When Barack Obama assumed office last January, polling showed he had an approval rating of between 65 and 70 percent. Now, the “good feelings” that carried him to victory have faded away as is normal for most political officeholders, and Americans are split in their view of him. With a year of rising unemployment and continuing ideological battles over health care, Wall Street, and of course two wars, most polls show Mr. Obama at his lowest approval rating yet, about 48%. Mr. Obama’s declining popularity is having an effect on the nation’s political climate however, in that the conservative right has been steadily gaining ground after the serious drubbing they took a year ago. Essentially, the American voters, tired of wars and the Bush administration’s adoption of left wing “tax and spend” policies, took Mr. Obama’s battle cry of “Change” to heart. Unfortunately the radical left mistakenly considered their win a mandate to implement a number of far left policies including the “Obamacare” health care plan, the “Stimulus” economic plan and an equally unpopular “Cap-and-Trade” climate change proposal. So, once again the voters are rebelling. Effectively riding on Mr. Obama’s coat tails, his loss in popularity is not helping Democratic political hopefuls, and it’s already cost the Democrats their congressional supermajority.
As the pomp and circumstance fades into history, and Mr. Obama continues to loose what approval he had, we might want to remember that his decline began in a fight with American conservatives over the stimulus package. We might also remember that despite the voter turnout percentages that handed Mr. Obama the Oval Office, approximately three fifths of Americans are politically conservative to one extent or another, making them the single largest voting bloc in the country. “IF”, and I repeat “IF”, the nations conservatives will get up off the couch, get their act together, and go vote next November, they could quite easily hand the loony left (and the Democratic Party by association) the biggest defeat in political history, repudiating Americas experiment with socialism clear back to FDR’s New Deal! In that sense, activism from Fox News and the conservative Tea Party movement certainly is a good sign, as Mr. Obama's fate is tied directly to the economic reality of voters' lives. It’s all about the economy, and the economy show’s no sign of improving for the average voting age citizen. For that reason, the White House has indicated that it plans to focus on jobs and the deficit this year, hoping to claim credit as the economy comes back from last year's collapse. If the economy doesn't rebound, 2010 could be a very difficult political year for Mr. Obama, determining how much damage he’ll be able to do in the second half of his term, and whether or not he'll get a second one.
The lean toward socialism in this country makes it seem that the more of our precious liberty we lose, the less we are able to understand its value. Americans no longer remember a world in which we could be reasonably secure in our life, liberty, and property without a government invasion of our privacy at every step. Nor do people remember that nearly all of our current problems were caused by that government intervention in our lives. The problem is that the less freedom we have, the less they are willing to fight for its restoration. We’ve lived through regime after regime since the 1930s in which the word freedom has been a rhetoric principle only, and each new regime has taken away ever more freedom. Now we have a president who doesn’t even bother to pay lip service to the idea of freedom. In fact, I don’t think the concept of personal freedom has ever occurred to Mr. Obama. If it has, he must have rejected it as dangerous, unfair, unequal, irresponsible, or something along that line. To him, and many Americans, government is nothing more than an extension of the personal wishes of those in charge.
And yet the demonstrated conservative disapproval, and the creation of the Tea Party movement, has failed to spur the “mainstream” Republican Party to reconsidering their “big government – big money” course of action. Scott Brown's victory could portend an epic shakeup in November, and while that may sound far-fetched, it’s no more so than a Republican with a connection to the Tea Party movement winning Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts. A few dedicated conservatives, somewhat shakily organized, made that victory possible. They have the experience, and the knowledge, of the consequences of turning the other cheek. We have seen what happens in a world where the "few" govern the "many". And it's not going to happen here as long as we do not roll over and stay silent. There is going to be a non-violent revolution in this country in the not to far distant future, and we are going to be asked to come forward with solutions. So be prepared, you will in some small way be involved in helping to re-shape and fix this broken system for our grandchildren. Start by pounding on your elected representative’s desks until you get their attention, or get a ticket for public nuisance. (If the latter happens, send a picture and your story to Bill O'Reilly) Don't strike the colors and fade away, organize. Express your anger in every way you can and make them listen. Preaching to the choir does little good, but there are millions of not yet completely convinced Conservatives out there that you should be talking to, reminding them of our conservative values, and that "We have not yet begun to Fight".
