American Restoration: What It Will Take
There is a constant refrain I hear at tea party events: “I fear my country, the America I love, is slipping away.” Is it possible that we are witnessing the incremental end of the American experiment? Is something formless and hollow replacing the land of the free and home of the brave?
I often hear people say the American dream is out of reach for their children: “They will not live as well as we have,” they worry. For many, there appears to be public disorder in the form of a grasping government and cultural fragmentation. Defining deviancy down — to use that well-worn Moynihan expression — seems to breed downward mobility and financial strain. This in turn seems to promote social dislocation and a working class transformed into an underclass.
There is little doubt that Americans have become more dependent on government to do the things they once embraced. Every discussion I’ve ever had about charity ends with the claim the government must do more to assist the poor. The idea that communities assist their own without government intervention is becoming a foreign concept.
And yet all is not lost despite the validity of some of these claims. Economic order can be restored if we have the will to do so. It will require belt tightening, a realistic assessment of public liabilities, and, most significantly, patience, since this is a problem that emerged over decades. Despite an unprecedented rate of illegitimacy, there are stable families in this land and these families need encouragement and support. This is a nation of families; to neglect them or deride their importance only serves to batter the building blocks of society. There are immigrants who want to be American. They want to share our values, speak our language, hold on to our Constitution, and admire our traditions. These are the people we should welcome to our shores. All is not lost.
But what we need is a vision, a vision that recognizes what we still have and what we must defend. My supply-side friends address the economic question with the lamentation that the market can solve what ails us. Surely markets are more effective in addressing issues than government engineers. But as I see it, our problem is mainly cultural. We need a spark to ignite the engines of productivity. People have to be excited about the future of their country. They have to be willing to defend and sacrifice because they know what is at stake if they don’t do so. As the Bible’s book of Proverbs indicates, “When there is no vision, a people perish.”
I would like to see the economic focus married to moral concerns. I would like to see the divisive issues of our day debated civilly so that divergent views can be heard. I would like to lower the temperature on public commentary so that the explosive takes a back seat to the calm and rational.
More than anything, we cannot rest on our laurels. We need a direction that looks back for guidance and looks forward for insight. No serious person ever underestimated American vitality, that energy stored in the body politic that rises to the occasion of national challenge.
Today, we have our challenges here and abroad. These challenges seem overwhelming. Can we prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Can we forestall the march of radical Islam? Can we keep accumulating debt without regard for the consequences? I don’t have the answers, but I do know there are answers that reside in the commonweal. These answers are to be found in our history, in our defense of liberty, and in our national resilience. We must turn the pages of our history with our eyes wide open. We must recognize the extent to which we have overcome difficulties in our past. After all, we as Americans tackle the difficult and welcome the impossible. All is not lost, and all will not be lost if we maintain faith in ourselves and a commitment to this great nation.
As the Bible’s book of Proverbs indicates, “When there is no vision, a people perish.”
Proverbs also teaches us how to survive against the harsh realities of life; especially when mankind decides that he is smarter than God, or that he can have the really good stuff life offers without obeying God’s Commandments or paying the fiddler to make music for the dance.
Beginning for the most part in the mid 1950s Americans sat back apathetically on their ever widening rear ends while the government set about incrementally removing God from our society.
We don’t have to earn by the sweat of our brow because the government will give us whatever we want, when we want it at no cost; except a vote at the next election of course.
We can drink, we can party, we can have sex, we can lie, we can steal, we can throw away our babies and old people; in fact we can do any damn thing we want to with no pain, no mess, no sacrifice and no bad longterm side effects. Why? Because the Constitution says so; guarantees it and if it doesn’t we will change the thing so that it does. Nothing can stand in the way of our perpetual rights of complete, government fortified greed, lust, power and profit enriched self gratification.
Debating things civilly is fine, but not when that is code crap for giving the illegal Hispanics here in our country amnesty as the solution for the problem. If you want to call in immigrant comparisons of the past don’t forget to mention that the preponderance of those folks came to America as willing contributors and givers.
They did not sneak under the fence at night with the idea of taking everything possible for themselves without rendering one dime to Caesar or ever becoming a citizen of Rome. They did not ask or expect the citizens of Rome to feel so downtrodden and bad for them that they turned over the keys to the gates and collapsed the walls of the Empire’s cities. And as the walls go so goes the economy.
There is one final thing to remember about the past and fixing the present.
In the good old days America had not yet seen a President in the Whitehouse that by his own mouth confesses hatred of America, Caucasians and Jews.
Nor did we have a nation unwilling to face that truth or the realization of what we had become at that point in time, while still believing that they can make everything okay with more sweet emotions and less bleeding.
Very good comment.
Extremely well said. Thank you.
The author, NYU? No surprise there. He blathers that “This is a nation of families”.
Well sir, have you not heard that 40% of babies in America are born to single parent (mother 99.9%) homes? That in the black community the ratio is 70%?
Crawl back up your ivory tower, Mr. London, and dream on. The America you seek disappeared a long, long time ago.
“Is something formless and hollow replacing the land of the free and home of the brave?”
Yes, it’s called “The European Social-Welfare State” and it’s coming to a town near you! Face it, with the liberal Democrats in power, they are hell-bent on turning us into France, where high taxes, high unemployment, a small and impotant military, low economic growth, and miserable productivity will be the new way of life in America. We already have the high debt that’s needed to fund the European social-welfare state, yet, ironically, we still don’t have nearly as many benefits offered by European countries, which shows you how “efficient” our government bureaucracy is. And, with socialized medicine just passed by Congress, just WAIT and see how high our national debt is going to get. That is, of course, unless some future Congress has the stones to bring a little sanity back to this situation and stops funding Obamacare.
