Are We Tottering?
Societies can sometimes implode abruptly, like the Mycenaeans from mysterious causes, the Aztecs before Cortés, or the Zulu nation in 1879 — or gradually and insidiously, such as Rome in the latter fifth century BC or Britain between 1946 and 1960.
I don’t believe America is in inevitable decline or will falter, but I am starting to see things, superficially, that I have not observed in the past.
California is bankrupt and it shows. Drive Highway 101 between, say, the general Watsonville and the Monterey Bay areas — potholes, poorly marked exits and entries, trucks in both lanes. The road is unchanged since the 1960s, but with ten times the traffic. And it is a veritable death trap on any given evening. Ditto almost all the main north-south arteries. One can travel long distances on 101, 99, and 5 where there are only two lanes, in places where there should be at least three. When I see a Caltrans road crew, I expect to see half not working, or all sorts of warning signs and orange cones that advise about non-existent work in progress.
Refined Stasis
I pass on east-west California arteries. There are really none much other than freeway 80. My favorite are 168 and 180, good highways that abruptly stop near the Sierra Crest — roads to nowhere. Over a half-million acres are not farmed because academics with tenure and publicly employed scientists have decided that a fish is a better barometer of civilization’s health than are food-producing plains.
Illegal immigration? I can drive two miles from my farm and shop with hundreds of California residents who are here illegally, do not speak English, and are entirely dependent on a government to which they can hardly feel any special allegiance or gratitude.
They (the majority of illegal aliens) identify more with a country that drove them out, and feel no special affinity with a nation that took them in, given that we, the host, rarely can define who we are or what others should do to join us. I know if I am hit again in traffic (twice is enough), the other driver (as in both cases) probably will not have a license, registration, or insurance, and may well try, again, to hoof it, if uninjured. I don’t drive on late Saturday afternoons on rural roads out here, since there are simply too many who drink and think stop signs mean to slightly yield.
Your money was unfairly obtained
More concretely, I know that in California the nation’s highest sales, income, and gas taxes somehow lead to the country’s highest deficits — and that the answer will be to raise taxes and call them “fees.” If 2,500 of the state’s better-off are fleeing per week, the solution will probably be to tax more highly the fewer who somewhat foolishly stayed behind (e.g., “at least we warned you.”)
Gorging the Beast
I think on the federal level, the Obama thinking is to “gorge the beast.” That means to spend so much money on so many things that higher taxes become inevitable. In the redistributive scheme of things, high taxation is a good thing, income being now capricious, unfair, and not entirely the property of the recipient.
I fear greatly the federal and state judiciaries. I know that special prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald hold press conferences, bankrupt their prey through drawn-out legal procedures, and then usually fail to prove much of anything against the likes of a Scooter Libby or Blago (and so settle for perjury convictions when they find contradictions in the miles of confused subpoenaed testimony).
Arizona and California plebiscites mean little. A judge or two can overturn the votes of millions. One rarely sees a left-wing ballot proposition overturned by a right-wing judge, as the former has not the votes and the latter usually objects to the procedure.
The federal government will sue those states that try to enforce Washington’s statutes, but ignore dozens of cities that undermine them. Contracts do not mean much either, not after the Chrysler reversal of its creditors. BP should pay, let’s say, 20, 30 — or, damn it, why not 40 billion dollars?
The academic elite is becoming bankrupt. And by that I mean utterly mendacious. The email disclosures about faking the global warming evidence, the BP scientific hysteria to stop drilling, the Gore saga, the nuclear power furor, the Delta smelt — no one much believes that the old rules of peer-reviewed, dispassionate scholarship apply when one can make the case that the egalitarian ends justify the tawdry means. Plagiarism depends — a progressive mistakenly cuts and pastes an email, or had lousy research assistants, or mixed up his index cards; a less hip scholar who fudges is a crook as he should be.
