite popular with the average Muslim and that is the miscalculation that every American President has made in the past twenty years. The mistakes of the past continue because the same group of clowns that run State are still there some thirty years later, incapable of changing their Woodstock ideological tunnel vision views of the world. These mistakes are about to cost thousands, perhaps tens of thousands Iranian citizens their lives.

In an authoritarian regime, the primary concerns of the leadership is not to “save face” as so many members of the mainstream media here incorrectly perceive. In fact the willing dupes of our mainstream media, both on the proverbial left and right, play into the desires of mullahs and dictators the world over, acting as honey to the flies, also called the oppressed citizens seeking freedom. The belief of these brave souls who marched much like their Chinese counterparts in 1989 was that America stood for something, Europe had any kind of a backbone, and that the rest of the world would lodge numerous protests and broadcast program after program proclaiming their point of view on the elections and that anyone would sacrifice their nation’s needs to help them.

Poppycock.

The reality of the dictatorship is coming home again, a point the naive left and right in our nation will never accept because ideology always blinds them to reality. In the months ahead all of the video and audio created during these protests will be screened by the MOIS (Ministry of Intelligence and Security aka Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar – VEVAK) and roundups will begin on campuses nationwide. Instead of providing material support from the United States as they expected or helping these students, most will perish in work camps or simply be executed, along with their families banished or assassinated per the standard operating procedures of the Islamic state. The issue that most Americans can not perceive, along with those ignorant career bureaucrats in our government, is that within a structured Islamic state any attack on the government and its leadership, justified or not, is an attack on Islam and violates the holy tenants of the Koran as interpreted by the state. This powerful point is used to suppress the less educated and insure that compliance is total. By reducing the population of protesters and eliminating potential future disturbances the mullahs can insure their political survival for another decade as another naive American President flails about considering how to deal with their obstinacy.

Unfortunately for President Obama, America will get the blame for upwards of 100,000 Iranians dying at the hands of the Iranian government.

And not one round of Israeli or American ammunition will be used during the slaughter.

The Genesis and History of American Socialism

I’ve posted only a large chunk of John’s commentary on the blog today, not it’s entirety .  Due the length and detail, I’m only posting portions of his analysis.   John’s essay here is one of the most truly enlightening reads on the subject of “How did we get here?” on par with “The Creature from Jekyll Island”.  Please click on the link in the title to truly educate yourself on the genesis of how America has become Moscow on the Mississippi.

Blame Wisconsin

By John Galt

May 14, 2009

“We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.”  -Theodore Roosevelt, August 6, 1912 final line from the speech “A Confession of Faith” before the National Progressive Party convention

I wish to begin this editorial with special thanks to Glenn Beck for re-stimulating my interest in this era of American history. I have always found the period from the 1907 Panic through the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank to be instructive as well as fascinating as the ideals expressed in that time period created the foundation for this era, and problems we now are encountering in our society. The theories about evolutionary law, not Darwinism mind you, economic Progressive thought, and the revision of the traditional ideals of our Constitution via the adoption of the 16th and 17th Amendments all should give one pause to reflect. Thanks to Mr. Beck, I have done so again and found another culprit which aided and abetted the destruction of our traditional American values and system, intentional or unintentional as it may have been.

Thus I say, “Blame Wisconsin” and in this somewhat wordy historical opinion piece, I shall attempt to tie together the idealism of the Progressives with the current era of what I call “PSD” or ‘Progressive Socialist Disorder’, which infests our nation’s major political parties and has created a nightmare scenario for our future.

Progressive Socialist Disorder 

America’s evolution from a balanced form of republican representative government into a dominant state subscribing to the ideals of Federalism or a strong centralized national government did not occur overnight. The end of the Civil War created the time line of change which has extended to our current period where the sponge known as centralized government absorbed more and more power and economic dominance because that system of managing our nation’s affairs and of the people was determined by an unelected elite to be the most practical solution.

“Unelected” might seem puzzling to the reader as many of us and our fellow citizens vote every two years in Senatorial, Congressional, Presidential, and statewide elections yet thanks to the Progressive idealists in Wisconsin and the Socialists of our past, the true concentration of power was removed from the electorate in many cases and delegated to the appointed and recruited technocracy known as American bureaucracy. For example the link to the speech from Theodore Roosevelt at the top of this piece could have come from this location, at www.theodoreroosevelt.combut in fact I elected to demonstrate the desires of our bureaucratic origins; the link at the top of the page comes from our own Social Security Administration which not only highlights the Progressive agendas of Theodore but of course his fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Ah the apple does not fall far from the tree when it comes to destroying Constitutional principles. 