But what I never, ever, understood about liberals in this country was why they were so anxious to be like the Europeans when almsot all of the European nations are broke? Why follow a terrible economic example like Greece? Almost all of the European nations are in deep, deep, financial trouble yet we can’t wait to be like them. All of the European social-welfare states have proved that socialism leads to bankruptcy, yet we can’t wait to spend even more money on this madness. So why do liberals want to do this?
Simple, it’s called “wealth redistribution,” and Obama let the mask slip when he admitted during the campaign that he wanted this to happen in America when he talked to Joe the Plumber. The liberals in America are probably one step above being out-and-out communists, although they would probably be happy under that form of government too. They don’t care if America goes bankrupt, they don’t care if we are turned into a third-rate power, they don’t care if we have lousy economic growth or high unemployment for years to come, what only matters is that everyone gets the same crappy health care and the same bloated benefits as everybody else. They would love to be as lazy and unproductive as the population in Greece, if it ment getting a ton of benefits, lots of paid vacation time, and being able to retire at 52. So what if the country goes bust, the population has no self-respect, it’s citizens all become wards of the state dependent on handouts to exist? Who cares, as long as I get what’s coming to me.
This is the world liberal democrats are comfortable living in. They would gladly give up all of our hard-earned rights just to be as mediocre and as unproductive as the average southern European. This is the essence of “Hope and Change” and, unless we chosen few can convince the rest of the nation that we are on the road to national suicide, then we really are finished as a world power. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama can all take credit in neutering the greatest country in history and they will declare success.
Don’t let this happen to us. Vote, convince others to vote, get active and throw these miserable bums out of office. Sure, we’re searching for today’s Ronald Reagan and, trust me, by 2012 we will find him OR her. Obama may be the second term of the Carter administration, but always remember who followed Carter into office: Ronald Reagan.
There is hope, but we’ll have to work hard for it. November is coming. Make it count.
Not all Socialist states are broke. As a friend from France observed, The southern states are flat broke. The temperate states are broke (like France), and the northern states (like Germany and Denmark) are doing well (if you like socialism). I’m convinced the only way forward is to move American socialism to the State level and out of the Federal Government (where it is blatantly unconstitutional). Many people truly prefer to have officials make (most) decisions for them, and it is not possible to get rid of socialism entirely – any more than the Founding Fathers could get rid of slavery. If we don’t have red and blue states under a limited Federal head, we will end up splitting into red and blue halves.
“Many people truly prefer to have officials make (most) decisions for them,”
I’ll counter your broadbrush generalization with one of my own: “Most people like to make their own decisions in life. Most people like controlling their own lives.”
“and it is not possible to get rid of socialism entirely”
The hell it ain’t! We lived just fine without it until progressivism showed is ugly face in our country in the early 1900′s.
“any more than the Founding Fathers could get rid of slavery.”
False argument. And by the way, we DID get rid of slavery. Just so you know.
Socialism at any level of government?
No thanks.
If by “doing well”, you mean have growth rates half of what the US has averaged and having a standard of living that is pathetic compared to more capitalist countries, then yes, Germany and the other Nordic states are “doing well”.
Like I said above, very good comment.
1. EDUCATION
I think that by any measure Eduction is the First Element of Freedom.
An educated man knows that greedy, unprincipled men and criminals will always attempt to seize control of government. And that if such scoundrels are allowed to succeed tyranny will result
and in tyranny any opposition to the tyranny will result in the sword.
Our group here, and at similar spots around the Web is all too well aware that government education has been used to effect the “dumbing down” of our children, aye the population generally to this point and that the population, bereft of sound education is easily manipulated by demagogues using television.
Recovery will not be easy
Recovery will require a correction to the education system and this will require good people to obtain control of Congress through regular elections
This is quite a Tall Bill of Goods. It will require communication and leadership: organization. Some groups are very good at this. But these are generally composed of driven people, too many of them being the greedy scoundrels and crooks who make their way by scamming instead of working.
I agree. It is the eduction of our children that is paramount for any long-term restoration of our republic.
We can tackle short-term objectives like the push to the November elections and taking back Congress with right of center candidates.
We can tackle medium-term objectives like getting federal spending down, taxes cut, and helping the economy.
But teaching proper history, civics, virtue, self-reliance MUST be integral.
We need a VISION of what it means to be an American.
i whole heartily concur!!!!!
Unless we get our education system back we are doomed. And really this means getting the Federal Government OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
It also means getting the state and local govts out of the schools as well.
I saw a short piece on the Swedish Welfare State. One thing they have that we don’t – school choice. Parents get vouchers to send their children to the school of their choice. Interesting.
You’re dreaming.
You’re a couple of generations too late.
Where were you when you were needed?
Counsel of despair ? Despair is a sin.
As long as the Golden Bubble of prosperity lasted
there was no way to oppose the corrosive influence
of Good Times on human society, even the exceptional
US society. With Hard Times approaching, and the first
effects visible on the horizon, the first steps can be
taken to repair as much of the damage as possible before
the storm hits; The question is, where do you, and I, stand
_now_: Leader, follower, or roadblock.
Nobody needs Eeyores like you. Not now, not ever.
Don’t deride or chastise someone for being born at an inopportune time.
Encourage them to keep interested.
If I’m a couple of generations too late, then by definition I wasn’t even born yet back when I was needed.