Lala Land
My favorite elite trope of the day is “Cordoba,” as in the “Cordoba Initiative.” Liberals rush to embrace the “Cordoba Initiative” as if that Islamic Lala land, because it had a 10th-century library, was some sort of Islamic Athens. (Cf. the president’s untruthful Cairo references about a non-existent Muslim Cordoba [the Christians retook it in 1236] by the time of the Inquisition (1487) showing singular religious tolerance). Meanwhile, with a wink and a nod, the message from the brilliantly cynical Imam Rauf gets through to radical Islam that an al-Andalus, the Islamic occupation of Iberia, was a golden moment that we all can gush about. He reminds me of the guy who throws a cherry bomb into a crowd, speeds off, and watches with glee the human fireworks from his rear-review mirror. (So Rauf jets off for a month to raise money from the “liberal” gulf autocracies; the bridge-building, healer Rauf wants not a 3, 4, or 6 story mosque, but a 13-story “Islamic complex” to contemplate and mediate and think about the misunderstandings that drove two planes to mysteriously take down two towers. This guy read Obamism to the tee, and is going to make a lot of money and gain a lot of attention playing its adherents as the fools they are)
VDH: Well said and I vote “YES” to the question of Hanson for president.
Seriously, how can anyone question our nation’s capabilities given what we did in WWII with a much smaller population, far less modern technologies, and far more at risk if we were to have failed.
Yet, while agreeing with what VDH said above, we could give up the ghost and surrender to a world of harsh feelings and more stalwart foes; it would be our loss not “their” victory.
What “we” did in WWII was done by a generation that grew up and lived in a world very different from our own. Does anybody nowadays have 1 or 2 hours chores to do on the farm before walking to school? Have you ever hitched a mule to a plow and tilled a field. If your income fails do you really face starvation? Read the lives of the five soldiers who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Does their upbringing resemble that of anyone you know today?
Bigfoot, I agree. Many, if not most Americans today are spoiled beyond measure. I work in public schools and see the kids that are being raised. Many are irresponsible, rude, and face a bright future at any number of correctional facilities. We have elected officials who literally bow to our enemies, weaken our national defense, leave our borders unprotected and spend us into oblivion. They are corrupt, totally dishonest, and embrace ideas that are totally destructive to a free society. Unless we turn this around, there is no free and prosperous America.
I know it is a small thing but please don’t refer to Marines as Army .At Iwo Jima it was the Marines who raised the Flag. We can be a cranky lot when people mix us up with the Army.
As can Navy Medical Corpsmen when mixed up with Marines. Good historical point there, Pete.
To230FMJ;
We are Hospital Corps(e)men and proud to be FMF Corpsmen.
Semper Fi
The term was less specific but the message was most definite. Any Marine would surely object to being referred to as a sailer or shellback just as passionately. Semper Fi dud——er dude..
Thanks, Pedro.
I see that sometimes and, while I know that there is no intention of sleight, it does kind of irk me. also. That title does not come easily. To the OP, no bad. Simply a clarification of peeves, as it were.
Semper Fi, my man.
Go easy.
With all due respect: My brother, my son, and my husband are all in the Armed Forces (Army, Marine, Navy). Of the three, my brother was the only one who did farm chores. All three are the most admirable people I know, and I would rank any one of them up with the Greatest Generation.
While not every military member is as awesome as MY men, all the ones I know are still outstanding people. Many are first or second generation immigrants who HAVE faced starvation and privation. The ones who deploy to Afghanistan, Iraq, or other third-world countries see how bad it is over there firsthand. And they are coming back over here to enter leadership positions in every field and industry, each one even more committed to extending America’s strength and protecting her ideals.
Perhaps America is not the same as the one that lived through the 1930s – but it’s not all THAT different either. Don’t give up yet. We still have plenty of Greatest Generations in us.
Well, this is fun:
1. Insist on exit tests for High School diplomas.
2. Close the Department of Education.
3. Repeal ObamaCare.
4. Print all government materials, ballots, driver’s ed tests etc in English only.
5. Repeal Title IX.
6. Rewrite all federal laws, statutes, and regulations. New rules must be specific not vague, must be 200 pages or less in length, and must be published online in proposed form 60 days prior to congressional vote.
