If it isn’t Right it’s Wrong August 10, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: abortion, culture war, Dr. Robert Owens, free trade, gay agenda, gay rights, politically correct, traditional values
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Back in the nineties when Pat Buchanan was wise enough to label the Culture War for what it was some of us asked, “How can a moral wrong be a civil right?” This was back when those coming out of the closet were asking for freedom, and not trying to deny freedom to others. Today the radical homosexuals froth at the mouth and impose boycotts against anyone with the impudence to say they support traditional values and with the bad taste to say they are married to their first wife.
The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media joins the radical homosexuals distorting what was initially said and fanning the flames of hate. Pandering politicians join in the pile-on and use their offices and the power voters entrusted them with to punish a lawful business because their CEO exercised his first amendment rights and stated something that not too long ago was so widely accepted it never would have had to be said.
Culturally the majority of Americans now live in a nation controlled and subjugated by a vocal minority intent on forcing their values on the rest of us.
Back in the nineties after America had defeated the Evil Empire we stood unchallenged as the world’s sole superpower. Our industrial base was an 800 pound gorilla in everybody’s room. We were the largest creditor nation in the History of the world. Our science and our technology were the definition of cutting edge. Today China rises like the red dragon in the East. We are the largest debtor in the History of the world. The fastest computer, the largest accelerator, and the number one computer and smart phone manufacturers are all in Asia. Our manned space vehicle program is a memory, our astronauts have to hitchhike to a space station we paid for and built, and the Chinese have just announced they are going to the moon to replace the stars and stripes with communist red.
Technologically we are standing still at best while former third world nations lead the way to a brave new world.
Politically we are watching the Mideast go south. We are bogged down in a quagmire in Afghanistan where the ultimate winner won’t be the corruption we have installed as government. The Chinese control the Panama Canal and the Port of Los Angeles. NATO had a hard time defeating the definition of a tin-pot dictator and his band of sub-Saharan mercenaries.
How did all this happen? How did it happen so fast? Is there anything we could do to reverse our slide into insignificance? Is there anything that will be done to lead the way back from the brink?
How did all this happen? How did it happen so fast?
The Culture War has been waged aggressively by its proponents: those who wanted an end to America’s traditional Judeo-Christian ethics and those who wished to profit politically by the end of the America we had known and loved. The coalition of social deviants, media boosters, and political panderers rolled over a live-and-let-live public as they achieved their dreams and changed moral wrongs into civil rights. It is now considered unacceptable to state your personal beliefs if they diverge from the culture of the lowest common denominator. Political correctness strangles freedom from college campuses to board rooms. The murder of unborn babies has made the womb the most dangerous place for an American child. Television, movies, and music are filled with vile hateful filth. Triple X superstores and legal gambling are now the trophies for the victors and tombstones for the vanquished in a war Mr. Buchanan was pilloried for having the courage to name.
What about the technology?
In their exuberance and hubris our leaders, Bush the First and Clinton the Last, decided that we could make free trade work for our advantage when it had killed every other empire that ever followed it to cheap consumer goods and industrial destruction. Ross Perot was ridiculed when he would ask, “Do you hear that giant sucking sound?” That’s American jobs being sucked out by NAFTA.” But he was right. Our balance of trade with Mexico went from more than a billion dollars a year surplus in 1994 to more than a 64 billion deficit in 2011. This was followed with so-called free trade agreements with country after country systematically turning a positive balance of trade into a negative.
Then when we combined free trade agreements with an American innovation, shipping with containers, we set the stage for our markets to be overwhelmed by Chinese imports. Today if the balance of trade and the content of that trade were examined it becomes apparent that America is fast becoming a de-industrialized colony of China as they have been a financial colony of ours. We supply them with vast amounts of invisible credit via the pegged, undervalued, yuan-dollar exchange rate and raw materials while they supply us with cheap manufactured goods. Our own money is inflating a mercantilist predator poised to devour our industrial base. Even our military now relies on Chinese parts and our security may rest upon components that are designed to either malfunction or provide a backdoor for hackers.
What about politics?
Bush the First crowed about creating a New World Order and couldn’t beat a womanizing bubba in a tux. Clinton the Last spent his Peace Dividend buying votes and gutting the military. Bush the Next led us into a war in Iraq we never should have fought and refused to leave a war in Afghanistan he didn’t notice we had won. Obama the Destroyer of Worlds leads from behind while following the UN, apologizes for American exceptionalism, and bows to foreign leaders. When you fight a war against an enemy you won’t name how will you know if you have won?
Is there anything we could do to reverse our slide into insignificance?
How do you end the degradation of our society into an open sewer of licentiousness? Values are taught in the home or they are picked up in the street. Ethics are passed on by people who believe there are absolutes and who live consistently as if those absolutes actually matter. Telling our children to do as we say not as we do has produced generations of people who do whatever they want. Hedonism and conspicuous consumption have combined to give us a world where getting what you want is prized above getting what you deserve. Let those who live right be salt and light in this world and those who seek the day instead of the night will follow. Billy Graham, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Bible are right Larry Flint, Hugh Heffner, and Bill Clinton are wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
Take the steel boot of regulations off the throat of industry and innovation. Allow economic freedom and the invisible hand of entrepreneurship will once again transform America into the powerhouse of industry and technology. Adam Smith and Milton Friedman had it right; Keynes and the Progressives have it wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
End the so-called free trade, and insist upon equitable trade. If someone uses tricks to add fees to our products add the same fees to their products. If someone restricts our products in their markets put the same restrictions on their products. Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan had it right; our progressive politicians have it wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
Return to what was once traditional American policy: a friend to all and entangled with none. Why are American troops still garrisoned in Europe, Japan, and Korea? Why are America’s finest stationed in hundreds of bases in over 100 nations? Bring our troops home. Let them guard our own borders from the hordes that now walk across them every day. Let their bases provide an economic stimulus to American towns and cities instead of those of foreigners. Washington, Hamilton, and Monroe had it right. The Bush dynasty, Clinton, and Obama have it wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. How do we restore what’s wrong with America? We do what’s right.