We as a country have lost God’s Blessing, when the moral decay began with legal abortion, killing 40+ millions babies without a conscience. It went downhill from there.
If, by “moral concerns,” you mean personal responsibility, individual initiative, and local governments that rely more upon themselves than their federal overlords, then I agree with you. If you mean emphasizing issues like abortion, opposition to gay marriage, and all-around holier-than-thou Bible-thumping, I vociferously disagree.
Today, America finds itself on the brink. Debt, entitlements, the accelerated concentration of power in Washington, and a complete disregard for the Constitution and its principles of limited government, federalism, and individual rights threaten to turn the US into a second-rate power that prospers only through the beneficence of its foreign creditors. Actually, we have probably already passed that point.
We can reclaim our country by telling people that they have the power to turn things around – that Americans are smart enough, inventive enough, and compassionate enough to take up the slack when we cut federal spending and scale back the role of Washington in our daily lives. That will be infinitely harder to accomplish if we beat them over the head with a Bible and concentrate on peripheral issues like abortion, gay marriage, premarital sex, etc.
Do the people who care about these moral issues ever stop to think that these things might be outside the purview of a constitutional, limited government? Beyond that, do they ever stop to consider that these problems might go away on their own if we scale government back to its constitutionally enumerated powers? These things have become issues precisely because government has exceeded its bounds. Using big government to correct them is not only wrong-headed, but short-sighted, as well.
I could not agree more with David Paitsel. I have functioned at high levels within a number of government institutions: Pacifica Radio, the radio panel of the National Endowment of the Arts, and have received grants from NEA and NEH. I know about the corruption of these institutions from the inside, and how federal policies have deformed our political culture. For details, see these blogs on my website: http://clarespark.com/2009/08/13/my-life-at-pacifica-radio-a-memoir-part-one/
http://clarespark.com/2009/08/18/storming-pacifica-revising-my-view-of-pacifica-history-july-22-1999/
http://clarespark.com/2009/08/14/my-life-at-pacifica-part-two-with-gory-details-and-more-on-identity/. If those conservatives who want big government to enforce their “traditionalist” values, I say you will only empower the Democratic Party indefinitely. Stick to fiscal conservatism and more local control and you will get the votes of Independents. Secular does not mean that religion is abolished, but that the state may not create a clerical establishment. Cultural pluralism has worked well in the past, don’t throw it overboard now. (And I don’t mean multiculturalism, dissected in my essays linked above.)
Pardon my syntax: I meant to say that those conservatives who, like Mr. London, think they can win on social issues, are courting certain defeat, for independents and neocons like myself will never acquiesce to a clerisy. I personally am socially liberal and fiscally conservative and am probably typical of many on the Center Right. I should add that government institutions like the FDA are essential for the preservation of life against snake oil salesmen of every kind.
The FDA hasn’t saved anyone and has resulted in the deaths of millions by keeping needed drugs off the market far longer than necessary, and by making the drugs that finally do get approved, much more expensive than would otherwise be the case.
PRivate regulation of drugs is both more efficient and more responsive to the needs of the population.
Examine the UL model to find out how private regulation can work.
Liberty. That is the core value. It is what makes Americans American. Put in negative terms, as leftists would belittle it, it is the demand to be left alone. And to leave others alone to pursue their own destiny, their own happiness. But it’s not negative at all. The desire, the need to go it alone and to leave others alone bespeaks a conviction that I’m up to the struggles of life and so are you. And dammit, how I get through life is my business, not a busybody control freak gummint’s business. Return liberty to its rightful place as THE defining American value and everything else will take care of itself.
“All is not lost, and all will not be lost if we maintain faith in ourselves and a commitment to this great nation.”
There’s a recipe for disaster. We’re the ones who got us into this mess in the first place, and there are no signs anyone is too concerned about changing themselves.
The people who live in America today no longer have a shared culture. They no longer have a shared morality. There are no longer common beliefs or values, nor are there common goals. America is fundamentally _not_ the country it might have been 200, 100, or even 50 years ago. Faith in ourselves? What does that even mean?
“We must turn the pages of our history with our eyes wide open” sounds like “yes we can”, and every bit as devoid of substance. This kind of teleprompter nonsense might play during a campaign, or make some folks feel good the week before we celebrate fireworks, barbeque, and beer, but really Mr London, thanks but no thanks.
Polyanna balderdash. The hell we are witnessing all around us … the darkness spreading over the land … is simply the result of a sickness, plague really, already raging in the 1950s. Actually it goes back to Adam and Eve. Christ alluded to it when he spoke of ‘the world’ vs how the mind of his followers and disciples should be conformed.
The real sickness is established among it’s victims in a milieu of selfishness and irresponsibility. It rages out of control within families that have no real philosophy of raising their own children. As I grew up in the fifties it was as if my parents and most of my peers believed that the schools or perhaps just the general society would inculcate their children with the necessary values for responsible and successful living. Television got more attention from parents than their children could ever hope for. ‘Greatest generation indeed!
So we got a generation of narcissists that wanted to play their whole lives. Who treated their beaus and eventual spouses as playthings to be tossed aside when they no longer ‘met their needs’. Who paid little or no attention to politics. Who wanted a free lunch and hadn’t the reasoning power (due to a very poor education) to realize such was an impossibility.
Then we got a couple of generations that simply magnified and compounded the stupidity and vulgarity of their elders.
Now we have a nation ripe for dictatorship and we are getting it. Make no mistake; the Left craves dictatorship and the only thing that could possibly avert their desire is civil war, catastrophe and a phoenix like rebirth. Not much chance of the third component.
