Respect for the Constitution will never be-instituted at the ballot box. There just aren’t enough of us. The Marxist takeover is nearly complete if Yuri Bezmanov is to be believed...and I do. Keep your powder dry and try to adjust your sleeping habits so that you’re alert at 3:00 am.
That is correct. It’s over. I knew it the morning after.
The only antidote is economic implosion, or civil war over a very long term.
The post-mortem is twofold: benefits/tribal voters, and the hopeless division in the republican party amongst the country clubbers, the libertarians and the evangelicals. We’ve suspected for a long time that the three factions had no use for each other; now we know it.
I think that we should begin preparing for the 2014 elections. Those who want to quit the USA should emigrate to a place they like better - maybe join the Confederados in Brazil.
But, those of us who will remain Americans need to get past the last election and figure out how we might do better in the next one.
FREE HOME FOR ANYONE WHO WILL TAKE IT!
I was in my neighborhood restaurant this morning and was seated behind a group of jubilant individuals celebrating the successful passing of the recent health care bill. I could not finish my breakfast. This is what ensued:
They were a diverse group of several races and both sexes. I heard the young man exclaim, “Isn’t Obama like Jesus Christ? I mean, after all, he is healing the sick.” The young woman enthusiastically proclaimed, “Yeah, and he does it for free. I cannot believe anyone would think that a free market would work for health care. Another said, ‘The stupid Republicans want us all to starve to death so they can inherit all of the power. Obama should be made a Saint for what he did for those of us less fortunate.” At this, I had more than enough.
I arose from my seat, mustering all the restraint I could find, and approached their table. “Please excuse me; may I impose upon you for one moment?” They smiled and welcomed me to the conversation. I stood at the end of their table, smiled as best I could and began an experiment.
“I would like to give one of you my house. It will cost you no money and I will pay all of the expenses and taxes for as long as you live there. Anyone interested?” They looked at each other in astonishment. “Why would you do something like that?” asked a young man, “There isn’t anything for free in this world.” They began to laugh at me, as they did not realize this man had just made my point. “I am serious, I will give you my house for free, no money what so ever. Anyone interested?” In unison, a resounding “Hell Yeah” fills the room.
“Since there are too many of you, I will have to make a choice as to who receives this money-free bargain.” I noticed an elderly couple was paying attention to the spectacle unfolding before their eyes, the old man shaking his head in apparent disgust. “I tell you what; I will give it to the one of you most willing to obey my rules.” Again, they looked at one another, an expression of bewilderment on their faces. The perky young woman asked, “What are the rules?” I smiled and said, “I don’t know. I have not yet defined them. However, it is a free home that I offer you.” They giggled amongst themselves, the youngest of which said, “What an old coot. He must be crazy to give away his home. Go take your meds, old man.” I smiled and leaned into the table a bit further. “I am serious, this is a legitimate offer.” They gaped at me for a moment.
“I’ll take it you old fool. Where are the keys?” boasted the youngest among them. “Then I presume you accept ALL of my terms then?” I asked.. The elderly couple seemed amused and entertained as they watched from the privacy of their table. “Oh hell yeah! Where do I sign up?” I took a napkin and wrote, “I give this man my home, without the burden of financial obligation, so long as he accepts and abides by the terms that I shall set forth upon consummation of this transaction.” I signed it and handed it to the young man who eagerly scratched out his signature. “Where are the keys to my new house?” he asked in a mocking tone of voice. All eyes were upon us as I stepped back from the table, pulling the keys from pocket and dangling them before the excited new homeowner.
“Now that we have entered into this binding contract, witnessed by all of your friends, I have decided upon the conditions you are obligated to adhere from this point forward. You may only live in the house for one hour a day. You will not use anything inside of the home. You will obey me without question or resistance. I expect complete loyalty and admiration for this gift I bestow upon you. You will accept my commands and wishes with enthusiasm, no matter the nature. Your morals and principles shall be as mine. You will vote as I do, think as I do and do it with blind faith. These are my terms. Here are your keys.” I reached the keys forward and the young man looked at me dumbfounded.
