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Divided We Fall October 18, 2017

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.
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United we stand has long been part of the inner strength that enabled America to rise from thirteen disjointed colonies on the edge of lonely sea to the pinnacle of power.

Some people believe in the Six Degrees of Separation Theory: that everyone in the world are six or fewer steps away from each other and that a direct line such as “a friend of a friend” can be drawn to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.  Some people believe all of us are in this thing together, and that diversity is our strength and I am he as you are she as you are me and we are all together.

Even if we’re all connected in ways we cannot know I believe the world is filled with strangers.  Take a ride and as you pass through country, town, and city you’re constantly presented with the faces of people you’ll never know, all of whom have lives and families that will never know you or your life or your family.  Every day we see people we’ve never seen before and will never see again.  They rise out of the mist beyond the pale of our personal knowledge and are immediately submerged again never to rise again.  Our only and forever our only connection will be that one fleeting moment when we moved through a single frame of the separate sagas of our lives.

Unlike Cain I do believe we’re our brother’s keeper, and unlike Scrooge I believe we should help our brothers in need instead of seeing them boiled in their own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through their hearts.  However, unlike the rhetoric of Marx, Lenin, and ex-President Obama I don’t believe that life should operate on the basis of from each according to their ability to each according to their need, or as we say in America today, spreading the wealth around.

In other words, I’m not a socialist.  I believe in personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity.  I found myself out of phase with the Progressive Clique which successfully maneuvered its way to power using the education system, the media, and until 2016 uninformed, uninvolved, and emotional voters.

Out of phase or not, I believe in the equality of opportunity which gives everyone a shot at success as opposed to the equality of outcome which the Progressives and their fellow travelers wish to foist upon us, which gives everyone the assurance of mediocrity.   No matter the consequence, no matter the sacrifice we must stand up for what we believe or we’ll stand by while our nation is transformed into what we won’t be able to believe is still called the United States of America.

Day by day the bean counting pencil pushers, who make up the nameless faceless bureaucracy that is the Deep State, grind out rule after rule and regulation after regulation.  President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, Obamacare churned out thousands upon thousands of pages of federal requirements all meant to fill in the blanks in a 2600 page bill that we had to pass to find out what was in it.

Hope and change became bait and switch.  In 2012 Mr. Obama wasn’t even trying to win votes from those who disagreed with him.  He wasn’t trying to change minds.  He was trying to buy votes.  He bet that generations of entitlements had finally birthed the lumpen proletariat that his theories of government proclaim must exist for History to reach its summit.  He bet his second term on the belief that there were enough people dependent upon the government that they would vote for a handout instead of voting for a hand up.  He bet that America had been dumbed down enough and bribed enough to trade our heritage of freedom for the yoke of a guaranteed something instead of the opportunity for everything.

Class warfare, penalizing success, dividing America into interest groups and voter blocks this was the strategy Mr. Obama thought would win as he worked to build a coalition of leftist intellectuals, government insider and those convinced they were disenfranchised.  Looking at the polls it appeared he had the solid core of 40+% who will vote for a Democrat even if he is the devil himself.  The question was would the unengaged and uninformed voters who could at least hope he would change combined with the illegals and the dead who at least get to vote in Chicago be enough for him to win?

Of course it didn’t hurt that the Republicans nominated a stiff who threw in the towel after winning the first debate.

Remember what a second Obama term looked like?

He won on the basis of a promise to double down on social democracy, a complete disregard for the checks and balances meant to maintain the balance of power between the branches of government, and a desire to totally transform America.

After the last four years of the Obamanation when he ruled by one unconstitutional decree after another and no one opposed anything he did what is left of the America we’ve known?  How will we ever get back to where we came from?  No entitlement once enacted has ever been repealed.  The size of government never shrinks.  The power it usurps from the people and the States is never surrendered.

What’s a constitutional libertarian independent to do?

A world filled with strangers keeps getting stranger all the time.  No matter how many degrees of separation actually exist we should never be as divided as the Progressives and their identity politics try to portray us.  We’re Americans.  We can do better than this.  Reject the siren song of free entitlements which are never free, and embrace the liberty our forefathers won for us.  Let’s renew the great experiment in human freedom and strive to see our nation rise again as the last best hope of man that it was meant to be.  The shining city on a hill that can light the way to a future worthy of free men and women held together by unity not disjointed in our separation.

Even if it takes more than six degrees of separation to connect to others what does it matter how connected we are to people around the world if we are in terminal disagreement with our fellow Americans?  As a nation we’re divided between those who want to strive to achieve and those who thrive because they receive.  The Progressives have bred generations of passive takers who believe they’re entitled to the fruit of others’ labor.  They pay no taxes so they don’t care how high taxes go.  They have no conception of paying for what they have, so they don’t care about the national debt.  They see America as a vending machine, so they don’t believe in our unique place in History.  They desire a shabby world of bread and circuses based on equality of outcome, so they don’t long to be all they can be.