Wow……. you nailed it… I have seen this stuff coming for a long time……… we taught girls how to have disdain for boys and men and how to grow up mean and selfish, so they did…….. and how everytime you buy a car or anything else for that matter, the goal is to get a good deal rather than being fleeced by the salesman…………… I remember as a child, when I heard the town leaders talking about growth and more growth etc etc……. what happens when you keep growing for the sake of growing……….. well, eventually you outgrow the need to grow.
Government schools can NOT NOT NOT be reformed!! Why?
Answer:
1) Government schools **are** socialism. Simply by attending children learn that the government has enormous power to take money from their neighbor to pay for a service that their parents want tuition-free!! Well!…If government can take money from a neighbor for schooling why not a thousand other socialist wants and needs?
2) At their very best, when they first opened in the mid-1800s to early 1900s)the modern government schools offered the students a lukewarm generic Protestantism. It had to be that way just to gain the support of the voting majority. Well!..We know what Christ does with the lukewarm. He spits them out of His mouth!
Within one to two generations of modern government schooling, the curriculum was essentially secular. That was the plan of Mann and Dewey. They succeeded. My grandmother ( born in 1894) and my father ( born in 1913) were subjected to a curriculum that was essentially godless, with a mere sprinkle of prayer and scripture verse in the morning. The contrast between their education and my mother and her parent’s Catholic education couldn’t be more stark. Is it any wonder then that the generation of our grandparents and parents mistook Franklin D. Roosevelt as Moses?
Fundamentally…The sickness from which our nation suffers is spiritual. We need:
1) Massive spiritual revival.
2) We must raise up generations of children who are fully grounded in Judeo Christian belief and the founding values of our nation. That can ONLY be accomplished in private schools.
WE MUST WORK TO SHUT DOWN ALL GOVERNMENT SCHOOLING!! We must get our nation’s children into private schools that weave Judeo Christian values and our nation’s founding principles into the very woof and weave of their school day.
I agree with everything you said about needing the Gov out of our schools. Weaving religion into them is also not he answer…thats for PARENTS and CHURCHES to TEACH!!!
However, as i have repeated stated, we must get our schools back, get the fed gov out of our education. No restoration is pososible unless the education is back in the hands or parents.
I do have a problem with this however…so many parents today are too selfish to teach or do anything with/for their children. So it maybe already too late. The attempt needs to be made though.
Wiontertime, you are absolutely correct. The public school system in this country is irredeemably corrupt. Between Dewey, B.F. Skinner and the general Gramscian meme that turned public schools into dumbing-down/indoctrination centers adn the teachers’ unions that willingly participate in the mind-slaughter of our kids – there is no possibility of refoming such a corrupt and godless institution.
You can only starve it of the two things it most needs to exist: our money and the minds of our children.
Regards -
And precisely what is wrong with growth? At what point between living in caves and what we have now, should we have stopped “growth”?
GET OUR SCHOOLS BACK!!! PERIOD!!
Unless we get the schools back and stop the liberal bias and progressive teachings we are lost. Each yr we are producing more and more wimps from our schools who think the gov is the answer to everything.
So, no matter what we do, unless we change the direction of the schools NOTHING we will do will last or matter.
I know i say this a lot on here….but it is essential to any plan to get the country back on track.
Start with firing liberal teachers and professors. Demand that school administrators do not hire liberal teachers and professors.
Nothing will change if we keep sending our children to be taught by these kinds of educators. Nothing will change (and it will get worse) if we keep cranking out undergrads who have been indoctrinated by liberal professors.
To not address the fundamental problem of our liberal school educators is like spitting in the wind.
There are too many entrenched special interests to make a rational recovery possible. It’s going to take something irrational – economic collapse, civil war – to restore America to it’s previous prominence and prosperity.
I agree. We need to rewrite the rules of the system we have now. Way too many special interests wielding too much power and buying too many votes.
I am not optimistic that it can be done strictly legislatively, either.
There is a narrow, rapidly approaching window
of opportunity for reform, opening in November
and closing in 2012; If the US does not give the
rest of the world reason to hope for change in our
behavior by then, it will do things the old way.
America barely even qualifies as a country nowadays. Echoing some of the points already made, we have no shared culture other than mindless consumerism. The crumbling we are witnessing all around us is the inevitable result of “multiculturalism”. I agree with the author in one sense though, that all is not lost. However I interpret that to mean a new entity, or multiple entities, might come into being after the inevitable Balkanization that’s coming.
You would be right except that abortion has been dragged under the purview of the federal government by Roe v. Wade, and the left is presently trying to do the same thing by making gay marriage a “right.” School prayer (which in your view, I assume, should be left to local communities) has likewise been politicized. But perhaps we would agree that opponents of abortion and gay marriage and proponents of local school control would best address these as constitutional issues rather than moral ones–if the federal government did release its grip, most of these issues might be settled in a way social conservatives could live with.
A realistic look at our public liabilities issue would require that those public liabilities be either phased out or means-tested. This invariably results in the acceleration of something that already happens but few see…the systematic pillaging of wealth for redistribution to people who have not earned it. Medicare and Social Security must be phased out, but that requires a generation, maybe even two or three, of people who will pay into the system while knowing that they will receive absolutely nothing in return, that their earnings will go towards sustaining an entire generation in their declining years. It won’t be pretty, and reminds me of the exchange between the two lone adults in “The Breakfast Club”:
Vernon: Now, this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night: that when I get older these kids are gonna take care of me.
Carl: I wouldn’t count on it.
