Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Civilization, Dr. Robert Owens, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, socialist agenda, Utopia, utopian agenda, utopian plans
We can’t know what we don’t know however we can know that we don’t know or as Socrates taught us the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.
The society and civilization in which any human lives and operates is like water to a fish. Something they move around in, something they need to survive, it is also something they don’t even notice. If we wish to understand the world in which we live we need to realize that the civilization which serves as our support and framework is based upon vast amounts of knowledge those who fill its ranks give no thought to whatsoever.
It is also necessary to understand that civilization isn’t something consciously created by man. Civilizations build up over time by humans interacting with and attempting to modify their surroundings. As such our civilizations are more accretions than structures.
What our civilization is today is no more the conscious product of some master plan than the course of a river. Life flows into the channels of least resistance and is moved by forces that act upon it. We can no more predict what our civilization will look like in a few generations than one of our 17th century ancestors could have described the lives we live today.
What will be invented tomorrow that will change the future in ways we could never imagine? Thirty years ago in 1983 who would have thought we would all walk around with minicomputers we call cell phones? Or that there would be hundreds of television stations? Or a worldwide internet that can cross-pollenate thought at the speed of light? What may be around the next corner is anyone’s guess. One thing is for sure, thirty years from now we will live in ways we never imagined today.
This is the foundational problem that undergirds and eliminates the possibility of success from any of the utopian central-planning schemes that litter History and of the ones we are trying today. The planners cannot take the place of masses of people living, innovating and creating. No one person or group can substitute their decisions for the independent decisions of everyone else without short circuiting the system and causing civilization to stall out. No one is as smart as everyone.
If two minds are better than one how much better are 100,000 or 1 million or billions? Over and over those who think they and they alone are intelligent, far seeing or inspired enough to shape the future have grabbed the reins of power and tried to impose their vision on the world around them. Sooner or later reality comes along and teaches them that it just won’t work. We have people trying to guide trillion dollar economies who know nothing of economics, and people trying to guide History who know nothing of History. We are surrounded by political savants who know how to get elected and not much else. Some even have the hubris to list running a campaign as a life skill that qualifies them to run the lives of everyone around them.
What is even more bizarre than this is that people believe them and vote them into office based on such sketchy experience and vague promises as hope and change. Then when the Rube Goldberg plans they devise fall apart and everyone is worse off than before the savants say, “You just didn’t give us enough power to accomplish the task. What we need now is more of the same.” Time after time civilizations have fallen for this siren song of perfection. And time after time civilizations have fallen because they did.
Why does this destructive desire to trade freedom for the promise of utopia always fail? Because it’s based on the erroneous idea that humanity created civilization and therefore it is possible to alter its institutions, operations, and mechanisms whenever and however we please.
This assertion would be valid only if we had created civilization deliberately with full knowledge of what we were doing while we were doing it. In a way it is true that humanity has made its civilization in that it was not brought here by some aliens who placed us in it like animals in the artificial habitat of a zoo. Civilization is the product of the combined actions of hundreds of generations living their lives, making choices, succeeding and failing, rising and falling. This however, does not mean civilization is the conscious product of human design or that any one individual or group can completely comprehend all of its functions or what is required for its continued existence.
The very idea that humanity sprang from the earth with a mind able to conceive civilization and then proceeded to systematically create it does not fit the anthropological or historical record. Our minds themselves are the product of the constant adjustments we make as we attempt to adapt to our surroundings.
Is it nature or nurture is an age old debate.
The reality is that it is both. Our minds are what they are, unbelievably intricate bio-computers able to think in symbolic terms and extrapolate beyond what is known to what is imagined. They are the wonder upon which civilization is built; however they did not design and then initiate civilization. If they were, all we would have to do to reach a higher plane of civilization is imagine it and then make it happen. The fact that civilization has advanced by fits and starts shows that some things work and some things don’t. It is the constant adjustment that moves us forward.
Believing the lie that man is the measure of all things is the trap the utopians fall into: that man in and of himself has the capacity to control History. It seems so enticing and yet it never works because that isn’t how civilizations grow. They grow by the friction between our present conditions and our dreams. They grow by the incessant revision of what is into what we want it to be. Our current experience shapes our course deviations in so many ways that cannot be foretold leading in a zigzag fashion from the present to the future.