The historical references and data with this government sponsored bureaucratic nightmare are worthy of taking your time to read and review at your leisure as it demonstrates the glorification of clerical unity and bureaucratic power when you read the SSA website.

So what is “Progressive Socialist Disorder” (PSD) and why is it an affliction that could quite possibly destroy not just the United States Constitution, but the concept of America itself?

First we have to transport our frame of reference to the era where the debate began. Shortly after the Civil War concluded in the United States a book was printed in Germany in 1867 that created a shudder throughout the modern industrialists mindset titled Das Kapital by Karl Marx. While the notions presented in this book were dismissed out of hand by most Americans and many within the traditional business community worldwide, the idea that wealth was not a creation of the individual or business endeavor but the result of labor, the group effort or one portion of the industrial process became popular among those within the trade unionist movements and the leaders of the lesser, or lower economic stratus in societies worldwide.

The consequences of the Marxist movement throughout history from that day forward can not be dismissed nor ignored by capitalists as the Progressive movement has served the purpose of the ‘useful idiot’ which has enabled many of the programs which Marx and Engels advocated and now are considered a “necessary” part of modern American society. I shall reflect further on in this piece as to the acquiescence of these useful idiots and their purpose which has the current generation of our nation and quite possibly the next two generations unless drastic changes occur immediately; a highly unlikely prospect considering the mindset of our citizenry.

The Marxist movement created a conflict within American society where socialism was viewed with disdain by many and un-American in its concepts and origins, a sort of European societal aberration of which its principles were not just foreign but objectionable to the emerging Progressive movement of the late 1880’s. Professor Richard Ely, PhD, the Associate Professor of Political Economy at John Hopkins University, wrote a book in 1889 titled An Introduction to Political Economy where he outlined not only the traditional views of American society but also added his views of the Socialist movement and why it will not succeed within the American system. In Chapter V. titled ‘Socialism’ on page 245 he correctly identifies the most glaring weakness of the Socialist idealism:

“The danger to freedom appears to be a very real one. It is frankly admitted that up to a certain point there is a tendency on the part of government to improve as its functions increase. But would this hold with the indefinite extension of the sphere of government? Let us admit that s our livelihood would depend on the efficiency of government all the force and energy which now go into private services would be turned into public channels. But what would happen if, in spite of all precautions, some unscrupulous combination should secure the control of government?”

This analysis of the glaring flaw which shines above all else in the Socialist movement was confounded though a few paragraphs further where he warned of the dangers of Mercantilism, which he viewed equally as dangerous. It is wise to keep this conflict in mind as we review the impact of Professor Ely on the state of Wisconsin and by extension the early Progressive movements which emerged within the Republican and Democratic Parties at the turn of the century, which I will discuss within the era of Van Hise, Roosevelt and Wilson.

The impact of this debate created a conflict where Progressives emerged with the kinder, softer Americanized democratic (not the party) version of Euro-Socialism without the hard core Marxist tinge. As American society emerged from the turn of the century, the romanticism was spread about that era by the very education system designed by the Progressive movement and by default, the glorification of their actions at that time. The American citizen has no reason to doubt that conservationism, clean water and pure food were programs which were meritorious in their achievements, as I also have no desire to have a worm pop out of my burger and say “howaydoin” while munching on my Vidalia onion topping. Yet the benefits of that era are somewhat outweighed by their negative accomplishments which have been twisted into positive outcomes as witnessed by Hillary Clinton’s declaration that she was an active Progressive much like those politicians of that era as she stated during the 2007 portion of the Democratic Party debate series.

Now without revealing the thrust of this article at this time, let us say that Hillary and Obama are the poster children for PSD. During the turn of the twentieth century, nothing would offend a supporter of President Roosevelt or the Progressive movement more than accusing them of engaging in stealth socialism. Fast forward to the current administration and once again, if you wish to raise the ire of the “Progressives” point out the activities and outlines of the policies and politics they engage in as “Socialist” or “Marxist” and you win the “right wing extremist” tag and a free phone tap from the Department of Homeland Security should you dare to visit a gun show or send money to Ron Paul.

