Falling Short of Greatness

When African-Americans marched on Washington to hear the historic ‘I have a dream’ speech by Martin Luther King, they were pressing for a society that looked very much like that in which they already lived – a society built on freedom; a society that protected life, liberty and the pursuits of happiness among its citizens. Many of those freedoms and protections had not been extended to African Americans of course. And so they came to Washington to ‘cash a check’ (to paraphrase King) that would cover the remainder of their birthright as American citizens.

What blacks got when they cashed that check was not their birthright. Of course the right to vote was formally recognized and began to be slowly enforced. But Washington’s main thrust was to try and paper over the decades of pain and oppression suffered by blacks with a shiny new toy – the Great Society program. The program offered to cure all the ills of black America with government entitlements – Food Aid, housing assistance, Medicare, a variety of educational enrichment programs, and the like – it promised a glorious path for Americans (black Americans especially) out of poverty and into the middle class. Those were the glory days of America. With a large industrial base and a growing economy, it seemed as if authorizing major new spending programs designed to deal with intractable social problems just might be the key to maintaining racial harmony and achieving the goals of social justice set forth by King and others.

Fifty years later, that experiment has finally earned a retrospective. Looking back on it, we should have seen as a nation that the Great Society could not have been a permanent solution and might even be detrimental to America’s growth. The programs began to grow and expand as more and more citizens, got involved. For far too many, Johnson era anti-poverty programs became more of a permanent dependency rather than a lift out of poverty. In a perverse way, the Great Society helped to further entrench some of the social problems that gave rise to it. And as American population growth slowed, it began to reveal its other flaws as well.

Or problems is that the programs became a political patronage strategy for successive generations of politicians – any time they wanted to secure a part of the American electorate they would campaign on expanding Federal spending to cover some new area of social need – whether that was prescription drug coverage, expanded head start, a new jobs program – and ultimately between new programs, slowing population growth, and an aging population, we inadvertently created the almost impossible budgetary situation that we are facing today.

Today we face a situation in those social programs have grown from a miniscule proportion of the GDP (initial great society programs cost a mere $2billion), to a situation in which entitlements have grown so onerous that we now have to borrow funds (great peril to our future stability) in order to fulfill current obligations. When we look at the countries around the world that have gotten into this situation, Greece comes foremost to mind. Greece got caught up in the transition to the Euro and essentially turned its government into a national piggy bank, from which funds were extracted but not put in place. Once the easy money stopped in 2007, Greece found itself in the impossible situation of being unable to service even the interest on its debt, sending the government into bankruptcy and the society into a chaotic downward spiral.

People economic charlatans such as Paul Krugman argue in essence that America can (and perhaps should) run over 100% budget deficits ad infinitum. The one major assumption upon which that snake oil business depends is that the U.S. currency continues to serve as the world’s reserve currency, and that America’s lenders will continue to fund our extravagant spending forever. That is a very shaky assumption indeed upon which to base such otherwise rash financial management practices.

But more importantly, the programs themselves have not worked as intended. The inner cities are still a mess in the places in which gentrification has now essentially displaced inner city populations. Poverty is still a major problem. Public education continues to face a crisis of shamefully underserving America’s children. The housing crisis is worse than ever in some cities, where lack of available and affordable housing is increasingly putting poor people further and further away from jobs. And healthcare has become the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room that – before the largely fractious political debate over a flawed Obamacare – no one dared whisper about. Although the rise in health costs has slowed somewhat in the short term – health care spending still constitutes almost a fifth of GDP – and threatens to balloon in the foreseeable future if the current system is not fixed. Americans are still overspending for government-run health care.

It would be one thing if the costs of Government paternalism were high but the benefits were worth preserving. And even in that scenario we would have to look into ways of making the system more efficient. But unfortunately, for too many, the costs have been high but the benefits fleeting at best. To be fifty years later still faced with chronic under-education, social marginalization and a concentration of poverty in the face of receding government entitlements is truly a scary place indeed.

While we were constantly reminded by the selective repeating of the audio and visual later unincluded text portions of the Martin Luthur King Jr. famous “I have a dream “ speech.

The left and its media arm never makes references to the beginning and King’s references to the way this country was uniquely created with its purposes of existence declared through its carefully crafted Constitution, citing God gifts to mankind, and its Declaration of Independence .

They never cite King’s support and belief in it. Because it wouldn’t serve the purposes of racial division which King was against.

This race war crap was started for one reason and this agenda was driven because;

As opposition to Obama’s abuse of his constitutional authority and talk of “impeachment” began to arise and his polling numbers fell.

What Obama needed, worked for, and got , by separating and isolating his solid group of supporters the blacks through creating out of whole cloth stories of “victimization”.

Using circumstances where lawless black youths wound up dead in felonious struggles over guns held by figures of authority. Both Martin and Brown were the attackers. Obama used his “Bully Pulpit to reinforce that “victim” agenda in Florida and Missouri. In both cases he portrayed authority as the aggressors and the perpetrators as the “victims”

In Florida’s case success was indicated by the number of incidents where members of other races were attacked severly injured or murdered by black youths committing these assults in the name of the so called “victim” All the while Obama neither commented on nor condemed such activity.Because of this, the question ; Is there blood on his hands ? Are those deaths that resulted from these incidents innocent “victims” of that agenda? Is avoided.

In Missouri he met with and issued a “stay the course” order to the Ferguson protesters. They in turn coordinated by the usual suspects organized nationwide protests. Their purpose and result was a successful demonstration of what would happen if congress ever moved on any constitutional efforts to restrain or even remove Obama including“Impeachment”..

Once the regime measured its unexpected success why not continue ?

Expand it to war on law enforcement. Get more cops refuse to respond or get killed if they do. or hesitate to defend themselves while attempting to confront “afro-americans” engaged in felonious assults while fleeing or are engaged in criminal activity resisting arrests.

Attack the Grand Jury system investigating police mal practice. It’s not after the facts. It’s after “payback”to those poor hypenated Americans known as “Afro” who because of their financial situation are forced to pillage, kill, and rape. And are entitled to do so.

Exploit innocent interchanges between “afros” and different races make them (the afros) believe it’s racist. Create uneeded tension between them and other groups so that those groups not only view them with aprehension but feral creatures unable to know right from wrong

All because the regime must be protected from being questioned in its exercize and abuse of power.

Then bring in another completely alien group which they believe are easier to manipulate which will furthur isolate the “afro” who will get thrown to the wolves once they’re politically no longer “usefull”.

All made possible by the agenda driven socialist products from academia running the alphabet soup venues controlling the visual and print media . Competing with each other protecting their beneficiairies financial interests. That has wound up in “Trusts” controlled by individuals or groups interested only in protecting their own self interests. “Trusts” which should be broken up.

Worse yet supported by the leadership of the political opposition. Who see the benefits of “working together” expanding government. As the happless voter having never to get their day of reckoning and their children’s children’s children pay the bills living in a culture their forebearers wouldn’t ever recognize. Using the dream of King’s speech as the door mat by a person of his race destroying it.

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