The weathermen who have a hard time accurately predicting what the weather will be like five days from now seem ever ready to tell us what it will be like five hundred years from now. The economic forecasters who are surprised every month by what the economy did last month have no problem making absolute statements about how actions today will guide our multifaceted economy for years in the future.
Man knows not his time and we cannot know the future. In other words we can’t know what we don’t know. About the best we can do is know that we don’t know.
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
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: central-planning, Dr. Robert Owens, fundamentally transform America, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, socialist agenda
How do you fundamentally transform a nation from what it has been to what a clique of ideologues wants it to be? The easiest way is to convince the general population that what the would-be masters want is what the people want. Those seeking to subvert a culture must take a long view. They must realize that this will be a multistage project that will take generations to achieve.
As an example that will strike home and ring true to every engaged American let’s look at how the Progressives have incrementally moved us from the best educated, most politically engaged population in History to a flock of militantly apathetic fans. Couch potatoes waiting for the next game or reality show unaware how our government operates and impatient with anyone who tries to explain it to them. How did they nudged us from the most self-reliant people in the world to a line of people waiting hat in hand for the next transfer payment?
The first goal was the educational system. Capture that and it was possible to raise up generations who either thought as they did or who didn’t think at all. Dumb it down, exchange confused thinking for critical thinking and soon the people who once asked hard questions will swallow easy answers. The best place to start is at the colleges and universities. If you can convince a generation of teachers that the snake-oil you’re selling will cure everything you will soon have them indoctrinating generations that the sickness is really the cure.
A target of particular interest is of course was journalism schools. Once these schools become factories churning out carbon copies it isn’t necessary to have an official propaganda ministry. The journalists themselves will self-censor anything that doesn’t fit the reality they imbibed along with the Kool-aide. Once the editorial boards and the human resource departments are filled with clones none but clones need apply. Today the portals of American media are filled with people who don’t even know someone who is pro-life. They don’t know anyone who sympathizes with the Tea Party. So those on the other side are always the other. There is no understanding or compassion for thoughts and ideas they find foreign and alien even though they represent the thinking of the majority of Americans. So as we cling to our Bibles and our guns the megaphones of the public discourse represent mainstream America as a fringe while holding up a cross section of the Jerry Springer Show or the Gong Show as the new normal.
The next target in America’s transition from a society built upon individualism, self-reliance and innovation into a centrally-planned experiment in utopian collectivism might have been the hardest or it might have been the easiest: capitalism itself.
As layer after layer of regulations entangled the economy there came a tipping point. This was reached when government interference in the economy became the dominant feature. Then business decisions were no longer made because they were right but instead because of how they intersected with government policy. Look at the stock market today. It no longer moves due to innovation or even speculation it instead moves like a marionette to the strings pulled by the Federal Reserve. It reacts to real, perceived or imagined government actions.
No longer do we have Henry Fords or J. D. Rockefellers moving and shaking the economy to build industries. Now we have crony capitalists who use their connections to get sweetheart deals, tax subsidies and bailouts. Too Big to Fail has replaced Laissez-faire and it is no longer what you know but who you know that brings success in America.
The most insidious aspect of this incremental transformation of America is what it has done to truth. Once thought to be an objective reality, in a centralized utopia truth must become whatever endorses and supports the efforts to reach the designated goals. If necessary, good becomes bad, up becomes down and dark becomes light if that is what is required to make the assumptions and conclusions of the planners plausible.
War becomes peace. Inequality becomes equality. Pork becomes stimulus. Stonewalling and taking the fifth becomes the most transparent administration in history and the destruction of the greatest health system ever known becomes affordable care.
As the meanings of words change it becomes increasingly hard to hold an intelligent conversation, because no one is sure what anyone else means. This cannot be viewed as the natural evolution of language. This is a direct by-product of the effort to centrally-plan a society. Since all efforts must be bent to the centrally directed goals all thoughts must be shaped to conform to the politically correct thoughts of the leaders. All other thoughts become suspect and are held up to ridicule.
The prevailing mood of cynicism and the general intellectual climate that this produces brings about the loss of even the meaning of truth. Truth becomes relative. It is wholly dependent upon political considerations as the spirit of independent inquiry itself disappears. Under the constant barrage of the all-embracing central government and their willing allies in the media the belief in the power of rational conviction fades from view and only the official line seems to make sense to those who through either apathy or complacency swallow the party line and march in lock-step from freedom to serfdom.