The reality is that this disdain for the use of proper terminology when applied to the activities the Progressives support and engage in, which are the same positions of Socialists and Marxists alike is the root of PSD or Progressive Socialist Disorder. They wish to engage in the activities of the Socialist ideal but refuse to acknowledge the roots of their activities as such. The self-delusion of their propositions and protestations makes one wonder if they are genuine but the mindset introduced with Roosevelt, Wilson and the Professors behind Progressivism always believed the ends justified the means. Thus you must understand that PSD is not a myth; it is a propagandist proposition to mask the reality of their actions under the flowery ‘Patriotic’ activities of two over-glorified Presidents in the early 1900’s. Thus you now have the understanding that these activities and the individuals who engage in them suffer not from a delusion, but wish to impose that delusion on the citizens of this nation, to create a fog of war which will allow them to complete the task initiated some one hundred and twenty years ago.

The Wisconsin Idea 

“The people must be given full power to make their action effective, and at the same time the educational institutions of the commonwealth must be built up in such shape as to give the people the opportunity to learn how to use their power wisely. Nor must political reform stand by itself. it must accompany economic reform; and economic reform must have a twofold object; first to increase general prosperity, because unless there is such general prosperity no one will be well off; and, second, to secure a fair distribution of this prosperity, so that the man of the people shall share in it.”   - Theodore Roosevelt, Introduction pages ix and x to The Wisconsin Idea by Charles McCarthy, The Macmillan Company, 1912

[end snip]

[begin snip]

….The Constitutionalists are now considered dinosaurs to be mocked and despised for their primitive idealism and their voices to be silenced using whatever methods are necessary. 

After all the greater good and the public interest are far more important than an advocate of the positions of Washington or Jefferson that are inconvenient to the current political class. Regulatory expansion is far more important to assure job creation for the allies who adore the cause or can contribute to the expansion of Progressive Socialism. The concepts I have outlined are not outrageous. If you reflect on the original Communist Manifesto, much of what Marx and Engels sought to spread throughout the world’s capitalist economies have been implemented in Europe and the United States while some of the same proposals are being deconstructed in Communist China.

Go figure.

America is at a crossroads and that intersection is wrought with danger. The capitalist must decide if he can tolerate a one and a half party system where the choices for political office will assure the continued destruction of his or her rights and freedoms as well as imposing crushing tariffs on his labors. The other alternative is to retire, or cease to produce for the state, leaving the complicated problem of survival in a country that was once admired by all men and women the world over, yet now has raised doubts about the dedication to the very magnet which brought millions to our shores. The choice is what I call the Great Restoration but it will not be easy and doubtfully be completed in our lifetimes. The trials we are to endure as the absorption of America into the great World-Euro Socialist model appears to be successful and will continue unabated.

The major corporations have chosen their alliances and lot in life and thus that of their employees in this conflict. The new found acquisitions of private corporations or shares of their companies by the Federal government lays the basis for a statutory envelopment of those companies that the administration deems necessary for not just our future, but that of the world movement. This is balanced by a need for the citizenry to have a basic existence and to sell the diminished standard of living to the populace as a necessary evil for the greater good. This will be attempted via the process of economic blackmail, security of the future for retirees, and the perpetual crisis, a concept enjoyed by Fascist governments throughout history to alleviate the pain as new restrictions on freedom are declared. America’s trials are just beginning, even though the elite would have you believe they began in the 1890’s with the banking crisis of that era and since.

Sadly, this crisis as all of the others since 1907 would be long over and resolved had the government stepped aside. Alas, it was not meant to be nor would it appear a celebration of 250 years of our nation as it was envisioned by the Founders.

Forget the 1930’s; We Are Facing 1917

The Ultimate Socialist Revolution is Being Spun and Run in Reverse and Applauded By Useful Idiots

Forget the 1930’s; We Are Facing 1917

by John Galt

March 9, 2009

“Obama, Brown Call for Global Solution to Economic Crisis”
from the first paragraph of the story:

“US President Barack Obama joined British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today in calling for a global solution to the economic crisis and both leaders vowed to repair their countries’ shattered financial systems.”

And now a little bit more distant piece of history….

“We are opposed to national enmity and discord, to national exclusiveness. We are internationalists. “

-28 December, 1919, Lenin, Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine, Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 291-297

Are we really that far apart?

I think not but history has a way of perverting itself in the grand scheme just when the “advanced” nations think they know and see all. Just what if the great American experiment ended as a comedy show instead of a tragedy? We have always elected to view ourselves as a sitcom, a piece of Americana where the hilarious Al Bundyesque ending always seemed to concluded every tragedy no matter what with a laugh track and a miracle, because heck, we’re American by gummit and that’s how it is! Of course no one ever asked:

What if the final joke is on us?

What is the reaction of the American public when they wake up from their American Idol slumber and realize that everything they believed in, the system they have been told was safe, the world they knew, ended.

No subtitles.

No miracles.

No superheroes.