“Are you out of your mind? Who would ever agree to those ridiculous terms?” the young man appeared irritated. “You did when you signed this contract before reading it, understanding it and with the full knowledge that I would provide my conditions only after you committed to the agreement.” Was all I said. The elderly man chuckled as his wife tried to restrain him. I was looking at a now silenced and bewildered group of people. “You can shove that stupid deal up you’re a** old man, I want no part of it” exclaimed the now infuriated young man. “You have committed to the contract, as witnessed by all of your friends; you cannot get out of the deal unless I agree to it. I do not intend to let you free now that I have you ensnared. I am the power you agreed to. I am the one you blindly and without thought chose to enslave yourself to. In short, I am your Master.” At this, the table of celebrating individuals became a unified group against the unfairness of the deal.
After a few moments of unrepeatable comments and slurs, I revealed my true intent. “What I did to you is what this administration and congress did to you with the health care legislation. I easily suckered you in and then revealed the real cost of the bargain. Your folly was in the belief that you can have something you did not earn; that you are entitled to that which you did not earn; that you willingly allowed someone else to think for you. Your failure to research, study and inform yourself permitted reason to escape you. You have entered into a trap from which you cannot flee. Your only chance of freedom is if your new Master gives it to you. A freedom that is given can also be taken away; therefore, it is not freedom.” With that, I tore up the napkin and placed it before the astonished young man. “This is the nature of your new health care legislation.”
I turned away to leave these few in thought and contemplation and was surprised by applause. The elderly gentleman, who was clearly entertained, shook my hand enthusiastically and said, “Thank you Sir, these kids don’t understand Liberty these days.” He refused to allow me to pay my bill as he said, “You earned this one, it is an honor to pickup the tab.” I shook his hand in thanks, leaving the restaurant somewhat humbled, and sensing a glimmer of hope for my beloved country.
Use reason.
The die is cast, I agree, let them have their way, watch it all come tumbling down and try to pick up the pieces. Enough of playing the libs own game, let them own the results.
The trick is can we pick up the pieces after the collapse and will freedom be the chosen path. Neither of these are a given.
schu
I know what this conservative did. I retired just before the election which caused a major drop in my income.
As things get worse I’ll be in contact with a bankruptcy lawyer to get rid of debt.
And finally after my dust has settled, I’m moving out of California even if I have to walk away from my house!
I’m tired and don’t want to play this game anymore.
Know it's in his hands and it's his will. Pray and remain steadfast.
We used to have three branches of government
Both the Congress and Supreme court have abdicated all but symbolic vestiges of their responsibilites; all they actually do is serve as highly paid rubber stamps for the Executive branch and completely uncontrolled feral bureaucracy. Some of our elected misrepresentatives still go through the motions of listening to us; only a very few of those, however, actually try to represent us. By the same token, a few Supreme Court justices still try to rule in accordance with the Constitution; even they, however, are stuck with nearly a century's worth of non- or overtly unconstitutional precedent. Partly by default, partly by skulduggery, and entirely by design, all but empty vestiges of political power has ended up in the Executive branch, and political power has been extended and expanded to cover virtually all aspects of each American's personal and economic life.
Who's in charge?
Good question. Too bad we don't have definite answers. We can speculate; we can approximately tell who's on the rise, who's keeping a chair warm, who's on the way out, but that doesn't tell us who actually makes the highest level decisions, still less how, still less why. National policy? All we can say with certainty, I believe, is Congress abandoned all thought of that a long time ago. Carefully selected members of Congress may be informed of decisions from time to time; how much say they have in them is altogether another matter. It's all on a need to know basis, and we, the people don't.
