Posted on 11/08/2012 6:05:52 PM PST by JerseyanExile
I'm feeling rather pessimistic today. Call it sour grapes. So pessimistic, in fact, that you might just call it out right doom and gloom. With an outlook on life and politics and the prospects for our country that usually I just laugh at. Not apocalyptic, per se, but something approaching that.
100 years after the Roman Empire fell there was still something lingering around calling itself the "Roman Empire". 500 years after Rome fell, there was something still calling itself the "Roman Empire". Over a thousand years after Rome fell, there were still people around speaking as if their country was really Rome.
In the East, the "Roman Empire" didn't end until 1453 with the fall of Constantinople.
In the West, the "Roman Empire" didn't end until Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz in 1805 over the last "Holy Roman" Emperor.
Farther East and North, the last Caesar ruled until 1917, when Czar (Czar = Caesar in Russian) Nicholas Romanov (= son of the Romans) II abdicated.
That is to say, the fiction of Rome lasted far longer than Rome itself. The idea of Rome being much more powerful than the actuality.
I can't help but wonder if America does ever fall, will the people living through it realize it is gone? That what future "Americans" call "America" will actually just be a fiction created by them as a way for them to try to reclaim some of the greatness that was once this thing called America? And that transition to the new fiction from the old reality will be lost on many who live through it?
And what if that generation is us?
If that is the case, and the America of the future is only related to the America of the past through the fictions we ourselves create, then is there really any hope?
Sure. Think of the Visigoths who sacked Rome, but who 150 years later were living in Gaul speaking Latin. Or better yet, the Ostrogoths who sacked true Rome for the last time, settled down on the Italian peninsula, and taught their children Latin.
100 years after Justinian briefly took Italy back from the Ostrogoths for Eastern Rome, you'd be hard pressed to find any one on the peninsula with even the faintest memory of their Germanic roots.
Further, the Romans didn't just go away. They didn't all die. The new invaders and the old Romans simply ... got on with life. They traded with one another. They lived side by side. They intermarried. Until finally, there were no more Romans and no more barbarians. In their wake they left us the English, the French, the Italians, and so on and so on.
And you know what? The ideas and ideals of Rome were so powerful that they live on today. In us.
As we become more and more like Europe, and less and less like the country that was founded on the principle that we are not Europe, then if there is any hope then it is this: that even as we become more like them, they are becoming more like us.
At some point in the future it will be our ideas which are remembered and venerated. That the fiction of America will long outlast any of its competition. And it will be our children and our children's children which will carry the blood of true America in their veins, even if it is mixed with the blood of those who destroyed the very thing which they will one day idealize.
Maybe this whole analogy is way off. I hope so. Maybe the future has something else completely in store for us. Maybe the next American renaissance is just around the corner. Or maybe we'll all be speaking Chinese.
I really couldn't tell you. But for now my faith is no longer in America continuing as the greatest nation on Earth. I just don't see it happening.
So, dig in and welcome our new barbarian overlords. They are us.
Europeans are committing cultural suicide. Their cultures and languages will die. Europeans aren't having replacement children.
In two hundred years there won't be enough 'Germans' to keep the language alive. Same for the French, Hungarians etc. In our country liberals don't have replacement children, but conservatives do. That will stop. Conservatives aren't going to want to bring children into this world - this country - either.
Europe will become Arab - and us? I suspect the American culture will become third world... one bad and dangerous neighborhood from coast to coast...
Thanks for the interesting post. It’s always a tonic to get a unique analysis of something, especially this particular subject, which is being hashed over by all and sundry. I am enjoying many people’s grappling with this political eruption of Karakatoa.
That is an interesting question. Those programs were imposed on me the day I got my first real job. Over my working life I have contributed around $300,000 if not more, while the results of all that money being invested for the past 45 years would be in the Millions of dollars.
Do I have access to those contributed funds and the resulting investments? Of course not, it's been spent.
Now add to that my personal situation. Diagnosed with Leukemia at age 52. Chemo, Remission, Chemo, sort of Remission, next who knows. I was told to expect to live anywhere from 10 to 15 years after my Diagnosis at age 52.
I am halfway through the best guess and will not be able to collect SS for another three years taking the lowered age 62 (penalized) benefit amount. I am hoping to live long enough to get at least one check. Talk about a Bucket List.
If you are asking if I should give up the money stolen from me to protect future generations, I say no. There are plenty of Programs where the Beneficiaries didn't contribute one thin dime to their funding. Time to start culling the herd with the Makers being the last to sacrifice after the Takers stop taking from them.
Then again, I guess I'm just a bitter clinger who wants his money back from the Obama loving Commie Bastards, which is exactly what the Takers amongst us are.
As my dear Mother always said, you help people that can't help themselves, not people who won't help themselves.
“I would not be surprised to see white people further vilified and targeted for attacks.”
Whites are targeted because leftists fear them, so they try to demoralize and demonize white people.
It’s a nice dream that we will be remembered when we fall. That someday scholars will look through the annals of history as they struggle to form a new government with new ideals somewhere as they throw off the chains of tyrranical oppression. It’s just a dream though.
The visogoths and the ostrogoths may have sacked Rome, but they wanted in on the wealth as much as anything else. That is why they were more than happy to settle down alongside Roman citizens, ultimately adopt Roman habits, Roman Language, and Roman tradition. When Rome passed on, it remained as a shining dream. That is not our fate.
The international left, including what passes for the Democratic party in the United States hates America. They hate America with a blind burning hatred. The notion that individuals have a right to their own conscience, to speak their mind, and gather with like-minded people is completely anethema to them. The notion that rights are granted by a power higher than the state is something they recoil from like a vampire from a cross.