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
Is the Inertia Greater Than the Momentum ? August 2, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: 2012 election, boom and bust, Dr. Robert Owens, Federal Reserve, Government spending, inflating bubbles, inflation, tax and spend
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The causes of our problems are not hard to see. Americans aren’t obese because evil restauranteers are forcing them to eat fried butter on a stick. We are bulging at the seams because we eat too much and exercise too little. Americans aren’t trapped in upside down mortgages because evil bankers waylaid us and forced us to sign up for a house that was too big and cost too much. We’re living in homes we can’t afford because we wanted them and thought we deserved them even though we didn’t have an income that could support them. Americans aren’t buried in personal debt because credit card companies mailed us credit cards. We carry an average of $14,517 household debt because we wanted what we wanted when we wanted it and couldn’t wait until we could pay for it. And America isn’t drowning in national debt because we did anything more difficult to understand than electing people who bought our votes with entitlements we didn’t need and couldn’t afford.
The problem isn’t that we don’t know the answers. Instead it’s that we don’t want to face up to the fact that the free ride has to stop if we’re going to get off before we land in Athens. America’s economy is beginning to resemble one of those increasingly ridiculous action movies where the hero gets blown up, shot, stabbed, and hit with a brick only to jump up ready to roll. Every time a bubble bursts instead of allowing the economy to bottom out and correct itself the Government spends as it borrows from foreign countries and the Fed creates money out of thin air to pay for it. It’s time our leaders learn we have learned that blowing up a bubble to take the place of the last burst bubble is not building an economy.
As boom and bust turned into boom to boom to boom we have inevitably made our way to KABOOM!!!
The coming crash in this double dip dilemma is going to be a double whammy. We are currently blowing up a new financial bubble providing Fed funds at near zero % that the banks then loan out at 3-4% pumping more and more money into the system. And in a reprise of the 2000 dot.com crash the social media bubble is once again giving us billion dollar companies that aren’t making any money for anyone except the gamblers in the stock market casino.
The Federal Government keeps inflating bubbles to avoid the real crash so they can continue to buy votes with entitlements and pay for them with funny money. This postpones paying the piper, but it increase the bill when it finally comes.
Today the government Leviathan is devouring America’s income. In 2012 it’s estimated that the central government will consume 24 % of GDP kicking back 4% to the States and localities, the States will swallow 10% of GDP, and the local entities will inhale 11%. Subtracting the 4% Federal to State shell game and the governance of America is today costing us 40% of America’s production. On top of that the regulatory burden grows heavier every day until everyone everywhere is in violation of something. And we wonder why industry isn’t expanding? When you eat your seed corn and make impossible to follow guidelines for planting you can’t expect a bumper crop.
With money pouring out of a 5” hose how can anyone take the politicians promises to cut the deficit and reduce the debt seriously? The most draconian plans suggested so far, such as Representative Ryan’s doesn’t balance until 2040 and that is only if future politicians decide to play nice and not buy votes with free goodies which is about as likely as a dog with fleas not scratching.
That’s the problem: a dysfunctional government made up of kleptomaniacs writing phony checks on the future and a population addicted to easy money and unfunded entitlements.
What’s the solution? We as a people must kick the entitlement habit. Like any addiction our national addiction to freebees has debilitated us. It has made us dependent on the outside stimulus. Where once families and churches took care of the needy we have been taught for generations that Uncle Sugar will do it, so we have let Uncle Sugar do it. How has that worked out? Ever since the government bureaucrats have stepped between the givers and the receivers welfare hasn’t been well and it isn’t fair. Many of us know people who need help who are denied and people who should be helping themselves who are riding in their Cadillacs to spend their food stamps.
After more than 15 trillion dollars and four decades of a war on poverty the percentage of Americans below the poverty line is higher than it was when we started. There are more people on food stamps, more on disability and more that have just dropped out of the work force than ever before, and the only answer Washington seems to have is we haven’t spent enough yet. That’s like telling the heroin addict who almost died last night of an overdose that the problem was he didn’t shoot up enough junk.
How do we stop spending? How do we balance the budget? This is like the question the backslider always asks, “How do I get back to God?” The answer to the backslider is, “You get back to God.” The answer for the nation is, “we stop spending more than we bring in.” The politicians have a way to make that solution work: raise taxes until income matches outgo. This brings up another problem: we can’t eat the goose that lays the golden egg and expect to collect more eggs tomorrow. In any country that robs Peter to pay Paul eventually everyone changes their name to Paul. Case in point, we now have more people qualifying for disability each month than people finding jobs.
Yes, this is a call for austerity. Yes, this will cause major dislocations. Yes, when drug addicts quit taking the poison their bodies have come to crave they get sick. In time drug addicts recover and once again becomes normal people able to stand on their own without the chemical prop of a debilitating drug. In time if we as a nation will kick the habit of cheap money and government handouts we will once again learn to stand on our own two feet, hold our head up high, and proudly say, “This is America the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
If we will do this the last half of the twentieth century will be but a prelude to the American Century. If we don’t, the sun will set on the American dream as we devour ourselves in an orgy of hedonism and self-gratification.
The election is coming fast. Survey your choices and find people who have the courage to lead us in a return to fiscal responsibility before we face the coming collapse of the world we have known. For if we cast our bread upon the water it will return to us after many days, but if we sow the wind we will reap the whirlwind.
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
No Joke July 27, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: dead people voting, Democrat corruption, Dr. Robert Owens, Eric Holder, illegals voting, Motor Voter, Voter Fraud, Voter ID
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Fido, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Juan Valdez walk into a polling place. No this isn’t the beginning of a joke it is a key part of the Chicago Plan to re-elect the worst President in American History.
The Voter Participation Center (VPC), a left wing organization whose work to register Democrat voters exemplifies the process used for generations in Chicago to ensure the Outfit/Machine maintains control of the government, the power, and the swag. The VPC is mass mailing pre-printed voter registration forms to selected voter blocks known to be part of the Democrat coalition, African-Americans, Latinos, young adults, and single women. In their effort to extend the Chicago system to the rest of the country VPC mailed nearly 200,000 third-party voter registration forms to Virginia residents in June. This has resulted in more than 15,000 new voters being registered.