Just pain, agony and “solutions” proposed by those in power but this time instead of a populist from the back of a train en route from Berlin to Moscow, on a television screen and via the internet from Washington, DC with the power that the Bolsheviks could only have fantasized about in their day and age. A geopolitical monster with military and financial reaches that would shake the roots of hell into panic and cause all to tremble in its wake. Is that what we are facing now?

In the 1900’s an oligarch, the Czar of Russia, held complete control over every aspect of the lives of the people of Russia. A wrong word, a bad astrological forecast, inept military advice and poof, you were executed. The sheeple of that time, the peasantry was meant to serve the aristocracy primarily because that “was how it was always done” and new ideas were foreign to the people of that land due to centuries of Imperial enforced ignorance. This would change with the sudden expansion of other ideals and the blind foolishness of the “West” which assumed that the political system of Russian leaders was perfected to prevent outside influences from causing internal disturbances from expanding beyond small regional racially based flare-ups where the leaders could easily be bought off to preserve the status quo.

Just what if the theory worked in reverse; an oligarch, either of the American Democrat or Republican Parties elected to reverse the Soviet revolution and impose a state controlled system by convincing the “people” that it was the only solution to save their way of life?

The idea of a proverbial de facto proletariat takeover of our nation has never crossed the mind of the national psyche. America elected it though and it is quite possible we will sow what we reap because a “good crisis is too good of an opportunity to pass up” or words to that effect. The re-centralization of power and control and expansion of a statist system with integrated and cooperative corporatist technocracies to enhance and insure the expansion of a singular party’s control is the fantasy of many a dictator and we might have reached that zenith in history just now.

Just what would happen if the “workers” thought they took over our Republic? There is a lot of conjecture now in the hinterlands that the average soul is upset about the state of our union, that their voices are not being heard, the politicians are ignoring them, etc. What is different from this period of time and the era from 1913 to 1920? Not much except they arrested and detained the opposition during much of that time period using such powerful terms as “treason” and “sedition” to silence and extinguish legitimate debate, not the fringe, from the hard issues of the day. The call has already been made by some leftists like Stephanie Miller (an obscure talk show host) as highlighted in her declaration that Rush be charged with “treason and executed“. The silence from the mainstream media must indicate a support via the whisper or a blind eye to insure their role as America’s new private partnership with the Department of Information is solidified for the future.

Time will tell.

The problem as I see it is the economists, the historians, political junkies and talk show hosts are all focused on the wrong era. This is not about a 1930’s style Roosevelt takeover of our nation and elimination of the rights of the citizens. Nor is it the Woodrow Wilson reincarnation of “Progressive” freedoms. This is the new world ideal, a concept developed after continuous trial and era, using smaller nations to eradicate and use as test beds for the greater good. Unfortunately it is time for the grand experiment to come home to roost. The damned piece of paper will be willfully sacrificed with a “people’s movement” real or perceived to save the pain of the elderly from losing what they “had” and to preserve the basic standard of living of the American people. In the process of doing so, the 1917 model will be implemented to insure that freedom is defined only by those in power and insured via an international agreement to extract the capital, the production, of the United States citizen in exchange for this new life of liberty as defined by the state.

Once the level of economic deprivation and pain has reached the extremes in our nation this time, the sacrifice of the ideals of Jefferson and Franklin will become a secondary concern in exchange for a box of MRE’s for a hungry family along with several gallons of water. It is the ultimate revolution, spun and run in reverse, with the implied blessings of the religious hierarchy, mainstream business concerns and alleged intellectuals across this land of ours.

And the people will beg, pray for and demand it.

How An Economic Depression Makes A Hitler

History repeats itself, because we fail to remember the lessons it teaches.  We think we can avoid the same mistakes of the past.  But that is not possible when we are ignorant of history, or had it so thoroughly perverted and revised that we have no comprehension that events taking place today – took place a little over 70 years ago, and the consequences cost millions upon millions of lives and plunged the entire world into conflict.

History is again repeating – and we have no clue how late in the game it really is for this nation…and the world.

How the Great Depression Brought Adolph Hitler to Power

 

Oh goody! Looks like we’re having another Depression — maybe just a little one, but who knows how long we can stretch it out, if we give it a good try? 

 

So now we can play FDR and The Glorious New Deal.

If that sounds insane to you, well, it’s what both Charles Krauthammer and David Broder – the Burt and Ernie of the Washington Post – have now concluded about the Obama White House.

