Posted on 06/07/2015 3:18:46 PM PDT by PoliticallyShort
“At issue in the Hiss case”, wrote Whittaker Chambers in his autobiography Witness, “was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great the he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it.”
In August 1948, Chambers, an editor at Time, identified Alger Hiss, a former assistant to the Secretary of State and former General Secretary of the United Nations, as a fellow member of his underground Communist cell in the 1930s. Hiss was ultimately convicted of perjury for denying his espionage activities and sentenced to five years in jail. Chambers was further vindicated in the mid 1990’s as the Venoma transcripts, secret KGB and GRU messages during World War II, were released and confirmed that Hiss had been a Soviet spy not only in the 1930s, but at least until 1945.
In Witness, Chambers goes on to write that at issue in the Hiss case was whether his “faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another. At issue was the question whether, in the desperately divided society, there still remained the will to recognize the issues in time to offset the immense rally of public power to distort and pervert the facts?” This is ultimately the question of our time as our society is loosing the power not only to distinguish between reality and unreality, but the ability to distinguish between good and evil.
At some point the fundamental basic question needs to be asked as we take a step back and look at the agenda that is being pushed as blatant lies, delusional insanity, and outright evil have seeped into our society from the influence of a few upon the many who are not naturally corrupt. The agenda behind this push is what Chamber’s defined as “the dimension of treason in our time.” Chambers elaborated, “In the 20th century, treason became a vocation whose modern form was specifically the treason of ideas.”
That movement is embolden within society today acting under the guise of progressivism and liberalism as their chief proponent just so happens to occupy the White House. Yesterday’s fascists, communists, and marxists have shed their labels and evolved their tactics as their ideas now permeate throughout our intellectual and moral foundations and within the institutions traditionally established for the preservation of those foundations. Although the past solutions under this movement to create a social order based on false intellectual doctrines have ultimately failed, liberals today remain steadfast in their pursuit to contaminate and eventually annihilate what remains of our forgotten republic.
We’ve reached this point in time not solely due to the “treason of ideas” that Chamber’s alluded to, but because we have accepted, with little fight, the decay of the principles upon which our republic was founded. In the final days of the Roman republic, Cicero made a statement that today should resonate with Americans who are worried about the decay of our republican institutions. Cicero wrote, “The Republic, when it was handed down to us, was like a beautiful painting, whose colors were already fading with age. Our own time has not only neglected to freshen it by renewing its original colors, but has not even gone to the trouble of preserving its design and portrayal of figures.” The Roman republic fell because few heeded the warnings of those like Cicero and even fewer attempted to preserve its original design. Thus, in the span of a hundred years, Rome was transformed from a republic with democratic institutions into an empire under the control of one man.
“The progressive agenda, writes Jarrett Stepman of Breitbart, “from its early days at the turn of the twentieth century until the modern day, has been aimed at placing a new cornerstone at America’s foundation. Rejecting both the ‘natural law’ ideas of individual rights and the carefully crafted system of federalism codified by the Constitution, progressives have radically increased state power, placed more power in the hands of the executive branch, and created the bureaucratic-administrative state that now runs rampant.” Rome had a few great men in its last days as a republic but no movement to back them, notes Stepman. “In this regard, modern conservatives have an advantage…and should take to heart Cicero’s lament that the republic was dying because few attempted to freshen its original principles.” The disastrous result of the progressive agenda is a populous that upholds mediocrity in the name of relativism with an ever-expanding and centralized government that is unmoored from constitutional limits.
We must turn to the voices of our Founders if we are to ever regain what was once our republic. Speaking about the conditions in which Caesar came to power to Rome, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following; “If Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power, have done to lead his fellow citizens into good government?” Jefferson continues, “Steeped in corruption, vice and venality, as the whole nation was,… what could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done, had it been referred to them to establish a good government for their country?” The problems we face today are just as immense, but their solution lies in the education and enlightenment of the people and the emergence of a spirit that will serve as a foundation for independence and self-government.
The solution is in the reformation of the American mind, according to Jefferson this reformation of the mind is “to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments proportioned, indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession.” These are the inculcations necessary to render the American people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government.
We face a daunting task in restraining and reviving the sturdy virtues required for self-government while at the same time restoring the principles of America’s Founders to their proper role in the public and political discourse. With all the crises and chaos that consume us throughout each day, we have all but forgotten that the real heart of our own government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that cause that we must ascribe all our results.
In his Speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Calvin Coolidge eloquently defined the history in which we ourselves must rediscover. Coolidge stated that, “governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments…Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.” It is only through the observance of the principles laid out by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution that can save the character of our nation and restore the republic for which it stands. One nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
WELL, you’re correct the US used to be a republic...
a modest, little bitty look will show you it’s NOT ANYMORE...
Sovereign states are a thing of the past... been true since the Civil War..
Took awhile for reality to take hold...
Absent another Civil War the US will never be a Republic again..
