Posted on 06/27/2009 7:41:27 AM PDT by quesney
While reading the following news story:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/motoringAutoNews/idUKTRE5406CF20090501
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I was reminded two very important quotes from John Adams about the American Revolution:
* As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 - 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. o Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1815-08-24), The Works of John Adams
What do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution. * Letter to H. Niles (1818-02-13)
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In other words, years before the American Revolution, there had been a revolution in people's minds about the way things were and the way things should be.
Forget the disputes over just how real are Obama's high poll numbers. This is beyond Obama, or even his current followers.
Whether we realize it or not, the US went through another mental revolution of thought over the past few decades -- maybe beginning as far back as the anti-war protests of the 1960s, maybe to Roosevelt's New Deal, maybe to Lincoln forcing a more centralized Union...whatever.
This revolution of thought has slowly eroded the entire mental foundation of the country's founding principles.
The U.S., as it was and as many of us here still think of it, is already gone. Dead. A number of us have not fully caught up to this emerging reality.
Obama, and Bush before him, are only making that obvious. Steele, Arlen Spectre, the feckless GOP, all the rest -- it's all part of bigger picture already drawn and entrenched, maybe even before many of us were born.
Many of us are holding onto a mental artifact that is gone or never existed in the minds of our "fellow Americans." That remains true no matter what happens to Obama, long after he's gone.
Does that mean we give up? No. But that if you're making a personal decision not to give up, you have to start thinking more seriously about follow-up to those Tea Parties and perhaps to secession.
The U.S. is, beyond everything else, an idea. When our "fellow Americans" no longer share the basic elements of that idea -- of even basic standards of mutual respect, logic, reason, civil discourse, respect for others as equals -- our "fellow Americans" are no longer our "fellow Americans."
Plan accordingly.
Time to run up the flag....
Already here at FR too! This whole booklet, written in 1938 could have been written today.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/929392/posts
EXCERPT:
There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, “Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don’t watch out.” These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when “one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state.”
Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern.
Hmm, let me dig. OK, it is from her ‘famous speech-become-book The Other Six Deadly Sins.’ I got it from a study of the Seven Deadly Sins/ Moral Compasses for Modern Leaders, from the Trinity Forum. At a really TERRIFIC conference Leanne Payne gave at Wheaton College.
The libtards we see on TV, in the movies and in congress will all fold when the shooting starts and the real statist thugs are unmasked.
Those folks will fight and it will not be a picnic.
Think of an American version of the Spanish Civil War (1936-9)complete with foreign "volunteers" and League of Nations [read UN] indifference.
I will let you guess where these volunteers will come from and whose interests they shall serve.
Yes, it is a great quote — “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” Winston Churchill.
I completely understand. I can't possibly respond to every negative post or thread I see, but I get to a point where, after having scanned through too many of them, I finally break.
To tell you the truth, Americans have not rejected the constitution and founding ideals of the Nation.
They don’t know about it. Most never even heard about it in an accurate and complete way. That includes a lot of college grads.
Americans can not reject what they don’t know exists.
One thing about our uneducated public is that they do respond to rhetoric. That is why we often pine for a Reagan who can speak and inspire Americans to follow a call of freedom. Obama won because he was able to do that and call them to “share” like “Lincoln.” For Americans to come along, it is not just the rosy words; it is the showmanship quality of delivery - like a celebrity or movie star.
Look to Israel for a partial answer. Molon Labe.
I'd recommend that be printed in the form of bumper stickers, but you just know that that DHS would take a "special interest" in anyone displaying it.
“I do not buy that zer0’s agenda is irreversible. I just don’t. If that were true then Carter’s cr@p would still be the predominant direction of the country. zer0 wouldn’t have to be overcoming the Reagan Revolution (with the unfortunate help of Clinton and GWB) right now.”
I have a tough time with this thought vis a vis “irreversible”. While in theory, of course, anything can be reversed, IMO it will be a lot harder than with Carter. I say this because (and with the caveat that I was far less politically involved during those times) Carters’ mandates were just blatantly ridiculous on their face. Now, I’d of course say the same things about 0bamas’ agenda points, but bear with me.
With Carter, we really had an advocate for sudden and system-wide capitulation to multi-front failure that few were prepared to accept, whether left or right winged. Oh sure, from both sides, we deserved plenty of punishment for the VietNam war. Our cars had turned into low quality pieces of pig iron. OPEC, which was felt to be “the Arabs” had us by the short hairs, and most US cities were in serious decay.
But IMO the general populace was NOT NOT ready to capitulate to the type of subjugation we see today. Today, let’s compare from a more leftist view than either of us take: we have the horrible rotten guilt we should feel over Iraq, and let’s call that equal to VietNam. We had 9/11 which showed that the Arabs were not necessarily desert savages, they could master cell phones and email and cause us horrific damage. Russia is re-emerging as the kind of opposing chess player that supposedly went away post-USSR, so maybe their Reagan-based demise was overstated, but in any case we surely aren’t as safe as we once thought we were (to all but mass-destructive nuclear attack) so THERE’S ANOTHER linchpin thing about America that isn’t the way it was.