The Great Depression certainly empowered FDR to make big changes in America over his four terms.  In spite of all the hoo-hah the country didn’t get out of the long, long slump until 1940 or so, with the huge mobilization of men and industrial resources for World War II. But FDR did get to play to his heart’s content, through the NRA, the WPA, the AAA, the CCC, the TVA, the NLRB, the FDIC and the SEC. By comparison all we’ve got is a measly TARP. So far. 

Trouble is, the Great Depression also brought Adolf Hitler to power. (Darn, I knew there had to be a downside somewhere.)

For those who have forgotten history or never bothered to learn it, here’s is the sixty-second version.

1. Adolf Hitler started out as just another Bohemian intellectual, a sort of fire-breathing hippie, hanging around the coffee houses of Vienna after the big defeat of World War I. Just like Lenin, Mussolini and all the other psychopaths who rose to power around the same time. (Look it up, kids). His ilk can still be found in all the big city cafes of Europe, along with Berkeley, California, Madison, Wisconsin, and other college towns. They all profess peace. But in the right conditions, they are all happy to set off sociological or real dynamite. (Viz., Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn; the Rev. J. Wright and all the rest.)

Today the cafe intellectuals are more likely to be Islamic fascists, but what’s the big diff? They all follow Hitler’s big maxim, ”Alles muss anders sein!” (“everything must change”) or, in Obamalingo, “Change you can believe in.”  They all hate whatever is; it doesn’t matter where they want to go.

They want a perfect world, every single one of them. Therefore they all hate freedom, electoral democracy, and the blood-sucking capitalists. They all demand justice and equality.  And millions of suckers always fall for it. Some things never change; even the words don’t change, much less the marching music.

2. When Hitler got out of the Kaiserliche Wehrmacht with burned-out lungs from mustard gas, Germany was broke. The Reich had started the war as the wealthiest, most industrialized, most highly-educated, and perhaps even the most arrogant nation in Europe.  (Although that’s a tough one to judge, there being so much competition in the arrogance sweepstakes in Europe.) Anyway, if you remember the goose-stepping soldiers with the funny helmets with the little spikes on top, and all the cheering people standing on the sidewalks going Hoch! Hoch!, that’s the one.

3. As punishment for the war, the Versailles Treaty required the Germans to pay their victims, to handicap their military and heavy industries, and to be nice to their neighbors. They did pay some money for a while, but then they just lied about all those other things. None of the victorious nations dared to actually find out if the Germans were re-arming or not. Besides, the Germans and Austrians felt threatened by the new and militant Soviet Union, accidentally created when the old Reich helped Lenin to overthrow the Czar of Russia.  (Lenin was another cafe intellectual who turned into a ruthless mass-murdering tyrant, except that he hung around Zurich rather than Vienna.)

4. After WWI the Weimar Republic brought parliamentary democracy of a kind to Germany.  But it also saw a wave of corruption, degradation of middle class values, attacks on religion, promiscuity, and glorification of “alternative lifestyles” — which all agreed on their hatred of thebourgeoisie (who happened to be their parents) — along with lots of artistic expressions of the same Up Yours! attitude that has made government-funded artists so popular in our day.

(A lot of our avant garde is just the derriere garde of Europe’s Weimar period. Nothing new there at all.)

5. Having the Soviets practically next door was a big help to the German Communists  — who still called themselves Communists rather than Black Liberation Theologians, as ours do today. But just like Rev. J-Wright, they all hated middleclassness, or as they called it, the bourgeoisie. (That was their parents, remember?)  So did Mussolini and Hitler, who also rose to power as radical world-changers in the turmoil of the day. They were also big ecofreaks — because Mother Nature was good, you see. They practiced a fair amount of nudity and gayety, celebrated sex and violence, got drunk and carried on riots, and whipped up giant hatreds against scapegoats — the French, other racially inferior peoples, and of course … . Yes. 

They also swore to eliminate the handicapped, the retarded, and any organized religion. Both the Communists and the Nazis really really hated Christianity. Not just Judaism and the Jews. They were equal-opportunity haters, without fear or favor.

6. The whole Ship of Fools seemed to go sailing along until the economy went kaput.  But why did it? You can point to hyperinflation, long and deep declines in industry and agriculture, unemployment, and shaky currencies.  Europe had decades of troubles before the United States caught the bug. Stock markets dwindled, trade barriers went up, and on October 29, 1929, far away in New York City, Wall Street went into a tailspin. It was followed by the other big stock markets. People lost their jobs and their savings. No capital, no productivity, just despair.

7. Europe decided that democracy wasn’t its thing after all, and  looked for nice trustworthy generals to take over the hopelessly ineffective parliamentary governments — like in Germany. But the President of Germany, General Paul von Hindenburg, was elderly and out of his depth, and after a while was forced to ask that nice Herr Hitler to organize a new government. Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party had never gotten a majority, but the time was ripe, and the Nazis never cared much for rules. So they took power.

