A lesson from history

Many of us can well remember the tumultuous years of the 1960’s and 70’s, with the never ending war in Vietnam, the racial hatreds, incessant riots, civil disobedience, “Urban Guerillas” national disunity, the Kennedy and King assignations, dirty tricks in national politics, and a presidential resignation. Shortly thereafter we ran full tilt into an oil shortage, rapidly escalating prices, the Iran hostage crisis, and finally the economic slump of the early 1980’s. In many ways most of us would probably prefer to forget that era completely, but still, we somehow managed to survive the times. Yet that “bad times” era certainly could have been a lot worse, I think I learned a lot from it, and the nation should have as well. Still, the ongoing revision of American history in recent years (generally done by leftist academics trying to make the US out the bad guys, or to “prove” some social or political theory), has only denied those lessons, promoted a great disservice to the American people, and left a lie for future generations to study. Those were momentous times in the history of our nation and should be presented to us and to future generations as they actually happened.

The “baggage” we carry around with us… our memories, experiences, and our knowledge of the past… our history in other words, is what makes us the people and the nation we are. And I would think that history might have a bearing on who we select as the leaders of our nation, based on what was done, right or wrong, in the past. The wisdom of past experience should be expected to show in today’s decisions. Today we’re saddled with a historic debt, two wars, health care issues, a weak dollar, an all-time high prison population, skyrocketing Federal spending, faltering social security, bank foreclosures, and a crashing economy, making this a critical election year. Had they known they were about to face all those problems, I wonder if Senators McCain or Obama would have decided to forget all about running for office this time around! For those interested, history shows us that whoever gets the job is going to take a beating, and the party in power is really going to take a real heavy hit!

With the president at the wheel, he is the first one blamed if things go wrong. But, if you think the President actually has the power to change things, you're sadly mistaken. The President is little more than a talking head, while the Senate is charged with government oversight and the House determines government spending, leaving the president to beg, plead, and cajole for whatever program he believes best. It's the people we send to Congress that are going to make things happen for good or ill. When you look at the failing economy, remember that congress has been headed by the Democrats for the last 2 years. Yes, it took much more than two years for our economic crisis to gather steam, but it was started by left wing economic policies, and the far left politicians have had their hand on the throttle for years. Now, they want to “change” things, with even more taxes, more government spending, and more government interference in our daily lives.

The Crash of ’29 was caused, plain and simple, by greed in the business sector. Credit was cheap, to many people jumped on the stock market bandwagon with that cheap credit, and when the bills came due, there wasn’t any hard money to pay them with. (Credit is after all, nothing more than a promissory note.) The folks jumping out of Wall St. windows weren’t the financial fat cats of the day, but rather the little guys who suddenly found they’d pawned the kid’s future on harebrained schemes. We’re looking at a similar situation today, in that far to many people jumped into a rather shaky investment market in the hopes of getting rich quick. When the housing bubble popped it took much of that investment business down with it. Neither the president or congress had much, if any, control over that. We can blame the Federal Reserve in part, for constantly tinkering with interest rates, rather than simply letting the market find it’s own level, but the Fed is a semi-autonomous part of the government that pretty well does what it wants. We can blame the Treasury Department for not properly regulating Wall St., but Congress had long ago ended much of that oversight authority. We might also keep in mind that the economy had been growing slowly but steadily throughout the Bush administration. Blaming the Republicans, the President, and “greedy corporations” for all the bad things that are happening in our world is nothing but a nice way to shift the responsibility away from the lousy job Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Democratic Congress have done with the mandate given them two years ago. Or at least they claimed they had a mandate when they took control of congress.

In the aftermath of the ’29 crash, Americans floundered around a bit at the start, and then dug in their heels, joined hands, and went to work solving the problem for themselves. Friends, families, neighbors, and entire communities pretty well stuck together, supported each other, and began rebuilding. The government started borrowing money and scattered it around with considerable fanfare, claiming that FDR’s brand of socialism was saving us. But what’s going to happen now if our economy continues to crumble? There’s not much money left for CCC and WPA projects, nor are we the people we once were, today we’re a “diverse” society remember, a random collection of strangers who usually don’t know each other, or even speak the same language, much less have common goals!

I'm registered as an independent, and for years I've voted for whomever I considered the best candidates from both Parties. If the Democrats can ever remember that they lost the last two elections because they keep shoving a far left agenda on us, and blaming everything on “knuckle dragging, trailer trash Christian fundamentalists”, I might consider voting for them again, sometime in the far future. Remember too that after 9/11 the Democrats were saying, “How is this our fault? How are we to blame for this?” while the Republicans were saying, “This is pure evil, and we need to fight this now.” Today, their “agent of change” is another elitist pushing a far left agenda, and who blames everything on “bitter working-class voters who cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations." No, I’ll remember past experiences, and again vote for the person who will best accomplish what I want done. I wouldn't vote for Sen. Obama as president as he’s not likely to change the things I want changed. I’m not overly happy with Sen. McCain either, but I have a fair idea of how he’d handle things.

I’m also going to remember that the last three people the Democrats sent to the White House included a “good old boy” from Texas who gave us a major war and divided the nation, a peanut farmer from Georgia who gave us some failed social programs along with the Iranian situation, and lastly a slick talker from Arkansas who saw nothing wrong with chasing interns around the Oval Office. Now they want us to elect a far left radical from Chicago!