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The Revolution Passed in the Night April 26, 2013

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
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Many things are holding the headlines hostage, the terrorist attacks, the crippling effects of Obamacare, the prospect of expanding war in Syria, and as always Iran.

There is one over-riding constant that defines as it divides the present era: the fact that America has a President who advances values and policies diametrically opposed to the traditional beliefs of a vast number of Americans.  From bowing to foreign leaders to not knowing how many states there are, from vowing to fundamentally transform America to actually doing it, President Obama is to many the Manchurian Candidate.

Elected the first time on a vague promise of hope and change he has been re-elected on a blatant promise to re-distribute the wealth and complete the transformation of  America into a welfare state.  His bureaucratically imposed policies such as Cap-n-Trade and the Dream Act are blatant end runs around the authority of a Congress that overwhelmingly rejected both.  The alarming reality we all must face is that for the first time in American history we may actually have a president who is anti-American.

Barack Obama is blatant in his anti-American rhetoric.  Such as:

“In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”  Emphasis added.

“And what would help minority workers are the same things that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, the education and training that lead to such jobs, labor laws and tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation’s wealth …”  Emphasis added.

“But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted. And the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties — says what the states can’t do to you — says what the Federal government can’t do to you — but it doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that …” Emphasis added.

These positive rights are what Progressives have been trying to establish since FDR floated his idea of a second bill of right which included:

  • The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation
  • The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation
  • The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living
  • The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad
  • The right of every family to a decent home
  • The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health
  • The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
  • The right to a good education

Now all of these sound great and in a perfect world might make up a laundry list of prizes falling out of the cornucopia of utopia.  In a real world they would mandate a government large enough to provide everything and powerful enough to take everything away.

The whole idea of having a constitution is to limit the government which is in essence a charter of negative liberties.

President Obama goes on to state, “Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune.  ‘The market will take care of everything,’ they tell us.  If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger.  Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers.  But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else.  And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory.  And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government.  That’s in America’s DNA.  And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker.  But here’s the problem:  It doesn’t work.  It has never worked.”

And of course there is his infamous “You didn’t build that” statement which exposes his complete misunderstanding of what it takes to start and grow a business.

With a leader such as this whose basic understanding of America is at such odds with those who once constituted the majority of the citizens and the continuity of our History is it any wonder that so many feel as if they are living in a conquered nation?

Conquered by who?  As Pogo once told us, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Or as Garet Garrett, quipped as he chronicled the fall of the Republic and the rise of the American bureaucratic Empire said, “There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

 

If We Blow It Up Again It Will Blow Up Again April 18, 2013

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
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Back in 2007 when I was speaking of the crash to come I noted that we really didn’t have to worry because our fearless and infallible leaders intuitively know the remedy.  When the bubble bursts they will blow up another bubble.

The absolute triumph of Keynesian economics in America and the West has never been more on display than during our rocky journey through the Great Recession.  An economic contraction which our leaders say is over and those of us who work and live in flyover country know is still grinding us down to the new normal.  TARP was going to save the economy.  It didn’t.  President Obama’s porkulus stimulus was going to save the economy.  It didn’t.  QE 1 and QE 2 were going to save the economy.  They didn’t.

Then along comes QE 3 with an open ended commitment to pump 85 billion per month into the economy, and presto-changeo alakazam and miraculously the stock market is breaking new highs and the real estate market is beginning to revive.  Unemployment keeps inching down and even the Neocons over on Fox are telling us the cratered economy is showing signs of life.  It turns out if you magically create trillions of dollars and drop them from helicopters across the country there seems to be more money blowing in the wind.  As one very profitable prophet once said, “It doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Hang on to your hats because a booming economy has to become part of the Obama legacy so that the transition to a centrally-controlled economy can ever be hailed as the prescription for success.  Just as the booming economy of the 90s is constantly brought up as “The prosperity we experienced during the Clinton years” so to if any politician ever attempts to restore economic freedom, or when there is another crash it can be blamed on too much regulation, a pathological fear of deficits, and return to the old days of greed and avarice.