The desire to force people to accept a creed and to salute the flag is nothing new. What is new is the justification for doing so that lies at the basis of our current round of communal thought control. It is believed by some that there is no real freedom of thought in any society at all. The thoughts of the masses have always been and will always be shaped by what we now call propaganda or governmental advertising by the laws and regulations of the leaders and the example of the upper classes. Those who wish to regiment thought and control opinion act as if since this is so it is incumbent upon them to direct the thoughts of the masses into a desirable direction. Or in other words a direction that supports the movement towards the goals and objectives previously chosen by the central planners.
Incrementally, step by step, inch by inch the highly individualistic descendants of the pioneers have become a mob clamoring for bread and circuses. Dependent upon government for their very livelihood a large portion, perhaps a majority of the electorate, eagerly embrace the thinking needed to justify robbing their fellow citizens through transfer payments to subsidize their lifestyle. Society becomes rigid and any deviance from the proscribed way of thinking is ostracized. Any attempt to break free of the stranglehold of political correctness on the thoughts and opinions of a once free people must be punished. The best that we can hope is that since we have gone step by step and inch by inch eventually, slowly we will turn.
In George Orwell’s classic 1984 it was the thought police that monitored and directed the thoughts of an entire nation. On a smaller scale the sadistic captain of the chain-gang in Cool Hand Luke phrased it this way when referring to people who tried to break out of the system, “You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice you got yourself two sets. You ain’t gonna need no third set, ’cause you gonna get your mind right.”
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
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Capitalism, central-planning, collectivism, Democrat agenda, Dr. Robert Owens, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, socialism
Failure to plan is planning to fail. This truism has been a guiding light in my life and in the lives of countless others. Without planning we would never accomplish much in life. The haphazard serendipity of chance rarely adds up to a consistently positive result. We all know people who seem like they can fall into a sewer and come up smelling like roses. Most of us come up smelling like something quite different if we take the same fall.
On an individual basis planning is absolutely critical. For society some things also need planning such as coining money, defending the nation, and delivering the mail. All of these require planning and for all of these things it is possible to plan realistically and effectively.
There is no argument between the citizen supporters of constitutionally limited government and our perpetually re-elected Progressive collectivists and the fellow-travelers who support them about this. Some planning is both necessary and good. However, this is where we part company. Those who believe in a constitutionally limited government do not believe that it is possible or advisable to try to run an economy and a society through central planning.
The very attempt to use central planning short circuits the myriad of personal decisions which make up the routine functions of a free economy and that is the bedrock of a free society. Every group that advocates central planning, no matter what they call themselves are Utopians who believe that they can do a better job making decisions for everyone than everyone can make for themselves. That is the essence of the Nanny-state: government knows better and must protect us from our own bad choices.
There is one common feature that is clearly a part of all the various collectivist systems no matter what they call themselves. They all call for the deliberate organization of society to accomplish identifiable social goals. That a free society lacks this focus and its activities are guided by the personal whims and feelings of individuals all seeking their own good is always the complaint of the Utopians.
This brings the basic difference between the collectivists and the advocates of personal liberty into stark relief. The different types of collectivists: Socialists, Communists, Fascists, and Progressives may differ as to the specific societal goals towards which they want to drive their populations, and they may differ in their methods depending upon the amount of control they exert over the choices of others. However much they differ from each other they all uniformly differ from the advocates of individual freedom in that they wish to regiment all of society and all its resources to achieve whichever set of goals their particular brand of collectivism sees as the pathway to Nirvana.
Whatever the social goal is whether it’s called the great leap forward, a worker’s paradise, a classless society, the common good, the general welfare, or the Great Society it doesn’t take much reflection to see that these terms are so vague it’s impossible to determine their exact meaning so that any specific course of action could be decided upon. It’s like a war on terror, or drugs, or obesity how are you supposed to know when the goal has been reached or victory achieved?
The welfare and happiness of people cannot be measured on a scale of more or less. There are too many variables. There are too many possible combinations of circumstances that can become either negatives or positives depending upon another set of widely diverse situations. The “good” of any society cannot be expressed as simply or succinctly as the collectivists pretend. It is just too complex.