In the end United States kind of lucked out, compared to Europe — but don’t try to tell that to anybody who managed to live through it. It’s not just our habit of democratic governance that brought us out of it without tyranny and the devastation of Europe and Asia. FDR had a certain amount of demagogue blood in him.

Or as he proclaimed in accepting the Democratic Party nomination,

“Throughout the nation men and women … look to us here for guidance andfor more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people… This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms.” (Italics added.) 

A better “opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth? … A call to arms?” Has the Obama crowd seen this speech?  FDR naturally attacked greed and wealth, coming from a family of old wealth and long-forgotten greed himself. Greed is in the eye of the accuser.

What’s the bottom line? Well, certain politicians thrive in times of trouble; and if they don’t see enough trouble, they’re always happy to add some more.

They always practice the same kind of demagogy. They always promise radical change. And they often bring the opposite.  Historians have long pointed to the breakdown of Europe’s  middle class as the single biggest earthquake, the one that shook all the other pillars of society until it crumbled. 

In the 21st century, you can kill the middle class by teaching kids to despise their parents and their traditions; you can tax them into poverty; you can whip up nationalistic fervor against the Frogs or the Boches; you can inflate the currency so that everybody is equally miserable; you can teach the poor, the black, the women, the young, to attack the middle class values that brought prosperity over generations of toil; you can torpedo the currency and destroy retirement plans; you can turn the Organs of Propaganda – pahdon me, the “news media” — to assault middle class values; you can unify the very wealthy with the very poor to try to squeeze and whack the middle; you can take historic wrongs like black slavery or Christopher Columbus to turn people against each other; you can easily turn bubbleheaded movie makers and starlets against George W. Bush; you can break the banks and turn the desperate against the malefactors of great wealth; or you can unify white liberals with poor blacks and militant feminists against all the Evil White Guys…

But it’s all the same, you see. Nothing ever changes except the color of the flags and the uniforms. And it’s always the militant idealists, the obsessional clerks and scribblers, who seize the moment to raise yet another Hero of Change and Hope to the peak of power. Because, you see, Adolf Hitler was not the exception. In the century of Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, of Lenin and Stalin, of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, of Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein, of Ahmadinejad and Khomeini, of genocidal little tyrants in the Sudan and Rwanda, Hitler was by no means the exception.

He was just brought down faster than the others.  Heigh-ho. Interesting times.

See what a little history can teach you?

How America Becomes A Tyranny

“Justice and happiness in a community rests upon the moral condition of its citizens.. without proper moral conditioning, a nation’s “defining principle” will be the source of its ultimate destruction. “

This essay in the American Thinker is a great read, and undoubtedly one the Founder’s themselves had read, studied and which motivated many of their warnings to us, regarding the safeguards of liberty:

The only foundation for… a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. – Founder and Signer, Dr. Benjamin Rush

There is a huge difference between freedom and liberty.

Today in America, we define liberty as being able to do whatever one feels like without regard to consequences or responsibility.  But this is not liberty – it is in fact slavery.  Slavery to ideas anathema to liberty and slavery to the vices of both flesh and tyrants.

Liberty as intended for us in this country, can only be preserved by a state of religious biblical morality.  Without it, we see the results in both the culture and now in our political landscape: chaos, anarchy, corruption, deceit, abomination, violence and debauchery celebrated as goodness, while the righteous are silenced and persecuted by a new morality that will usher in tyranny.

 

How Democracies Become Tyrannies

By Ed Kaitz

Back in 1959 the philosopher Eric Hoffer had this to say about Americans and America:

“For those who want to be left alone to realize their capacities and talents this is an ideal country”. 

That was then. This is now. Flash forward fifty years to the election of Barack Obama and a hard left leaning Democrat Congress. What Americans want today, apparently, is a government that has no intention of leaving any of us alone. 

How could Hoffer have been so wrong about America? Why did America change so quickly? Can a free people willingly choose servitude?  Is it possible for democracies to become tyrannies? How?

The answers to these questions were famously addressed in a few pages tucked within the greatest masterpiece of the classical world: Plato’s Republic.  On the surface, and to most reviewers of Plato’s writings, the Republic is a dialogue on justice and on what constitutes the just society.  But to careful readers the deeper theme of the Republic is the nature of education and the relationship between education and the survival of the state.  In fact, the Republic is essentially the story of how a man (Socrates) condemned to death for “corrupting” the youth of Athens gives to posterity the most precious gift of all: the love of wisdom.