The is now a democracy..... run by democrats....
you know.. Mob rule for mobsters..
Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism .-Karl Marx
True it is, EVEN if you don’t like it.. Bend over -OR- Revolt..
Great article, Nick Short. Great quotes, hosepipe. Thanks. BTTT!
Thank you!!
I agree, & majority in America today dont even know difference between Republic & Democracy. Neither do our politicians. hell most have probably never read the constitution
Even the communists know that communism doesn’t work.
The Soviet Union is gone. They’re eating grass in North Korea. Mao liked to go swimming with the young girls. The communists are riding in Mercedes limos in Vietnam. Castro has his private island resort. Venezuelans are wiping their behinds with clam shells.
Communism/socialism doesn’t work. It won’t work.
Because human beings run it. And human beings, absent Christianity, are some nasty creatures.
So, some dreamer or con man comes along and convinces the desperate or stupid to support him and he’ll give them everything. Then, when he has the power and wealth, he lets the people go to crap.
In the meantime.....millions die.
I don’t mind if somebody works or gambles their way to wealth.
I hate people who lie and cheat and steal and kill their way to wealth.
The purported communists don’t want a chicken in every pot. They want a limo in their palace garage.
and the Liberals have moved Left of Communism....they now support nihilism
We used ti kill communists.....we should restore that activity.
Agreed.
I've spoken out and asked if anyone realized they were pledging an oath to BE a republic ?
stares
I read this article and was left wondering about two premises: what republic are we talking about and what self governance? It has missed my notice that either still exist, if they ever did.
Caesar does as caesar wishes and doesn’t give a fraction of a damn what any of us think about it.
And are you just willing to accept it?
“And are you just willing to accept it?”
No. I’m doing something useful instead of standing in line to elect politicians.
The kid running a lemonade stand, the guy mowing his neighbors yard, the woman feeding her children will all do far more good for this country in one afternoon than the political class can in a decade. Assuming, of course, that the political class were inclined to do some good, which they obviously are not.
We used to kill communists.....we should restore that activity.
Socialism should be illegal.. in a proper US Constitution .. IT IS....
The US Constitution was penned expressly for ONE Purpose ONLY... and one purpose Only..
....TO LIMIT THE FEDERAL GIVERNMENT.....
In an intact Constitution, socialism is not possible..
AND couldn’t survive the Supreme Court.. created to decide what is Constitutional and whats NOT..
Little wonder socialists DESPISE the US Constitution..
AND seek to PACK the Supremes with socialists..
Sad to say the only recourse is to REVOLT..
You CANNOT vote your way out of the dilemma America is in..
The socialists will ONLY release POWER out of their cold dead hands..
Must “get busy” -OR- learn how to be a SLAVE.. a serf.. LIKE you are NOW..
If givernment can TAX stuff you OWN..
Your paying RENT on it.... “they” actually OWN IT..
A large majority of Americans will look at you as if you are an idiot if you inform them that this country is NOT SUPPOSED to be a democracy! They have never asked themselves why the pledge of allegiance says, “...and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands.” They have ZERO idea that the constitution guarantees to each state a REPUBLICAN form of government and most of all they think you have fallen from a tree on your head if you tell them that this country was never REFERRED to as a democracy until WWII and that the founding fathers warned against democracy and in fact considered it, as one rare individual once said to me, “A dirty word.”
I have even seen one online multiple choice test on history and civics which asked the question what form of government does the US constitution guarantee to the states. Four choices were listed, NONE of them were correct! IIRC the choices were communism, socialism, fascism and “representative democracy.” They called representative democracy the correct answer although it is in fact no more correct than any of the other three but history teachers in universities will teach that it is the actual correct answer. At this point some member of the “most educated generation in history” will usually chirp that this is, “only semantics”. My answer to that is if the words mean the same why not use the actual word from the constitution, what is wrong with the word republic? If the constitution mentioned a tree would they change the word to stationary form of life?
The main thing wrong with America is that so many people KNOW so many things that are not true...AND THEY VOTE!
Socialism has at least two types, communism and fascism, they type most active in the US is the latter, fascism.
And Canada, Urp and China..
I agree. But if we don’t change the political class that exists today, there will be no tomorrow.
“But if we don’t change the political class that exists today, there will be no tomorrow.”
I respectfully disagree. Caesar is foing to do what caesar is going to do, and isn’t going to give one scintilla of a damn about what we think about it. Plainly put, our electoral system is a control mechanism, and an amazing one at that. Think about how much baloney we conservatives tolerate because we get one one-hundred millionth of a voice in which of two carefully chosen candidates will get to hold the whip.
If you want to see conservatism or liberty in your life, you’ll need to implement it on a micro scale, because caesar is not going to go along. Fortunately we have incredible opportunities to do exactly that. These are wonderful times to be alive because we do have the opportunity to make some meaningful choices for comservatism and liberty notwithstanding the grim political reality.
bump
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