However, there are a few problems with this exercise in Chicago-style democracy. They are violating rules set forth in the state code and the Virginia Constitution requiring that voters fill out their own form. The State Board of Elections, which the group says pre-approved their forms and their methods, has asked the group to stop filling in the forms prior to sending them to the people, and pointing to the errant forms they have also raised questions concerning how the group obtained lists of registered voters. In addition, according to Justin Riemer, the Virginia State Board of Elections’ deputy secretary, forms have been sent by the group to “deceased infants, out-of-state family members, and non-U.S. citizens, among others.” Given the fact that these forms can be mailed in and that the Federal Government will sue any State that has the chutzpah to require a photo ID to vote don’t be surprised if in this, the most crucial election of our lives Fido, Casper, or Juan cast their vote to continue the occupation of Washington by the Progressive Statists and their totalitarian plans.
The list of problems with Democrat voting procedures that have ensured their iron-fisted rule in the tottering hulks of our once great cities is as long as it is disturbing. There are the great Democrat machines that have used every form of voter fraud and intimidation to dominate the urban political scene in America for generations in places such as Philadelphia, Detroit, and of course the Mecca of corruption President Obama’s adopted hometown and political base, Chicago. In East St. Louis and Indianapolis there are actually more registered voters than eligible citizens.
As the Obama Justice Department circles the country like a bird of prey waiting to pounce on any jurisdiction that attempts to purge the dead the illegal immigrants or felons from the voting lists, it is apparent that voter fraud has been elevated from a crime to a national policy. So far Attorney General Holder has sued Florida, Georgia, and Texas while investigating Pennsylvania. Yet there is no time or resources spent on investigating sixteen counties in Texas with more voters on the rolls than in the census or sixteen jurisdictions in Illinois that also have more registered than eligible. There also was no interest in prosecuting the clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party who patrolled voting locations armed with clubs while making racist statements to voters. And the most reprehensible case of voter suppression of all is the campaign waged to limit the vote of our active duty military.
Any attempt to slow the growth of phantom voters is met vigorously by the Federal Government with strident accusations of racism saying that anyone who requires a photo ID to vote might as well burn a cross on the White House lawn. This is patently absurd. It takes a photo ID to do many things people do every day. You need a photo ID to:
Get a Driver’s license
Buy alcohol
Buy cigarettes
Apply for welfare
Apply for food stamps
Cash a check
Purchase a firearm
Make any large credit card purchase
Open a bank account
Rent an apartment
Be admitted to a hospital
Get a marriage license
And yet according to Attorney General Holder any jurisdiction that requires a photo ID to vote is placing an undue burden on minorities akin to a poll tax collected by a man in a white hood. But for security purposes you needed a photo ID to get into the NAACP meeting recently to hear Mr. Holder speak in a state he is currently suing over their requirement of a photo ID to vote. The irony never ends in a world that is fast becoming the theater of the absurd.
Add into the mix that most states offer free IDs and provisional ballots that are counted once ID is verified to anyone who shows up without an ID, and it’s easy to see the righteous battle against voter ID is really a reprehensible defense of voter fraud.
And just in case the actual living citizens of America show up to vote in great enough numbers to compete with Fido, Casper the Ghost, and Juan the Obama administration has retained the services of thousands of lawyers. These devil’s advocates will challenge the vote in any district that goes against them or to defend themselves in any jurisdiction with the gall to challenge their manufactured majority.
Passing over the debates of who is Barack Obama, where did he come from, and what motivates him we must deal now with the Fete Accompli. He has been legally sworn in and has run the country into the ground for almost four years. We cannot afford four more years of the Progressive’s spend us into oblivion with the Cloward–Piven Strategy as national policy. We cannot afford another four years of international support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s march to power in Middle East and serial apology tours. We cannot afford another four years of trillion dollar yearly deficits. We cannot afford another four years of Barack Obama if America is to have any chance to remain the land of the free and the home of the brave.
If we don’t end this soon the Progressives will end it later.
If we don’t reassert our devotion to constitutionally limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom we will sink into a quagmire of endless entitlements for the idlers paid for by plundering the productive. In four short months we will have an opportunity to choose. The opponents of liberty are lined up to steal the election, but we can overwhelm them if we will all show up and vote. Make sure every Patriot is registered, and do anything and everything you can to make sure everyone you know votes, because you can bet Fido, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Juan Valdez will. And that’s no joke.
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 Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
What’s A Patriot to Do? July 20, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, election 2012, Obama anti-capitalism, Obama Marxist, Obamacare, Progressives
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Mr. Obama may not be the only President we have ever elected who has little real world experience, but he may be the first who has none. And hopefully he will be our last.
President Obama’s latest insult to hardworking Americans has drawn massive press, at least in the portion of the Media that isn’t consumed with repeating and debating his false allegations concerning Romney’s business record. It isn’t hard to understand how a Marxist would consider the accomplishments of a capitalist to be criminal. It also isn’t hard to understand how a Marxist would believe that no one can accomplish something on their own; they do believe it takes a village to raise a child after all. What is hard to understand is how America was gullible enough to elect a Marxist president when the evidence of his beliefs, his associates, and his political activities were so easy to see.
What will be utterly beyond comprehension is a majority of our fellow voters drinking the kool-aide a second time when it is obvious from Mr. Obama’s rhetoric that he is selling a blatantly anti-capitalist and anti-American line of constitutional suicide.
With serial apology tours, bowing to foreign leaders, and abandoning our surrogates to help install the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, it is obvious Mr. Obama is a walking disaster for America’s foreign policy. It is also obvious from the recession he has managed to turn into the Great Recession that his spread around the wealth transfer policies are an unmitigated disaster on the domestic front. His record wouldn’t inspire anyone except a fellow American hating Marxist to vote for him, so his only viable tactic is to make the other guy totally unacceptable. In the coming months watch as the President, his fellow traveler mouth pieces, and the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media turn squeaky clean bland, boring Mitt Romney into a nefarious arch criminal who has built a massive criminal enterprise on the backs of exploited victims.