7. Eliminate congressional option to abstain, vote present or skip voting on any and all proposed legislation.
8. Ban all congressmen/senators and department secretaries from lobbying the federal government for 5 years after leaving federal service.
9.Impose term limits.
10. Eliminate all federal, state, and local government employee unions.
Term limits are good, but are not enough. Basically, government has become the easiest path to riches for the most ambitious criminals in the world.
We need a way for the PEOPLE to recall the gangsters before their terms are complete. Look at the damage Obama is going to be able to reck in the next two 1/2 years.
If we had only recalled one or two congressmen in 2009, the impending disaster we are now in would be totally different. The fear of additional dismissals would have blocked government spending and Obamacare.
The next most important thing is to get control of their perks. No ex-office holder should be allowed to lobby congress, as just one example. Their financial assets should all be in trusts that can only be invested in Treasuries while they are in office, as another. No pensions. No lifetime medical benefits. Staffs limited to a handful of aids. Cut their salaries in half. Only let them “legislate” 50 days a year. etc.,etc.,etc.
The potential wealth is just too great for most of them to resist. No congress person should come out wealthier than they went in. I know that sounds extreme, even un-American, but their ability to feast at our expense is the root of all of the other problems.
You mean to tell me that you would deny Bill and Hillary the means to make $110 million while still in “public service?” How on Earth would they have been able to have a $3 million wedding for their daughter if your notions had been implemented?
Your ideas are patently unfair to our self-annointed betters.
While I found 2 items in the article about which I was less than enthusiastic, I find none of those in your list. Bravo!
#8. Five year ban on post-lobbying needs to be doubled.
#9(B). Ban “double-dipping” pensions for multiple elective offices. Retired office holder can have one pension, only. Her/his choice. (Would not apply to non-elective office pensions).
12. Office holders (and staff members) receive same medical care and benefits as everyone else, unless they pay for enhanced coverage themselves.
I definitely agree elected officials should be required to partake of the fruits of their labor, ie. the legislation they pass:
1. Standard healthcare insurance for all would be via ObamaCare. No exceptions regardless of financial status. And no whining.
2. Environmental impact assessments mandatory for all elected officials re travel, functions and festivities. This would include measurements of carbon and methane emissions, landfill usage, clean water usage/runoff from WH gardening activities, temperature control of office space, etc, etc. Results to be published in Federal Register.
3. Any legislation authorizing military intervention would result in draft by lottery of 5% of Congresscritters (or their children of military age) for 6 mo temporary duty assignment to Army or Marine Corps combat units slotted for employment. Those with specialty training (eg. MD’s, RN’s, pilots, other designations) would serve in front line combat support. Those with no other background or experience (eg. lawyers, bureaucrats, assorted grifters) would serve as E-1/11B in rifle platoons. Veterans would be excluded. 4F/non-deployables would serve in Graves Registration stateside. Conscientious objectors would serve 6 months as Peace Corps volunteers in poorest Muslim third world country available.
TLM States it so well, if we could just get more americans to wake up to the disaster the governments policies are bringing to america maybe theres still hope
People do see the problems. They are just either willfully blind or horrifically misled, as to the causes.
Ergo, the formerly M, MSM
There is about 30 other Depts. you can add to that list. If we go that one Dept. eliminated and education back to the states, where it belongs, I would be a happy man.
#1 on this list should be: Stop disrespecting God. Of all the things which we think of that are bringing America down, this one is Number One. We took prayer out of schools, our schools are a cesspool. We adhere to the Humanist Manifesto 2 in much of our lawmaking now (tacitly of course, because if the American people ever found out that many of our new laws from this piece of used toilet paper, they’d want to know just WHY we’re drawing from it.) with its premise that man can be his own savior and that religion is outmoded and irrelevant and irrational. We want God out of everyday American life anymore and we’re paying the price for it as a nation. Now we have homos parading up and down the streets half naked in Pervert Pride parades and our military with all its technology can’t even beat a bunch of AK-47 wielding camel herders. Our economy is collapsing. We get hit with one natural disaster after another and we’re still too stupid as a people to figure out that God is angry with us?