Dunno about the rest of you, but I and my family certainly did not serve in the Uniform of this nation thru several wars so that we could now go away peacefully and let a few “social kooks" destroy our country.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
World President
"At such times it is not uncommon to find a multitude represented on the world's vast stage by a few men, just as in the theatre. They alone act amid universal immobility... it is astonishing to see how few, how weak, and how unworthy are the hands into which a great people can fall." -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
It’s funny that everything Mr. Obama says seems to have an “expiration” date on it. We have examples of his hypocrisy before he was elected, one being the promise of transparency regarding his socialized medicine scheme. Another was how he planned to destroy… “limit” the missile defense program. Then of course we were going to bring the troops home and “end the war”. A great example of political doublespeak is where he and his minions, continuously referred to him as a Christian (and even paraded Rev. Wright before the cameras), despite the fact that Mr. Obama was on record as having gone to school in Indonesia, where his school records prominently proclaim him a “Muslim”. According to Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim (which both his natural father and his stepfather were), you are a Muslim, period, and if you convert to Christianity you’re an apostate and sentenced to death. But strangely enough, that hasn’t happened to our man in the White House with the three Muslim names. Calling him a Muslim during the campaign was considered a “smear tactic”, and you weren’t allowed to use his middle name either. Then, after he “won” the election, it was again okay to speak of him by his three Muslim names.
Mr. Obama has very recently granted the International Police Force (Interpol), full diplomatic immunity within these United States. In other words, foreign police are now above the law in this country, wherein American police can’t stop them, search them, arrest them, or even question their motives. It sounds to me like Interpol can now wreak havoc on the American people, all the while sneering at our Constitutional rights, and doing so with the blessings of the White House! So now we have International Police looking over our shoulders, FEMA concentration camps being set up, the FBI is still spying on American citizens, a “National Police Force” (DHS) patrolling the streets… and all for what? Oh yea, to “make us safe from terrorists”. But apparently the Terrorists are the Tea Partiers, Veterans, Gun Owners, Republicans, Christians, and other assorted Patriots. Perhaps that’s what the Patriot act is all about, to round up and incarcerate American Patriots?
I’m having somewhat of a problem figuring out just what this guy’s game is, as it seems he has never stopped campaigning. Not all that long ago he was an unimportant backbencher in the Illinois legislature. He has since served a partial term in the U.S. Senate, where he spent most of his time campaigning for the Oval Office. (That’s certainly a meteoric rise to power!) He has never run for re-election, but has always used his present position as a boost for his next step. He’s still spending a lot of time giving major policy speeches, not only in the states, but around the globe as well. With that we might ask “What office is he running for?” I’ll also note that Mr. Obama is an ambitious, audacious man, enormously competitive, and quite ruthless at times. Factor in his obviously high intelligence, and the grandiosity revealed in his victory speech after winning the Democratic nomination (“This is the night when the oceans start to recede”), we glimpse a “conqueror” personality type that the world has known before, most notably in Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolph Hitler, men driven by ambition to world conquest, and naturally with themselves as supreme ruler.
With Mr. Obama’s election, the Tunisian daily ‘Al Chourouk’ plainly stated that "Today America elects "The President of the World." Well, if this is Mr. Obama’s goal, then it’s shared by quite a few people apparently. A Sept. ’09 poll reportedly taken by the BBC indicated that a large proportion of the world’s population favored Obama as world president! However, some of the nations where the poll ran included Russia, Kenya, India, China, and Jordan, which leaves me to wonder… He’s already there in his dreams of course, which is why he’s flying all over the planet giving policy speeches and apologizing to all and sundry for America being America, rather than staying home and working on our problems as we pay him to do. He’s happily destroying the very things that made us a world power in the first place, by emasculating our military, sending our industrial capability overseas, digging us into a financial hole we’ll never get out of, and quietly inviting the third world to come here and freely partake of our welfare largesse, probably so that they can join the “Obamacrat” army and bring about his socialist New World Order!