Those of us who want America to be what America has been and what it should be, the home of the brave and the land of the free can’t let divisions divide us anymore!  We must unite to save liberty or we will stand alone at the end of the day.  We may be strangers to one another.  We may not know each other but if we’re fellow believers in personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity we must unite over what connects us to save what has always made us E PLURIBUS UNUM.

A final thought: Just as we have prospered as no nation before through the application of “United we stand” so too will we reap the results of its mirror image: “Divided we fall.”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2017 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

Did You Do Anything to Keep Liberty Alive? May 10, 2013

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
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One day our grandchildren may ask us this question.  Will we have an answer that will make us and them proud or will we have to sit silent knowing we stood silent when it was time to speak or remained passive when it was time for action?  Now is the time for all believers in limited government to stand up and be counted.  Now is the time for all who believe, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”  to remember “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The coming 2014 mid-term elections may well be the most important in our lifetime.  America faces a crisis as profound as the Revolution and as divisive as the Civil War.  This has been brought on by the Progressives who seek to fundamentally transform America through evolutionary means.  Incrementally, one entitlement program, one regulation, and one tax rate increase at a time, these Evolutionaries have used class warfare, activist judges, a politically-correct education system, and a complicit media to create a dependent constituency.   They’ve constructed a matrix of sports addiction, celebrity worship, and recreational prescription medicine that makes the bread and circuses of Rome appear as crude as they were effective.  Welcome to the Brave New World.

In 2008 the Progressives achieved what the media called a “Veto Proof” majority in both houses.  This was typical of the Progressive-controlled media’s spin.  With a fellow Progressive holding court in the White House there was no chance the long cherished dreams of national health care, massive interference in the economy, and expansion of the bureaucracy would be vetoed.  The description of the majorities should have been “Filibuster-proof” meaning there was no way for the minority party to thwart the will of the majority.  Even when the Democrats lost their 60th seat in the Senate with the addition of a Progressive Republican taking Teddy Kennedy’s seat, they still had a filibuster-proof majority.  The only reason they did not achieve more of their agenda such as amnesty for illegal immigrants is that members of their own party balked at a complete surrender of our heritage.

Fast forward to 2013 and after 3 years of the 2010 Tea Party led re-capture of the House Nancy Pelosi and her troops are chomping at the bit to finish their Evolution and drive the final nails in the coffin of limited government.

Those who wish to stop the mad rush into the arms of an all-embracing Federal Government must register!  They must vote!  They must do all they can to influence anyone and everyone to elect a true veto proof majority with the power and the will to reverse the slide into insolvency, which will trigger either a default upon our overwhelming debt or a collapse of our economy.  Either of which opens the door for the current administration to impose their statist solutions irrevocably altering the nature of the United States.  The name will remain the same but let no illusions of normalcy cloud your sight; this will be a new nation, the Obamanation.

In the coming mid-term elections it is imperative that those who wish to reverse course send a veto- proof majority in both the House and the Senate to Washington or President Obama will block every attempt to return to the traditional American model of limited-government.  And even if this happens the newly awakened Patriots must realize their victory will energize the portion of the country desiring a European-style welfare state.  They must realize just as Truman in 1948 ran against the “Do-nothing Congress” more than against Tom Dewey and Clinton in 1996 ran against the “Mean-spirited” Congress more than against Bob Dole, in 2014  Mr. Obama and his surrogates will run against the “Obstructionist” Congress more than against any individual opponents the Republicans might nominate.

The Town Hall meltdowns of 2009 and the Tea Party phenomenon of 2010 have surged across America as no spontaneous movement has in many years.  The energy and enthusiasm of this grassroots explosion has rocked primaries from Coast-to-Coast.  The political establishment in both parties were bracing for a tsunami of popular indignation at the ballot-box in 2012.  Instead the republicans nominated another Progressive which left the conservative base sitting on the sidelines.

The Republicans managed to hold the House leaving the Democratic Majority Leader to lead well-disciplined troops in blocking every move the Conservatives make, and the media will hang the ensuing deadlock squarely around the neck of the Tea Party.

In 2014 to make sure that the rising Tea Party Samson successfully pulls down both the House and the Senate pillars of the Temple of Progressivism, the novice Conservative political activists need to understand voting is not enough.  We need to exert every ounce of influence among friends, neighbors, and family to bring out an historic vote.  We should stand ready to drive people to the polls, work the polls, do anything we can to plant the flag of Liberty once again in the capital of the Land of the Free and the home of the Brave.

Turning to the Word of God we’re counseled, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  Our Founders declared, when tyranny raises it head, when a government founded to ensure the rights of citizens begins to trample upon those rights their descendants should remember, “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.”