Those of us old enough to remember the Clinton years should know that it was the peace dividend and the Tech Boom Bubble which fueled the prosperity of the 90s.  We should also remember that it was a phony peace dividend since our military was engaged in interventions around the world during Clinton’s depredations in the oval office.  We should also remember that the Tech Boom flew through the air with billions in stock values for companies that made no profit and eventually delivered not prosperity but the crash of 2000.

Our Constitution was not written to be not a living document that evolves over time.  The words were never meant to take on new meanings with every passing generation.  The accumulation of case law and judicial proclamations was not meant to supplant the written political contract that the Sovereign States individually decided to ratify.  However, contrary to the oft stated desires of the Founders of our nation and the Framers of the Constitution the United States has evolved into a behemoth bureaucracy.  In all bureaucracies instead of the best and the brightest rising to the top those who learn to pull the levers the best end up controlling the machine.  Often the official leaders are merely telegenic front men for the powers behind the throne.   The grifters who have gained power through elections filled with ineligible voters, outright fraud, gerrymandering, and a two party system where-in Progressives control both parties use the living document ruse to turn the Constitution into a dead letter.

Crony capitalism has replaced free enterprise.  Just watch the big gaming table at the New York Stock Exchange.  Its volatile swings are dictated not by innovation, profits or production they are instead moved by real or projected government actions.  Will the Fed keep creating money out of thin air?  Will the EPA impose Cap-N-Trade?  Will the imperial presidency use a foreign adventure to grasp more power?  The banks act as willing accomplices of the Fed borrowing money at 0% interest and buying Treasuries at 3% helping to maintain the fiction that we aren’t monetizing our debt and printing our way to prosperity.  The foreigners who used to crowd the treasury auctions know what is going on.  Today the biggest purchasers of American debt are American banks using the Fed’s funny money.

How many times must this Ponzi scheme economy show itself for what it is?  How many times must this self-serving Progressive cabal be exposed for the hypocritical central-planning neo-fascists that they are?  How many articles like this must be written before enough people wake up and do something?  We glory in the American Revolution.  It overthrew tyranny and established personal independence, individual freedom, and economic opportunity on a scale that had never before been seen in the world.  This is something worth celebrating.  However, the counter revolution has been in progress since Hamilton founded the first bank and John Adams threw his opponents in jail.  The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance, and today’s generation may be too busy watching the game to notice their country is being transformed into something they won’t recognize by the time they get up for their seventh inning stretch.

Any semblance of a freely functioning economy has vanished since Progressive leaders like FDR, LBJ, and BHO birthed government control and intervention as an 800 pound gorilla on steroids.  The mirage of false prosperity is once again raising its crowned head out of the sea of financial calamity it created with the last bubble.  A new bubble is forming and happy days will soon be here again with a chicken in every pot and a flat screen in every home.  How many of our fellow citizens will be swept up in the coming Obama Boom?  How many will be devastated when it all comes crashing down again?

The too-big-to-fail friends of the government will be made whole.  The perpetually re-elected and their handlers will have their golden parachute pensions and plush jobs on K-Street and at Fannie, Freddie, and crony filled board rooms across the country.  The only ones hurt will be those who do the real work, those who play by the rules.  When the new bubble blows up the remedy is ready made: we’ll just blow up another bubble.  How could this ever go wrong?

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

Is America Under Judgment? April 12, 2013

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
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All that follows I will preface with, “I believe.” I am not attempting to establish theology for anyone or to declare that anyone who does not agree with me is a heretic. I am merely sharing my beliefs, grounded on study and prayer, since my opinion has been solicited on this topic more than once.

Many Christians today bring every conversation back to, “Do you think these are the last days?”

This may be based on a personal reading of the Book of Revelation in the Bible. It could be based on the broadcast sermons and teachings of any number of professional End Times preachers who have built careers on pointing to an apocalypse around the corner.

The signs of the times are always easy to read they just aren’t so easy to interpret. Nero was the Antichrist as was Diocletian, King James II, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. False Prophets have equally abounded from the Pope to Martin Luther, from Henry VIII to Rasputin to Jim Jones.

Is the End coming? Most certainly. Can we know when it is coming? Most certainly not. Since it is impossible to know when the end is coming I cannot believe that God would want us wasting any of the precious time He gives us speculating as to when it will arrive instead of being His witnesses to the world .

