Posted on 03/26/2011 11:23:05 PM PDT by Nachum
Sixty years ago in February I came to the United States. I was classified as a "displaced person" from World War II with no identity or knowledge of when, where or to whom I was born, an orphan who had miraculously survived on the streets of a war ravaged city somewhere in central Europe. On that bitterly cold overcast morning as I stood, alone at the railing of a ship, staring at the iconic image of the Statue of Liberty, I found myself arriving in a strange country itself coming face to face with a new and unwelcome role as the foremost nation on earth about to embark on being the most dominate economic and military power in modern history.
In 1951 the United States in addition to being the long established beacon of individual freedom for the oppressed around the planet and still trying to shake the memory and adversity of the Great Depression and World War II, had, by default, assumed the mantle of leader of the free world. The forty-two year military and geo-political stalemate with America's one-time ally in the War, the Soviet Union, was in its fourth year. The beginning stage of the greatest economic expansion in the annals of man was underway. There were still vestiges of the nations troubled past as 15% of the population still suffered from institutional discrimination based solely on skin color. Yet optimism regarding the future was palpable.
Not having had the opportunity to experience a childhood and unable to escape the events of the past, I came to this country already old beyond my years and as a consequence I was never able to be fully absorbed into the mainstream of the culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The Magic Eight Ball says Very Doubtful.
We aint going to make it. Unless the military grows a set and stages a coup, we are doomed.
The gutless wonders in the GOP aint going to do squat. The Democrats are still in charge and flyng the plane of state right into the Soviet Russia airport.
This chills me to the bone, but it is precisely what I think it will take to reverse course. The people of the U.S. will have to experience significant pain. I had a tiny bit of hope in November 2010, but Boehner and company won't say and do what needs to be said and done. I think the problems are too big for one person/political party anyway. It will probably take our near destruction for possibly something good to arise. I'll vote for the person running against Obama in 2012, but the countdown began a long time ago. Is it better to go over the cliff with Obama and the Dems flooring it like Thelma and Louise, or with the Republicans at the wheel and Miss Daisy sitting in the back seat?
I am beginning to wonder if that isnt the GOP strategy. She is headed over the cliff and it is better to have BHO in the front seat.
Nicely said, Beaversmom. I’ve come to exactly the same conclusion.
There is simply no exit, and we have to await the roof to fall in.
I’m beginning to speculate on what would come after the catastrophe. George Kennan, the intellectual author of the containment doctrine during the Cold War, in his later years decided that the United States would break up.
Walter Williams, the professor, has had the same thought.
Before them, Thomas Jefferson envisioned not a huge nation “from sea to shining sea” but a conglomeration of smaller republics on this continent, with shared values but each with its own characteristics.
In short, I expect us to break into pieces. I hope they will be good republican (small r) pieces.
“AT is a secular publication, so comments aimed at witnessing or proselytizing for a faith are not permitted.”
Kind of seals off access to the human heart, which is the thing that has to change if things are going to improve. No one else but Jesus Christ can change the human heart. And unless He is allowed to, humanity os stuck in Jeremiah mode: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” ( Jeremiah 17:9)
That’s the condition our founders knew about, and tried to design a government around.
It’s over...face the music.
Over a span of many years our government has insidiously made more and more individuals and businesses incomes dependent upon their rules, regulations, mandates, direct and indirect payments and outright fraud against the Constitutional laws. The “tipping point” was reached many years ago.
There are too many corporate and individual pigs eating at the trough and it’s only going to feed upon itself.
You know that America (as we know it and as it was originally founded) has died when judges...not Congress...makes laws that are not immediately quelled in the name of Constitutional authority.
It’s too late for we have allowed this to happen and are all to blame. I too, have stood in silence on (at the time) things that seem trivial but later developed into the very knives that stabbed the heart of American freedoms.
We have only one option to save our country and I will let you guess what it is. I only hope it is not too late for that too.
No.
“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
Good Lord!
The negativity on this thread is unbelievable!
SNAP OUT OF IT!
You all have families, children and grandchildren.
Are you going to let the Dems and Obama walk away with their future?
Go walk in Arlington and see the graves of those young men who have thrown the torch of liberty to you to carry forward.
You want to throw it away?
Then you face them.
Because I can’t.
We have to fight for what has been given to us.
And let the fighting come in my day, so my posterity can live in peace, as one patriot said many years ago.
Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
2012 is the marker in American history—you be there or get lost.
FR is infested with losers who are heavily invested in deaftism, DU trolls and agent provocateurs trying to smash morale.
It’s one thing to get down emotionally from time to time, but I’m seeing concerted propaganda campaigns by some posters to demoralize the patriot movement.
An overwhelming number of people who I come in contact with in the course of my business start discussing current political affairs. Mostly voicing how much they are tired of the way the Government spends our tax dollars.
I always ask them if they voted - most did - then I ask how many they took to the polls with them. Not many had an answer.
Want to change government? Do what Acorn and the unions, and the community organizers do. Think about it - if every person who is concerned about the course of our country convinced just one additional person to vote and vote correctly then the course of this country could be changed. I went and got my adult kids (who couldn’t care less about politics), drove them to the polls and made them vote for the right candidates (the bank of Dad carries some strong infuences). So at least there were 3 more votes out there.
We, the concerned citizens, really need to get off our butts, get people registered and drag some to the polls during these elections.
As part of my usual conversation I ask the questions “are you registered to vote?” and “Did you vote the last election and are you going to vote this election?”.
Our country is being run by someone who was elected to office by 51% of less than half of the voters - so about 26% of the voting eligible population gave us Obama and his minions.
The time to start is now.
“We have to fight for what has been given to us.”
I agree. I just don’t think voting is going to win the fight. We are to far gone to vote our way out IMO.
I will keep voting but, really, I’m just passing time until our George Washington reluctantly steps onto the stage.
“FR is infested with losers who are heavily invested in deaftism”
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
So we can prepare for what is coming our way and perhaps delay the time of the event but even the “exceptional” United States of America can not avoid the inevitable.
Tocqueville estimated a democracy would last about 200 years before it would self destruct in the manner described by Heinlein.
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
As I recollect the same God was on both sides in WWl and WWll, so I wondering if you could tell me which side God favored regarding the outcome?
How about the War of Northern Aggression, did God hate the south? God was really there for those Cambodians John Kerry deserted. No doubt over a million people were murdered to teach somebody a valuable lesson. Was it you?
The nuns used to answer that “God works in mysterious ways”. Pretty damned mysterious if you ask me.
I recommend you prepare for what is coming our way with something more reliable than prayer.
That is supposedly what the RiNO's were telling each other four years ago as the big-money givers were keeping it in their pockets .... not giving politically .... waiting for Hillary to waltz into the White House as per her and Bill's evil plan, just in time for the big aircraft-carrier scene out of 2012.
You do know that that was a key point of Alinskyism .... inducing a feeling of defeat and helplessness in the Main Enemy. Consider e.g. the Mark Foley affair which suppressed Christian Coalition/social conservative turnout in 2006, as conservatives lost confidence in droves in the political "leadership" of Speaker Denny Hastert and the RiNO National Committee (chaired by a gay for years), and under-responded to the challenge from Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi's plan to take over the Congress.
The Russians called such induced dispiritment a key strategic objective in their geopolitical struggle against members of the Western community. Their name for it was novolya, or "lack of will".
Good point.
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