I’m wondering exactly how we are going to get states to embrace the massive budget cuts needed when their entrenched, early-retiring, gold-plated benefit having public unions organize protests every time it is suggested that they pay a FRACTION of their own medical costs, or actually forgo the standard yearly raise?
As for Washington, it will never dismantle the power structure it has built to sustain itself. It will never willingly shrink itself to within its constitutional constraints. The only paths I see to the return of a free-market, constitutional America is through state revolts (where states vehemently assert their 10th Amendment rights), civil war, or a complete economic and government collapse due to overwhelming debt.
When the economy collapses, and tax income to the State drops to zero,
there will be two kinds of unpaid bills: The interest and principal
on foreign debt, held mainly by China and Japan, and domestic debt, mainly
SS and MC promises made to Boomers and Welfare payments to the Underclass;
Which one will cause the most immediate problems, which one will solve itself,
and which one will quite possibly get the US into a war it will lose ?
The deterioration of the family, with so many single mothers, is a catastrophe. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about it in 1965 as the deterioration of the Negro family, but now it is widespread. See David Popenoe’s new book, Marriage..
First and foremost, is a top down purging of academia. From K through post-doctoral, we must remove the progessive/leftist/anti-western elements that have infected our educational institutions since the late 50′s, as well as dissolving the Dept. of Education.
The road to retaking the government begins with parents actively engaging in local politics and retaking the local school boards. We have a VERY LONG road back.
But there is no alternative.
““I fear my country, the America I love, is slipping away.””
Well, I could see if someone said this in 1913. To a more recent date; America started slipping in the 1960′s. The quote is a better reflection of the moment. Otherwise it’s just too late.
But you can keep up the fight, left against right.
The Left has had a plan, one spelled out by Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci just prior to WWII; if you want to conquer a society don’t use the quick but uncertain route of guns and violence, but rather use decades of patient “peaceful” work, use subversion, use the growing power of all forms of communications media to unceasingly spread propaganda far and wide, use educators, opinion makers, entertainers, celebrities, playwrights and writers, the theater, movies and TV, religious and other authority figures, songwriters, singers, newsmen and cultural icons to attack, weaken, subvert and destroy the foundations on which the bourgeois societies of the West rest—the family, the church, the school, the legal and political systems, public life, civic and business organizations, the values and ways of behaving of those target societies, their mores, their ethics, and their laws, their understanding of “how things are,” their expectations, and their dreams, and their nightmares too, and attack and subvert, too, the leadership classes of those societies—and they have been wildly successful.
That they have been wildly successful is due to their capture–early on–of our educational establishments, for once you have infiltrated and subverted, once you have captured those educational establishments, you are in a position to make History and its lessons be and mean whatever you wish them to be and mean, and you are also in a position to slowly erase certain things and substitute others, to twist things, to dumb things down so that—in a few generation’s time–you are well on the way to creating a nation of heavily propagandized but largely uneducated people, people you have deliberately directed down the wrong path, people now wearing “blinkers,” whose ideas and values and behavior you have molded to your liking, people who have never been taught about certain historical figures, and events, and ideas and values, so that they are not aware of them, people who have been taught a new pantheon of heroes and villeins, supposedly “educated” people who no longer have the tools of past memory, values and standards, grit, self-reliance, and inquisitiveness, literacy, logic and analysis that citizens need to make the hard and sound judgments in a Republic; you have created an ever-expanding percentage of the populace that consists of easily fooled and easily led sheep.
Simultaneously, use the educational establishment, the cultural elites and the legal systems you have captured to relentlessly attack Religion and the morality, values and standards it teaches, everywhere they appear and have influence in public and private life, and then move on from there to Philosophy and introduce a Gramscian Postmodernism, the “narrative” that says that all is class warfare and power relationships—the oppressor and his victim, that there are no fixed standards—really no standards at all– and that the old idea of fixed and eternal Values and Morality, and the “Good, the True, and the Beautiful” are outdated, outmoded and fraudulent viewpoints.
Simultaneously, too, attack the structure and functions of the family, and, meanwhile, inflame the relations between the sexes and races and ethnic and cultural groups, so as to divide your potential opponents, and pit them against each another.
Remake the past, “control the narrative” of today and make the captive MSM your “Ministry of Truth,” for didn’t Orwell say in “1984” that “he who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future,” and make that actual past the subject of constant, withering criticism, and call it regressive, outmoded and old fashioned—“the bad, old, unenlightened days,”–and promote your “cool” new brands of “progress,” “social justice” and “modernity.”
And as for “today,” use the educational establishment,the MSM and the Entertainment Industry to create an entirely artificial alternative History and Universe, one that you control–a “Matrix”–one that ignores and blocks out those things that contradict the false narrative you have taught, but, instead, reflects and supports the narrative that you have created. And that, folks, is exactly what has happened, and why we find ourselves in such deep shit today.
Logically, it would seem that the first thing that needs to be done is that there needs to be a counterattack against the Left’s captive educational establishment to take it back. However, it seems to me that in the situation that we find ourselves in today, we no longer have the time necessary to do that in time to make any major difference; it took generations of patient work by Leftists to capture the establishment, it will probably take just as much time to recapture and purge it—time that we just don’t have.
Similarly with the MSM, organized Religion, and all the other fundamental building blocks of our society that have been subverted, parasitized and occupied, or destroyed outright; we simply do not have the time necessary to take them back or to rebuild them in time to do any major good in our current situation.
It is easy to diagnose the problem—it is an obvious, stinking, festering wound–but I have no idea how to cure that raging, deadly infection, and make us well again.