Even if President Obama really believes personal accomplishments, except his own of course, are merely the trophies of exploitation that doesn’t mean the rest of us should accept this as a legitimate premise for discussion. The Democrat Media may want to spend endless hours asking Mitt to explain why he threw grandma off the cliff after stealing her Social Security check, but that doesn’t mean any sane person should waste time considering it.
A better question might be if capitalists have claimed personal success unfairly while using roads and electric grids built by others why is it fair for Mr. Obama to claim as his own the fame for killing Osama when someone else started the campaign and someone else executed it? Why aren’t the failures of his forays into venture socialism such as Solyndra, the Volt, or anything else his fault? Our Dear Leader is a walking example of socializing the costs while personalizing the profits. If it goes bad it was someone else’s fault, but if it goes right it was all him. He has changed the famous Truman quote to “The Buck Stops with You” and since the teleprompter told him to say it he was able to do it with a straight face. The saddest thing of all is that the dumbed down crowds he wows probably don’t know he changed the quote at all.
All of this is shaping up as a surreal election cycle. We have a Democrat doing everything imaginable to lose. He is abandoning the white middle-class, attacking capitalism, and lavishing insult after insult upon anything and everything Americans have always held dear including our founding principles. We have a Republican who passed the template for Obamacare and can’t generate as much excitement as a Saturday night of rearranging your sock drawer.
America hangs in the balance.
If we re-elect a Marxist on a platform of class warfare and soak the rich, I imagine we will see class warfare and soak everybody. If we elect a middle of the road Massachusetts Republican with a veneer of conservatism who is enamored of the foreign affairs advice of John Bolton, the angriest of the neo-con war hawks I imagine we might get a reprieve on the Marxism as the government grows to sustain more wars for peace.
What’s a patriot to do? Are we teetering on the edge, past the tipping point, or already careening into the Abyss? Do we throw away our vote on someone with no chance to win? Do we choose the lesser of two evils knowing that we will still be choosing evil? Do we do as one of my oldest friends is doing: sell everything and leave the country before all this progressivism hits the fan? Do we store food, bury guns, and wait for the zombie apocalypse?
The answers could be so simple. Domestically we could cut taxes, cut regulations, and let the economy surge. In foreign affairs we could follow the direction laid out by the founders: a friend to all and an enemy to none, withdraw our far flung international police precincts, make our homeland an impregnable fortress and let trade be our currency and peace be our policy.
Instead we face a future of austerity and contraction based upon a bloated government swallowing ever more of the American pie no matter who wins. We face endless interventions and undeclared wars in quagmires defending a status quo that is no longer tilted in our favor. China, the rising dragon of the East, is playing chess as our dithering Progressives moan about chickens coming home to roost, and political correctness prevents us from doing what we should do when we should do it.
We are truly between Barack and a hard place with every forward indicator pointing down.
These are times when I draw upon the true source and summit of my being and remember that the God of Heaven and Earth has not left us without understanding. We face these problems because we have forsaken Him, and the only way back is through Him. He told us long ago, “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.” That isn’t just an observation it is a promise. And unlike our fickle politicians who merely want to tickle our ears, God always keeps His promises.
Therefore as we turn to face the change don’t be discouraged, don’t be depressed, and don’t worry. God has our back if we will give him our faith. For He also told us, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.”
Keep the peace. Keep the faith. We shall overcome.
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
How Chicago Plays Ball July 6, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Chicago politics, Dr. Robert Owens, Obama Chicago politician, Obama corruption, Obama intimidation tactics
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In Chicago they play “Chicago Ball.” This is a form of soft ball that is as location specific to the Chicago area as Hoover Ball is to West Branch, Iowa. In this game a sixteen inch softball that is as hard as a baseball is used with no gloves. If at least one or two fingers aren’t broke in each game it must have been in girl’s division. It is a rough sport, and everyone who plays it knows it. Catching a line drive is like catching a cannonball in the stomach and catching a high pop-up is like having an incoming meteorite land in your hands.
In Chicago they also play another kind of ball that is rough, and everyone knows the rules. They call it politics. In other places they call it organized crime.
Back in the Dream Time, elders were honored because of their accumulated knowledge. If Pops knew a better way to saddle horses, that knowledge helped Junior since he saddled horses. Today if Pops knows how to tune-up cars what good is that when cars don’t need to be tuned-up anymore? Now the old are relegated to extolling their own relevance while exclaiming, “I’ve never seen that before.” Doddering ancients who use their cell phones merely to talk wonder why their grandchildren never answer their emails as Gen Z tweet each other: “Don’t trust anyone over fifteen.” The world is moving so fast not only is today tomorrow’s yesterday the generations are living in different todays today. Gen X and Y parents with their once hip lap-tops under their arms stare in wonder as their pre-teen Gen Zs text with one hand while Wii skydiving in the backseat. For these new additions to middle-age who’re just old enough to remember Star Trek imagine Captain Kirk visiting Captain Picard pointing at Commander Data and saying, “What’s that?”
After years of being treated as if the Wisdom of the Ages were as relevant as Confucius in a fortune cookie, now that we have Chicago on the Potomac the wisdom gained in the City that Works is suddenly spot-on. Of course George the Second’s doctrine of pre-emptive war made one old saying make sense beyond the Southside, “Never start fights, but if you have to hit someone back first once in a while that’s all right.” Then again ACORN has shown the everlasting relevance of Chicago’s best known adage, “Vote early and vote often” as well as eternal life or ACORN by another name is still the same corrupt mob of community organizers organizing their way to personal power and prosperity.
With President Obama and the Chi-Town hustlers large-and-in-charge, Windy City Proverbs may help many believe what kind of change we’ve stepped in. Such as “Everybody cheats so if you don’t cheat you’re a cheater,” or “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable.” Maybe the taxman could use, “They must not have wanted it they didn’t have their hand on it.” Looking at our Congress, “If you’re going to get mad at thieves you’ll never have any friends” comes to mind. Thinking of the new Green Home Efficiency Inspectors they want us to deal with when buying or selling a home is reminiscent of the Chicago Fire Marshal conscientiously telling a young business owner, “We’ll save the city some gas money if we just do the inspection right here in my office,” while patting his desk indicating where to place the money.