To direct all of society’s energy and resource by one plan assumes that every need and desire is given a rank in order of importance and a place in order of time. It also assumes that an absolute lineal order of occurrences must proceed from every action. If this happens that will automatically occur. Besides asserting through action that it is possible to order all things as one desires it also inherently expresses the idea that there is one universal set of ethics by which good and bad are obviously seen by the planners. All of these assumptions, assertions and expressions are not only false they are obviously false. No one is as smart as everyone.
The very idea of having a universally accepted and complete code of ethics is beyond the scope of human experience. People are constantly choosing between different values as they go through their daily life. What is best today in this situation may not be best tomorrow in that situation. However, when all of society and all of its resources are to be harnessed and driven in one direction toward a preselected set of goals such a universal and complete set of ethics are not only a necessity they are a prerequisite for success. Since this is unattainable success is also unattainable. If this sounds harsh please view the tattered hulks and broken lives which litter the history of all Utopian collectivist societies.
Only God can plan the end from the beginning. Only God has an ultimate and a true ethical code that is universally applicable to all people in all situations. Only God has a right to order events to suit His purposes. He created all things, and all things exist because He holds them up. All things are His, and He has the ability and the right to do with them as He pleases.
The problem we face is that collectivism puts the state in the place of God. Collectivists believe that government, through its bureaucracy, can make decisions and take action that could only work if designed and carried out with the aid of omniscience and omnipotence neither of which qualities have ever or will ever belong to government.
A scientist once said to God, “You’re not so much. We have learned how to make life in our laboratories.”
God answered, “Is that so.”
The scientist proudly said, “Yes it is and I am willing to have a contest with you right now to see who can make life faster and better.”
“All right,” God said, “let’s go.” With that God stooped down and picked up some dirt and started molding it into a man as the scientist grabbed his test tubes and started pouring liquids from one to another.
Just as God was about to blow the breath of life into His creation, he looked at the scientist and said, “Hey! Get your own dirt.”
There is one thing I have learned in this life: God is God and I am not and neither is anyone or anything else. Sounds like a pretty basic lesson; however, it took me about half of my life to learn. If we could only get those entrusted with our government to learn the same thing maybe we would stop our slow slide into that long dark night.
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
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Capitalism, collectivism, Competition, Dr. Robert Owens, fundamentally transform America, Obama’s agenda, Progressives, Progressivism, quantitative easing, socialism
In politics and economics as in everything in life there always seems to be more questions than answers.
Some answers previously shared:
Politically speaking, I have said before in these columns that I no longer consider myself to be a conservative because there is nothing left to conserve. Instead I consider myself a Liberal in the classical sense: in the tradition of Jefferson and Paine a believer in human liberty. The once proud name of Liberal has been coopted and fundamentally transformed by the Socialists who have followed the advice of one of their early leaders, Norman Thomas, “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
I say it is time to reclaim the name.
In the economic realm, I am unabashedly a believer in capitalism. The reason for this is that it is the only system ever devised by man that requires freedom as a foundation for it to exist. Every other economic system ever tried is a centrally-planned command system. The king, the dictator, or the politburo decides how many widgets the country needs and that is how many widgets the country gets and everyone works at the widget factory.
As a child of the Cold War who had Marx shoved down his throat by Socialist teachers from grade school through college, I rebelled when one of my History professors told me that economics was the lynchpin of History. It wasn’t until after the fall of the Evil Empire that I was able to appreciate this truth. It is interesting to note that before we adopted the German style of College education in the 1890s Economics, History and Political Science were all one discipline. How can we understand any one of them without the others? One legged stools do not stand very well. Information in a vacuum is still a vacuum.
So what is the question?
How can America continue to exist politically as a Republic with a constitutionally limited government dedicated to personal liberty, economic freedom and individual opportunity if our central government destroys competition?
The support of competition does not make someone an anarchist as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accuses.
The use of competition as an organizing mechanism in society precludes the use of certain types of coercive regulations. However, it does not preclude the use regulations or guidelines. There are important reasons why the negative aspects of this statement have been stressed by the advocates of competition while the positive have been neglected by its opponents.
It is necessary that all parties in the market place must be free to buy and sell at any price which they can agree on. It is also necessary that everyone should be free to produce, sell and buy anything that can be produced or sold. It is also necessary that everyone has equal and free access into the trades.