The American people are far too trusting of this usurper in the Oval Office… Here we have a man occupying the White House who doesn’t have memories of growing up in America, can’t prove where he was born, has no concept of American patriotism, seemingly hates our culture and traditions, and who was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the Arabic call to prayer is the ’sweetest sound on earth’. He holds the future of our nation in the palm of his hand, and the majority of the American people can’t get the least bit concerned about his motives!?
God help us…
It’s funny that everything Mr. Obama says seems to have an “expiration” date on it. We have examples of his hypocrisy before he was elected, one being the promise of transparency regarding his socialized medicine scheme. Another was how he planned to destroy… “limit” the missile defense program. Then of course we were going to bring the troops home and “end the war”. A great example of political doublespeak is where he and his minions, continuously referred to him as a Christian (and even paraded Rev. Wright before the cameras), despite the fact that Mr. Obama was on record as having gone to school in Indonesia, where his school records prominently proclaim him a “Muslim”. According to Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim (which both his natural father and his stepfather were), you are a Muslim, period, and if you convert to Christianity you’re an apostate and sentenced to death. But strangely enough, that hasn’t happened to our man in the White House with the three Muslim names. Calling him a Muslim during the campaign was considered a “smear tactic”, and you weren’t allowed to use his middle name either. Then, after he “won” the election, it was again okay to speak of him by his three Muslim names.
Mr. Obama has very recently granted the International Police Force (Interpol), full diplomatic immunity within these United States. In other words, foreign police are now above the law in this country, wherein American police can’t stop them, search them, arrest them, or even question their motives. It sounds to me like Interpol can now wreak havoc on the American people, all the while sneering at our Constitutional rights, and doing so with the blessings of the White House! So now we have International Police looking over our shoulders, FEMA concentration camps being set up, the FBI is still spying on American citizens, a “National Police Force” (DHS) patrolling the streets… and all for what? Oh yea, to “make us safe from terrorists”. But apparently the Terrorists are the Tea Partiers, Veterans, Gun Owners, Republicans, Christians, and other assorted Patriots. Perhaps that’s what the Patriot act is all about, to round up and incarcerate American Patriots?
I’m having somewhat of a problem figuring out just what this guy’s game is, as it seems he has never stopped campaigning. Not all that long ago he was an unimportant backbencher in the Illinois legislature. He has since served a partial term in the U.S. Senate, where he spent most of his time campaigning for the Oval Office. (That’s certainly a meteoric rise to power!) He has never run for re-election, but has always used his present position as a boost for his next step. He’s still spending a lot of time giving major policy speeches, not only in the states, but around the globe as well. With that we might ask “What office is he running for?” I’ll also note that Mr. Obama is an ambitious, audacious man, enormously competitive, and quite ruthless at times. Factor in his obviously high intelligence, and the grandiosity revealed in his victory speech after winning the Democratic nomination (“This is the night when the oceans start to recede”), we glimpse a “conqueror” personality type that the world has known before, most notably in Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolph Hitler, men driven by ambition to world conquest, and naturally with themselves as supreme ruler.
With Mr. Obama’s election, the Tunisian daily ‘Al Chourouk’ plainly stated that "Today America elects "The President of the World." Well, if this is Mr. Obama’s goal, then it’s shared by quite a few people apparently. A Sept. ’09 poll reportedly taken by the BBC indicated that a large proportion of the world’s population favored Obama as world president! However, some of the nations where the poll ran included Russia, Kenya, India, China, and Jordan, which leaves me to wonder… He’s already there in his dreams of course, which is why he’s flying all over the planet giving policy speeches and apologizing to all and sundry for America being America, rather than staying home and working on our problems as we pay him to do. He’s happily destroying the very things that made us a world power in the first place, by emasculating our military, sending our industrial capability overseas, digging us into a financial hole we’ll never get out of, and quietly inviting the third world to come here and freely partake of our welfare largesse, probably so that they can join the “Obamacrat” army and bring about his socialist New World Order!