In the Republic, two young men, Glaucon and Adeimantus, accompany the much older Socrates on a journey of discovery into the nature of the individual soul and its connection to the harmony of the state.  During the course of their adventure, as the two disciples demonstrate greater maturity and self-control, they are gradually exposed to deeper and more complex teachings regarding the relationship between virtue, self-sufficiency, and happiness. In short, the boys begin to realize that justice and happiness in a community rests upon the moral condition of its citizens.  This is what Socrates meant when he said: “The state is man writ large.”

Near the end of the Republic Socrates decides to drive this point home by showing Adeimantus what happens to a regime when its parents and educators neglect the proper moral education of its children.  In the course of this chilling illustration Adeimantus comes to discover a dark and ominous secret: without proper moral conditioning a regime’s “defining principle” will be the source of its ultimate destruction.  For democracy, that defining principle is freedom. According to Socrates, freedom makes a democracy but freedom also eventually breaks a democracy.

For Socrates, democracy’s “insatiable desire for freedom and neglect of other things” end up putting it “in need of a dictatorship.”  The short version of his theory is that the combination of freedom and poor education in a democracy render the citizens incapable of mastering their impulses and deferring gratification.  The reckless pursuit of freedom leads the citizens to raze moral barriers, deny traditional authority, and abandon established methods of education.  Eventually, this uninhibited quest for personal freedom forces the public to welcome the tyrant.  Says Socrates: “Extreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.”

Adeimantus wants Socrates to explain what kind of man resembles the democratic city.  In other words, he wants to know how “democratic man” comes to be and what happens to make this freedom loving man eventually beg for a tyrant.  Socrates clarifies that the democratic man starts out as the son of an “oligarchic” father — a father who is thrifty and self-disciplined.  The father’s generation is more concerned with wealth than freedom. This first generation saves, invests, and rarely goes in for conspicuous consumption.[i]

The father’s pursuit of wealth leaves him unwilling and unable to give attention to his son’s moral development. The father focuses on business and finance and ignores the business of family. The son then begins to associate with “wild and dangerous creatures who can provide every variety of multicolored pleasure in every sort of way.”  These Athenian precursors of the hippies begin to transform the son’s oligarchic nature into a democratic one.  Because the young man has had no moral guidance, his excessive desire for “unnecessary pleasures” undermines “the citadel” of his soul.  Because the “guardians” of the son’s inner citadel — truth, restraint, wisdom — are absent, there is nothing within him to defend against the “false and boastful words and beliefs that rush up and occupy this part of him.”

A 1960s revolution in the son’s soul purges the last remaining guardians of moderation and supplants new meanings to old virtues:  “anarchy” replaces freedom, “extravagance” replaces magnificence, and “shamelessness” replaces courage.  The young man surrenders rule over himself “to whichever desire comes along, as if it were chosen by lot.”  Here Socrates notes the essential problem when a free society becomes detached from any notions of moral virtue or truth: desires are chosen by “lot” instead of by “merit” or “priority.”

For the son the democratic revolution in his soul is complete.  In this stage “there is neither order nor necessity in his life, but he calls it pleasant, free, blessedly happy, and he follows it for as long as he lives.”  Socrates gives a brief illustration of the young man’s new democratic life:

Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times he drinks only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; at other times, he’s idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy.  He often engages in politics, leaping up from his seat and saying and doing whatever comes into his mind.  If he happens to admire soldiers, he’s carried in that direction, if money-makers, in that one.

In short, the young man has no anchor, no set of guiding principles or convictions other than his thirst for freedom.  His life is aimless, superficial, and gratuitous. The spoiled lotus-eaters of his generation have defined themselves simply by mocking all forms of propriety and prudence.  What’s worse, as these Athenian baby-boomers exercise their right to vote, they elect “bad cupbearers” as their leaders.  The new cupbearers want to stay in office so they give the voters whatever they desire.  The public, according to Socrates, “gets drunk by drinking more than it should of the unmixed wine of freedom.”  Conservative politicians who attempt to mix the wine of freedom with calls for self-restraint “are punished by the city and accused of being accursed oligarchs.”

As conservative politicians court suspicion so do conservative teachers and academics who stubbornly hold on to objective measurements of performance: “A teacher in such a community is afraid of his students and flatters them, while the students despise their teachers or tutors.”  Conservatism becomes unpopular just about everywhere, to a point at which even the elderly “stoop to the level of the young and are full of play and pleasantry, imitating the young for fear of appearing disagreeable and authoritarian.”