Ps. 9:17 The wicked shall be turned into the grave, even all the nations that forget God. Every nation which turns its back on God will be destroyed in the long run.
Remember Nineveh.
I do not remember prayer in school. Might have been there, really early on, but I don’t remember it. It going away is not the problem.
The problem is the victim/entitlement mentality that caused it to go away. “How DARE you spank my perfect little darling?!” when the brat’s disruptive behavior was destroying any chance of other kids in the class getting an education, or the bully was assaulting another kid, or any of the many other things I USED to see kids get spanked for. Now, a teacher can hardly even tell a kid to sit down without risking being sued for “damaging the child’s self-esteem.”
When the punishment was a paddling from the teacher or the principal at school, and then another from parents once the culprit got home, there wasn’t much misbehavior. When the “punishment” became being taken out of the class and put in a “time out” room — or sent home — to do whatever the brat wants, suddenly there is a lot.
Nor is the degradation of education, courtesy, faith, common sense, and reasoning accidental. It’s been going on for most of two centuries as a concerted effort to create an elite and a submissive slave population that exists to do the elite’s bidding: http://savageheart.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-our-children-are-not-educated.html
#1. Eliminate the Civil Service Code and fire 4 out of 5 sniveling servants now.
#2. SUNSET all laws in the U.S. Code with a Robespierrean Council testing all rewrites for constitutionality.
California has had term limits on its state legislature since the 1980s! So has that other basket case, Michigan. The evidence tends to show that term limits made matters worse, not better. The long time state employees and the lobyyists ended up running the show because no one in the state legislature has enough experience to provide meaningful oversight. Also, so do we want a legislature full of short term thinkers? That seems to be another consequence of term limits.
And ALL laws apply equally to ALL persons legally present within the US. No diplomatic immunity, no exemptions for Congress or staff, and no racial, gender, orientation or ethnic bias in enforcing the rule of law.
This *is* fun. I propose adding these words from the original Pennsylvania constitution (quoted by Ben Franklin) to all modern constitutions:
“As every Freeman, to preserve his Independence, (if
he has not a sufficient Estate) ought to have some
Profession, Calling, Trade, or Farm, whereby he may
honestly subsist, there can be no Necessity for, nor
Use in, establishing Offices of Profit; the usual
Effects of which are Dependance and Servility,
unbecoming Freemen, in the Possessors and Expectants;
Faction, Contention, Corruption, and Disorder among
the People. Wherefore, whenever an Office, thro’
Increase of Fees or otherwise, becomes so profitable,
as to occasion many to apply for it, the Profits ought
to be lessened by the Legislature.”
With that, would we even *need* term limits?? :-)
Require all members of Congress to sign affadavits, under penalty of perjury, that they have fully read, and fully understand, all particulars of each bill before it can be brought to a vote.
Wow, an excellent rundown of all that is running down in the country.
Been around 77 years and, like you, I think we can turn the tide and start moving back up. Why? Because we are Americans and we’ve done it before.
Your list of suggestions is right on the money. I would add to it a new energy policy that encouraged drilling for our own oil – wherever it is (ANWR, Santa Barbara Channel, the Eastern Gulf, off both coasts, etc.); building nuclear power plants for clean, plentiful electical generation; and keep making our vehicles more efficient.
Every barrel of oil we produce here is one we don’t have to buy from someone else. Finding and producing oil creates good jobs. It also produces income for the government from the lease sale, to royalty on each barrel produced, to income taxes paid by companies and their employees, to the taxes on each gallon of gasoline bought at the pump. What a deal for the government! All that income and they don’t have to do anything except allow the oil companies to do what they do best. Another huge benefit is that every barrel we produce here cuts down our foreign trade deficit. Such a win, win it is amazing that the environmentalists have been able to obstruct this valuable resource.
Jimmy,
To add to your comment, annual U.S. demand for oil could be decreased by 25% within 18-24 months.