The American people are far too trusting of this usurper in the Oval Office… Here we have a man occupying the White House who doesn’t have memories of growing up in America, can’t prove where he was born, has no concept of American patriotism, seemingly hates our culture and traditions, and who was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the Arabic call to prayer is the ’sweetest sound on earth’. He holds the future of our nation in the palm of his hand, and the majority of the American people can’t get the least bit concerned about his motives!?
God help us…
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Conspiracy Theory
Most people can't resist listening to all the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-out they may be, and then quickly denounce any such theory as untrue... or even downright lunacy. (We also hear the term “unpatriotic” bandied about by the mass media, particularly when some theory involves activities of the far left.) Half-baked “experts” are marched out in droves to prove or disprove many of these theories, and usually do little more than confuse the issue, while simple common sense often appears to have been left far behind. It’s common for "hit pieces" to pick apart extremely fringe and not very popular theories, which in turn makes all conspiracies on a particular subject look crazy. Skeptics magazine and Popular Mechanics did this with their 9/11 investigation. Referring to less than 10% of the many ideas around, they picked the highly improbable points that only few people believed, and used them as a "final investigation" for looking into the disaster. With this, they again proved that the wilder the theory, the easier it is to debunk (and thus put a bad light on all theories about the subject).
“Conspiracy theory” was originally a term used to describe any unproven claim of civil, criminal, or political conspiracy. However, in recent times it has come to refer to any fringe idea which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot of almost superhuman power, authority, and/or cunning. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end." Thus, nearly any planning or activity can be properly described as a conspiracy if it is not held up to the light of day, and can range from two kids figuring out a way to heist a candy bar from the neighbor kid to a secret military, banking, and political action aimed at stealing power, money, and freedom from "the people". To many, conspiracy theories are nothing more than a component of human nature, for after all, not everyone is honest, hard working, and straightforward about their dealings or intentions. So how did “conspiracy theory” get grouped with fiction, fantasy and folklore? As one pundit says, “Maybe that’s a conspiracy”.
If we look into conspiracy theories, we’ll find that thinking about a conspiracy is usually considered somewhat akin to lunacy and paranoia by the establishment. Some people even consider it an illness. It’s not surprising to see people writing about conspiracy theories using with the words "crack pot," or "nut job" in their discourse and often say something along the lines of, "for these conspiracies to be true, you would need hundreds if not thousands of people to be involved. It's just not conceivable." Still, it’s odd that these writers assume there must be thousands of participants in a conspiracy when I can hardly believe that any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people could remain secret very long. True, thousands may unknowingly be involved, but actually only a very few really have any idea of what’s going on. Remember that the chance of anything remaining a secret is inversely proportional to the number of people who know about it.
The fact remains however, that there have been conspiracies, proven, and not made up, since time immemorial. The Roman Empire was little more than an open conspiracy to take over the world, and it very nearly succeeded. Remember the plot to kill Hitler? Or how about the “Business Plot” of 1933, wherein a group of wealthy American businessmen that included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against FDR, and install a dictatorship in the United States. Apparently none of the masterminds noticed that their point man was an active FDR supporter, who soon spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee acknowledged the existence of the conspiracy which had never gotten past the planning stage. In their report, the Congressional committee supported Butler's allegations, but for political reasons no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter largely was forgotten.
Humm… How many of today’s conspiracy theories are nothing more than oddball ideas… and how many others have a strong basis of truth? After all, if I believed in conspiracy theories, I’d believe that today’s far left is making every effort to drag us kicking and screaming into "one world government" and global socialism. If I believed in conspiracy theories, I’d believe they’re succeeding!
