Let me project of my own perspective onto you. We're probably both middle-class, college-educated and often beyond, perhaps business owners or middle to high management. We probably live in suburbia in our own homes, and have sent or are sending our kids to college. We have a hobby, perhaps golf, and aspire to a decent retirement with some travel.
What do we have in common with anyone that you can think of in the Democrat party in positions of national office? What do we have in common with the intellectuals at Harvard who provide the intellectual rationalization for what the Democrats in national office do? What do we have in common with the Harvard educated, Democrat registered, financial elitists who are running our international banks and hedge funds? What do we have in common with the likes of Larry Summers who moves elegantly from Harvard Square to Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue? Do we have access to their information? Do we have access to their social circle? Do we have entry-level opportunities to aspire to their positions? Do these people in government and finance, and also at the top levels of media, see themselves as more connected to Lexington, Kentucky or London England?
Do you use the same language, I do not mean the same words I mean the same language of, as the people at Harvard use when they speak to elitists in finance, government, media, etc.? Does the word "amnesty" mean the same thing to you as it does to these people? Does the word "investment?" Do the words, "hope" and "change?" What about words like "free exercise of religion," "right to bear arms," "reserved to the states or to the people?"
When your children come back from the University to which you sent them hoping they would learn to read, write, think, debate, cipher, program, invent, and fear God, do you find them speaking another language, denying God and barely tolerating you? That is to be expected and has been the result of real education from time immemorial but there is a difference now, our children are not being educated but indoctrinated. Just as slick as that we have been defrauded and we are terrified not to send our next child into the same process to be defrauded again lest he miss the next step up life's ladder. Our universities are not designed to turn out Thomas Jeffersons but Barak Obamas; not Renaissance men but revolutionaries. Mostly, they are taught the new language, Orwell called it "Newspeak", we call it "Orwellian," which might entitle them to gain entry into the closed circle of elites. We thought we were sending them to university but we were in reality sending them to The Frankfurt School. Their new language is the badge of the indoctrination.
Raise your sights to even more rarefied heights and consider the likes of George Soros. Born in Hungary, evaded the Nazis as a teenage Jew, emigrated to England and graduated from the London School of Economics, turned against the country that took him in and educated him and broke the Bank of England. Acquired United States citizenship but seems to prefer to live in Europe and certainly does not confine himself to residency in America. Influenced the politics of many of the former Soviet republics to the point where he is regarded to be a persona non grata. Has invested part of his billions in influencing the American political process including elections and governance. And by the way, if you wish to invest in his Quantum fund, it is very unlikely that he would let you in. What fraction of the control over the Democratic Party that George Soros enjoys does your vote entitle you to? Are you more or less patriotic than George Soros? Can you believe that he would hesitate for a minute to break the bank of America? What part of the set of moral values held by George Soros do you share? How much has George Soros' money and influence diluted your share of stock in our corporate adventure called America? Can you rectify that at the ballot box?
When we are asked to cast our vote for one party or the other we are induced to react to and vote upon issues that are usually quite irrelevant to what should be our concerns. We vote against a sitting senator because he uttered the word "macaca" which no one then or now can satisfactorily define. We elect a president who uses words which he flatly refuses to define and which the media would not require him to define-after all he did not use the word, "macaca." We do this because the media has so conditioned us and funneled our ken to trivialities charged with emotional overtones. The electorate knows about Sarah Palin's children and grandchildren but do not know whether she is the vice presidential candidate of John McCain or of Barak Obama. We decide more politics in America on race than on any other consideration. Small wonder that the people who do not speak our language are content to fly over us figuratively, financially, politically, culturally, as well as literally.
Democrats lament an alleged growing gap between the very wealthy and the middle class in America and they express concerns for the plight of the lower middle class. They see these gaps in themselves as the problem. I see them as symptoms of the problem. The lower middle class does not attend college and does not learn to begin to speak the language. The middle and upper middle class attend college and have a grasp of the language, but are not let into the game. The elites become more and more detached, they begin to speak an even more and more insular dialect.
