Posted on 11/27/2008 7:16:07 PM PST by BCW
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 Palins pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more imporant.)
Mr. Obamas 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 mediadid 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.
Dont 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 yearsa shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidencyit 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 believeand why I believe it.
I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.
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You are (and Glenn is) preaching to the choir. I tend to see, more and more, Revelation 18 as speaking of the US. And verses 4 and 8 are of particular interest to me.
Rev 18:8
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.
A few things to keep in mind:
1) No U.S. government, ever---save for three brief recession periods of 3-4 years each---held the budget steady, let alone "cut" the size of government PER CAPITA. Did not happen. Thomas Jefferson, considered a "small government guy" authorized and supported a $10 million (!!) public works program when the ENTIRE federal budget wasn't $10 million. That would be equivalent to Obama proposing a $2-3 trillion single program.
2) The largest single bureaucracy before the Civil War was not the Army, but the U.S. Post Office, larger than the Army and Navy combined. Unlike today, it was entirely politicized and beholden to the President. This would be equivalent to making the U.S. military today political.
3) We had a 100% politicized media prior to Abraham Lincoln. While Lincoln is excoriated by libertarians as an "oppressive" president in his dealings with the press, in fact newspapers actually SHIFTED away from politicized news---wherein 80% of antebellum papers were solely and completely backed by a single party---to what we would call "News" news. They stopped being propaganda organs and began reporting news; they began to pay their own way through subscriptions, not political largesse; and they adopted real business models. By 1890, 80% of America's papers were NON-political.
4) We are moving away from inflation, not toward it. We have to remember that the Fed's great screw up in the Great Depression was to NOT inject sufficient currency into the system, thus causing a deflation from 1929-1932 in which one-third of the money supply disappeared. So far, despite the massive influx of money, there is no indication that we are heading toward inflation. Gold and oil remain reasonably low---and certainly aren't skyrocketing. The collapse of banks automatically shrinks the money supply by "destroying" dollars. This is the great threat, not Weimar-Germany type hyperinflation.
Much of it is bogus. The correlations don’t work, the analysis flawed.
Ping to re-read over and over...
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I truly believe that they think every human who doesn’t think like them is evil. If they really thought it was all human life that was evil and they REALLY, REALLY cared, they’d commit suicide.
>That globalist socialists want America dead, and a socialist autocracy erected in its place to control every aspect of our daily lives.<
That globalist socialists want the Republic of America dead, and a socialist democratic autocracy erected in its place to control every aspect of our daily lives.
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But, that being said, I do believe that the USA will be judged, and most severely. Look at what happened to Israel and Judah of old when they transgressed God's Law, and look at what the USA has done in the name of "tolerance," the murder of babies, the legalization (or soon to be) of immoral lifestyles, even trying to get Israel to give away their land. No country on the surface of the earth (except Israel) has been lifted so highly only to fall so lowly. If Israel can be given away into slavery because of their transgressions, how much can the USA?
Actually, the real power behind this is muchbetter hidden than Soros, wbo is just one of their many tools.
bttt
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They gave the popular election to Obama.
So far on this thread no one has mentioned the slaughter of innocents, more than 50 million in our nation alone. The greatest holocaust in the history of civilization is followed by the darkest tyranny.
We have not begun to suffer the horror we have unleased.
bump
scary isn’t a good enuff term!
Sure, but American industrial output is stronger than ever, or was as of last week. However something has changed, and that is economic theory. Economic theory has changed completely and nobody is telling what it is now. Capital is no longer in industry, but in the finance industry, almost completely, and that is why Congress is propping up finance and GM et al. are getting crumbs.
bttt
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