“Conspiracy theory” was originally a term used to describe any unproven claim of civil, criminal, or political conspiracy. However, in recent times it has come to refer to any fringe idea which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot of almost superhuman power, authority, and/or cunning. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end." Thus, nearly any planning or activity can be properly described as a conspiracy if it is not held up to the light of day, and can range from two kids figuring out a way to heist a candy bar from the neighbor kid to a secret military, banking, and political action aimed at stealing power, money, and freedom from "the people". To many, conspiracy theories are nothing more than a component of human nature, for after all, not everyone is honest, hard working, and straightforward about their dealings or intentions. So how did “conspiracy theory” get grouped with fiction, fantasy and folklore? As one pundit says, “Maybe that’s a conspiracy”.
If we look into conspiracy theories, we’ll find that thinking about a conspiracy is usually considered somewhat akin to lunacy and paranoia by the establishment. Some people even consider it an illness. It’s not surprising to see people writing about conspiracy theories using with the words "crack pot," or "nut job" in their discourse and often say something along the lines of, "for these conspiracies to be true, you would need hundreds if not thousands of people to be involved. It's just not conceivable." Still, it’s odd that these writers assume there must be thousands of participants in a conspiracy when I can hardly believe that any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people could remain secret very long. True, thousands may unknowingly be involved, but actually only a very few really have any idea of what’s going on. Remember that the chance of anything remaining a secret is inversely proportional to the number of people who know about it.
The fact remains however, that there have been conspiracies, proven, and not made up, since time immemorial. The Roman Empire was little more than an open conspiracy to take over the world, and it very nearly succeeded. Remember the plot to kill Hitler? Or how about the “Business Plot” of 1933, wherein a group of wealthy American businessmen that included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against FDR, and install a dictatorship in the United States. Apparently none of the masterminds noticed that their point man was an active FDR supporter, who soon spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee acknowledged the existence of the conspiracy which had never gotten past the planning stage. In their report, the Congressional committee supported Butler's allegations, but for political reasons no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter largely was forgotten.
Humm… How many of today’s conspiracy theories are nothing more than oddball ideas… and how many others have a strong basis of truth? After all, if I believed in conspiracy theories, I’d believe that today’s far left is making every effort to drag us kicking and screaming into "one world government" and global socialism. If I believed in conspiracy theories, I’d believe they’re succeeding!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Divisive Troubles
As the political party currently in power, one would think that the Democrats could pass just about any legislation they desired. But, even with a Democrat sitting in the White House (well… maybe in Hawaii), and a democratic majority in both the Senate and House, it appears that an already difficult situation is getting worse as the 2010 political season begins. Four House Democrats have recently announced they would not seek re-election, bringing to 11 the retirements that leave Democratic-held seats vulnerable to Republicans, and even more are expected according to analysts. In the Senate, at least four Democrats, including Harry Reid and Chris Dodd are in serious trouble. The party could also lose its grip on the seats Obama held in Illinois and that Joe Biden occupied in Delaware. Over the holiday break, Democratic freshman Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama defected to the GOP as well, stating that "I can no longer align myself with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy, and drives us further and further into debt." At present the Democrats hold a 257-178 majority in the House and an effective 60-40 majority in the Senate, including Independents who generally side with the Democrat line. The one thing that that cheers the Democrats is that most voters don't think much of the GOP either, which lacks money, an effective leader, and is facing a conservative revolt. Both parties should be concerned about a hostile electorate worried about the unemployment rate, the economy, who are weary of wars, and who are genuinely angry at nearly all politicians.
The Democrats will likely lose a lot of support (and power in Congress), because they have enraged much of the public with their refusal to listen when the voters say no to health care. The “Trillion Dollar President” can see his approval rating going by the wayside, and its decline is due to his insistence on an unpopular health care program, along with his program of printing a few trillion essentially worthless dollars, shipping them off to Wall Street, and shrugging at a skyrocketing deficit. Every initiative that the Democrats care about is now seriously threatened by the situation the far left “Crusaders” have put their fellow Democrats in.