The gaps grow as a result of the breakdown of our institutions. When 40% of the graduating kids in Detroit can't read, when more than half the kids in Detroit will never graduate, the educational system at that level has utterly broken down. When whole sections of the country are immune to a two-party system such as Massachusetts or Chicago, the electoral process is broken down. When the entire financial industry must be flooded with trillions of dollars and taken over by the government, our financial system has broken down. When the courts become super legislatures and write in Orwellian language, our jurisprudence has broken down. When trillion dollar bills go through Congress unread, when lobbyists like Larry Summers can distribute hundreds of billions of dollars to their former associates, probity in government has broken down. When the House of Representatives is run by the Speaker in a fashion that would shock Sam Rayburn, governance is broken down. When one party rule effectively dominates two branches of government and extinguishes all opposition, the system of checks and balances has broken down. When the media abandons its proper role to become sycophants in favor of one party because of ideology and one candidate because of race, our very democracy itself has broken down.
Our democracy has moved by stages from a very restricted franchise of white men of property only to include everyone, whether seized of property or not. In practical terms "everyone" includes illegal aliens who are evidently now voting quite regularly and who dilute your franchise. So the power in government has moved from a Lockean conception, or even a conception of Rousseau, which is a collection of individual choices by people with a stake in society, to a society which is governed by money, influence, elitism, cronyism, and group collectivism. If you want to influence government effectively, the last place you should think of devoting your time and energy is in the casting of your own vote. Think George Soros. Think Walter Reuther. Think Jesse Jackson. Think Katie Couric. Think LaRaza. These people need not even trouble themselves to go to the polling place, they undo your vote a million times over every election. Political power in America has thus moved away from the ballot box. It is much more effective to organize, contribute and lobby than to vote.
From this state of affairs it becomes very easy to cease thinking as an American and begin to think-this will sound at least superficially to be contradictory-at once tribally and transnationally. As one who has been living three seasons every year here in Germany and one season in Florida for about 20 years, I see the world from a different platform today. Since the time of my birth the population of America has doubled. As a kid we had a party line and waited all day to get a phone call through to the relatives only 200 miles away on holidays. There was no interstate highway system and it took forever to travel those 200 miles.
Today, I can speak at no charge to anyone around the world on Skype and send a letter instantaneously also at no charge. The doubling of the population in America has distorted the democracy I was born into. The technological revolution has likewise distorted it. It has tended to make people think less in national terms and more in terms of web connections and airports. It is creating a culture of 21st-century transnational gypsies. It is instructive to see how the idea of nationalism has been practically washed out of the German character. Obama would like to do the same in America. He does not see America as the shining city on the hill, but as a sinister force abroad in the world. So the Germans here confine their nationalism to their soccer team now that they had to give up on their deutsche marks. If one does not think as a patriot, one thinks as a hobbyist, as a sports fan, as an industrialist, a financier, a hot shot with a new derivative fresh off the computer, as a salesman looking for markets, as a taxpayer looking for havens. In short, one thinks to protect his family, becomes tribal, and focuses his sights on evading the systems including the system of nationalism. The Germans were disillusioned by the nationalism of the Nazis and so that disillusionment accelerated this process. As Americans become disillusioned with their culture, their government, and their stake in the nation, we will see more and more John Gaults. So we become the oxymoron, like gypsies, internationalists of opportunity but tribal in loyalty.
We are all on our way to becoming small time George Soros. The smart money says get there first. The odds are against us as conservatives and patriots on Free Republic. When Whittaker Chambers defaulted communism and became a patriot he was sure he was joining the losing side. He thought the on-march of communism was irresistible. He did not foresee Ronald Reagan tearing down that wall. I confess, I see no Ronald Reagan on the horizon either. I hope I am as wrong as was Whittaker Chambers.
Good Sunday morning to you, the sun is shining here in Germany this morning and I intend to go out into the day smiling.
