Posted on 10/19/2009 10:16:20 PM PDT by Noumenon
History Unfolding
I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply 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 to 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 learned 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 $700 billion 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 (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as 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 I 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 even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And finally, we have elected a man that no one really 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 are more important.)
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..
As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have 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 should have known 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. Conservative "losers" read it right now.
And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did - regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course,
How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards 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.
If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It's all there in the history books.
So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. 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. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.
Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, 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..
I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, 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. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.
Author unknown
No, he’s worse. He’s the front man for those who will make Hitler look like an amateur.
At what stage in the dismantling of the US marketplace would you advocate raising an alarm, if at all?
The article points out how easy it was for a persuasive, suicidal dictator to destroy an advanced, cultured society. The author’s point did not require addressing Hitler’s extremes, It was sufficient for the author to remind the reader how easy it was for Hitler to take complete control of his government in the face of real and fabricated crises.
Your initial criticism of the writing argues the reference to Germany was inappropriate inasmuch as Germany never had “…an effective representative form of government.”
Some would argue there is little difference between your point and the fact we presently have an Executive branch that believes the US Constitution is “fundamentally flawed”; a branch that at the same time is being heavily populated with career anti-Americans and one that enjoys the working support of the Congress.
Some further believe there was a significant failure of our political process and wonder whether the third branch of government, the Judiciary, will recognize it has a role in the controversy over O’s seeming lack of qualifications. At the heart of that controversy is the failure of state officials to apply state election laws, and the complete failure of the Congress at its January 8 Joint Session to adhere to the requirements of 3 USC 15 whereby O could have been required to demonstrate his qualification for office - if a majority of the members had recognized their oath to defend the US Constitution.
You then state:
“That doesn’t mean he (Obama) is not dangerous, but it does mean he is not likely destined to become one of the most reviled men in the history of mankind.”
You know no such argument has been made on these pages.
But, at least we agree about the war with Islam.
I know nothing of the kind. Please re-read the post. The author is making exactly this argument.
Some would argue there is little difference between your point and the fact we presently have an Executive branch that believes the US Constitution is “fundamentally flawed”; a branch that at the same time is being heavily populated with career anti-Americans and one that enjoys the working support of the Congress.
Again, if you know history, you know that many of these same -- thoroughly execrable, I agree -- people were part of the Clinton Administration. In fact, a great many of these anti-Americans were also part of the Bush Administration. Indeed, they are part of the permanent apparat, and extending backward through history to the CIO and before them to the Wobblies, their parents and grand-parents were part of Roosevelt's administration: they were anti-Americans then, they did great damage to the country and the world, and sadly, for the most part they escaped with their reputations fully intact. History regards them as quite the opposite of treasonous criminals; those who opposed them and dared to speak the truth about the extent to which the State Department and OSS and even White House were thoroughly infested with these traitors are the ones who have been largely reviled in American History. The Berlin Wall has come down, but 1.2 billion people still live in thrall because of their willful malice and our parents' inattention then, and our reckoning with them has yet to play out.
This is a long, long battle. It has been going on through most of human history; the fight by the few people who want to be free against the many who profit (even if only by having the dubious luxury of never being adults) from authoritarianism. In the times of our parents and grandparents, frankly, we failed. The parents of the "greatest generation" embraced a man far different from the one history has come to know, and in accepting his "New Deal" they shredded most of the US Constitution -- long before Barack 0bama arrived on the scene. Our parents, too, failed. They could've recognized the danger but were wearied by war and by wealth, and when the real health care "public option" nudged its ugly nose under the tent -- Medicare -- again, they did not shoo the camel away.
You will not snap people back to attention by comparing 0bama to Hitler. Even if true -- it is not -- they are not ready to accept how far down the road to serfdom they have already gone. Even glancing comparisons of this kind turn people off. Remember we are attempting to change the opinions of idiots who vote on the basis of the last yard sign they see on the way into the fire hall one November -- perhaps at the most two Novembers -- every four years. Their attention wanders even in life-and-death situations and as bad as this system of governance is it is better than everything else.
A woman who called Glenn Beck's radio show yesterday characterized him as the "front license-plate on an 18-wheeler headed straight for us".
Please re-consider.
Cheers!
Adolf didn't need a teleprompter.
As yet, 0bama has not come close to FDR, whose NRA was the harbinger of all the ills we've had to endure since. Just ten years before I was born, this liberal icon sent 110,000 loyal Americans to concentration camps. His OSS, State Department, and Treasury were infested with Communists -- some of whom we will never know. Their machinations turned hundreds of millions over to the tender mercies of Mao, and our nuclear secrets to our greatest Enemy. His administration was considered so untrustworthy that military intelligence did not reveal -- to the President of the United States -- that we had broken the Soviets' codes.
I'm not counseling against vigilance. But 0bama has some way to go before he even becomes Roosevelt, let alone Hitler.
All I was trying to address was this one sentence of your earlier post:
There is very little reason to suspect at this point that he intends any of these things.
I was merely pointing out what the "reasons to *suspect*" were.
Keep me posted :-)
Cheers!
That's a fact noticed by many a Photoshop artist.
Actually, Benito could give a better speech in a foreign language without a teleprompter than Zero can give in his own with one (Zero, even at his best, is a quite boring speaker after a couple of minutes). Zero is an empty suit into which the Sheeple poured their hopes.
Intentions are problematic. If asked, did Roosevelt intend to destroy the Constitution and replace it with his personal authority, I would have to say "absolutely." He was unfit to hold the office of Washington in so many ways. I think 0bama is every bit the megalomaniac FDR was, so you may be right. I hope that my generation, which has failed in so many ways, is finally equal to a task that our grandparents and parents were not.
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