Perhaps Mr. Obama should study a bit of history before he insists on even more socialist government. Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a recent study that New Deal policies stymied economic recovery for seven years! "Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chairman of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies." Our political Right, and the Moderate center, have clearly said “NO” to the health care reform, just as they did to President Clinton’s health care plan.
But Crusaders won’t listen to words of caution or of warning. They are after all, on a mission from God. And the leaders of those Crusaders tell their followers to ignore the political cost, as this is a moral battle after all! But just maybe the mainstream Republicans are finally waking up to the facts of today’s political life. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is admitting where they've gone wrong in the past. Apparently recognizing that Regan and Goldwater haven’t gone away, he recently said that "Republicans gave in to big government, and we paid the price. It wasn't the fault of our ideals. It was the failure of our leaders to live up to them." Now, “we must return to the principles of the Founders, principles of small government, economic freedom, lower taxes and renewed commitment to personal responsibility for oneself and one's family.” The American people don't want socialized health care, invasive "green" initiatives, or burdensome new taxes, says Steele, and Republicans in Washington have to start listening.
We can only hope…
The Democrats will likely lose a lot of support (and power in Congress), because they have enraged much of the public with their refusal to listen when the voters say no to health care. The “Trillion Dollar President” can see his approval rating going by the wayside, and its decline is due to his insistence on an unpopular health care program, along with his program of printing a few trillion essentially worthless dollars, shipping them off to Wall Street, and shrugging at a skyrocketing deficit. Every initiative that the Democrats care about is now seriously threatened by the situation the far left “Crusaders” have put their fellow Democrats in.
Perhaps Mr. Obama should study a bit of history before he insists on even more socialist government. Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a recent study that New Deal policies stymied economic recovery for seven years! "Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chairman of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies." Our political Right, and the Moderate center, have clearly said “NO” to the health care reform, just as they did to President Clinton’s health care plan.
But Crusaders won’t listen to words of caution or of warning. They are after all, on a mission from God. And the leaders of those Crusaders tell their followers to ignore the political cost, as this is a moral battle after all! But just maybe the mainstream Republicans are finally waking up to the facts of today’s political life. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is admitting where they've gone wrong in the past. Apparently recognizing that Regan and Goldwater haven’t gone away, he recently said that "Republicans gave in to big government, and we paid the price. It wasn't the fault of our ideals. It was the failure of our leaders to live up to them." Now, “we must return to the principles of the Founders, principles of small government, economic freedom, lower taxes and renewed commitment to personal responsibility for oneself and one's family.” The American people don't want socialized health care, invasive "green" initiatives, or burdensome new taxes, says Steele, and Republicans in Washington have to start listening.
We can only hope…
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Obamamania?
If you can believe the news reports, e-mails from assorted political organizations, and ordinary discussion with friends, neighbors, relatives, or even total strangers, Americans are getting completely fed-up with conditions in this country today. Politically we’re about as divided as we’ve ever been throughout our history, with a lot of serious talk of succession. We’re threatened by common criminals, Mexican drug cartels, and Moslem terrorists. Our government seems riddled with corruption and favoritism, while our elected representatives carry on like there’ll be no tomorrow (do they know something I don’t?). Morality seems a thing of the past, and we appear to be developing a hedonistic culture where anything goes. Our economy is on the rocks, unemployment is at record levels, the national deficit is skyrocketing, and we’re in the midst of yet another unpopular war. Personal income is plummeting while living expenses are out of sight and still increasing. Conservative and Liberal extremists are at each others throats, with even the moderates being forced to take sides. All in all, it’s not a very pretty picture, and our “bright and shining future” looks rather tarnished at the moment.