As peaceful citizens let those who love Liberty use their guaranteed rights to write, speak, assemble, and vote to preserve what we’ve been given for our children and our grandchildren.  Let every politician know, whether they wish us well or ill, that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”  If we will do this, if now that it’s our time upon the stage we’ll take a stand beside the Founders, the Framers, and the Greatest Generation when our children or grandchildren ask us, “Did you do anything to keep liberty alive? we will be able to say more than, “I didn’t notice what was going on,” or “I couldn’t find the remote.”

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

 

 

Don’t Surrender Without a Fight September 28, 2012

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With the economy staggering on the edge of a cliff, our foreign policy collapsing, our empire crumbling, and our embassies under attack the big question is why isn’t Romney up by 25 points in the polls?

The Republican side of the Washington-based perpetually re-elected party of power has a habit of nominating candidates whose main qualification is that “It’s my turn.”  Look at Dole, McCain,  and now Romney.  These three may have slugged it out in the trenches and proven themselves to be reliable workhorses and adequate fund raisers, but they don’t inspire anyone.

The most memorable speech Dole gave was in a Viagra commercial.  McCain spends more time reaching across the aisle to his Progressive comrades then he does trying to do anything even vaguely conservative.  The best move he made was to nominate Sarah Palin, and then his team spent all their time trying to put a muzzle on a momma bear intent on going rogue.  The most memorable event in his campaign was when he theatrically suspended his campaign to fly to Washington to deal with the financial collapse.  Once there he blended into the background and whispered a meek, “Me too.”

Now along comes Romney.

By nominating him the Republicans threw away one of the most potent differences they had between themselves and Mr. Obama: Obamacare.  During the rough and tumble of the primaries and immediately thereafter Governor Romney proclaimed he would end Obamacare on Day One.  Now he says he likes parts of it and will only get rid of the parts he disagrees with.  Coming from the man who passed and not only defends, but also says he’s proud of the mandatory program known as Romneycare, how will he credibly attack Obamacare in the debates when all his opponent has to say is your plan was the template for mine?

In the primaries the former governor from Massachusetts who has been running for President since he was elected Governor in 2003 was relentless in his negative attacks against his more conservative rivals.  In the general election against the hard hitting Chicago machine bent on doing whatever it takes to retain power Mr. Romney seems to have lost his edge.  It’s like watching a boxer with oversized gloves constrained by the Marquis of Queensberry Rules fighting a gang banger from the South side in a cage match.

With the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media solidly in the Obama camp and using every opportunity to boost one side to the detriment of the other, Romney has to depend solely on paid advertising to counteract ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC.  Everyday every network except FOX masquerades as news outlets as they work tirelessly to re-elect their Fearless Leader.  The thrill running up and down their leg energizes them enough to advance their agenda day and night turning the worst debacle in American Foreign policy since the hostage crisis into Romney’s gaff or Obama raiding Social Security for hundreds of Billions into Romney wants to throw Grandma off the cliff and starve her dog.

This is like watching a slow motion train wreck.  Wake up Mr. Romney!  If you want to win this thing you are going to have to win this thing.  They may be starting to vote in many places but in Chicago they’re already counting the pre-marked ballots.  The Republicans are starting out with the cards stacked against them, and if Romney doesn’t come out swinging in the debates he may join the ranks of also rans even if he has been running for ten years.

A little free advice.  Instead of running away from your 47% comment embrace it.  You were correct. You don’t have a chance to gain the vote of those who are dependent on government.  However, unless this express to the poorhouse is turned around soon this might be the last election before the dependent class becomes the majority.  And if that ever happens, the Democrats will never lose a presidential election again.   Mr. Romney don’t equivocate about your wealth and your personal success. Hold it up as something anyone has a chance to achieve in a free society.  Lead the way back to capitalism before we totter over the entitlement cliff into a nanny state nightmare of cradle-to-grave regulations guaranteeing a mediocre future.

Come on!  You fought like a brawler to get this opportunity don’t through it away because you’re afraid of being called a racist, a vulture capitalist, or a tool of the elite.  You’re being called those things anyway.  In that first debate you had better punch Mr. Obama’s ticket back to Chi-Town or this train is going to leave the station and you’ll miss the boat.

If Mr. Obama is re-elected on his platform of using executive orders to take everything from the producers and give it to the non-producers everyone who votes for him should remember elections have consequences and every once in a while you get what you vote for.  And as sweet as the “I told you so” might be it doesn’t have to happen.  Anyone who will stand up and offer to lead America back to America should be able to beat the worst president in living memory.  Don’t equivocate. Don’t pander. Make a straight forward case for limited government, personal freedom, and economic opportunity.