Any attempt to control or regulate prices or quantities of commodities deprives competition of its ability to bring about the effective coordination of individual efforts because price changes then are no longer able to correctly act as a reliable guide for an individual’s actions.
This is not an iron-clad rule. As long as any restrictions placed on all potential producers affect all producers the same and are not used as an indirect method for controlling prices and quantities. All such restrictions impose extra costs however if they are imposed evenly competition can survive if not thrive. For example, it is generally agreed that regulations to control the use of poisonous substances, to limit working hours, or to require sanitary conditions are both desirable and necessary.
The only question here is: are the social advantages gained by these regulations greater than the economic costs they impose. Neither is the existence of social services incompatible with freedom as long as their organization and operation is not designed to restrict competition.
Thus it is shown that the advocates of competition and economic freedom are not anarchists demanding a Laissez-faire anything goes free-for-all. They admit the need for safety and agree that as long as things are equal things are fair.
The fairness of competition is shown in one of its primary foundational principles: that the owner of private property benefits from all the useful services rendered and is liable for all the damages caused to others by its use. When it becomes impossible to make the enjoyment of certain services dependent on payment or if the damages from its use are deflected then completion is ineffective as a social organizer because the price system has been disrupted.
Thus both restrictions on the use of property and bailouts which transfer the cost of failure from those who made the bad decisions to the taxpayers cause the market to become unhinged from reality and the creature of government direction. We see licenses, permits, and other regulations control who can engage in what economic activity. Look at the stock market. Does it rise or fall because of innovation? Do the efforts of people to create and market new products lead the DOW to new heights? No. The market rises and falls on whether or not the Fed is going to continue pumping fiat money into the system.
The rules of the game have been so distorted by the government that honest and open competition is almost impossible. This is why the underground economy flourishes, because it the only place where free competition still exists. And people will always yearn to be free. No matter how governments try to chain their citizens down with webs of regulations and nets of laws Gulliver will always struggle and strain against the ties that bind until he breaks free.
It is obvious to all that President Obama has succeeded in his goal of fundamentally transforming America. For example, his massive stimulus that paid off campaign debts to unions and donors and his mountains of new regulations on everything from banking to coal to student loans. There is the never-ending FED pump which just keeps pouring more money into an already bloated bubble in an effort to make a socialized crippled economy at least look like it works. And of course there is Obamacare which effectively socializes 1/6 of the entire economy. The combination of these policies breaks the back of competition and sound the death knell of the great experiment in freedom begun in 1776. Drip by drip, inch by inch we have been moved closer to the goal. Now it is the Health Care take-over and the flood of fiat currency that are leading to a terminal case of bankruptcy, a systems collapse, and as our Progressive leaders hope the dawn of a new day.
When the invisible hand has been tied and competition weighted in favor of government chosen winners and losers, when the electoral game has been stacked in favor of a two headed Progressive Republicrat party of unlimited power, pride and ambition, when equal justice under the law applies only to citizens and not to officials, the Question is, “What’s the Answer.”
That answer might be, “How long?”
How long before we the American people demand that our nation founded in revolution against tyranny reject the empire and restore the Republic? We can all see that the emperor has no clothes. We all know the deck has been stacked, the game rigged, and the winners chosen. How long before we demand that we are allowed to live in a nation where we will be judged by the content of our character and not by our membership in a protected or favored group, our political contributions or whether or not we have saluted the party line?
As we watch our beloved nation transformed it might be well to remember what our second President John Adams once said, “a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” Then again he also said, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
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
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, equality of opportunity, Equality of result, liberal media, Mainstream Media, media bias, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, socialism, socialist agenda
The most insidious result that central-planning and the overabundance of government control that it requires is not the maladjustments that it inevitably creates in the economy. It is not the crony capitalism and bureaucratic nepotism that it always fosters. It is not the smothering blanket of nanny-state regulations that strangle creativity. It is not even the tendency to one-party rule even when camouflaged behind a two party system that is in reality two heads of the same bird of prey. It is not a system which may actually contain only two parties if you believe there is the government party and the country party.