Boone Pickens has advised that if the United States legislated to switch the countries’ trucking fleet to natural gas, annual demand for oil would decline substantially.
It would also generate massive economic benefits domestically since natural gas is an abundant indigenous resource.
The government could apply ‘stimulus money’ effectively with a program to convert every 18-wheeler in America to natural gas, make it obligatory, and provide favourable loans or subsidies to get this done today. It would generate employment now in the auto and mechanics industry, as well as in the natural gas industry.
Simple, obvious, and effective – someone please tell me why this is not being done right now!? and why some politician isn’t grabbing this program to be able to paste their name all over!?
David Sheedy,
Right you are. The quickest results would come from modifying bus and truck fleets that leave a parking area each morning and return each night. That way the refueling could be done at the parking area. School buses, utility trucks, garbage trucks, farming vehicles, etc. It is pretty easy to install a natural gas refueling station in an existing parking area. Over the road trucks would require fueling stations all across the country. That would take longer and be far more costly to implement. It could result in a substantial decrease in gasoline usage – thus less imported oil.
Why isn’t it being done now? The answer probably lies in what hurdles (permits, taxes, environmental statements, etc.) the governmment has placed in the way.
One must realize many of the backers of the left make money from foreign sources. So cutting back on the trade deficit while helping Americans hurts them and their backers.
The US has the largest oil and gas reserves in the world, several times over.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3012/ (Piceance Basin, CO, shale formation, 1.525 trillion barrels oil)
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3060/ (WA-OR, 2.2 trillion cubic feet natural gas, 15 million barrels oil)
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3037/ (Barents shelf, >76 billion barrels oil, 380 trillion cubic feet natural gas)
There are more. http://www.usgs.gov/science/science.php?term=799&b=0&n=10
We do not need to buy oil from anyone, if we could only extract our own.
I love reading this stuff. You are truly a breath of fresh, clean air. Thanks VDH.
A typo, I hope:
(So Rauf jets off for a month to raise money from the “liberal” gulf autocracies; the bridge-building, healer Rauf wants not a 3, 4, or 6 story mosque, but a 13-story “Islamic complex” to contemplate and mediate and think about the misunderstandings that drove two planes to mysteriously take down two towers. This guy read Obamism to the tee, and is going to make a lot of money and gain a lot of attention playing its adherents as the fools they are)
I’m sure you meant “meditate”?? I doublt that much mediation occurs in a purely Muslim environment.
Im all in on your 11 suggestions.
BTW, in regard to the Hagia Sophia, mentioned a strip or two ago… while converted to a mosque at some point – it’s heritage is well documented today and a visit is sensitive to its WHOLE history. As an architect I checked and noted.
Islam is well represented in the neighborhood with the Blue and Sulyiman (sp.?) mosques nearby.
Stay on point sir.
VDH,
All good examples of actions to take. I worked as a research engineer at a small college for a while. I was amazed at the amount of money available for all kinds of research. Most of it was marginal at best. It became a self licking ice cream cone as institutes and other college affiliated organizations developed lobbyists of sorts to live in Washington, lobby their legislative staffs, and try to get their annual cut of the pork pie. Don’t get me wrong, there is some good work happening but there is no end to it and it feeds these tenured professors who rarely teach a class and spend most of their time traveling to seminars to generate even more interest and funds for more research in their particular area of expertise. The global warming bunch is a prime example.
Do we know how much money we are spending on frivilous research? I think we could save tons of money, kick these kids out into the job market (most of the grad students are foreign by the way), and help bring sanity back to our campuses. Let the market pay for research it wants, not legislators..
(4) Until and unless one of alternative, non-Big-Physics fusion technologies proves itself
to be technically and commercially viable, productize and mass produce on factory assembly lines liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR). The latest American Scientist contains an article that explains why this is both possible and desirable. The technology was prototyped at ORNL years ago. We could be building 10x or more the number of reactors you suggest per year if they are mass produced LFTRs.
A Wimper , like the cowards the current US Generation is.
