Posted on 11/13/2008 6:50:52 PM PST by STARWISE
A reader comment over at Dollard's place nails it.
(http://patdollard.com/)
Plain and simple .... and true. This is what I see. I wish I had written it. (hat tip mg)
~~~
I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life.
I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.
Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?
We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms.
That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the 700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders.
Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving.
Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity.
Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman.
Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?.
We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government, our education system is worse than a joke
I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about)–the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.
It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska.
All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary
(Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more imporant.)
Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change.
Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.
This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life.
In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning.
And I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing.
What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises.
Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office, a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression].
Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think.
How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex.
He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.
He did it with a compliant media–did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and . . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for.
(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.)
Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of.
When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.
Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years–a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency–it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course.
The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.
Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe–and why I believe it.
I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.
Many people are feeling this way. One thing we cannot allow is for our guns to be taken away from us.
Buy Lots of Ammo Today
THAT’S THE ATTITUDE!!!
My former boss was writing articles for defense magazines way back in the 70's about the deterioration of our industrial base. He didn't know, just saw what was happening. It all fell on deaf ears. We used to have to have a Buy American Act, small business set asides, in military procurement and only go foreign source when there was no other options. Then for some unknown reason, the floodgates opened.
I don't want to venture into these waters wrt the rest of the questions, but it can't all be by accident. Some of it could be a direct result of our fall into massive immorality and all that goes with it.
I've some suspicions that aren't too conspirational but won't go there.
for later
THE RACE FACTOR
The frightening thing is that everything he says is true. I just hope the outcome is better.
It’s worse than anything you can compare it to. Don’t compare to Germany in the 30’s...compare to the Soviet Union history. Obama and the democratic left will be overthrown by a modern troika.
I appreciate your post. I showed to husband, who runs a small business and has tried not to think about the O slam. He came back from a trade show yesterday and said that everyone is stagnant- no buying, no nothing until the companies understand O’s plan.
Tonight he read your post and was quiet. Business people think optimism, forward action.
It is all very scary. To top that Soros was in front of some Congressional Hearing today! Good Lord.
Reading this sure makes me think!
Broadcast Blackout of Left’s ‘Fairness’ Doctrine Push
By Rich Noyes
November 12, 2008
Excerpt:
Barack Obama’s transition team has tapped former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera, a longtime proponent of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” to head the team looking for the man or woman who will soon give Democrats a 3-to-2 advantage on the Federal Communications Commission.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2008/11/12/broadcast-blackout-left-s-fairness-doctrine-push
for later
Can't comment yea or nay on most of the article; but I can answer that particular question. Our economy got de-industrialized because nobody was willing or able to stand up to the unions or the demagoguery the dimowits leveled at anyone who tried. Detroit wrench-turners have been making over $30/hr for 35 years. They were trying to compete with people who were willing to work for 1/20th of that. Can't be done. So, de-industrialization was not necessarily intentional -- it was a natural outgrowth of unions' inability to ever take a pay cut. The golden-egg-laying goose has been slit open.
I have been ill since the election. Just that strange feeling in your gut. Uncertainty, pessimisism, fear. This hits the nail on the head.
While I’m tempted to offer you a tin foil hat for your rantings, I don’t think that you are far off the mark. My only reluctance to full agreement with you is based in, time and the inability to see into the future.
I can’t know the unknowable. At this point, it is worth watching carefully who does what. How successful the democRATS are in enacting their true desires. If there is a general amnesty for the illegal aliens, all is lost.
I do believe that Civil War 2.0 could be on the horizon.
There are some chilling parallels. Whats that old saying... people who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I didn’t know Soros showed his hateful, anti-American
face in the halls of Congress. I loathe that beast.
dont know why, but the whole time i was reading it, this song kept coming to mind. it may have been meant for another purpose, but dont mean we should not all stop,and look whats going down. parts seemed quite applicable to a obama rule!
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