No none of these missteps on the way to an illusionary utopia are the most insidious result of any system no matter what it is called that is some variation on the socialist theme of “From each according to their ability and to each according to their need.” Instead the most insidious result of the effort by some to control all is a change in the character of the people.
When government regulation becomes an all-embracing web of minutia that requires lawyers, accountants, and other translators of government-speak to comprehend, when safety-nets become hammocks, and when the do-gooders believe that they know what is best for everyone reaches a tipping point people begin to expect others to do for them what they used to do for themselves. A nation of self-reliant, go-getters can be changed into a sea of slugs on the dole constantly crying and voting for more.
The descendants of the pilgrims and the pioneers are content to wait for their government check and their food stamps as long as there is a game on their flat screen and minutes left on their obamaphone. Militant apathy has ossified the sinews of a once great people. So many people don’t care about anything beyond their creature comforts, the most basic of which are guaranteed, that the will to succeed has been squashed.
When you guarantee success and everyone gets a trophy just for showing up few will strive to do more than is required. When success is punished by the ridicule of the media and the inequality of government policies such as a progressive income tax that says, “The more you make the more we take” few will strive to do more than is required. When college entrance quotas and set-asides say, “We don’t seek the best and the brightest we look at race and gender to pick the winners and losers” few will strive to do more than is required. When government subsidies and tax-breaks say, “If you have connections the government will hold back the crushing reality of the market at tax-payers’ expense” few will strive to do more than is required.
In America today we are surrounded by low-information voters who either don’t pay any attention to affairs beyond their life or who get their news exclusively from the Progressive controlled Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media. Their opinions are scripted for them by the progressive group-think of corporate hacks constantly building a narrative to advance their utopian agenda. If it doesn’t fit it doesn’t print. If they don’t like what you say it will never play. America’s once dynamic free press transformed into a one-sided monologue reciting over and over, “Government knows best.”
Our government controlled and increasingly standardized education system works hard to say as some of my students have; “a ‘D’ is good enough.” Or, “At our school we receive an attendance diploma it just means we were there it don’t mean we learned anything.” Assignments such as I witnessed in a 12th grade Political Science class, “Watch Michael Moore’s film, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and then write an essay on how many ways Bush lied to trick us into invading Iraq” show indoctrination has in many places swallowed education. Circumstances such as these tend to stifle those who would drive innovation and promote those who are just along for the ride, pass the mediocre while holding back the brilliant.
We have moved from a capitalist system to a mixed economy and now under a president who promised to fundamentally transform America we are lurching into a socialist system in all but name that seeks to ensure equality of result instead of the equal opportunity which has traditionally been the seedbed of America’s meritocracy. We have transitioned from a small limited government, a representative republic that operates on democratic principles into an all-powerful central government that operates through a massive bureaucracy. Executive orders are used to make end-runs around Congress and the Constitution. Unconstitutional and illegal recess appointments are used to avoid the scrutiny of a Senate confirmation. Our borders are for all intents and purposes open like an automatic door at Wal-Mart. Forgetting what Ronald Reagan told us, “A nation without borders is not a nation.”
Norman Thomas, an early Socialist candidate for President said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” And as Lenin said, “Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”
Step-by-step we have journeyed from being a people birthed in rebellion against tyranny, a people who founded the world’s first experiment in a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Until a nation founded upon a written constitution which guaranteed limited-government, personal liberty, and economic freedom has become just another failed utopia that is spending itself into oblivion as the band plays, “let the good times roll.”
At a time like this it is good to remember some of the wisdom of those who have gone before:
Noah Webster said, “There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government.”
Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”
Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”
Barry Goldwater said, “A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.”
AND
Alexander Tyler said, “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship”
A word to the wise they say is sufficient.
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
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, limited government, living document, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, transform America
I have witnessed a teacher of Political Science in America require a class to watch Fahrenheit 911 by Michael Moore then write an essay outlining how many ways President Bush lied to trick America into invading Iraq. If you don’t find this assignment offensive you’ve already had you quota of Kool- Aid and you should step away from this article and dial 911. Tell them someone is about to tell you the truth and you aren’t prepared for what that might do to your world-view.
