Victor Davis Hanson: 2009 Chickens and Their 2010 Roost

realclearpolitics.com ^ | December 31, 2009 | Victor Davis Hanson

[neverdem]

In the coming year, plenty of our chickens will be coming home to roost.

Take foreign relations. In 2009, the new administration assumed that George W. Bush was largely responsible for global tensions. As a remedy, we loudly reached out to our foes and those with whom we had uneasy relationships.

But so far these leaders -- like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Russia's Vladimir Putin -- have only interpreted Barack Obama's serial goodwill gestures as weaknesses to be exploited. They play the part of the pushy class bully, we the whiny nerd.

In the waning days of 2009, Iran has announced it has no intention of dismantling its nuclear facilities and ignored the latest Obama deadline to cease. There's no reason not to expect the theocracy to make significant strides in its nuclear program in 2010, while continuing without rebuke to beat and murder democratic dissidents in its streets...

--snip--

By year's end, oil was creeping back up to $80. If the economic upswing continues, in 2010 it may near its old high of nearly $150 a barrel. Soon we will wish we had done something concrete in 2009 rather than offering more stale rhetoric about wind and solar power.

In other words, 2009 may seem to have ended relatively quietly. But in our foreign relations, in the war against terror, in our massive borrowing, and in our energy policies, we created chickens that soon will come home to roost in 2010.

[PGalt]

Thanks for the post/link. Very good thread.

[redpoll]

>>>The second possible reason is that the president has cold bloodedly calculated that his energy policy, when considered in pari materia with cap and trade will so dislocate the economy and produce so much chaos which he will exploit and move the country towards Marxism.<<<

Sadly, I think this is the strategy. It’s called a “manufactured crisis.” Since this is the United States, I don’t see something like the manufactured crisis that happened in Russia in 1917, but that’s the template. I would sense that we’ll see glacial movement towards totalitarianism, a movement so incremental that the structure will be in place long before anyone actually uses it in a Soviet manner. It’ll be one thing after another, and the solution will always steer us toward a statist solution run by Democrat Party supporters or sycophants. We’ll keep our guns, but slowly over time more and more of us will be “ineligible” for gun ownership, in the same way that a person convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence right now can’t own a gun. We’ll keep our churches, but our institutions will steer citizens away from it. We’ll be able to listen to Rush, as long as the station can file the proper paperwork showing that it reflects the community, and slowly over time fewer and fewer communities will reflect that viewpoint. We’ll get used to 10 percent unemployment, and then 20 percent unemployment, maybe, as long as benefits don’t dry up. We’ll be glad to have a job, even if it means working for the state. The state will help us get money for college, and teach us the right way, and provide us a mortgage, and sell us the right kind of car, and turn our thermostats up and down for us, and provide us with medical care, and create hospices for end of life concerns, in slow, measured steps. When the Republicans win in 2010, the ideas will still be there, and the left will be waiting again for another crisis to further push their way towards the growth of the state.

Those of us who remember liberty and freedom will be considered doddering old men pining away for a racist past. And when we die, no one will remember.

[Tolik]

 

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