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Posted on 08/21/2009 5:26:37 AM PDT by SJackson
I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life.
I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?
We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy.. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x ten! And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.)
Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.
This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning..
As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the “savior” was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative “losers” read it right now.
And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did - regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course,
How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world. He did it with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and …. . .. change. And the people surely got what they voted for.
If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It’s all there in the history books.
So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy trouble maker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.
Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.
I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe—and why I believe it.
I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.
David Kaiser Jamestown , Rhode Island United States
David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C. , Albany , New York , and Dakar , Senegal . He attended Harvard University , graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.
He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College. He has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University . Kaiser’s latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.
The U.N.ing of America?
“I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe—and why I believe it.”
I totally agree with his assessments. But, welcome to the “fringe,VRWC, rabid____________(fill in the black)hater of progressive ideas,aka Dems)”. Oh yes and since they have put a token in as their leader-—add racist for daring to object to the destruction of the Constitution.
Hitler didn’t START with murdering millions of people.
He started with “economic recovery” and “healthcare for all”, and an inherent racism - yes, I’m calling 0bama a racist, he is. He hates white people.
And for having a bio which is difficult to dismiss as the ravings of a right wing nut.
More likely than analogies to the Reich, but I don't think The One can do it.
It just takes some effort to soften us up first so we (as a country) won't (or can't) interfere.
Kaiser doesn’t mention he’s of the Oliver Stone school of history that sees Kennedy’s assassination as an LBJ plot to “get us into” Vietnam. Sorry, but I think his analysis is tainted badly by that (unstated) fact alone.
Never in history has there been such a conflation of evil trends - economic, political, social/cultural, and spiritual - all coming to a head at the same time....
Those who blithely intone “We’ll get through this because we’ve always gotten through it before” are in for a very rude awakening....
Either he is channeling me or I wrote this article under an assumed name. These are precisely my thoughts.
Hear, hear! And pray for our country.
” WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! “
No - you’re just gonna wish you were dead...
There are worse things, after all.....
I work at a college as well. For over thirty years I have watched exactly what the author describes unfolding. It depressing.
The onset of the Second Age of Darkness.
Reading that brought a chill to my bones, I have had similar feelings for some time now. I firmly believe that evil has taken over the left and they are about death and despair. There is reason to have more hope than Germany did perhaps, we are better educated in terms of individual liberty...Americanism including a more solid Christian foundation. I think evil may have made his move too soon, another generation or two and then perhaps...but at this time there are too many of us who understand what is right and what is wrong. In any event, our near future will very probably see violence on a scale we have not seen for over a hundred years in the US. But, I do think we will prevail, we must...
We’re not Germans.
The breaks one of two ways.
Either it doesn’t happen and we bumble along like America always has.
Or it turns out even worse...
I think the first is the most likely scenario.
I agree totally with what is written, but apparently Snopes.com is saying Kaiser did not write this editorial. Firewalls are blocking me from researching further.
Unfortunately, rather than being bent on global conquest, Hussein is running a regime determined to destroy the United States and surrender to Islamists.
He may well be correct in sensing something big is coming. But a "serious student of history" like Mr. Kaiser should recognize the symptoms of a decadent society ... our problems really do boil down to that.
It will be a very dark and degenerate world when the United States is no more.
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