Homeschooling is currently legal in all 50 states (in CA you must run a very, very tiny “private school”), thanks to the untiring efforts of many (see hslda.org). We have made so many sacrifices to keep our kids out of Government Schools, but we get castigated for wasting all that money on homeschooling (instead of my wife working in an office) and private high school. Our two oldest are working their way through college, but I keep wondering if a college degree is worth anything anymore.
Yuo are correct in all respects. The Bramscian praxis has been enormously successful in its subversion of almost every corner of our culture, arts, education and politics. I’d suggest reading Malachi Martin’s chapter on Gramsci in The Keys of this Blood. Worth the price of the book, IMHO.
But Gramsci’s vision of the perfect Communist world, like so many other utopian visions has been hijacked and it’s methods used to further the ends of those with an unappeasable lust for dominion over every sphere of human thought and endeavor. These are monsters, and their trajectory through history has left the slaughter of millions and the enslavemetn and impoverishment of hundreds of millions more in in their wake. I’ve writtn on this subject in this essay: Killers Without conscience. This is who we’re up against. And neither peace nor compromise can be made with them if we wish to call ourselves human.
hheeeey….Obama is at the Economic Summit…he’s gonna speak and tell the world how to do it…
He’ll be on the campaign trail “words just words”…he has a lot of words and little action to help us. He’s a poor representation of a strong pro American person.
But don’t’ worry…as long as we all have welfare and affirmative action we’ll make it..oh..who is going to pay for it?..the unions!! okay,well…we’ll work that out as we go along.
And little Johnny’s team didn’t win?,,oh heck give em all a trophy, we don’t want to hurt their little feelings..puke. AND!! give those elementary kids condoms!!! colored ones..oohhh for cute…
Some of you have eluded to Christianity as the cure for all. I disagree. It is self respect. It is pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and doing what you have to do.
I’m not a Christian but America was founded on certain values that are considered chrisitan, yet it encompasses thousands of years of thought and beliefs.. So how is sharia creeping into our nation?! What happened to founding values???
We need to respect ourselves. That means learning to live without other people’s handouts and their hard earned money.
It will take getting rid of people that represent us and yet pay NO attention our wants and needs. It will take not being ashamed of American ingenuity.
Frankly I would rather nations be afraid of America.
It’s too late to save the thousands of jobs that have gone overseas..but we can and will do other things..unless Obama has his way. As said, he is a poor repsentative of American values.
Oh, and when my ggrandparents etc came over from Italy and Scotland..they did it legally. They had a hard time..but they made it without handouts and anchor babies.. You get no tears from me on illegal immigration on our southern border. I blame our president”s” for inaction and our faltering.
Up in New Hampshire some libertarians are already starting down the path to breaking away from this country. You will never convince a leftist he’s wrong–even if the world is marched all the way down to the killing fields. Let them go on to create their own living hell.
Stop trying to convert people, and get on with it: Divide the country now. Time is not on our side. The demographics are irreversibly moving toward the Democratic Party, as was their plan using multiculturalism and open boarders to dilute and then permanently hew the country apart from its historic beliefs and values.
You negotiate from a position of power. We can only get weaker from here.
Simply put, TOO LATE! An irretrievably corrupt Congress–D’s AND R’s–plus multiple unions, and voracious mega-industries’ corporate lobbyists are, and have been, and will continue to be conjoined at their fat hip(s), wallowing in and spending, spending, spending, all of YOUR extorted, ever-increasing tax dollars required to promote ONLY their self-interests FOREVERMORE–until “the system” all comes crashing down. And the simple-minded public be damned. What fools these mortals be. End of story. End of an America as so many dreamed it could aspire to be. Yet this dimbulb socialist scumbag of an empty-suit “President” STILL thinks bigger government is the answer. Hey! All you whiny leftards: you got what you wished for! Now JUST TRY to crawl out of the swamp you’ve created!
Great comment FIX WHAT.
Ignorance feeds the Liberal Adjenda !
Mr. London suffers from terminal academic disease which is an inability to confront the harsh realities which we, as a nation, now face. We are at war with implacable foes whose goal is a total destruction of what our Nation stands for which is the pursuit of liberty, justice, and the ability to achieve whatever goals we choose without a tyrannical government ruling over our lives. Civil discourse on devisive issues? Have you ever tried to reason with a liberal/marxist/evnovironmentalist or Islamic believer. Civil discouse is an alien concept to them and is to them a sign of weakness. We must confront these enemies with all of our strength and not fall into the trap of projecting our values onto them and think that we can deal with them on these terms. We must stand tall and never yield one more inch to these wanna be rulers of our country. We must awake all of the people to this threat.
We lose only if we give up.See that our chidren are educated in American history and to see the way Socialism is destroying our country .
There has much writtin on this blog about taking our educations sytem back, which i fully agree with and support!!
The time for ACTION on this issue is NOW!!!
So….How shall we proceed????
We need REAL action and an ability to effectively spread the word on how and why this needs to be done.
Sorry for the typos!
My solution:Eliminate the state as the vehicle of Liberalism. Make the Culture do the heavy lifting of social justice–this will bring about actual community as opposed to “community” as beggar to the throne of the federal dollar dispenser. In other words: if it’s a “program” it must be reconsidered.
1.)Eliminate Fannie, Freddie, and Sallie without delay or remorse. The Government is now out of the lending business.
2.)No more Pell grants for liberal arts degrees. Yes, you just read that.
3.)Eliminate the Dept of Education. No more indoctrination by proxy.
4.)A complete reconsidering of “block grants” to the states.
4) A complete elimination of block grants to the states.