In just the last 24 Hours:
- Speaker of the House wants Federal investigation of any that oppose the Ground Zero Mosque.
- State Department pays for Imams ME Trips.
- NY offers State land to move Mosque.
-Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Utah Memorial Crosses Along Highway
We deserve slaughter to make room for a better people.
We are the weakest US Generation.
How can you say that? We have not yet begun to fight! The one who makes the first move loses, so let the would-be tyrants move first.
Historical references here are usually to Roman or Greek examples, but in this case, Some English sayings apply:
‘They jest at scars who never felt a wound.’
‘I took a blow in order to deal a blow.’
“Lord, for what we are about to receive,
make us truly grateful.’
This last is a fervent prayer from a British sailor
about to receive a broadside from the enemy, hoping
for inaccuracy. :(
The People, and their constitution, will prevail,
but it will take serious pain to goad them into action.
And if their first move is to squash the spider……..(and we happen to be it)? I think we need a better strategy than to wait for our betters to “move first”.
Mr. Hanson:
I never read your words without appreciation and enlightenment. You have a historian’s grasp of the long sweep, you have a theologian’s knack for identifying the crux, and you have the tone of a gentleman. Thank you.
I share this eloquently said sentiment whole heartedly.
Thanks, Dr. Hanson. Exposition helpful in comprehending the destructive forces assaulting Economy and erosion of Constitutional restraints. And, what is to be done. Hope and change. This , too shall pass. Amazing and prolific output in your writings signal and bring to mind your calling as a Teacher in Humanities, History and Languages. Appreciated, very much.
I do wonder how you are able to take the grief in California, and remain. One recalls the merchant explaining how losses were managed by making it up by ever greater volumes sold at accelerating loss. My guess is that your capacity for large scale , high quality output outruns the pursuing adversaries.
Agreed with the article and enjoyed reading it, the comments on Caltrans reminded me of the joke about a self standing shovel being the demise of Caltrans. I frequently travel US 80 and on returning to California the first thing that greets a driver crossing from the Nevada border is a pot hole right in alignment with the sign that welcomes one to California.
I’ve got one more for you Dr. Hanson. Hold politicians to their words and promises. If a man or woman is elected to the Senate under the promise of cutting spending and rolling back “BarryCare” and fail to do so then that person must be removed from the Senate (or House). And let’s try to figure out why a upper middle income man or woman or successfully runs for Congress suddenly, within a few years, is a millionaire. Or even a smiling, bloated multi-millionaire living in a 15,000 square foot mansion with a carbon footprint larger then the footprint of a T-Rex.
“If a man or woman is elected to the Senate under the promise of cutting spending and rolling back “BarryCare” and fail to do so then that person must be removed from the Senate (or House).”
================
I would take that one more step. Require a person running on repealing Obamacare or any other program to sign an agreement to immediately relinquish the office if he/she violates that pledge.
Dr. VDH. Wonderful, accurate, and provocative observations with the much needed list of remedies. In fact your clarity is so stunning that our current crop of government layabouts will do absolutely nothing. All responsibility from this moment onward will reside with the voters. If incumbents and liberals remain in office things will continue to degrade. A revolution is needed to overthrow such mass corruption as exists today. At what point do we not have a country left to rescue ? You correctly provide the necessary changes – now the voters must wake up and act. Thanks Thanks Thanks.
Dr. Hanson:
A fine essay, as always. May I add a comment and a quibble?
The problem with the Cordoba mosque is not that it is “insensitive” or “inappropriate” (I share your displeasure with the misuse of this useful word), but that it is an act of war during a time of open, declared war. And it is an act of war to which the United States is particularly succeptible.
We are indeed at war and have been at war since the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration. Most Americans don’t know that in the years between that humiliating event during which Islam openly and repeayedly declared war on us (and all infidels)and 9-11, some 800 Americans around the world were killed by islamists, and of course, many, many more since. President Bush did indeed keep us safe during his term in office, but during the first two years of Obama, we have been successfully attacked three times, and a number of other attempts–many of which we’ll never know–have failed or been foiled.