This may be the last chance we have to turn this thing around before we hit the dustbin of History.  The 47% are going to vote for “Give me more!” no matter what you say, so you might as well say what might motivate the undecided to finally decide and vote for freedom.

Mr. Romney could say that after spending trillions of dollars to revive the economy, recession is the new normal.  He could point out that after years of apologizing and bowing to others, Mr. Obama has succeeded in changing us from the world’s sole superpower to the world’s punching bag.  His campaign spots could remind everyone the workforce is shrinking, the lines for food stamps, welfare and disability are growing, and all the opposition offers is more of the same.

Since anyone who has lived in the Obama nation knows all these things, what should be the most effective campaign slogan Mr. Romney could use is “I’m not Obama.”  He’s already using that; however, to win he needs to appeal to the hearts and the minds of those whose votes haven’t been put on layaway by the federal benefits machine.  This election will be won or lost in the debates.  If Mitt Romney will stand up and say what he means and mean what he says, and if he will make a case for returning to Constitutional government he will win. If he soft pedals for fear of making a mistake or offending someone he will deliver the Republic to the fate of all past republics: financial collapse and ruin.

Mr. Romney you need to show the people of this country that you are in it to win it.  Show some passion and fight the good fight for truth, justice and the American way.  And whatever you do, don’t surrender without a fight!

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

A World Filled With Strangers Keeps Getting Stranger July 11, 2012

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
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Some people believe in the Six Degrees of Separation Theory: the idea that everyone in the world is separated from everyone else by six links.  Some people believe all of us are in this thing together, and that diversity is our strength and I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

Even if we are all connected in ways we cannot know I believe the world is filled with strangers.  Take a ride and as you pass through country, town, and city you are constantly presented with the faces of people you will never know, and all of whom have lives and families that will never know you or your life or your family.  Every day we see people we have never seen before and will never see again.  They rise out of the mist beyond the pale of our personal knowledge and immediately are submerged again never to rise again.  Our only connection will forever be that one fleeting moment when we moved through a single frame of the separate sagas which are our lives.

Unlike Cain I do believe we are our brother’s keeper, and unlike Scrooge I believe we should help our brothers in need instead of seeing them boiled with their own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through their hearts.  However, unlike the rhetoric of Marx, Lenin, and President Obama I do not believe that life should operate on the basis of from each according to their ability to each according to their need, or as we say in America today, spreading the wealth around.  In other words, I am not a socialist.  I believe in personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity.  Sadly I find myself out of phase with the Progressive Clique which has successfully maneuvered its way to power using the education system, the media, and uninformed, uninvolved, and emotional voters.

Out of phase or not, I believe in the equality of opportunity which gives everyone a shot at success as opposed to the equality of outcome which our Leader and his fellow travelers wish to foist upon us, and which gives everyone the assurance of mediocrity.   No matter the consequence, no matter the sacrifice we must stand up for what we believe or we will stand by while our nation is transformed into what we won’t be able to believe is still called the United States of America.

Day by day the bean counting pencil pushers who make up the nameless faceless bureaucracy grind out rule after rule and regulation after regulation.  President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, Obamacare, is already churning out thousands upon thousands of pages of federal requirements all meant to fill in the blanks in a 2600 page bill that we had to pass to find out what was in it.

Hope and change has become bait and switch.  Mr. Obama isn’t even trying to win votes from those who disagree with him.  He isn’t trying to change minds. He is trying to buy votes.  He is betting that generations of entitlements have finally birthed the lumpen proletariat that his theories of government proclaim must exist for History to reach its summit.  He is betting his second term on the belief that there are now enough people dependent upon the government that they will vote for a handout instead of voting for a hand up.  He is betting that America has been dumbed down enough and bribed enough to trade our heritage of freedom for the yoke of a guaranteed something instead of the opportunity for everything.

Class warfare, penalizing success, dividing America into interest groups and voter blocks this is the strategy Mr. Obama thinks will win as he works to build a coalition of leftist intellectuals and those convinced they are disenfranchised.  Looking at the polls it appears he has the solid core of 40+% who will vote for a Democrat even if he is the devil himself.  The question is will the unengaged and uninformed voters who should at least hope he will change when combined with the illegals and the dead who at least get to vote in Chicago be enough for him to win?

Can you imagine what a second Obama term will look like won on the basis of a promise to double down on social democracy, a complete disregard for the balance of power, and a desire to totally transform America?  What will be left of the America we have known?  How would we ever get back to where we came from?  No entitlement once enacted has ever been repealed.  The size of government never shrinks.  The power it usurps from the people and the States is never surrendered.

A world filled with strangers keeps getting stranger all the time.  No matter how many degrees of separation we should never be as divided as our Dear Leader tries to portray us.  We are Americans, and we can do better than this.  Reject the siren song of free entitlements which are never free, and embrace the liberty our forefathers won for us.  Let us renew the great experiment in human freedom and strive to see our nation rise again to be the last best hope of man that it is meant to be.  The shining city on a hill that can light the way to a future worthy of free men and women held together by unity not united in our separation.