If the International Left succeeds, and they may yet not, the very next day they will begin to take an eraser to history. The left already speaks of the United States not really having any history compared to the other nations of the world. They tip their hand. Books will be destroyed. The internet will be purged. All reference to us will be destroyed as quickly as possible.
The future they will present will be one in which anyone that strays outside of the state’s very narrowly defined acceptable behavior will simply be cut off from the necessities of life. The state will control food, water, housing, clothing, fuel, and work. The elite need not even have much of a police force. All they will need is a network of public cameras and internet sniffers.
America must destroy the international left or be destroyed by it.
Good question to your first part...in all honesty...I don’t know. As to the second part, IMHO it would have to be out of government hands.
Didn’t Obama refer to us as a colony in the first sentence of his acceptance speech. How touchingly appropriate from his viewpoint.
Stolen. Taken from you with the threat of jail and then spent, all against your will.
Now add to that my personal situation. [...] If you are asking if I should give up the money stolen from me to protect future generations, I say no. There are plenty of Programs where the Beneficiaries didn't contribute one thin dime to their funding.
It's ok to get rid of the programs you aren't using, but not the ones you're entitled to.
Do you see where this is going?
Until and unless we as people can love our fellow man enough to give up our claims on things stolen from us we will never significantly cull an entitlement program. When we can see the past as "spilled milk, realize the present is injustice, and fight the future of that injustice is when we will be free from it.
Time to start culling the herd with the Makers being the last to sacrifice after the Takers stop taking from them.
No, we lose when we go that route. They have the ear of "the law" and the government's made it plain that they have no problem redistributing.
What we need to do is show them real love, life-changing, heart-turning love. The sort of love that makes friends of enemies; in short, we need to be the light of the world.
Painful? Yes.
Worth it? I'll ask Jesus when I see him.
Since I'm not using any programs, I'll have to get back to you on that. LOL
As far as SS and Medicare go, odds are I won't collect much if any SS and the odds of me living long enough to use Medicare are a whole lot slimmer. Such is the joy of contracting Leukemia at such a relatively early age.
Don't worry, the Takers are making out on my lifetime of labor, of that I can assure you. I should have spent my youth smoking, drinking and doing drugs like the Vermin that is the base of Obama’s support.
Maybe things would have turned out differently and I would have ended up a Taker without a care in the world.
Only the good die young, or so I've heard. Maybe there will be a miracle drug developed so I can live to a ripe old age, but increased Corporate Taxes and Obamacare will reduce the funding of the kind of R&D that would be required.
I have no hope living in the new Socialist States of America. The Liberal Electorate took care of that last Tuesday. God Help our once great Nation. The dream has been squandered by those who do not equate sacrifice with honor.
Brought this to mind:
And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.-- CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man
It already has in Los Angeles. They still vote Dem in elections, despite the de facto ethnic cleansing that has been going on for a decade and more.
Thanks. Yes. That's putting it in clearer terms. It is not out of the question, with Zero in office a second time around, that a crisis will occur resulting in an enormous change across the board in our population's view of government. I almost wonder if both Zero and Romney are shocked at what happened, with Zero secretly wishing he could get off the stage. Well, he's holding the bag now, while the population seems content to double down on stupid.
Exactly what is being taught in our schools anyway? Which person, the one who sees capitalism as an opportunity to improve his/her lot, or the one that sees capitalism as abhorrent, is the more likely to prosper economically?
This is why the conservative world-view, based upon small government, opportunity and the ability to make your own way will be a very hard sell to those who have a world-view that the system is rigged against them. The chances to recover from this are as you say, based upon some catastrophic change in the world that forces the person to question their foundational beliefs. This may happen, but is not a guarantee that the world-view of the capitalist will be the direction chosen by the person that has their world rocked.
Christianity is one of the few changes that can happen without someone’s world being turned upside down, although often this is the impetus that it takes.
We are so screwed.
schu
Thanks,
I think there is something in all people,call it human nature, to want to learn, explore and seek truth or at least greater understanding. I know that many people seem to suppress this since I can’t imagine it is not in them. Your are very right to point to our education system and “how” they teach, which shifted in the mid part of the last century. The shift to so called “progressive education” can be traced to John Dewey. Dewey and his crowd were the early adherents to “Humanism” which had ties to current and former Eugenicists.
In my own experience, since accepting Christ, my passion for learning and quest for the truth has grown exponentially. This has not simply been a function of stuffing my head with facts, it’s been to gain a deep understand of both why some are either for a against God, and what are the foundations for their beliefs.
Capitalism is the expression of freedom and liberty that resides in all men. To be convinced otherwise, is to deny the nature of man and oneself.
>> But for now my faith is no longer in America continuing as the greatest nation on Earth. I just don’t see it happening.
GFY, Shackleford.
-— . Your are very right to point to our education system and “how” they teach, which shifted in the mid part of the last century. The shift to so called “progressive education” can be traced to John Dewey. -—
It actually goes back to the beginning. Horace Mann wrote a glowing report of Bismarck’s compulsory schooling system, even though he never actually witnessed its operation. (In his previous report to the Boston School Committee he praised phrenology). Behavioral psychology has dominated teacher colleges since the 1880s (Thorndike, Wundt, and Pavlov).
“The Underground history of American Education” explains the sordid history. There is nothing good, or American, about compulsory schooling.
BTW, you can read it on line for free. Just google the title.
#19 is very astute. We have to deal with people where they are. And yes, most people lash out when challenged. They don’t understand that they should be seeking the truth, rather than getting their way. This problem is common with leftists.
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