The good news—admittedly a stretch and a half
"Progressives" are a destructive force. During the past century and longer, they've done a determined, patient, effective job of destroying our original constitutional republic from within. To the extent they're Marxists and/or collectivists and/or socialists, they're so far out of touch with reality, it'd be funny if they hadn't helped themselves to such a raw quantity of power. You have to be not merely blind, but deliberately and systematically blind to reality to believe any part of the utopian gibberish leftist extremists spew while trying to drum up popular support. Serious collectivists—not the self-styled "thinkers," but the people who end up in positions of highest power in collectivist regimes, are totalitarians first, last, and all parts between. They use ideology as a means to power. If Lenin had happened upon a new religion, for example, or thought one up, he'd have abandoned Marxism in half a seventeenth of a skosh, placed himself high in the new religion, and seized power in the failed Romanov empire. Totalitarians are power-mad psychopaths or sociopaths driven by hatred, revenge, bitterness, and the like: all destructive forces.
If you buy some land with an old farm house and a barn and some sheds and your goal is to build the house of your dreams, you have to get ride of what's there before you can put up the new. You might want to keep the original well, but that barn isn't even worthy fire wood, and the house... Well, the less said, the better. "Progressives" are good at demolishing the old. They're not architects. They're not builders. They're not finish carpenters. They're not decorators. They're not furniture builders. They're not painters or sculptors or weavers or landscapers anything but demolishers.
Totalitarians sincerely believe they're creators, but they're not. They sincerely believe they can build a new America, but even a quick peek at history shows the absurdity of such notions. Without a single exception, collectivism in all its myriad forms has been at best a dismal failure, and more often a monstrous failure. In the twentieth century, communist and/or socialist and/or national socialist governments murdered in excess of 100 million of their own citizens, over half by starvation, and of those, over half were children. That's a record of destruction, not construction—period.
The "progressives" who've destroyed our constitutional republic are going to fail. How soon? How badly? How much ancillar damage will be done? Heaven may know, but here's all I can tell you with certainty: they'll fail.
Oh, by the way...
...governments always believe they are countries. They're monopolies with varying degress of control over countries, but governments come and go, whereas countries tend to keep being themselves. Assorted Russian governments have arrived and departed, but Russia is still Russia, and so are all its satellite states still satellite states. The "progressives" in Washington, D.C. sincerely believe they are America, but they're rock-solid wrong about that, too. America consists fundamentally of the land and the people. We were the first nation that deliberately created and crafted our own government. We didn't raise it above the nation, but made it our nation's public servant. Our founding fathers would at least have laughed at the very idea that some people might believe the government is America. We were America when we were still English colonies; we're still America today, and we'll remain America even after the "progressives" have finished the last of their dirty work.
A nickel's worth of perspective
Tyranny was a stable form of government for centuries. European feudalism, for example, lasted a millennium and longer, as did Chinese feudalism, as did any number of European and Asian empires, some rooted in feudalism, some in more recent alliances and schemes. Kingship and imperialism went into their death throes during World War I, and are now largely things of the past. To be sure, Russia's communists reasserted the Romanov empire, and Putin seems determined to preside over something like a Russian empire, though he's apparently intent upon making most of the same mistakes the Romanovs made. China is sort of a communist country first, sort of Asia's leading empire first, and China first. Germany and Italy attempted to reassert themselves as empires, and utterly lost World War II. Japan attempted to assert itself as Asia's foremost empire, and likewise lost World War II. Empires haven't fared well. Dictatorship hasn't fared very well. China is the world's most successful overt tyranny today; if you look at all closely, however, you'll notice it's diluted power at the top of the pyramid rather than leave it in a single pair of hands, gradually brought in elements of open market capitalism and large quantities of closed market or crony or state capitalism, and is "evolving," you might say, away from communism, which has been a more gradual disaster there than in Russia, though a disaster none the less.
Another quick peek at history reveals a curious fact: the combination of representative government, civil rights for all, and open market capitalism invariably enables the greatest number of people to create, widely distribute, and enjoy the greatest material wealth.