The Obama Administration started off with some Southside swag calling the biggest earmark in history a stimulus bill aimed at shovel ready jobs. Then again as the President later joked, “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.” After this predictable Southside of Chicago opening act the poster child for a different kind of politics continued the virtuoso performance calling ward-heelers czars and followed a time-honored Second City tradition in the Minnesota recount by finding a bag of votes giving us a good laugh by installing Al Franken in the once revered United States Senate.
Who says you can’t go home again? They may turn the old neighborhood into Yuppie Heaven by knocking down the middleclass housing and putting up three-story imitation Victorians but right here right now the machine that gave no-show jobs to half the wise-guys on the corner as well as Michelle at the hospital is in the process of not just fixing tickets but fixing everything else. The political descendants of Big Bill Thompson, Richard the First and Richard the Second parlayed community organizing into a national organization that should make the Five Families green with envy.
Having fixed the economy and with health care, hate-crimes, immigration, and cap-and-trade all queued up to flow through the system before the voters get a chance to register their disapproval, Don Barak also had the opportunity to begin fixing the highest court in the land. In the Chicago justice system ( an oxymoron) lawyers give out printed pricelists stating how much acquittals cost verses dismissals and the old saying concerning courthouses goes, “It may say justice on the outside but that doesn’t mean there’s any on the inside.” Since the Democratic Machine and their Me-To Republican allies rubber-stamped Mr. Obama’s first pick for the A-Team, how do the prospects for judicial restraint and the Constitution look? Fine if you fit the profile for the protected or promoted classes, but not too good if you naively look for that lady wearing the blindfold and holding the scales.
Joining the sisterhood on the bench, Ms. Sotomayor felt her gender and her race made her uniquely qualified to reach wise decisions and believes international law should be consulted when weighing appeals. She should feel right at home with the former chief counsel for the ACLU who apparently believes American Citizenship is the right of all mankind. In one decision she said, “You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don’t consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.” And now they have turned Chief Justice Roberts to the Dark Side. Ah justice, what is it good for? Or as they say in Chi-town, “How much justice can you afford?” The difference between Chicago Prime and Chicago on the Potomac is in the original version mayors serve for life followed by a power struggle. Vive la Différence!
How does Chicago Ball fit into all these old sayings? There are multiple sayings associated with playing ball. Such as, You have to swing the bat to have a chance to hit the ball,” or “I ain’t cheating if they don’t catch me.” So how do our now nationalized Chicago Pols play ball. One recent example is in the financing problem faced by the owner of the Chicago Cubs. The plans to renovate the dilapidated Wrigley Field were being held up because of the current owner’s political associations. And that’s how they play political ball in Chicago.
And how does that translate to Chicago-on-the-Potomac? In 2009 the Obama Administration played Chicago Ball with the Drug Industry to get their support for Obamacare. These types of tactics have become standard operating procedure for the Obama Administration as department after department make their wishes known and their power felt.
And just recently the President strong armed the Supreme Court asserting any interference with his take-over of 1/6th of the economy would be unprecedented. What was unprecedented was his use of manipulation and brow beating to pressure a supposedly independent court to become another place where the fix is in, or as they say in Chicago Ball “When they send out their best hitter, aim for the head.”
And if this article makes you feel politically as if you’ve had your fingers broken, well that’s just the way they play ball in Chicago.
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
Why the Congress Must Reign in the Supreme Court June 28, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Anti-Federalist Brutus, Chief Justice Roberts, Dr. Robert Owens, Obamacare, Progressives Healthcare, Supreme Court Decision Obamacare
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“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.” Please notice that this, the foundational sentence of the American way of life does not say “endowed by the Supreme Court.”
Ever since the Supreme Court took unto itself the power to void laws passed by the representatives of the people in Marbury V. Madison the black-robed Justices have acted, and Americans have accepted them as if they are the source and the summit of what is and what isn’t allowed in America. In most cases since the middle of the 20th century, the high court has sided with whatever the central government wanted to do in the way of extending its power and curtailing rights which any person who can read plainly sees protected in the document they are sworn to defend.
However, in Article Three of the Constitution, the one that outlines the judicial branch, after specifically enumerating which types of cases the Supreme Court shall try it says, “In all the other Cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”
We often hear of obscure clauses of the Constitution which have been stretched and strained to sweep more power and authority into the never satisfied maw of the Federal Leviathan such as:
- The “Necessary and Proper Clause” which is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 states, “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the [enumerated] Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” This is also known as the “Elastic Clause” because Congress and Presidents have stretched it to give them powers the Founders never would have dreamed possible outside a tyranny.
- The “Commerce Clause” found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 states, “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” This is the go-to clause for the Progressive’s conquest of America. This is the clause that was used in the 1930s by FDR to implement most of the New Deal. It was used by LBJ in the 1960s to impose the Great Society. And it is being used by BHO in the 21st century to shackle us with the social democracy brand of socialism which has devastated Europe and which has been repudiated by our former adversaries in the Cold War.
In the Supreme Court decision Wickard v. Filburn in 1942 it was handed down from on high that wheat farmer growing wheat on his own property for his own use can be legally regulated under the commerce clause because not selling your wheat and using it yourself is actually competing with wheat that is sold and is therefore commerce. This is the same clause the Obama Administration originally used as a defense to say they can fine people for not buying insurance arguing that not buying insurance is commerce.
Yes, these two clauses have been stretched and interpreted beyond any semblance of rationality to restrict and restrain Americans in the enjoyment of the freedom and liberty which should be our birthright, yet the clause which clearly states that Congress has the power to reign in the Court has been ignored.
Forget all the posturing about abortion by all the so-called conservatives in Congress. Has there ever been a concerted, protracted or sustained effort to remove abortion from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court? No there hasn’t. And yet tomorrow, or even today Congress could pass a law stating that abortion is an exception to the court’s jurisdiction and with the signing of this law by the president Roe V. Wade would be null and void, and all state laws affecting abortion would once again be in effect. And this same procedure could be used for the representatives of the people to take back control of the law and the country from the Court.
