Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

It’s Never Too Early to be Too Late November 17, 2009

If no one has told you this yet let me be the first, as you get older time goes faster. If you’re under thirty you’re thinking, “This old coot has finally gone off his rocker! Everyone knows an hour is an hour. So how can time go faster as you get older?” If you’re between thirty and forty you’re thinking, “Who’s got time to think about time and who cares? I’ve got to go to work!” If you’re between forty and sixty you’re thinking “He might have something there” as you day-dream about those endless summers when you were in High School. If you’re over sixty you’re hoping time doesn’t end before you finish reading this paragraph.
Besides being a dimension time is a concept that’s inextricably intertwined with our material reality as in the space-time-continuum, E=MC2 and all that. It took the genius of Einstein to find a way to prove what every old man knows, time can move at different speeds for different people. Knowing all this is little comfort when confronted with reality. The last wave of the Millennial Generation has entered college. I now teach History to students born after the end of the Cold War adults who’ve never known a day without a personal computer, the internet or a cell phone.
When the weapons of the superpowers became too terrible to use the Lost Generation, those who fought World War One and led the world through the Great Depression and World War Two gave America the Cold War. For those too young to remember this was a 50 year conflict marked by bellicose rivalry and our first modern limited war in Korea. Not to be outdone the Greatest Generation, those who grew-up in the Great Depression and fought World War Two and Korea gave us escalating tensions, naval blockades and another limited war in Vietnam. They finished with a flourish by winning the Cold War and then doing a hundred day encore in the Gulf.
The Boomers hit the White House like guest hosts on Saturday Night Live with a snappy monologue and a party in the Oval Office. They tried to keep the limited war train rolling by occupying Bosnia. Losing a Blackhawk in Somalia and bombing Serbia for Kosovo. Then Boomer George met Osama in New York. Enter the first post-boomer president and a War on Terror becomes a law enforcement problem just as Korea with 55,000 dead was a Police Action. Have we refined limited war to the point that we aren’t sure whether it’s a war or a series of unrelated unfortunate incidents?
A friend who optimistically believes every cloud has a silver lining hopes the tragedy at Fort Hood was merely the work of a volunteer in the Insane Clown Army and not a terrorist attack on an American Army base in our supposedly safe Homeland. This struck me as symptomatic of the age we’ve entered; call it the Reality Show at the End of an Era. In the land of the free and the home of the brave the best we can hope for is a demented mass murderer because the alternative is too frightening to face. If home-grown Jihadists are beginning to kill the brave in bosom of the Heartland it won’t be long before check-points and internal passports begin restricting the free in the byways of the homeland.
Have you ever noticed that after Pearl Harbor we didn’t declare war on sneak attacks? Instead, we declared war on those who attacked us. In America today we’re constrained by the emasculating cult of Political Correctness from even naming our enemy. Our leaders blather on about religions of peace when people hold street dances to celebrate 9-11 and mobs murder and burn in reaction to an offensive comic strip. Now we have a person doing his best to enlist as a foot-soldier in Osama’s army while serving in Obama’s, shouting the catch phrase of the 9-11 bomber pilots as he murders more than a dozen unarmed innocents and the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media pussy-foot around trying to give us the false hope that he’s merely a homicidal maniac.
It’s time to understand that if we don’t stand for something we’ll fall for anything and until you admit you have a problem there’s no chance of finding a solution.
Time is slipping into the future. Are we going to stand complicit in our silence as wars without limit fought by people who proudly proclaim they love death more than we love life shoot our unarmed citizens in the name of God? Will we allow apologists for evil to blame the second amendment instead of telling us the truth?
It’s time to rise up and say enough is enough! We know who are enemies are and we know who we are! If the brave want to keep their land the free can’t sit at home chasing the remote. Whatever speed time is moving its going too fast to wait. It’s never too early to be too late. Let’s roll….
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Religion, and Leadership for Southside Virginia Community College. Contact Dr. Owens. © 2009 Robert R. Owens http://robertrowens.com/ Dr. Owens is available for speaking engagements.