Most tyrants are power-mad, not wealth-mad, and they're vengeance seekers, anyway, not builders. Do you suppose the people at the apex of Chinese power care whether the workers and peasants to to bed with empty or full bellies? They prefer full bellies because people with empty bellies could easily seize power, put an end to communism, and scatter their ashes in some desert.
Representative government hasn't done remarkably well on the whole. In general, most of the colonies of the failed British empire are self-governing, stable, and prosperous; most European countries, by contrast, seem to be deeply involved in reinventing the idea of empire. The European Union is a nominally self-governing creation of bankers and industrialists of great wealth and power. Like Italian fascism and German national socialism, it controls rather than tries to own enterprise as communists did in both Russia and China, and the control it practices is noticeably more humane than control in Cuba, say, or Venezuela. No thugs in comic opera uniforms. No cult of personality. No torchlit parades. No wars of conquest. The E.U. is an outwardly happy marriage of very big business and very big government. It was formed to compete more successfully with America than a hodgepodge of individual nations that competed among themselves. Like a corporation, it sought and often found economies of scale. Like a corporation, some of its acquistions are worthier than others, and some, (I'm thinking of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain,) should never have been made, and look likely to do great damage to the parent company—except it's sort of an empire, except it's sort of a supra-national entity that really ought to be called an oligarchy, except it's sort of like a cartel of similar and related companies, except...
Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and a few other Asian countries are happily and stably self-governing, markedly more capitalist than collectivist, and doing well economically. Most of the rest of Asia is in the hands of assorted tyrants, oligarchs, representative governments of one kind and degree or another, and slow, but measurable economic betterment. India has abandoned socialist-oriented oligarchy masquerading as representative government, embraced genuine representation and capitalism, and begun to make good economic progress.
Much of Latin America has representative government in name, oligarchy of one style or another in practice, and economic betterment slowly simmering on back burners. Mexico had an outwardly representative government that was actually an oligarchy in the hands of the very wealthiest and best connected crony capitalists; it's now well on its way toward devolving into anarchy and local tyranny or corruptocracy by assorted narcotics war lords. Brazil seems determined to work its way up to clean, open representative government and open market capitalism, which is probably why it's doing so much better economically than the rest of Latin America.
Some Islamic states tolerate superficial appearances of representative government and capitalism; in reality, however, they're theocratic, dictatorial, royal, oligarchic, or some combination thereof, and their idea of capitalism is to find safe places for the very few to keep wealth from oil. Islam is an anti-religion, not a genuine religion. It has many of the trappings of religions, but it's solidly hate-based; its ethical system is perverse in many ways and riddled with exceptions, and the culture of Islam is solidly autocratic. I regard Islam as a theological ideology that's always adamantly resistant to change of any kind, always socially rigid, always obedience-oriented, and often, (as it is today,) imperialistic.
Nations in Africa run the gamut from hopelessly corrupt, backward theocracy and unvarying poverty to tribe-based tyranny to... Heaven may know, but I've to confess I don't.
In sum: the economic success of representative government and open market capitalism is well and widely understood; most unfortunately, totalitarians and oligarchs and theocrats are intrinsic, vehement enemies of the very idea of representative government, and even when they're willing to tolerate capitalism, they greatly prefer closed market or crony capitalism, which is to say: the weakest, most readily controlled form of capitalism.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
The "progressive" oligarchy at the apex of our national government doesn't stand a chance of remaining in power very long. Any self-appointed genius who'd publicly announce, "You didn't build that," is at best an economic illiterate. As well as I've been able to discern, President YDBT is determined to "redistribute the wealth," which is to say: punish the successful, grow the feral government, and win the undying admiration of the former main stream "news" media and his constituencies of "progressives," looters, blacks, and followers of the prophet the world over. That's not a plan: that's a disaster earnestly looking for a place to happen.
Two fairly obvious possibilities
1.) Economic disaster, closely followed by social unrest and collapse of the nation.
How stable is the dollar? How stable are stock and commodities markets and banks? How stable is the Federal Reserve? How stable is the E.U., and if it's not, how unstable are its banks and largest companies with close ties to American banks and largest companies? How much more economic stress can our nation absorb before a crushing avalanche is loosed?