The Congress is elected. The Supreme Court is appointed. Congress can be replaced. The Justices of the Supreme Court serve for life. They could be impeached and removed; however, none have ever been removed and the likelihood of that happening is remote. There are checks and balances in the process of passing laws. The Senate is a check on the House and the House on the Senate. The President is a check on Congress and Congress is a check on the President. There is a check designed to restrain the Supreme Court from becoming a black-robed committee of kings: Article 3, Section 2, Clause 2 giving Congress the power to create exceptions to the Court’s jurisdiction. However, tradition and the desire of professional politicians to demagogue about issues instead of solve them keeps the perpetually re-elected from reigning in these want-a-be demigods.
Thursday June 28, 2012 will live in the memory of all patriotic Americans as a day of infamy along with Pearl Harbor, and 9-11. This is the day the Supreme Court ruled that if the Central government can’t force American citizens to do what they want them to do one way they can do it another.
When the Obama Administration and their co-conspirators, the Progressive Democratic Party in Congress, rammed Obamacare through Congress they argued that the fines imposed under the individual mandate upon anyone who didn’t purchase health insurance wasn’t a tax, but that it was penalty allowable under the Commerce Clause. According to the Constitution all tax bills must begin in the House. Obamacare began in the Senate; however, that was all right since the fines weren’t taxes they were penalties.
When the issue got to court and it became clear there wasn’t a majority ready to declare not buying insurance was commerce the Obama Administration argued there was no standing to litigate the individual mandate and the fine it imposed because it is a tax. Through the looking glass inside the beltway and behind the curtain it’s a penalty when that argument works and it’s a tax when that argument works.
Sophistry is defined as “Reasoning that appears sound but is misleading or fallacious. In Metaphysics, Aristotle defines sophistry as ‘wisdom in appearance only.’” When we look at that definition from now on it will be hard not to see the face of Chief Justice Roberts who today showed his true colors as the midwife of totalitarianism. While declaring unconstitutional the very arguments used to pass the law the majority declared the law constitutional based upon the very arguments its opponents used to try and defeat the bill. Up is down, right is wrong, and the government can do whatever it wants.
During the ratification debate when addressing the Supreme Court one of the leading Anti-Federalists wrote, “There is no power above them to control any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controlled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel independent of heaven itself.”
The balance between the central government and the once free citizens it is attempting to turn into dumbed down helpless dependents has been significantly changed. As predicted by the Anti-Federalists, the courts have been used over and over to expand the power of the central government to the detriment of the States and the citizens. Today we crossed a threshold; we passed a tipping point and are no longer at the edge of the abyss. We are careening down the cliff into the fearful embrace of totalitarianism. An over the top Supreme Court has given the green light to an out of control Progressive Administration, and as of today there are no checks and there is no balance.
Those of us who love liberty and are dedicated to limited government must contact our representatives and demand that the Supreme Court be brought under control. Something must be done to preserve liberty or the United States we have loved will become the one we have dreaded. An all-powerful central government will continue to grow and bend all things to its will. We must return to the literal definition of constitutional government or this living document will be the death of freedom and the graveyard of liberty.
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 Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
Why the House Must Impeach President Obama June 21, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: DOMA, Dr. Robert Owens, Fast and Furious, Obama amnesty, Obama immigration, Obama impeachment
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In America today just like in Lake Woebegone every child is above average and every child gets a trophy. We may score low in international grade comparisons but we rank number one in self-esteem. In other words American students may not be doing well but they think they are. Those of us old enough to remember how Dad could control the situation with a look and when you got in trouble in school your parents didn’t sue or contact the School Board you got in trouble at home too are also old enough to remember Watergate.
This scandal that the general public still does not understand brought down a president and led to the Watergate Congress which threw away the victory in Vietnam and solidified the Progressive control of Congress until 1994. Today we are confronted with contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law that makes the Watergate Scandal look like the tempest in a teapot that it actually was. How many people died as a result of the Watergate Scandal = 0. How many have died as a result of the Fast and Furious debacle = at least 200 and still counting. How did Richard Nixon disrespect, disregard or violate the Constitution in the Watergate Scandal = 0. How many times has Barack Obama disrespected, disregarded or violated the Constitution during his time in office = at least twice as documented below by making recess appointments while Congress was still in session and refusing to enforce laws.
There is an old saying, “That’s good enough for government work.” This saying comes out of the big government make-work programs of the 1930s and has been used ever since as short hand for “Approximate is close enough,” which might as well be the new national motto. In societies that rob Peter to pay Paul the stage before all the Peters change their names to Paul is typified by government bean counters picking winners and losers. This process discourages producers and encourages non-producers assuring you get less of the former and more of the latter. As an educator I have a belief that if you don’t teach someone to do something right you are teaching them that doing it wrong is acceptable.
If Congress does not assert its place as a co-equal branch of government, the Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama will continue to usurp power. From recess appointments while Congress is in session to refusing to enforce the laws of the land this President is fundamentally transforming our system of government. Not through the amendment process, but through a campaign of unconstitutional and therefore illegal actions designed to buy him enough votes for a second term. Whether it is through the money laundering schemes that are government negotiations with public service unions, pork barrel payoffs to political donors, or back-door amnesty this is nothing more than buying votes: a time-honored Chicago tradition. Combine this with a campaign to resist any attempt to verify who is voting and the stage is set for an election that would make any managed society proud.
His supporters may call it the Audacity of Hope Campaign, but if it is successful it will be the audacity which crushes any hope of limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom. The dreams from his father will become the nightmares of our children and grandchildren. With no authority Mr. Obama is attempting to rule by decree. Executive orders have previously been used to direct the Executive Departments how to implement laws. Mr. Obama is using them to legislate, and that is in direct contravention to the separation of powers clearly outlined in the Constitution.
President Obama has built a shadow government that parallels and is standing ready to supplant our constitutional government. He has appointed more Czars than most of his predecessors and these Czars are not just advisors they are actually tasked with duties that under our traditional American governmental structure have been the responsibility of Cabinet Secretaries. These Czars are not confirmed; they are anointed, and none of them are accountable to anyone but the President. Even though Congress voted to defund his Czars, President Obama has said he will ignore that part of the Budget and keep them anyway. A cult of personality surrounds him typified by a compliant media which fawns over his every action and defends his every transgression.