Conversely when I say we should have listened to the Anti-Federalists, echoing the message of my book The Constitution Failed I’m sure many who often turn to these dispatches from the History of the Future are ready to call the headquarters of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy and report that poor old Dr. Owens has veered off the reservation. I was once hired to teach history in a high school devoted to promoting the Socratic learning style using the works of the Enlightenment in the hopes of molding another generation akin to the Founders, critical thinkers dedicated to the proposition that liberty is the fountainhead of achievement. I was fired before the semester started because I did not hold the Founders in enough reverence believing as I do that they were mere men and not demigods infallible and universally inspired.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that the Founders of American independence and the Framers of the Constitution were a unique collection of political geniuses who did their best to craft the vehicle for their posterity’s benefit and for this nation’s greatness. The limited government they founded allowed the forever pent-up abilities and longings of man to burst forth into the flowering of American Exceptionalism, the brilliance of the American experiment.
However, that experiment crashed upon the shoals when Abraham Lincoln and the newly birthed Republican Party decided to interpret the Constitution which had been freely entered into by sovereign States to say that no State could ever voluntarily leave even though this is not stated anywhere in the document. Having made that determination this minority government used the overwhelming majority they had in what was left of the Congress to shackle the power of the Industrial North to crush the seceding agricultural South. Slavery,
which cannot be divorced from its evil nor defended in any way, provided the spark, the rallying cry, and the effective explanation for a war which shattered the myth of a federal republic composed of sovereign states.
Since that war between brothers our nation has inexorably grown from the vision expressed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence of a commonwealth of freemen into what is rapidly becoming a statist express highballing its way to the gulag of collectivist uniformity and shabby mediocrity. Gone is the meritocracy of the young republic. Gone is the equality of opportunity smothered in the cold dead grasp of the equality of outcome. Gone is the blind justice of a nation of laws devoured by the politically correct insanity of social justice. The Progressives and their coalition of mega-state lobbies have turned the protections of a Constitution written to limit government into a suicide pact wherein if the nationalist federal government chooses open borders in contravention of federal law and states are condemned for passing laws which requires police to enforce the law.
It is time to think the unthinkable and to embrace the abhorrent conclusion that the Constitution has failed. It was meant to limit government. This is proven conclusively by the 10th Amendment which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Without the promise of the immediate adoption of the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution would never have been ratified by a majority of the States. This important though neglected amendment says, and means that only those powers expressly delegated to the central government are legitimate not the endless multiplication of powers which allows that government to intrude into every aspect of our lives as it does today.
The very reason for a written Constitution was and is to limit the government created by that document to the powers expressly delegated not to open the door for interpretation and precedent to expand infinitely until all limits are gone. If that wasn’t the intent why have a Constitution at all?
Though many trace the diversion from republican purity to Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives the truth is Hamilton set the stage for a big government. He fathered the movement away from a decentralized federation of free people agreeing to disagree so that compromise would leave enough space for liberty to bloom. John Marshall the second Chief Justice of the Supreme Court manufactured the power of judicial review by exploiting political factions clearing the path for the rule of unelected black robed aristocrats with the power to turn a country of laws into a country of men.
This history lesson may not make my fellow Patriots glow with the satisfaction derived from accepting the Constitution as inviolable scripture received from on high. However, our current decent into the Progressive’s transformed America should make every lover of liberty ready to embrace the truth. The only question remaining: Can learning the truth unlearn the lie?
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
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
Tags: Capitalism, democratic principles, Dr. Robert Owens, Free choice, free market capitalism, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, Representative republic
In our current confrontation with Radical Islam the battle lines are portrayed as those between a secular society, us and a religious society, them. I reject this portrayal as a betrayal of the faith of our Founders and of those patriotic Americans who still hold fast to Jesus as God and Savior, we too are a religious people.
America was founded as a Christian country. Anyone who denies that has not studied enough History or has been sadly misled. Columbus accentuated his desire to spread the Christian faith to his patrons the King and Queen of Spain and in his log. The first thing the English did upon landing at Jamestown was set up a cross to dedicate their endeavor to Jesus their Savior. Were these early explorers and colonists always true to their faith? Did they always operate under principles derived from God’s Word? Sadly they did not. However, to say that the Christian faith was not an integral part of their motivation and worldview is simply not true.