If the dollar loses some portion of its value, there'd be a sudden, dramatic shortage of oil for gasoline and diesel fuel. Without those, how much transportation would grind to a halt? What if groceries started to run short of food? What if pharmacies started to run short of medicines? What if gasoline hit $15 a gallon, but only when it was available? Arson and looting, cholera, collapsing state and local governments, cops and firemen and doctors and nurses without pay checks, typhus, failing water and sewage systems, failing electricity, failing telephone systems, failing... Never mind the fine details: it could easily be horrendous. We, the people would find ourselves deep in massive unemployment and social unrest in no time.
If all heck broke loose, how long do you think it would take various states to secede from the United States and restore constitutional republican government, civil rights for all, individualism, open market capitalism, and in short, the American way? Believe it or not, millions of Americans have had it up to here with the "progressive" affliction, and would gladly restore a portion or portions of our country to legitimate American government and culture. How long would that take? Not years, but decades, I'm sure. 2.) Economic trouble, followed by the replacement of the "progressive" oligarchy with an E.U.-style oligarchy.
America 2.0
How jarring an economic earthquake would it take to scare the socks off us, the American people? I'm sure it wouldn't take a complete collapse, especially if it were a carefully planned, controlled collapse.
Mysteriously, a guy thunders into Washington, D.C. on a white horse. He's go an emergency rescue plan. Yes, it does include some temporary measures such as the nationalization of banks and oil companies, wage and price controls, control of food distrubution, and a few other things, but those are just temporary inconveniences. Yes, parts of the internet will have to be shut down temporarily, but only because subversive terrorists have been plotting to blow up Congress.
Meanwhile, not behind the famous curtain, but in a completely separate building, the very wealthiest and well educated best connected crony capitalists finish putting the fine touches on the plan, and go to work. They're going to end up owning this, relying on the government to manage and control that, own parts of something else, and as in Europe, make sure business and government keep things quiet and orderly. Congress will still meet and pass emergency measures as needed. The Supreme Court will verify they're all fully constitutional. The stars and stripes will still fly.
If you want to buy a car, it'll be made by one of several surviving car companies, all quietly owned or controlled by the right people. If you want to buy gas—mysteriously, we'll suddenly begin to work toward the "energy independence" politicians began to foam at the mouth about 40 years ago—you can pump it at any of hundreds of thousands of competitive convenience stores, but it'll be produced by quietly owned or controlled by the right people. Banks will be un-nationalized as soon as the emergency begins to show signs of subsiding, and the big banks will be quietly owned or controlled by the right people, too. Socialist medical care? No. As soon as the emergency is over, there'll be a national insurance plan, and what's more, you can choose among competing companies, most quietly owned or controlled by the right people. Repeal the Second Amendent? No, of course not. This is America, isn't it? Temporary emergency firearms registration, maybe, but no one's going to round up guns, (and don't worry about the new insurance requirements: it's not going to be expensive, and it's for the sake of public safety.) People will go back to work. The hero on the white horse won't just be tolerated, but elected in a landslide for a second four-year term.
In sum: I can all too easily see millions of Americans not merely accepting, but cheering for a European-style, American-looking crony capitalist regime. It wouldn't need to look very different from our original constitutional republic, and in fact, the raw size and intrusive power of the current feral bureaucracy could be cut back dramatically: business and government working toward shared goals would be much more efficient than government run riot, wouldn't it?
Ooops! One more fairly obvious possibility
Have you noticed President You Didn't Build That has been "tilting," you might call it, away from Israel toward Islamic states? What if, as a sign of undying gratitude, one or another Islamic jihad state were to finish cobbling together a few nuclear weapons and set some off to punish Great Satan? I can't think of a reason that couldn't happen concurrently with a "progressive"-inflicted economic disaster of one kind or another, one degree of severity or another.
Things could turn—and stay—really ugly for a long time.