What many do not know or appreciate is that Islam is a violent creed that recognizes no separation of church and state and has no room for tolerance. It is utterly incompatible with democracy, tolerance and religious fredom. Muslims who practice Jihad (holy war) against infidels (all non-muslims) are merely adhering to the letter of the teachings of the Koran. Of course many jihadists violate the prohibition against killing other muslims, but killing infidels on the path to imposing Sharia (islamic law) on the world is not only allowed, but a religious mandate. That most muslims do not try to kill their non-muslim neighbors and will never take the path of jihad is nothing more than a reflection of their individual humanity and lack of blood lust, not a reflection of the clear dictates of their faith. Sadly, many–particularly among the self-annointed elite–know this, but refuse to acknowledge, accept or act upon it.
Just as during the Vietnam war, our enemies know that they cannot defeat us on the battlefied, but they are certain, and with much historic support, that they can defeat us on the domestic propaganda battlefield and that such defeat will eventually cause us to give up. In this case, in this time, such surrender will be cultural, civilizational suicide. That is what the attempt to build the mosque is: A propaganda offensive that is part and parcel of a war of slavery and extermination against freedom, democracy and western civilization. This is a war for which the islamists have infinite patience. Americans tend to be far more impatient.
That we have a president–and a political party–that seem unable and/or unwilling to recognize the nature of our enemy, and whose determination in fighting the war imposed upon us is, at best, reluctant, should be the ultimate, overriding concern for every American when they step into the ballot box, for absent the survival of liberty, every other issue pales in significance.
Oppose the mosque because it will hurt people’s feelings? No. Absolutely prevent its construction because it will give aid and comfort to our deadly, declared enemy during a time of war. Prevent it because to support it is treason (giving aid and comfort to the enemy). The mosque’s proponents say: “It’s only propaganda; it’s only words and words can’t hurt us. The First Amendment!” Wrong. Propaganda is merely a type of warfare, the effects of which can be as deadly as the bomb or the bullet. We are at war. Building the mosque is an act of war perpetrated by our enemy, an act of war that will help them and their supporters and harm us. That this must be pointed out, that any American could fail to understand or embrace this is most discouraging and is not a sign conducive to the survival of our freedoms. That our President would not only fail to understand this, but support our enemies, is disturbing at best.
As to the quibble, I’m afraid I must disagree to an extent on the issue of natural gas powered vehicles. While the fuel does offer some cost and cleanliness benefits, there are very good reasons why it–and other fuels–have not supplanted gasoline. NG may well work for buses, some trucks and similar commercial vehicles, but as a day to day fuel for cars, particularly small cars, it’s just not practical.
Always a pleasure to read your comments on a VDH article sir, I look forward to them as much as the initial essay! You are absolutely spot on with your analysis of what the Ground Zero mosque is all about… it’s a place for the enemy to gather strength and numbers on our soil. Thank you for your concision and your wisdom.
You are spot on about CNG and small cars, but VDH merely said “transportation”. All types and sizes of fleet vehicles use of CNG are proving financially and economically desirable. So I take your quibble more as a clarification.
Case in point-Schwan’s uses natural gas powered trucks to deliver their ice cream, and has for years.
VDH-would you consider moving to Indiana? I would love for my sons to have you for a prof., but I would NEVER send them to the abyss that is California for schooling!! Unfortunately, we have an illegal problem here, also-although not to the degree that you describe. I’ve stopped going to McDonald’s, as no one working in the drive-thru’s at our local restaurants speak English. There are some good wineries around here, so if you still want to grow grapes…
heh…. Most of the US born, here at our drive-ups, don’t speak English either.
Yep,…..that quality public school education.
Please don’t take VDH away – California needs all the help it can get!
Boone Pickens has proposed that the American trucking fleet’s conversion to NG would reduce oil consumption in the U.S. by 25%; increase use of an abundant and indigenous natural resource; and be a ‘boon’ (sorry Boone) to employment for truck mechanics at a time when employment is very weak.