Even if it takes more than six degrees of separation to connect to others what does it matter how connected we are to people around the world if we are in terminal disagreement with our fellow Americans?  As a nation we are divided between those who want to strive to achieve and those who thrive because they receive.  The Progressives have bred generations of passive takers who believe they are entitled to the fruit of others’ labor.  They pay no taxes so they don’t care how high taxes go.  They have no conception of paying for what you have, so they don’t care about the national debt.  They see America as a vending machine, so they don’t believe in our unique place in History.  They desire a shabby world of bread and circuses based on equality of outcome, so they don’t long to be all they can be..

Those of us who want America to be what America has been and what it should be, the home of the brave and the land of the free, can’t let divisions divide us anymore!  We must unite to save liberty or we will stand alone at the end of the day.  We may be strangers to one another.  We may not know each other but if we are fellow believers in the personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity we must unite over what connects us to save what has always made us E PLURIBUS UNUM.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

 

The No Growth Zero Sum Pie May 25, 2012

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
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Has America reached the stage where we all stand in a circle and take turns holding a constantly shrinking dollar?

If our Dear Leader and the Daley led Outfit wins re-election next year perhaps a few more people will see the hand writing on the wall.  Though the Constitution is undeniably the greatest work to come from the hand of man, though it provided the safe haven of freedom for generations it is today a dead letter.  If after the coming November election the Democrats tax storm sweeps us down the economic drain and inflation kicks in those dazed by the success of the Chicago system in re-electing the first anti-American president then the silent majority will be ready to hear the watchmen on the walls.

We have sold our birthright for a bowl of entitlements.  We have stood silently by while corrupt politicians have looted our posterity of opportunity and hope.  We have allowed our Federal Government to assume powers never delegated to them by the Constitution.  We have spent the revenues of the future for a present that no longer resembles the last best hope of mankind.  We have followed the pipers from the Land of the free and the home of the brave onto the road to serfdom and we are about to learn that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

While our nation wallows in the Great Recession which our Progressive leaders and their water boys in the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media keep trying to tell us is over China keeps eating our lunch.  Starting with NAFTA both Democrats and Republicans have agreed to free trade deals that aren’t free and have suppressed our trade.  For these economic geniuses who think they can centrally plan the largest economy in the history of the world let me spell this out slowly and clearly:

  • If you buy more than you sell you have a negative balance of trade
  • If you spend more than you make you eventually go bankrupt

AND…..

  • Everyone else except you seems to know these two simple truths.

Maybe our economic geniuses should try Economics 101.  They want us to accept that America has become a no growth zero sum pie.  It doesn’t fit their game plan to take their foot off the throat of the economy.  If they did it would roar to life as the liberty and opportunity which is our heritage, and once again prove that free people making free choices is the best way to grow the pie and enrich the people.

A new book calls President Obama an amateur, and at first glance he may appear to be one.  However he does not stand alone.  He is the front man for a triumphant Progressive Movement which has successfully implemented a strategy that has taken more than a century to mature.  Starting in the 1890s they set their sights on education capturing the universities and then training generations of teachers, journalists, and lawyers.  These people have infiltrated every aspect of our lives dumbing down successive generations while Progressive politicians have worked at getting a majority of the voters addicted to government handouts.  Then in the1960s the Cloward and Piven Strategy was embraced as a way to spend the country into oblivion so that it could be remade in a Progressive image.  Step by step, inch by inch, line upon line these webs have been woven, and as the average American twists and turns trying to find some avenue of escape from the shabby future these want to be commissars have planned, all they see is the party line on the major networks telling them everything is coming up roses.

It is time to WAKE UP!  It is time to prepare as if the world we have known will end and expect major dislocations in every aspect of life.  Even an overwhelming defeat for President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of their fellow travelers will only mean this train wreck is slowing down.  The so-called draconian Ryan Budget never gets to a balanced budget for 40 or 50 years.  More than 30 years out the national debt is still growing.  Projections show that by 2025 the interest on the debt alone will begin to consume any hope of getting out of the trick bag they have spent us in to.  Our elected leaders have no plan to reverse the decline. They merely want to manage it in a more orderly fashion.

Each of us must decide what is most important.  Each of us must either prepare for the coming contraction or hit the wall like a crash dummy.

Personally I have decided that family is more important than career, food is more important than convenience, and honor is more important than status.   I have left the tenured halls and headed for the hills.  I have abandoned friends of many years to be surrounded by family.  I have embraced the soil to grow my own food. In other words, I believe I have been to the top of the mountain, I have seen what is coming, and I have taken my own advice.