So, the above being admittedly very superficial, what else? Now we have our so-called best and brightest all gung-ho, full of educational diversity, green energy, and distinctly lacking in Constitutional understanding or appreciation. There is furthermore a vastly enhanced entitlement class, be it welfare, illegals, or those bright students who think their schooling should be free, plus a sizable portion of the masses that think medical care should just drop out of the sky.
Now, we add to the mix a political cabal apparently quite convinced and jihad’ed over the prospect not of being custodians, but of being change agents, to the point of willing to be at apparent overt war with their constituents. That’s the measure of how convinced they are as to the righteousness of their cause.
So with all these elements supporting the *demise* of say the top 5 conservative principles, and a probable deterioration of conservative support, IMO there’s every reason to suspect an enduring mandate for the type of socialist centralization and control we seem to be heading for. The world has gotten to be a more complicated place and folks want someone to take care of things for them, instead of taking the pain and developing the cojones to stand up for themselves. They don’t see medical care as being something should have to think about or struggle for. Dammit, it’s hard enough waking up for Sociology class after going on last weekend’s bender!
That’s my wandering explanation for why, though possible, it’s likely IMO to be very, very hard to dislodge what’s being cooked up for us. There’s a ton of people who WANT what this guy offers (even tho it’s largely total BS) while during the Carter era, people KNEW it was just a dismal time that would most likely pass. This is hope and change and wonderfulness and as long as it never has to be measured against any objective reality, it’s likely to persist.
They will reap the whirlwind.
God will not be mocked. And as He has a peculiar sense of humor, the whirlwind will probably be global cooling.
The watchman watches in vain now.
Now I simply try to get others to understand the source of their imminent destruction while watching with the same silent shock as I did on 9/11.
Meanwhile I am shifting my charities, and looking at organizations that teach students about conservatism and liberty and the American Way.
The first course of action is taken by RINO’s. They would rather give up than fight.
Give them the New England States. The bastards have already ruined them. How do we get the conservatives out and ship the traitors in there as our ‘gift’ to them?
Better yet......let’s start a 527 with the sole purpose of shipping them OUT OF THE USA.
American Revolution
1/3 Tories...1/3 Patriots...1/3 Apathetic
I believe the number of patriots was closer to 20% Alot of damage can be done with 20% of us.........All these tea parties all the bitchin going on.......doing nothing....but there will be that one shot across the bow...........that will ignite what is already smoldering. Then God help us (them). As I will NOT go out like a lamb.
Tying into your last comment there, my tagline highlights a fundamental problem we have in this country right now.
When a significant chunk of the country is using the government as an agent of plunder against their fellow citizens, how long can we let it go on?
Anchorage is a haven for the liberal leftists but then you are not a true Alaskan.
Been saying so since I left “real” Alaska in 1975. Fairbanks 1970-1975.
I've felt that way for some time. The ideological and cultural gulf is too wide now for us to ever be a united people. I often feel that this has been done to us willfully and systematically.
+1000. There is no "Us". I know certainly I don't relate at all to many so called "Americans" and it absolultely was done on purpose. (i.e the 1965 immigration act was not an accident) It is not just the U.S. either. All predominately white Christian nations are being or have been destroyed.
Thank you for your thoughtful and interesting post. I agree with a great deal of what you've said especially regarding the entitlement and the rather self-centered and short-sighted (and ignorant) attitude of a depressingly large number of people.
Basically I totally agree with your premise that it is going to be harder than with the peanut farmer BECAUSE we are, all leftist complaints to the contrary, both richer and (mostly) safer after the last 8 years in general. Now, the housing and credit bubbles hurt big time but they would have worked them selves out without TARP IMO. BUt we are well enough off as a country that our citizens can pretty much just go around doing whatever they want without suffering physically, or being hungry or worrying about a terrorist bomb going off in the local market.
My point here is that Americans, even the poor, are very well off in international terms and its going to take the economy continuing to tank (after zer0's efforts) and for taxes and prices to rise dramatically (which they will)for a lot of regular folk to realize they've been had.
My theory is that this will happen before 2012 but not necessarily enough to help much in 2010. The pubbies, I'm afraid, will make some inroads into hearts and minds but still lose elections in this next cycle.
Being conservatives we have to play a bit of a waiting game while at the same time standing up and screaming as loudly as possible to get people's attention and remind them of conservative principles in the face of losing their freedoms.
Still, you are completely correct that this will not be at all easy. I simply think that it's still possible. Silly, optimistic me... ;0)
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