As if to add icing to the cake the Obama Administration has invoked Executive Privilege to support Attorney General Holder in his refusal to surrender all requested documents in the Fast and Furious Scandal. What national security issues could there be in this matter? If the documents proved that the operation really did start under the Bush administration as Mr. Holder contends does anyone doubt they would have been on the table yesterday? Either the President is attempting to protect his Attorney General, some member of the Whitehouse staff or himself. Either way this may eventually provide a real similarity to the Watergate Scandal. Though in this case the cover-up could not be worse than the crime it could lead to enough fallout to make his own supporters leave a sinking ship to avoid the stigma of a failed presidency and a looming constitutional crisis.
If this slide into tyranny is not stopped it will continue. If it is not protested it will be accepted. I know there are not enough Senators to convict but if these blatant attacks upon the checks and balances are not punished, at least by the shame and reproach of an Impeachment Resolution, they are being silently condoned. Speaker Boehner stand up and lead the House! Don’t just make a speech; present a case. Don’t just give us a photo op; give us a fighting chance to save this great experiment in human freedom.
If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything. America it is time to stand up to this Southside Chicago bully, and let him know he can’t have our lunch money anymore, and he can’t subvert our Republic either at least not without us protesting and using every legal means available to stop him and preserve limited government.
We, the lovers of freedom and the supporters of limited government cannot merely wait the clock out on the Obama presidency. Because if he wins another term with all these affronts to constitutional government unchallenged combined with a campaign based upon class warfare and the redistribution of wealth he and his statist backers will declare it a mandate for more of the same, on steroids. An oligarchy of the perpetually re-elected veneered over a permanent nomenclature of federal bureaucrats will easily fall in line behind a complacent and complicit media to cheer the new order as the soft tyranny of the central planners tell us what is best for us and then forces us to say thank you.
Protest the lawless Progressive counter-revolution! Contact you Representative and demand an impeachment hearing to investigate President Obama for the High Crimes of subverting the Constitution. He should be investigated for:
- making recess appointments while Congress was still in session
- for ignoring his obligation to enforce the laws of the land in the areas of Immigration and the Defense of Marriage Act
- for incorrectly using a claim of Executive Privilege to cover up reckless and possibly criminal activity in the Fast and Furious scandal.
Act today! Contact your Representative and let them know patriotic Americans want this tyranny ended and limited government restored. 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 Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
Not Worth a Continental June 15, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Helicopter Ben, inflation, Obama redistribution, spread the wealth around
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The Federal Reserve System (the Fed) was established in 1913 as one of the cornerstones of the Progressive agenda. They said it was a way to stop the boom and bust cycle which has always been a fixture of capitalist economies. The Fed is America’s third Central Bank. The First and Second Banks of the United States were born out of Alexander Hamilton’s ideas as expressed in his famous Second Report on Public Credit in 1790. The first bank was allowed to expire and the last was ultimately killed by Andrew Jackson in 1833. Jackson believed the Bank had too great an influence politically and economically.
The United States grew to become the greatest industrial power on earth in the next eighty years without a central bank.
Established in 1913, the Federal Reserve is America’s central bank. It is semi-independent/semi-public depending on which role is needed to justify its actions. It is run by a board of seven Governors. These Governors are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Led by a Chairman who is also appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate these eight people control a system of twelve Regional Federal Reserve Banks which have numerous branches throughout the United States. The Fed can expand or contract the money supply in many ways. They print money both physically and digitally, they set interest rates, they can loosen or tighten the regulations for lending, and they can purchase debt from the Treasury. Most of these measures are neither understood nor noticed by the general public. This helps build and maintain the impression of a mysterious institution behind a curtain pulling levers and pressing buttons secretly controlling the economy. In many ways this impression is correct
Ben Bernanke is the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Some believe that this is the most important post in the United States because the Federal Reserve controls our economy through its control of the money supply. Mr. Bernanke acquired the nickname Helicopter Ben from a speech he delivered in 2002 entitled, “Deflation: Making Sure “It” Doesn’t Happen Here.”
In this famous speech he said, “The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand – a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers. Likewise, the economic effects of a deflationary episode, for the most part, are similar to those of any other sharp decline in aggregate spending–namely, recession, rising unemployment, and financial stress.” This is a well stated summation of the problem of deflation.
As a defense against the ravages of deflation the future Chairman of the Federal Reserve never actually said he would drop money from a helicopter. What he said was, “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost.” Which was coupled by later analysts and pundits with the statement, “A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous ‘helicopter drop’ of money.”
In the popular imagination this has been shortened into the oft misquoted belief that he said he would get in a helicopter and drop bales of money to combat deflation.
The collapse of the Housing Bubble in 2008 brought the American economy to a standstill and threatened to escalate into a systemic collapse of major banks and other financial institutions. To stop the wheels from coming off the commercial cart the politicians reacted with unusual speed and vigor. George Bush famously said, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system” when he advocated and passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) which was designed to buy mortgage backed securities in an effort to inject money into the American banking system and thus restart the economy. This 700 Billion dollar fund (later resized to 475 Billion) was eventually used instead to bailout major banks, AIG, and buy GM and Chrysler with only 22 billion ever going to buy toxic assets.
This was followed by President Obama’s stimulus bill which cost another 800 billion and was supposedly designed to kick start the economy by providing jobs. The Congressional Budget Office eventually evaluated that these shovel-ready jobs cost 4.1 million each. But then again as our President later joked, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”
Spending government money to prime the economic pump cannot work. The government doesn’t produce anything. It must either take the money out of the economy through taxation taking from the productive for the benefit of the unproductive or print the money thus causing inflation. All the government can do is redistribute wealth; it does not create it. And when the government is in the business of picking winners and losers we all lose freedom, liberty, and opportunity.
Inflation is a rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and the resulting loss of value of currency. The Progressives didn’t invent inflation. The Obama Administration isn’t the first to resort to inflation to keep the ball rolling without the pain of tax increases. America was born in inflation. During the Revolution one of the greatest problems was how to finance the war. America was effectively blockaded by the massive British fleet and unable to trade with the rest of the world. So the government printed the money they needed, and printed and printed and printed until the money was effectively worthless coining instead of wealth the shameful saying, “Not worth a Continental.” These early ancestors to our dollar were eventually redeemed at 100 to 1.