When I was the Dean of a School of Christian Ministries I used to tell my students to prepare as if there was no Holy Spirit and preach as if there were no notes.  Today I advise my readers, prepare as if the America we have known and loved is about to be transformed before our eyes into a social democracy of European proportions, and live as if there is still hope.

For as long as we believe there is still hope we will not be hopeless.

So we come to the ultimate message: hope in Christ and you will never be disappointed.  All things must pass and only those things done in Christ will last.  All empires fall.  It is our place in History to watch the slow motion fall of a mighty empire: Western Civilization. But if we hold on to what is true, if we stand for what we believe, though a thousand fall on our right and ten thousand fall on our left it will not come upon us.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

The Sun is Setting Tell Everyone You Know February 9, 2012

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If we say nothing while watching someone walk off a cliff and plunge to her death we would be criminally negligent.  If we ride past a home in the early morning and see smoke rising from the roof and don’t call 911 we would be criminally negligent.   Today, as we watch our nation walk off a cliff, as we watch the smoke rise from the home of the brave and the land of the free, if we do not do all we can to raise the awareness of our fellow Americans we are criminally negligent.

Those who are awake to the coming end of limited government have watched this slow motion train wreck for our entire lives.  We have watched as inch by inch the Federal Government has lured our fellow citizens into one entitlement trap after another.  We have wondered when they will wake up and pay attention.

Election after election we have marveled at the shallowness of the debate.  One side says, “If you elect them they will gut the safety net and throw Grandma off the cliff!”  And after every election no matter who wins the safety net becomes more of a hammock.  The other side says, “If you elect them they will gut the defenses and whoever the currently fashionable model of a barbarian horde happens to be will soon stifle freedom, walk upon Old Glory and turn us all into slaves.”  And after every election the defense budget grows and the policeman of the world continues to walk the beat.

Blind justice may be good but a blind electorate is falling for these two straw man arguments electing demagogues whose motto might as well be, “You know I’m lying but you like what I say.”  The social safety net will not be eliminated by any of these empty suits. It will instead become the sack the cats are sewn in before the crazy guy throws it in the river.  The defense budget will not be gutted.  It won’t even be reduced.  Baseline budgeting and secret off budget black ops funding will make sure our 900 base 130 country overseas empire continues to make sure the sun never sets on the stars and stripes.

As each constitutional guarantee falls by the wayside we wonder when enough people will turn off the game, forget about the vampires, the hoarders, and the dysfunctional non-reality reality stars and realize our nation and our children’s heritage is being transformed into what our ancestors fought a revolution to be rid of?

Most of us, even the comatose can recite, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Our assembly line public education has drilled that into our heads.

What our one more brick in the wall system hopes we don’t recall is the next line, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”  And they pray that we don’t shout the next line, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”

When a government uses the excuse of security to tap our phones, monitor electronic communications, and generally read our mail without a warrant, to arrest and detain American citizens on American soil without a warrant, and hold them indefinitely without trial, to wage war without declaration or even congressional approval what we have here is more than a failure to communicate.  What we have is a central government establishing a tyranny in the name of providing security.

Ben Franklin told us, “Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

Looking for substance we tune into the ad nauseam insipid debates organized and orchestrated by a partisan press merely trying to make the Republicans look like the bar scene from Star Wars.  What do we hear?  Except for the lone exception we hear one after another big government professional calling for less spending, less regulations and more war.  Out of that list all we will get is more war.  And the lone exception is continuously relegated to the status of an also ran by every news organization including the supposedly conservative one.

On the other side we are offered four more years of this: four more years of total transformation until we wake up one day in the Progressive version of Heaven: a cradle-to-grave nanny state fighting endless wars for peace.  Regimented, controlled, secure and listening as the same comatose voters who brought us to this place repeat the pabulum that jumps off the teleprompters into the mouths of the info-announcers as if these were their own opinions.

We cannot, we must not allow this to happen without at the very least exerting every effort to wake up anyone within the sound of our voice.  To do this we of course must be awake and aware ourselves.

If we do not know where we came from how can we know where we are?  If we don’t know where we are, how can we know where we are going?

We must study to show ourselves approved.  If we lose the foundation how will the structure stand?  We must know and understand the constitutional and historical underpinnings of this noble experiment in human freedom if we are to preserve it.  We must know and understand the flow of current events if we wish to shape the future.

Study, learn, share, and look for the lights in the tower.  One if by land and two if by sea, we must recognize the signs of the times and try to wake up as many people as we can.  The time is late, the hour is dark, but the right shall prevail.