Since it is anti-biblical to believe we can know the date of the End, it is obviously not a Godly use of our time to try and figure it out anyway. What can we know? Just as we can look at the clouds and know when a storm is coming or smell the wind and know when a rain is on the way, so to we can look at the present state of our nation and know the time of the season. If we use the analogy of a year’s cycle it is obviously fall headed for the winter. It has been fall headed for the winter since the crucifixion of Christ: the fulcrum of History.

Some may ask, “Why has fall lasted so long?” The problem is we really don’t know how long the previous winter and spring were. The belief that the Bible tells us that there were approximately X number of thousand years before Christ and there will be X number of years after Christ equaling 7,000 years as a week in God’s time as taught by some popular TV preachers is based on the a tissue of strung together scriptures and cherry-picked verses. Equally, the belief that the time from Adam and Christ is discernible from the Biblical text is based on the erroneous belief that the Bible is presented as a linear historical document.

While I believe that the Bible contains real History and that it is literally true I do not believe that it presents a year for year time-line type of presentation. The Old Testament is above all a spiritual History of how God chose one people and eventually one person to bring forth the Chosen One: Jesus Christ, the Messiah of the Jews and the Savior of man. I do not believe that by counting up the lives of everyone mentioned in Old Testament genealogies it is possible to

know how many years elapsed between “Let there be light” and the birth, death, or resurrection of Christ.

Most of the names mentioned in the many Old Testament genealogies have no age associated with them so the would-be Biblical timeliner has to make a guess. Also when you compare the genealogies there are obvious overlaps, repetitions, and omissions. Compare the New Testament genealogies of Christ found in Luke and in Matthew and you will see the problem with genealogies as linear History. Now multiply that by all the genealogies in the Old Testament and you will begin to see the problem with this method of calculating time.

The people who tell us that the Old Testament gives us an accurate count of the years between the beginning and the beginning of the end are the same ones who tell us that they can figure out from the book of Revelation when the end of time will come. They do this in spite of the fact that Christ Himself tells us in Matthew, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Then to make the point again it was one of the last things He told  us before ascending to Heaven in Acts, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.”

Since we cannot know the day or the hour, the times or the seasons how godly can it be to spend so much time trying to figure it out? So much for trying to figure out when THE end is since it can’t be done. However, I felt I had to deal with that before I moved on to the real subject of this column: whether or not America is under judgment.

I believe that is a topic that can be discerned by anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. I am not talking about the end of the United States. It is and will be called by the same name, waving the same flag. I will let you judge if it is the same country we grew up in.

Looking at the spiritual History of the Old Testament as a guide we see that Judah the southern kingdom of the Jews, the believing remnant that carried on the covenant after the apostatized Kingdom of Israel had been carried off into exile was finally delivered into the hands of its enemies because they had sacrificed their children to pagan gods and walked in the ways of the world. Since 1972 when a case based upon a lie was used by an activist Supreme Court to invent a constitutional right to abort babies over 54 million Americans have been deprived of the most fundamental right of all: Life.

God does not condemn societies because of the sin within them because the same sins are in all peoples at all times. Rather God condemns societies for the sins they condone. Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities of the plains were not destroyed because they were filled with more evil than the Canaanites that God eventually sent the Israelites to destroy. No, these cities were consumed by fire and brimstone because they gloried in what others did in shame.

Stroll down the streets of San Francisco. Flip the dial from the Modern Family to Two and a Half Men from The Jersey Shore to Glee and it seems Jerry Springer has defined the new America. On cable and satellite hard core porn fills the overnight hours while state after state legalizes pot on their way to legalizing everything. The government has taken over the numbers racket, calling it a lottery as they plunder the poorest amongst us by selling them false hope where winning is as likely as being struck with lightening.

What is the judgment of God on nations that have moved out from under His blessing by rejecting His guidance? He casts them down from the heights their former obedience had achieved. In the near future we may become the tail instead of the head as our leaders continue to wag the dog.

Alexis de Tocqueville one of the most astute observers of America said in the early 1800’s “America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Now survey the current state of America for yourself. Don’t accept the opinion of someone else, but make up your own mind. Is America good? The answer to that will provide the answer to the question posed in the title of this column “Is America under Judgment?” For if we are not good what are we? And what is the result of that? Then remember God has told those who follow Him, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.”

Keep the Faith. Keep the peace. We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens