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.
About fifteen years ago or so I worked with a guy who came from India. At lunch one day we were talking about the Philippines and I mentioned how the Muslims there were beginning to cause trouble and how they wanted to declare the island of Mindanao an independent Muslim state.
He laughed and said to me, “What did you expect, they do that everywhere they go. When they first immigrate to a country they are model citizens but once their population reaches a certain critical mass they demand that they want their own separate laws, separate courts, etc. When they get that then they start demanding their own states.”
He said to me, “This happened in India, is happening in the Philippines, and will happen here in the United Staes some day as well.”
Not entirely sure I get your point.
Japan is a pretty good illustration of what I’m trying to say.
They had every intent of taking over the entirety of SE Asia and running it as the Japanese Empire.
As it turned out, their intentions and ambitions greatly exceeded their capabilities, and they were conquered.
To a far greater extent, Islamist ambitions and intentions also exceed their capabilities.
At the start of the war, the Japanese had the world’s most largest and most efficent carrier attack force. Today, only one of our potential enemies, Russia, has even a single carrier to put into action against our 11.
The actual military capabilities of the Islamists groups are laughable in comparison.
Not entirely sure I get your point.
Japan is a pretty good illustration of what I’m trying to say.
They had every intent of taking over the entirety of SE Asia and running it as the Japanese Empire.
As it turned out, their intentions and ambitions greatly exceeded their capabilities, and they were conquered.
To a far greater extent, Islamist ambitions and intentions also exceed their capabilities.
At the start of the war, the Japanese had the world’s most largest and most efficent carrier attack force. Today, only one of our potential enemies, Russia, has even a single carrier to put into action against our 11.
The actual military capabilities of the Islamists groups are laughable in comparison.
The citizenry is screaming for the candidates to do something about the bleak jobs picture, and yet how many times do you hear either those citizens, or the politicians they are petitioning, even mention the word liberty? It's as if they are incapable of equating taxation and over-regulation with those segments of our ailing economy that both are destroying.
I have read Locke, Hayek and Smith (Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' is a masterpiece).
I guess you haven’t been listening. I heard many at the convention including Ryan and Romney talk about the government stomping down small businesses and the American work ethic and promise of a better tomorrow. Maybe they just aren’t saying itthe way you want them too but it is being said.
Take the necessary actions to free up the economy for real growth and all 3 of your concerns will begin to “heal”.
I have said for decades that another great depression or crash (which is what we have now) would be far worse than in the past for the reasons you both suggest. I am old enough to have some idea of what it took to just survive a few hundred years ago but while my youth would make most young people today crawl up in a corner and cry I don’t imagine that it came close to the hardships endured by those who came here on wooden ships as indentured servants.
When I try to imagine those I know who are young today ever spending their summer “vacation” from school walking back and forth across a field behind a plow as I did from the age of ten until I finished high school I cannot even picture it. They have no way to even begin to comprehend what that was like. I joined the Navy straight out of high school because I was looking for an easier life! But let me repeat, I am sure that my life was a bed of roses compared to what my great-grandfather endured. He turned seventeen in South Carolina the year the American civil war started. His life must have been hell on Earth for the most part.
Beautifully said.
You might be right, but people do what is expected of them or what is required. What is expected of young people today? Hardly anything. Occupy a chair in a high school? That’s about it. They certainly aren’t required to do well or to get jobs and become good citizens.
Maybe if the expectations were ramped up, then we’d see a turnaround. I’m not holding my breath, though.
I don't recall, but maybe you do, did we have ROE that prohibited us from bombing civilians, or anything like that?
A carrier is awesome if you choose to use the power, just a big floating hotel if you don't.
We have military power that is the envy of the world, but it is not military power we need fear, but the enemy within. ‘Jumah at the DNC’ Speaker: ‘Muslims Visited America Prior to Columbus’ & ‘It Was a Muslim’ Who Guided Him to the ‘New World’
It is far worse than I imagined. Far worse . . .
Stupid people talk about an enemy’s or a potential enemy’s intentions. Smart people talk about his capabilities.
Islamist military capability: essentially zero.
American military capability: If we decided to, we could kill every Islamist, and for that matter, every Muslim on the planet. And nobody could stop us by force. We just have no desire or intention, at present, to do so.
People who obsess about the Islamist military threat always seem to assume that if America lost a city, or half a dozen cities, to Muslim terrorists, we would continue to operate with our present “hands tied behind our backs” rules of engagement.
I don’t think so. If the ruling elite refused to respond vigorously (a euphemism for something close to genocide) the American people would remove them and install a new elite.
If this happens, which I fear is likely, it will be very bad for America and the world. The Islamists have absolutely no idea that they are playing with firecrackers in the powder magazine.
Unless we lose our nerve, always a possibility, America will be the last man standing in a war of this type.
As long as they’re serious about the cuts, and they actually HAPPEN, every little bit helps. They can’t cut TOO much at one time, or they’ll be thrown out too soon. Both Romney and Ryan have been saying it’s going to be painful, and everyone is going to be affected, in some way. They aren’t sugarcoating that; they’re speaking to us as though we’re adults! Of course the VERY rich won’t be really hurt, but they never are, but we can’t let class envy get in the way of doing what must be done.
Exactly what is your purpose in discussing our military capabilities, when islamic encroachment is already eating away at our every fiber of our society like a runaway cancer?
Are they paying you for your quisling misdirection?
Unfortunately, I am uncompensated.
Thank you, Captain Hyperbole, for your thoughts. There are very few Muslims in America, and even fewer of them are in the elite positions you describe. Far fewer than 1%, certainly.
I am perfectly in agreement with you that our society is in deep doo-doo. I am just able to see that Islam has almost nothing to do with our decline.
A good many of the elite sympathize with Islam and apologize for it, but again it has nothing at all do with their sympathy for Islam as such.
It is rather a symptom of their disdain for America and western culture. They do not oppose America because it is insufficiently Muslim or socialist, they sympathize with Islam, socialism, feminism, environmentalism, etc. because they see these movements as anti-American, which indeed they are.
My point is very simple. We are in the process of destroying ourselves because the leaders of our society are at the root opposed to it. Focusing on imaginary external threats is a distraction from being able to identify and defeat the real enemy within.
Islam would love to be a real threat to our society. However, it just isn’t. Due to its anti-science focus, general backwardness, not to mention the crappy performance of most Muslim warriors in combat, it is highly unlikely to become one.
“Maybe if the expectations were ramped up, then we’d see a turnaround. I’m not holding my breath, though.”
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I think you have described the problem, my parents expected more of me on a daily routine basis than what I was actually capable of doing sometimes, they expected me to be as capable at twelve years old as they had been and that was a tall order. Now what most would consider high expectations would be laughable to my parents’ generation.
We don’t expect much from children and wouldn’t even allow them to do the things children used to do if they begged for the chance. I have said many times that anyone today who would permit his children to do the things my older brother and I were expected to do would have government agents taking his children away from him in short order.
“Obamacare...EPA.”
Over the past few decades, our real work (manufacturing) was shut down and started again in foreign communist countries. The communists are praised by service business operators in league with our local political leaders and local government employees as being far better than us.
Our families were broken by local feminists/romanticists in their many-pronged efforts and our children taken away to be raised by government-support sociopaths.
Layers of local regulations were instituted to prevent working class families from building their own homes, even on remote properties in nearly unpopulated areas.
The local political/regulator class with its government connections, has enjoyed the decimation of its potential, domestic competition (other families with fathers—the men who once worked with their hands to keep the private sector running).
Nearly all who are currently financially well-to-do are getting their incomes directly or indirectly from big, socialist government (e.g., services that rely mostly on government employee/pensioner tourists as customers). That’s one reason that both political parties lean so far to the fiscal left while lying about it in now hysterical political speech. The reason for the same class being so far to the social left is that they are spoiled rotten.
Let the default process continue, until there is no domestic manufacturing at all to further sustain big, bipartisan, fascist government. Avoid unnecessary personal purchases. Become more self-sufficient each month. Learn to produce something of good use as a hobby for now. Have fun. Enjoy the slide.
EMP
Your points are well taken and without actually saying it(unless I missed it), you point to the larger issue, that is, our feral government is meddling in areas well outside its designed and enumerated powers. AND has been doing it since the ink was barely dry on our Contsitution, but that's another story for another day. NOTHING good can come of it.
I'm sure you've noticed the talking heads and flapping lips invariably ask, "What are the Republicans going to do about [enter Dim talking point of the day]". Many of the well meaning(?) "hosts" on FoxNews even engage in this charade. The implication of course is that they should do SOMETHING, when if fact they should be gutting government and getting it out of the way. In the political arena, doing NOTHING, even when our Constitution calls for it, has been made to seem so, well, old school.
A few speakers at the RNC convention were at least paying lip service to the notions of limited government and enumerated powers. They seem to be testing the waters of Constitutional government. Imagine that!!! Are they just talking the talk??? My hunch is we'll get a chance to test their oratory; sooner rather than later. I'm impatiently waiting to see what November brings. My gut feeling is that R & R, along with a new batch of conservatives in the house and senate, will be installed and we'll if they're also willing to walk the walk.
Best,
EXCELLENT!
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