Forty-seven years ago a young pre-rap poet songwriter tried to wake people up to the intrusion of government and the need to recognize it when he said, “Maggie comes fleet foot face full of black soot talkin’ that the heat put plants in the bed but the phone’s tapped anyway Maggie says that many say they must bust in early May orders from the D.A.  Look out kid Don’t matter what you did. Walk on your tiptoes don’t try “No-Doz” better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose keep a clean nose watch the plain clothes you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”

Knowing which way the wind blows should tell us that we must do our duty to save our country or it will be lost.  I don’t know about you but in the future when my grandchildren ask, “What did you do to hold back the night?”  I want to be able to say more than, “I didn’t notice the darkness.”

Keep the faith, keep the peace, we shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

Now is the Time! January 26, 2012

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
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3 comments

Sarah Palin was just about to drag the Progressive John McCain over the finish line.  Then the economy collapsed and Senator McCain suspended his campaign to fly back to Washington and add his, “Me too” as President Bush said, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”  An economic downturn, a weak contender, and unpopular never-ending wars let Barak Obama win the presidency with vague promises of hope and change.

I personally met people who voted for Mr. Obama because they thought he was for lower taxes.  Ones who thought he was pro-business.  I even met people who voted for him because they thought he was pro-life.  His blank slate promises were interpreted by many to be whatever they thought they wanted.  He was the “Anyone would be better than what we have now” candidate.  Combine that with some of the best political theater in American History, slick advertising, a complicit media and a community organizer from the most corrupt community in the country becomes the most powerful man in the world.

The information about who Mr. Obama is, where he comes from, and what he stands for was readily available before the election to anyone interested enough to look.  Instead of researching, a majority of voters relying on television ads and sound bites, disgusted with the way the country was going under Bush the Younger, decided to give the unknown and untried man from Chicago a chance.

Flash forward three years and many of those who thought they could vote for anyone and the country would survive realize they may have placed that bet once too often.  It is now obvious for all to see Barack Obama is a strident left wing ideologue who applies the political strategies of the late Chicago communist Saul Alinsky, strategies he used to teach his followers in Chicago.  He uses the Bully Pulpit to advance a radical agenda of class warfare.  He is at war with capitalism and dedicated to spreading the wealth around.  Our President is no longer hiding behind vague platitudes.  He is no longer trying to sell us a pig-in-a-poke.  Instead he is now trying to sell us a societal bridge to nowhere as he campaigns openly on transforming America into a country based on centrally-planed redistribution and social planning as he channels the grandfather of Progressivism: Teddy Roosevelt.

The gloves are off.  The false fronts have been discarded, and we have come face-to-face with the ultimate goal of the Progressive agenda: an America that has evolved past the Constitution leaving limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom as mere memories.  A new America confined by regulations and intimidated by an ever more intrusive security apparatus.  A new America hostile to Christianity where being successful invites attack.

If President Obama wins re-election with this blatant appeal to class warfare and interest group divisions with no need to worry about re-election and having already said he will impose his agenda without Congress, there will be no check and no balance.  He will claim a mandate to complete his vision for a completely transformed America.

Congress has already shown that it will not stand up to President Obama’s naked power grabs.  When he initiated an illegal war against Libya without even consulting Congress the perpetually re-elected did nothing.  When he made recess appointments while Congress was still in session the parties of power were silent.  Congress has legislated away their own power for years, passing vague laws and allowing bureaucrats to fill them in with legally binding regulations.  They have made themselves irrelevant, and we now have a President who is ready to rule without them.

The biggest question left concerning America’s ever accelerating slide into Progressivism’s version of socialism’s version of communism is whether or not there will be a real choice this November.  Will the Republican wing of the Party of Power nominate another Progressive: an Obama Lite? Or will the rank and file break through and nominate a candidate who stands for a return to Constitutional government?

The Media wing of the party of Power is working 24/7 to frame the debate and manage the primaries.  Every broadcast, every cable show builds up the candidates they favor and ignores or demeans the ones they find unacceptable.  Will the voters follow like sheep or will they think for themselves?  Will they affirm the choice of the big government social engineers or will they see the blinders used to focus their attention on the anointed candidates?

If there is no choice there will be no chance.  If there is a choice America may yet pull itself out of the decline we see all around us.  A return to limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom would once again release the energy and creativity that made America the greatest nation in the History of the world.  A renunciation of collectivism, class warfare, and social engineering will once again open the door for a return to morning in America.  The re-election of President Obama will mean a solidification of his transformed America and a shabby darkness will settle over the land.

We who seek a return to limited government must look at the candidates, discern which one has a consistent record of supporting constitutional government, and then we must use every opportunity to influence others to unite behind that candidate.  If we don’t this may be our last chance to stop the Progressive transformation of America before they lead us into the dreary dead end of their collectivist dystopia.  Now is the time for all good Americans to come to the aid of the country, or as Ronald Reagan once said, “If not us – who?”  If not now – when?”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

How Dumb Do They Think We Are January 20, 2012

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
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3 comments

I’ve been called a fascist by communists and a communist by fascists.  I’ve been called a pagan by Christians and a Christian by pagans.  I’ve been called an optimist by pessimists and a pessimist by optimists.  All of us have been labeled by others.  We’ve all been called this by that and that by this, we’ve all had people try to insult us by how they refer to us, but when people insult our intelligence they are usually showing their ignorance.