In the latter part of the twentieth century Progressive leaders pushing a collectivist agenda decided to declare us a pluralistic society. They sought to detach the heavily Bible influenced Constitution into the dustbin of History by substituting what they call a living constitution for the rock-solid one the Framers bequeathed us. Mr. Obama, the quintessential Progressive in his speech to the Muslims of Egypt, Turkey, and many places spices up his apology tours by asserting that America is not a Christian country. This statement of his belief and goal does not make it true.
All of these recent changes aside, most Americans still believe in God and the majority consider themselves Christians. As a Christian, an Historian, and a Political Scientist in response to numerous questions I would like to share my beliefs concerning government, economies, and the rights of man.
As far as a government goes the only Biblically correct one is that God is God and we are His people. He is the King and we are the sheep of His pasture. As concerning an economic system God’s economy knows no lack and is exceedingly abundantly provisioned by the owner of the cattle on a thousand hills.
This being true I do not believe that God mandates any type of human government or economic system as pre-ordained, sanctified, or holy. However, I do believe that humanity as God has created it does require certain governmental and economic conditions to develop and thrive as God intended.
God created us in His own image. He gave us the power to create and to choose. He gave us a mind open to learning and ever eager to improvise. He also gave us what I believe is the most crucial aspect of our make-up: our free will or the power to choose. We can choose to follow Him and do what He desires, or we can choose to follow the leadings not only of our thoughts but of our emotions also. In other words we can dwell within the Kingdom of God wherein He is our King and we are His people or we can choose to live in the Kingdom of man and become the subjects of either our own designs or of whoever manages to gain control of the physical world around us.
If God wanted slaves or robots He could have created slaves or robots. Instead He created us and gave us a mind to think and a will to choose because He wanted us to decide to love Him and follow Him freely without compulsion. Therefore I believe that since free thought and free choice are the foundation of man’s nature freedom is necessary if man is to live as God designed. This being the case I believe that any governmental or economic system that denies man’s freedom interferes with and attempts to supplant God’s plan, which is the definition of evil.
There are of course limits to freedom as expressed in the Ten Commandments. Beyond this we should be free to choose our own way. Will we follow God or will we follow man. Within these limits and building on the moral framework the Bible provides I believe that a republic based upon the commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness using democratic principles is the governmental structure which most closely matches man’s God-given nature. I also believe that free market capitalism is the economic system which best allows man to develop and live as God intended. Conversely, when man rejects God and seeks to create his own utopia he builds some sort of centrally-planned command economy and the intrusive government needed to impose it upon others.
A free economy and the free government it requires allows the independent choices of many to produce the greatest prosperity for all as everyone seeks to do the best they can because they reap the rewards. In a socialist or any type of hybrid economy between capitalism and socialism bureaucrats make the decisions and stagnation is the inevitable result. As Gary North, a Christian economist expresses it, “The essence of democratic socialism is this re-written version of God’s commandment: ‘Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.’” Or as Winston Churchill observed, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” And that is not life as God intended.
If we look at History it is an outworking of the initial fall of man. In the beginning God created the world including man and it was all good. Then at the dawn of our existence we choose to go our own way instead of following God. We chose to follow the siren song of “You shall be like God” and ever since we have attempted to create heaven on earth. All we have succeeded in doing is to open the gates of Hell instead. A case in point would be the age-old question, if God is good why is there evil in the world followed by the age-old answer God gave us free choice and we chose evil.
With the help and guidance of those who seek to play god themselves humanity has often been convinced to surrender their freedom for security, to bargain away their God-given nature and assume the subservient nature of slaves.
In America the purveyors of socialism cloak their designs in the language of populism. They loudly proclaim that they seek a fair deal for everyone, except of course for the people they intend to loot. They want fair elections as long as nothing is done to stop fraudulent voting. They want equality enforced by unequal treatment. In other words they seek to build the kingdom of man where they can be king.
We have a mind to think and the capacity to make a free choice. As the day of reckoning draws near all I can recommend is, think and choose. We can choose to follow the path of redistribution, class warfare, and collectivist dependency or we can choose to at least attempt a return to limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom. Don’t be fooled by the progressive media and their obvious bias. To be free is God’s design. For us to be a slave to dependency is man’s.
One of America’s most beloved troubadours told us, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls” and one of those secular prophets he was referring to reminded us “You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
Or as my favorite book says it, “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
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
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: America’s decline, Cold War, culture wars, Dr. Robert Owens, Economic collapse, Obama’s agenda
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 