Fixed it for you.
How do you have a civil discourse with some one who’s views are diametrically opposed to yours? You can’t. Liberals will never agree on anything with conservatives, conservatives will never agree on anything with liberals. It’s gone way too far in opposite directions for any meeting of the minds. The concepts of liberty and freedom are but a distant memory, if memory at all, for far too many people who live in this country. There are far too many who WANT the government to do everything for them to turn back to liberty and freedom now. It’s over, people. It’s only a matter of time before the government runs out of other peoples money. Then the poo will really hit the fan.
As Reagan said, “It’s not the liberals are wrong, it’s just that they know so much that just isn’t so.”
So when you side with the Constitution about the 5th ammendment being enforced where BP is concerned, you suddenly find that you “Hate” Joe common man and “LOVE” the Corporate Elitests.
Or when you try to point out to someone the simple facts that;
1) You cannot TAKE from someone something they never possessed
2) You cannot GIVE to someone something that they already possess.
You suddenly have people Angry at you for “Welfare Takeaways” and “Tax Cut Giveaways.”
Before we can do anything, we will need to change the language back to meaning what it means. Otherwise, every step taken in the right direction will be met with HOWLS of how MEAN it is, or EVIL or BIGOTED or….
The problem with having civil discourse with liberals is that they genuinely believe so many things that are manifestly not true. When you point out that obvious fact, they blink, deny it, and make accusations. No benefit!
I agree with several other comments regarding the social issues. Though I personally abhor abortion, as an example, it is not in my power to dictate to a woman what she does with her own body, and the religious establishment is also not empowered, especially thru government. Would this not be encompassed in the concept of the Pursuit of Happiness? Granting gays special marriage rites unrelated to the procreative norm is quite the same, though they should be able to contract for any other legal relationship, like guardianship, conservatorship, or heirship.
The nation must focus on restoration of the primacy of basic principles. Fiscal responsibility, military strength with restraint except in times of genuine need, etc. Education and charity are local issues, not areas the national government should be involved in.
Charitable foundations are a scam to preserve power without paying taxes on the current profits. The fact that so much of the “activity” is in the mode of political advocacy demonstrates the point, with Gates, Pacifica, & Tides clearly demonstrate. If allowed to continue, they should “sunset” in a generation’s time.
The nation can recover, but if the public does not have the stomach for it violuntarily, it will occur by default upon a total collapse which is now nearing.
I added my mite to the cultural war (and you are right as to what the real battle is) until heart failure left me too tired to blog. America was begun in granite, but lured to soft marble over the last 50 years; it doesn’t stand up to hard winter very well: check any northern cemetery for proof.
My blog is oriented to Tolkien, so set your mental channel to Middle-Earth, and allow me to plead invalidism to quote myself:
January 2005
…With Martin Luther and Henry VIII and all that, the new reaches of empire took on a Protestant tone. Jamestown colonists and Pilgrims survived their journeys across the Atlantic in cockleshells, and the Declaration of Independence borrowed its legitimacy from Rights endowed by a Creator. A newborn people stood apart from the rule of popes and archbishops, and yet bowed their heads before that Creator in humility; in all their comings and goings aware of the bounds of a Judeo-Christian morality.
But the Shadow is not so easily discouraged: if frontal assault is thwarted, infiltrate from within. Better yet, try both strategies. Keep coming back, blow after blow after blow, in patient assault until at last Men fail and the blood of Númenor is spent and Valinor is a fool’s tale, smoke and mirrors signifying nothing.
The two hundred and twenty-nine years since have seen those bounds breached time and time again in an ever-increasing onslaught of secularism (of which the French Revolution is a charming example) until now, in our brave new 21st century world, they have nearly passed out of public knowledge. The walls are tumbled, the stones cracked with frost, the hand-cleared fields overgrown until the long labors of our ancestors are vanished, abandoned curiosities to be stumbled upon in the wild wood of moral relativism.
What a load of garbage. The state of Western civilization today is comparable to that of the dinosaurs before the collision of the meteor which would wipe them out. Everyone feels that something is going badly wrong.
From the inevitability of disaster inherent in an economy based on risky mathematical games and on a national debt that cannot be repayed; the impending catastrophe of global warming; a suicidal openness to aliens from different and often hostile civilizations on a massive scale and a nonreciprocal basis, unprecedented in human history; racial mixing between whites and nonwhites which can lead to demographic extinction; the trauma from the destruction of the two World Wars, of which the previous two examples are symptoms; human life becoming totally determined by propaganda and technology; the replacement of love between the sexes by reproductive and sexual techniques, and of traditional courtship by pick-up techniques; a resurgent Islam seeking to destroy us and already having made living in many parts of the West physically dangerous.
And what does the author of the article propose? “We need a spark to ignite the engines of productivity.” That’s it? Is this serious? This sort of farce will not do at all. We need outstanding men capable of original thought. What we need is a Martin Luther for our own century.
and…where is our present day Martin Luther?
The pickings are slim and Americans, in general, appear to be naive when it comes to power.
In a recent election here,only 16% of registered voters bothered to come out and vote in a very important election.
Our apathy will be our downfall. We need to find our collective voice~~
I don’t think that asking to re-start the engines of productivity is so far off the mark, but I just don’t know how we can do it. We have faced all sorts of crises in our history, but has there ever been a time when we imported so much from a power like China and produced so little (relatively) ourselves? Is there any way to back up a bit when it comes to world free trade? Would people pay $2000, instead of $800 for flat screen television if it were produced here and unemployment were at 2%? I don’t even know if such a “regression” is workable, but desperate times will call for desperate measures. We are as likely to go for more socialism, as much as less. More free market does not necessarily solve our productivity/employment problem especially if I want to invoke just half of the pessimism already expressed here.