The actions of the second-stringers, stand-ins, and understudies from the theater of the absurd who now pass for leadership in our Republic not only insult our intelligence, they act as if the American people have the IQ of a potted plant and the attention span of someone riddled with ADD.  There is one good thing about people who insult our intelligence; they’re probably misunderestimating the true level of our understanding.

Our President tells us that killing the Keystone Pipeline is no big deal.  Instead he tells us “However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline, they’re going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.”  Making decisions that kill the opportunity to create real jobs is offset by the jobs created by extending payments made to those who are unemployed.  That doesn’t make sense to anyone outside the beltway

At the same time this oxymoronic newspeak pours from the White House, the valiant leaders of the loyal opposition in the House vote to deny our spendaholic President another trillion all the while knowing that they already gave him the money last year.

You see, according to the debt increase law which was supported by all of the Republican Congressional leaders, the debt limit is automatically raised fifteen days after the president officially notifies lawmakers that the government is close to the current $15.2 trillion cap.  That is unless Congress votes to deny the borrowing increase and the President signs the bill.  This is where the Republican leaders add insult to injury by staging a symbolic vote to hold the line against an ever rising debt they already approved.  Their powerless measure passed the House with ease. Yet they knew all along it was DOA in Harry Reid’s Democratic-controlled Senate.  And even if by some miracle it was voted on and passed by the Senate, President Obama would veto it guaranteeing the increase will go through as planed and the debt will grow by another 1.2 trillion.

While Mr. Obama may work day and night to kill projects that might actually provide some work for the rest of us he has no problem investing billions of our dollars in green energy boondoggles that turn a profit for his donors and cronies.  Then when the flimflams are about to be exposed as the money pits they are, on the eve of an election, the Energy Department which turned a blind eye to the initial foolish investment suddenly becomes involved and the announcement is delayed until after the marks, I mean voters, have cast their ballots.

In foreign policy our Commander-in-Chief announced the date for our withdrawal from Afghanistan at the same time he announced the same type of surge he was against in Iraq.  Now he decides it’s time to negotiate with the Taliban.  Are we supposed to believe these highly dedicated, highly motivated, and religiously fanatic battle hardened warriors will rush to make concessions?  Won’t they instead hang tough, demand concessions, and pick up the pieces as our leader leads our valiant, though under-cut warriors, for the door?  Does anyone doubt that Karzai, our creature in Kabul, will be on a jumbo jet filled with American dollars before our last soldier gets home?  All this is presented as a rational settlement instead of an abject surrender and jaded political maneuver.

There’s no inflation.  At least that’s what the Federal Government wants us to believe.   Everyone who goes to the supermarket buys gas or pays to heat their home can evaluate the reliability of that piece of government information for themselves.

How could anyone ever see through any of this unless of course they have at least the IQ of that potted plant mentioned earlier?  This may be insulting, it may show us what the perpetually re-elected think of their constituents, but it also shows that they’re giving us an advantage.  We’re smarter than they think we are so we should be able to blind side them with organizational skills and motivational abilities far beyond what they’ll expect.

They are counting the Tea Party out because we aren’t holding mass rallies.  They believe they’ve won the organizational battle because they were able to mobilize the occupy everywhere crowd to gather for a street party and pollute some major cities.  They believe that since the conservative vote is currently split in the GOP they will manage to nominate the next Bob Dole/John McCain moderate to play the part of the Washington Generals in a Harlem Globe Trotter game: good but never quite good enough.  In 2012 they see the Republicans, like the Washington Generals, there to provide a platform for the chosen winner to shine.

The parties of power treat us with such disdain it’s obvious they believe we’re the sheep they work so hard to make us.  They believe Americans have been dumbed down enough and fattened with enough entitlements that we’ll barely bah bah bah as they lead us to the shearing shed one more time.  Our Progressive leaders in both parties see that election is the one that counts.  This is the election that will either drive us over the cliff into the shabby abyss of collectivist conformity or the one that will give us one last opportunity to return to limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom.

We may not be demonstrating in the streets.  We may not be organizing boycotts.  We may not be united behind one candidate.  However, we are awake.  We are educating ourselves.  We are determined that this great experiment in human freedom shall not perish from the face of the earth.  Vote for the Constitution.  Vote for personal liberty.  Vote for economic freedom.  If we all do what we can do we will accomplish what must be done.  We will keep the faith.  We will keep the peace.  We shall overcome!

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

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