Posted on 09/01/2012 6:37:39 PM PDT by joanie-f
Think back on the way the early Americans lived. Consider the quality of life, if you will, of the early pioneers who crossed the country in small covered wagons, who staked a claim to a small piece of land somewhere in the midwest or west, and who spent the next many years living off the land, growing their own food, hunting for meat, caring for sick family members, often without the aid of doctors or other medical practitioners.
These were our forebears. They didn't have the luxury of concerning themselves with those things that today's Americans place at the top of their list of concerns: the job market, affordable medical coverage, the unemployment rate, and the like. Those who came before us were busy doing what they had to do to simply survive from day to day, defending their freedoms, staking out and protecting what was theirs, and defining and facing down enemies.
With the election nearing, we consistently hear both the American electorate, and those running for office, discussing what they perceive as the most pressing issues of the day. Invariably, the issues that tend to top that list are economic ones: the ailing jobs market, high unemployment numbers, the price of a gallon of gasoline, the national debt, the declining net worth of the average American family.
Indeed, all one has to do this week is listen to the speeches at the Republican convention to verify that those domestic economic issues are at the forefront of the nation's consciousness.
I suggest that placing those issues on top of our list of national priorities is representative of short-sightedness at its worst, and we would all be significantly better off if we stepped back and looked at the big picture. If we continue to refuse to do so, we ignore that big picture at great peril.
I will grant you that the American economy is faltering. The jobs picture is bleak. Unemployment is decimating our workforce and harming our families. Prices, especially the price of gasoline, are rising and will continue to do so without the implementation of rational economic policies. Our government spending spree has placed a burden on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren that is beyond shameful. Yet all of these concerns are relatively fleeting, and reversible, under the right leadership.
At the same time, there are three glaring crises facing this country which, if not soon addressed, and if not soon brought into the forefront of the national consciousness, will not be reversed, and may prove fatal to the American experiment itself. Those three crises are embodied in (1) our dramatic loss of personal liberty, (2) the erosion of our national sovereignty, and (3) the threat of radical Islam to our very survival as a people.
Americans' personal liberties have been usurped at an unprecedented rate over the past four years. The oppressive regulations, mandates, penalties and fines contained in Obamacare alone are mind-boggling. Add to that the mountain of regulations that have been placed on the business community through edicts handed down from the administration itself, as well as its agencies (the EPA being among the most flagrant abusers of centralized power) and we find ourselves handcuffed by a government that appears to believe that its relationship to the citizenry is that of master/slave. Such blatant usurpations of individual liberties rarely retrace themselves in the history of mankind.
Likewise, our national sovereignty has been compromised in ways that many Americans seem to not even recognize. This president has sought to cede, and has in many ways succeeded in ceding, much of our sovereign power to global entities, with the United Nations being the primary power beneficiary. Additionally, our southern border remains porous, and there is no accounting for the thousands of people who cross that border every week: Mexicans seeking a new home, and terrorists seeking God only knows what. A nation is no longer sovereign when its government refuses to protect its borders from infiltration by unknown entities.
In these past four years, our president has bypassed the congress and effectively declared war on several countries. The result has been political instability in each case, and the seizure of power by radical Islamist elements. The power of the Muslim Brotherhood alone has risen exponentially, thanks to the president's foreign policy/war interventions. The American president is emboldening radical Islam, a "religion" whose stated destiny includes the destruction of America and her allies.
All three of the relatively unacknowledged crises that face America -- our loss of personal liberty, the erosion of our national sovereignty, and the dramatic rise in the power and breadth of radical Islam -- will eventually threaten our very lives. The more tyrannical a government becomes, the less it values human life. The loss of a national identity, and national borders, will lead to eventual dissolution of the fabric of society, unrest and violence. And ignoring, even encouraging, the rise of a violent, radical, powerful enemy is nothing less than suicidal.
An ailing economy is repairable. The process may require some temporary quality of life sacrifices, but the reward will be worth the sacrifice. The loss of freedom, the loss of national identity, and the refusal to face a deadly enemy threatens irreversible destruction, with the result being an America that we no longer recognize, and an America that our Founders would have sought to flee in search of a better place, a place where liberty is valued, where national identity and borders are respected, and where leaders face down enemies rather than emboldening them.
I suggest that it is time we Americans stop looking at the quality-of-life problems that we face each day and begin looking at the threat-to-life problems that are looming just over the horizon as a result of a government that seeks to enslave us, refuses to protect us from invaders, and emboldens our enemies.