Hey. we may well have at least one more free market boom left in us, but it will be followed by an even worse bust. At that point, people will be ready for tariffs, some degree of wage and price controls, and a turning inward.
I hope that I am wrong and that we can just stay the course, build up consumer needs over a period of time, and consume our way back to prosperity, but I am not optimistic about the possibility.
No chance unless we are smacked right across the collective face. Have you been to WalMart???? esp at the beginning of the month????
We have a couple of generations of Americans that go into the “gimme free” line. Low morals, anything goes,pass the drugs.
If you want to increase productivity, the free market is the only way to do it.
The idea that we shouldn’t trade with others because they can do things more cheaply than we can is one of those socialist ideas that sounds good on the surface but is suicide when applied.
The reality is that when we pay $800 instead of $1200 for a TV, we have $400 dollars to spend on other things. And when we spend it on those other things, we provide jobs for the people who make those other things.
40 years ago, people cried because the Japanese made things more cheaply than we did. They whined to govt that unless we closed the borders, soon there would be no factories left in the US and we would all be working for the Japanese. That didn’t happen.
Then a few years later, they said the same thing about Taiwain. Didn’t happen then either.
Then a few years later, they said the same thing about S. Korea. Didn’t happen then either.
They’ve also said the same thing about Vietnam, Singapore, and any number of other countries.
There will always be people who feel that they shouldn’t have to compete to keep their jobs, and they will turn to govt to force other people to buy their products. Such people care nothing for freedom. Such people care nothing for the welfare of others. They are at their core socialists, even if they won’t accept the label, and socialism always results in poverty and despair.
If you want to make America wealthy, get the govt and the unions out of the way.
‘Made in Japan’ was a synonym for ‘Cheaply made’
not because of the Japanese manufacturers but
because of the American buyers, who wanted the
last penny of profit at the expense of durability.
“looks forward for insight” What? That fragment may provide balance to the preceding fragment “looks back for guidance” but it is a phrase without substance. How can the unknown future provide insight? Just a quibble in comparison with the meaningless essence of your advice: the cheerleader call to “just do it.”
Let’s do what is necessary. OK, but what is it that we do, which is necessary? Is doing “it” sufficient?
“Can we prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?” OK, what is just do it? How about congress declaring war on Iran?
“Can we keep accumulating debt without regard for the consequences?” OK, what is just do it? Eliminate all federal bureaucracies except the DoD? Let California pay its bills without money coming in from any other state, i.e. no more federal stimulus?
What is “What It Will Take”, other than enduring in ostracism the ongoing course of cataclysmic collapse of our way of life, fomented by an uncontrollable government following our historic first Islamic apostate president’s pledge to fundamentally transform America?
If we get our schools back, will we teach morality?
Is moral behavior a social issue, or is it foundational to liberty?
Parents should teach morality, not the schools.
Morality is putting society before self;
If parents have not laid the foundation
before children start school, or if the
schools do not build on that foundation,
‘adults’ will not have the enlightened
self-interest, or the self-control, to
risk something in order to avoid losing
everything; Most, but not all people
need the reinforcement of religion
to help them make that choice, but
it does not have to be Christianity.
I would re-phrase that as putting others before self.
It’s way too small a step from putting “society” first, to putting government first.
Beyond that, how does one put “society” first? Does society have feelings? Does it have needs? What does it want for Christmas? Society is nothing more than a collection of individuals and it has no rights that the individuals that make it up do not have.
The Founding Fathers warned us all that what they provided us in the form of a government would only survive if we remained a moral and Christian people. Today we have somewhere around 85% of Americans say that they are Christian. If that were true does anyone suppose taking God out of the schools and the public square would have been tolerated? The lame arguments used to foist this lie (the separation of Church and State lie is easily defeated by the words of the Founders themselves) upon the 85% or so “Christians” fell upon dull ears and blind eyes.
There is only one thing the Almighty can do with such passive lukewarm Christians and that is “spew them out of my mouth”. What does that mean? It means you’re on your own. Is it a good thing to be on your own when faced with the current onslaught against freedom, morality, truth and justice? Our Founders didn’t think so, quite the opposite. We can only hope and pray that a remnant of the people will get right with God and shake America out of passivity in time to be saved.
Look at this website. Check the numbers – and quality – of comments that accompany the stories or opinion pieces. Then go to Yahoo (or MSN, wherever) and look at the numbers of comments. Then, for a truly disheartening experience, read the comments by the (mostly) drooling imbeciles who congregate in the forums there. Then, for a real treat, post a comment. Prepare to be shouted down, or worse, be subjected to the indignity of those same idiots rating your comment so low as to not be seen. Still, they babble on and on, bereft of reason or civility. Restore America? Bah. Who wants it? Find a defensible chunk of real estate and secede from the death cultists – now we’re talking. I just want to know where to sign up.
Reading recommendation: Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death
If you really want to change America forget about tea parties and voting. Instead work to establish a national holiday for freedom from the media. This joyous event should be held somewhere around mid summer, say July fourth. In the morning everyone takes a TV set out onto their front lawn, smashes it with a sledge hammer and leave the remains out until evening. As night approaches, all around the country people construct huge bonfires where they throw all the smashed TV sets along with newspapers and magazines into a pile and burn them. This should be an American version of Guy Fawks day. Stop the media and you will most assuredly bring about real change.