The explosion of boundaries and limits extends even to national identity itself, so that resident aliens and foreigners “are made equal to a citizen.”

The citizens’ souls become so infected with freedom that they become excessively paranoid about any hint of slavery.  But slavery comes to mean being under any kind of master or limit including the law itself.  Says Socrates: “They take no notice of the laws, whether written or unwritten, in order to avoid having any master at all.” That is, any kind of “hierarchy” in a democracy is rejected as “authoritarian.”  But this extreme freedom, according to Socrates, eventually enslaves democracy.

As the progressive politicians and intellectuals come to dominate the democratic city, its “fiercest members do all the talking and acting, while the rest settle near the speakers platform and buzz and refuse to tolerate the opposition of another speaker.”  There are “impeachments, judgments and trials on both sides.”  The politicians heat up the crowds by vilifying business and wealth and by promising to spread the wealth around.  The people then “set up one man as their special champion” and begin “nurturing him and making him great.” 

The people’s “special champion” however transforms from leader to tyrant.  He “drops hints about the cancellation of debts and the redistribution of land” and continues to “stir up civil wars against the rich.”  All who have reached this stage, says Socrates, “soon discover the famous request of a tyrant, namely, that the people give him a bodyguard to keep their defender safe for them.”  The people give him this new security force, “because they are afraid for his safety but aren’t worried at all about their own.”

Socrates describes the early weeks of the new leader’s reign:

“Won’t he smile in welcome at anyone he meets, saying that he’s no tyrant, making all sorts of promises both in public and in private, freeing the people from debt, redistributing land to them, and to his followers, and pretending to be gracious and gentle to all?”

After a series of unpopular actions, including stirring up a war in order to generate popular support, the leader begins to alienate some of his closest and most ardent advisers who begin to voice their misgivings in private.  Following a purge of these advisors the tyrant attracts some of the worst elements of the city to help him rule.  As the citizens grow weary of his tenure the tyrant chooses to attract foreigners to resupply his dwindling national bodyguard.  The citizens finally decide they’ve had enough and begin to discuss rebellion. 

At this point in the dialogue Adeimantus asks Socrates incredulously: “What do you mean?  Will the tyrant dare to use violence against [the people] or to hit [them] if [they] don’t obey?  Socrates answers:

“Yes – once he’s taken away [the people's] weapons.”

Thus ends Book VIII of Plato’s Republic.  I won’t spoil the marvelous ending (Books IX and X) but I would like to spend a few moments drawing some conclusions about the overall message of this fascinating text and its relevance for 21^st century Americans.

First, those of us who are incapable of self-mastery will always shamefully prostrate ourselves before messianic political leaders.  The progressive left in America has spent countless generations destroying the guardians of our inner citadel: religion, family, parents, and tradition – in short, conservatism and limits.  When we exhaust the financial and moral capital of previous generations (and future ones, as with the current stimulus bill) we will dutifully line up at the public trough, on our knees.  Citizens capable of self-mastery will always choose to be left alone.  In other words, they’ll always choose limited government.

Second, freedom without limits paves the way to tyranny by undermining respect for the law.  When politicians play fast and loose with the law it becomes easier for them and for the people to see special champions as alternative sources of rule.  Today in America the objective basis for law is being attacked on campuses and even in law schools as too authoritarian and too insensitive to the subjective experiences and personal narratives of criminals.  The SAT exam has also been under assault for the same reasons.  As Socrates warned: extreme freedom will instill a paranoia about any kind of “master” including objective measurements of right and wrong, and of merit based forms of achievement.  But when the citizens become enslaved to their vices they’ll dutifully cry out for another kind of master.

Third, is the crucial role of education, which is the underlying theme of Plato’s Republic.  The ethos of American education has been for many decades saturated with a simple mantra: choice.  What’s worse, those few remaining educators who chant the old, Socratic mantra of “judgment” are vilified and harassed by the modern day lotus-eaters as hateful conservatives.  Socrates predicted that all of this would happen in a democracy.  But it is judgment not choice that enables a young person to erect a citadel in the soul.  This eliminates the need for tyrants, and for bailouts too.

Finally, there is a question on the minds of many conservatives today:  How does one convince the younger generations of Americans to distrust the growth of the State?  Is it possible for Americans to recover the desire to be left alone in order “to realize our capacities and talents” as Eric Hoffer says? 

I’ve read that in Iran, many young people chafe at the pervasive despotism there, but when the burning desire for freedom threatens to boil over, the government in Tehran eases its restrictions on the use of personal satellite dishes.  Electronic Soma for the digital age.