My congressman introduced legislation that would require he and his colleagues to spend no less than 20 days in their districts. Naturally his colleagues decided they’re too busy spending money to do something like that.
Well, Uncle Sam does need to come closer to losing a third of the debt over a decade. Let states manage their own affairs, as they can compete for residents. It’s not possible to do that when there is only one Uncle Sam.
If I were king, I would come up with a nannydom rating — unproductive or antiproductive meddling — for every US government effort, and start cutting if not eliminating the nanniest programs first. That is hurting the ability of the people to prosper. A prosperous people would furnish more absolute revenue in taxes — the familiar Laffer curve peak.
Can’t argue with that!
Well as Mr.Eastwood said..they work for us...Maybe we should remind them.
Because our lives are becoming void of the things that make life worth living. Good carpeting, great food, and a nice car, don’t feed the soul, it doesn’t replace the sense of being a conquered tribe, a disappearing people as we watch centuries of hard earned advancement and growth, turned into looted husks, and burned out shells, all to be forgotten soon.
I would rather be living in poverty in the past when American eyes glittered with the meaning and the hope of life, with national pride, with faith in their fellow American and a spiritual awareness that we were a special people, and that it was our time in history, and that we were part of a culture that was literally marching to the stars, and that we could save the less free, the non-westernized corners of the world, not that we would be colonized, and eventually erased by them.
There are two ways in which Islam could bring America to her knees:
(1) Through the acquisition of chemical/biological/nulcear agents/weapons -- all of which can be brought across our porous borders. There is no need for strategic weaponry to deliver these mass destructive agents.
(2) Political correctness consistently prevents us from discussing the potentially devastating effects of Muslim infiltration of our society. But all we need do is take a serious look at England, France and the rest of Europe to see where our future lies. We, as Americans, have a short attention span. To radical Islam, a hundred years is the blink of an eye, as long as their goals are eventually met.
Sorry...I make all my own decisions. My mom told me to.
Amen.
Better a free poor man than a rich man in chains.
I think “Kane” is the greatest movie ever made.
People are still trying to figure out how Welles got some of the shots he did.
Agreed. I've probably seen it a dozen times.
What about skyrocketing economic growth? I’m in the sportfish market and we are projecting 30 to 50% growth year over year the next 10 years if we can just get predictability in the tax code. If the socialists knew how much income would be created by a flat tax or national sales tax they would crawl up a gnats ass to make it happen.
>>I would rather be living in poverty in the past
That’s the funny thing about “poverty” in modern America. The poor today live with more luxuries than I had as a child in a 1970’s middle class family with a blue collar dad and stay-at-home mom. Even with Jimmy Carter’s malaise, we were happy with what we had.
Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense.Therefore, if the economic problems are not solved, neither will the problems of defense of the country from enemies both without and within.
What is the mechanism by which you think Islam will destroy us as a people?
///
the Muslim Brotherhood, has laid this out,
in very detailed specific plans,
that were captured in law enforcement raids.
(and i’ve personally heard similar things,
INSIDE the masjid)
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i have links (mostly from others like Bayouranger),
to this, in my profile.
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and France alone, has about 10 million Muslims,
living at taxpayer expense, in what are virtually independent Muslim colonies.
seems like the plan is working pretty well.
Don’t say “no capability”. Especially since Iran is building their nuclear umbrella with complete impunity, and Hezbollah has been sneaking over the Mexican border with equal impunity for ages.
ABC weaponry can certain do great damage. Though deploying them effectively is not really that easy.
But your claim was not that they would hurt us, but that they would destroy us as a people. Even a dozen nukes set off in our major cities could not come close to “destroying” us, not even to the extent of defeating us militarily.
It would no doubt piss us off, and Islamists around the world would quickly discover that their major military asset has been our unwillingness to be “mean.”
In this regard, I recommend “Caliphate,” a dystopic novel by Tom Kratman, where this is essentially what has happened. It doesn’t turn out well for the ragheads.
http://www.tomkratman.com/asod.html
The single method by which they could, in theory, destroy our society is by developing a true super-plague biological weapon. But it of course would also destroy their societies.
Muslims are infiltrating our society, and many of them have evil intent. But it is also a fact that many of their young people are seduced by our society, making any inter-generational conquest problematic.
In any case, Muslims cannot conquer us unless we quite allow them to. IOW, they aren’t capable of murdering us, although we are quite capable of committing suicide.
A. Lincoln at the age of 28: “ At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm
If Abe was correct, as I firmly believe, then it is foolish to waste effort obsessing about imaginary external threats. Our problems are internal, as are their solutions.
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