Helicopter Ben has already overseen two rounds of monetary inflation referred to by the mysterious name of Quantitative Easing (QE) which is a fancy way of saying the Fed floods the banks with money. The staggering size of these have only now begun to come to light showing that since the 2008 collapse the Fed has flushed more than 16 trillion dollars out of the pockets of taxpayers and into the hands of banks and corporations both foreign and domestic designated by the Federal Government as too big to fail. That is more money in four years than the entire national debt which has taken 236 years to accumulate and QE 3 is on the way.
While running for office and telegraphing his distributive goals Mr. Obama said we need to spread the wealth around. Chairman Bernanke has said the government can produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost. However, no matter what these two wannabe puppet masters may believe there is no free lunch. In their insolated ivory-tower gated community world they may never have to pay the tab for their misguided attempts to create wealth with the wave of their hand. Those of us who work for a living who live in the world of family budgets will. The money we earn will be worth less and less and less until it is worthless. The money we have saved will lose value day by day. Someday people may not say, “It’s not worth a Continental.” They may instead say, “It’s not worth a dollar.”
The problem with getting older is you can remember when what we now pay at the pump was a car payment, and what we now pay for groceries was a house payment. The central-planers behind the curtain in OZ may tell us there is no inflation, but our eyes and our wallets tell us something else: the truth.
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
Hunker in the Bunker and Wait for the Rain June 8, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: America’s decline, Cold War, culture wars, Dr. Robert Owens, Economic collapse, Obama’s agenda
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As those of you who follow these wandering pages know I have recently re-aligned my life to turn and face the strange changes that are overtaking Western Civilization with ever increasing speed. Like ripples whose shape and size shifts but never leave the stream, change is the only constant in a society careening towards a cliff.
The descendants of those who built the empire no longer produce enough children to man the walls. The will to win and the desire to excel has been replaced by a complacency bred of bread, circuses, and entitlement checks distributed by a perpetually re-elected legislature designed to keep the marks from catching the con. A series of lack-luster presidents set the stage for collapse. One declares a new world order and then loses his bid for re-election to a saxophone playing party-boy. This surprise president sets the morality bar so low his scurrilous actions and obvious lack of character corrupt the very fiber of our nation. The next two expand the government and spend us into oblivion.
Empires rise and empires fall. That is the way of the world and the lesson of History. From the 15th century through the 20th Western Civilization used a temporary advantage in technology to conquer the world. Where our military conquered we imposed our culture. Where we didn’t gain political control the vision of our seemingly invulnerable strength and our unstoppable progress led local leaders to discard much of what was theirs to imitate what they coveted of ours.
For five centuries Western Civilization ruled supreme. It was our way or the highway so in our pride we decided ours was the High Way. Then in two spectacular bouts of societal suicide, World War I and World War II, we killed, maimed, and butchered ourselves. We wasted the accumulated riches of centuries and showed the millions of colonial subject people who were brought in to help kill whoever the enemy happened to be that Westerners weren’t invulnerable, weren’t unconquerable, and weren’t even smart enough to avoid the slaughter or hide the evidence.
The destruction of the economies and populations of the various colonial powers inevitably led to the break-up of the empires and the rise of a bi-polar world that pitted a world-wide Communism that was inimical to everything Western Civilization stood for against a united West now led by the newest edition to their ranks: the United States.
We had allied ourselves with the Communists to defeat the Fascists. However the victory of 1945 vanished into fifty years of a Cold War that flashed hot enough times to kill many tens of thousands. This epic struggle brought the Communists to their knees and us to the edge of bankruptcy. As we defeated Communism its less threatening little brother Socialism crept in the back door. We adopted the tenants of socialism: equality of outcome financed by expropriation and wealth and re-distribution to pacify our population through the long war. Today we are fast becoming all we have fought against for the last sixty years: a centrally-planned economy, a regimented society, and a totalitarian state.
This century long series of debilitating wars sapped our will to reproduce just as technology gave us birth control and lax morals gave us abortion. This unholy trinity turned into a demographic time bomb that ensures the eventual submerging of the peoples of the West beneath waves of immigrants swarming in to take their place. The moral rot swilled out from Hollywood, and a reality show culture exemplified and condoned by the political elite inspires and reflects a hedonism that would have made Caligula blush. The entitlement mentality foisted and fostered by buy-a-vote-with-benefits governments has sapped people of the drive and desire to do anything more than sit on a couch and dream of their chance at the golden ring of fifteen minutes of fame.
Sounds like a dismal picture doesn’t it? The most depressing part of the whole thing is that it is true.
Empires rise and empires fall and it is our lot to live on the declining end of Western Civilization: the greatest empire of all time (so far).
No one ever gets to live in the world they were raised in. Time moves on and things change. However most generations don’t watch the inversion of the world they grew up in. Today things we thought were wrong are now right. Things we thought were right are now wrong. What made you healthy yesterday kills you today. The wisdom of the ancients was once sought after in a world of constants today obsolesce often proceeds production in a microwave throw-away culture.
The world has been turned upside down.
Just as a British general marched out of Yorktown to surrender to a rag-tag bunch of summer soldiers, so we the children of those who stormed the beaches on D-Day to free Europe and end the darkness that was Nazism will wonder how were we defeated by those we had once so easily dominated?
The answer will be the same as it was for the British in the Revolution and for the Nazis in World War II: we defeated ourselves. Our over confidence and our desire to have it all led us to forsake the values that brought about our success and the principles that made us who we were. While the Socialist Progressives march us off to the shabby future they have centrally-planned perhaps instead of the World Turned Upside Down we should sing a paraphrase of a line from the sixties, “In tattered tuxedos they face the new heroes and crawl about in confusion. All the hands raised; they stand there amazed at the shattering of their illusions.”
We stand at the edge of the abyss. We know not what will be only that it will not be what it has been. Do not despair. Do not lose hope. Have faith in Christ. Follow Him and He will guide you to a safe harbor amidst the storm. I have found my place. I am preparing every day for the coming crescendo. My best advice is find Christ, find your place, and hunker down.
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 Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 