One of the reasons that I’m interested in history is that I like to know why things happen as they do, where we go from here, and what can be done about it. So what happened, or is happening? Judge Robert Bork considers the issue to be a combination of boredom brought about by technology, the weakening of religious beliefs, and the “Rise of the Olympians”, an intellectual elite that believes they are the enlightened few who are in business to spread their viewpoint to all “lower classes”, by force if necessary. This is of course a highly simplified version of his complex dissertation.
Technology, in the form of labor saving devices, has relieved us of dawn to dusk exertion of just a few decades ago. Unfortunately, “spare time” leads to boredom, when we fail to find something productive to occupy that time, and boredom inevitably leads to trouble. (Think teenagers with “nothing to do”.) With that technology comes the fact that fewer people are needed on the farms. So, the folks who used to be farm hands eventually migrate to the cities in search of work, and what used to be a hard working rural population becomes an urban population that may or may not be on the dole, and may or may not be spending their time in the local pub. At the same time, when your greatest worry is a temporary failure of the cable TV system instead of a potential crop failure and starvation, religion seems to hold little appeal to most people. And with the decline in religious beliefs comes a matching decline in morality.
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, did a study of national demographics, and points out some interesting facts concerning last November's election, and the “who voted for who” differences:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..." In short, Obama territory was the densely populated crime ridden inner cities and their environs.
It would seem that today we’re no longer a hard working, churchgoing, mostly rural country. Today, well over half our population consists of urbanites. Professor Olson also believes the United States is presently somewhere between the "complacency” and the “apathy" phases of democracy, with nearly forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" stage, and things look to get a lot worse before they improve. ‘Course the “inevitable march of civilization” is a very ponderous, slow moving process, and in reality there isn’t much that can be done to alter the things we don’t like about it. On the bright side, from my viewpoint at least, civilization is something that evolves over thousands of years, and I don’t expect to be around to see whatever the next stage will be in its entirety. But for today, if we ignore political events, and don’t put up a fight, we’re certainly going to fall victim to that future civilization, long before it’s time.
One of the reasons that I’m interested in history is that I like to know why things happen as they do, where we go from here, and what can be done about it. So what happened, or is happening? Judge Robert Bork considers the issue to be a combination of boredom brought about by technology, the weakening of religious beliefs, and the “Rise of the Olympians”, an intellectual elite that believes they are the enlightened few who are in business to spread their viewpoint to all “lower classes”, by force if necessary. This is of course a highly simplified version of his complex dissertation.
Technology, in the form of labor saving devices, has relieved us of dawn to dusk exertion of just a few decades ago. Unfortunately, “spare time” leads to boredom, when we fail to find something productive to occupy that time, and boredom inevitably leads to trouble. (Think teenagers with “nothing to do”.) With that technology comes the fact that fewer people are needed on the farms. So, the folks who used to be farm hands eventually migrate to the cities in search of work, and what used to be a hard working rural population becomes an urban population that may or may not be on the dole, and may or may not be spending their time in the local pub. At the same time, when your greatest worry is a temporary failure of the cable TV system instead of a potential crop failure and starvation, religion seems to hold little appeal to most people. And with the decline in religious beliefs comes a matching decline in morality.
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, did a study of national demographics, and points out some interesting facts concerning last November's election, and the “who voted for who” differences:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..." In short, Obama territory was the densely populated crime ridden inner cities and their environs.
It would seem that today we’re no longer a hard working, churchgoing, mostly rural country. Today, well over half our population consists of urbanites. Professor Olson also believes the United States is presently somewhere between the "complacency” and the “apathy" phases of democracy, with nearly forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" stage, and things look to get a lot worse before they improve. ‘Course the “inevitable march of civilization” is a very ponderous, slow moving process, and in reality there isn’t much that can be done to alter the things we don’t like about it. On the bright side, from my viewpoint at least, civilization is something that evolves over thousands of years, and I don’t expect to be around to see whatever the next stage will be in its entirety. But for today, if we ignore political events, and don’t put up a fight, we’re certainly going to fall victim to that future civilization, long before it’s time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)