The latter is a spot where stimulus money could actually be targeted, measurable, and useful – maybe that’s why the government hasn’t done this yet. It makes too much sense.
My understanding is that NG is not significantly cleaner in emissions than regular gas by the way, but it has multiple benefits to target trucks to be converted.
I completely agree with you about Carter and Iran. in fact, I lay the birth of modern terrorism at Carter’s feet. think about it: innocent citizens of the world’s most powerful nation held hostage for over a year? Carter, like Obama now, gives the Islamic fundamentalists the approval to go ahead and do whatever they want to do, secure in the knowledge that America won’t interfere.
(and re the article itself, VDH is spot on as always!)
Wow, that the list of 10 solutions is “eccentric” or unconventional would suggest to me a diet of ‘Wonder Bread’ for the current policy diet. And for the record, sometime in the 1930′s Wonder Bread had to change the ingredients to make ‘it’ (a thing more than a food in my opinion) more nutritional and less addictive after a man ate nothing but Wonder Bread for months and ultimately died of malnutrition.
True storey, and apt metaphor.
That healthy and constructive solutions can be accurately labelled “eccentric” expresses the American people’s disconnected and delusional perspective. The same can be said of most in my country, Canada.
Thankfully, sir, you thought well enough of us to provide clarity in this situation. We are eternally grateful.
Bill,
Beyond cultural distinctions between our countries, or regionally within our respective borders, we all share the same disconnect within the larger population. I hope I was clear about that (after rereading my post, this is meant to be stated respectfully).
Let’s hope the list of solutions proposed by VDH, and others on these posts, can progress from eccentric to conventional!
November will tell America, and our country, much about attitudes and priorities. The ‘hope’ is anything but a campaign slogan this time. It’s all there is right now. Maybe add in a prayer too.
P.S. The gratitude is all ours. We are truly the most fortunate country in the world to have such a long history of mutual friendship and gains and we look forward to many more ahead.
simply wonderful …
as always a great read sir …
We can eliminate the anchor baby issue by simply cutting the chain. In this case we don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The baby gets its citizenship but the parents and the extended family can’t use that baby to game the system.
Ahh…but will they who need to learn the most, pay attention to what you have presented? I doubt it! So, the game continues with the next real battle being this November, where the private vote gets tested, results calculated, winners and losers adjudged. A shift in power, yet the war will continue for the “hearts and minds” of the American people along with those who might be illegal, yet still loved by so many kind folk.
Every farmer knows that “fertilizer” can do wonders for a crop…when “properly” applied. Not too much, nor too little will work…it takes just the right amount.
Stimulus monies or whatever words this group of elected officials wish to use is nothing more than fertilizer.
Crack addicts know what I am talking about, don’t they?
Could it be we have many such types in government?
Well said RJ.
Very apt metaphor, and let’s hope that ‘farmers’ get elected and clear out any ‘crack heads’ from office in November.
I would add to “#11. Outlaw the use of “inappropriate”, the new weasel word for perverted, sick, or disgusting”, “transgression”.
‘transgress – infringe or go beyond the bounds of (a moral principle or other established standard of behavior)’
This one is headed in the same direction – let’s add it to the ‘no-fly’ list before it gets any more lift off.
I had forgotten that “pervert” is a word. I haven’t heard its use since the 1980s.
Thank you Dr. Hanson. Alternativess to madness are a good thing. You’ve proven that once again. Is anyone listening?
VDH, as he usually does, underplays it.
We are reaching the crescendo of a clash of world views that is the most significant thing to happen in this country since the Civil War, and it is coming much faster than anyone wants to admit. There will be no leisurely decline. The pace of change in general is many times faster now than in the ancient world. Chalk it up to modern communications. We have probably seen 3 cycles since WWII that would have taken hundreds of years in Roman time, or more.
Potholes in roads are interesting, but the roads won’t have time to disintegrate before this clash makes the quality of the road system irrelevant.
For the last 60 to 70 years the real conflict in this country has been between Americans who believe in the primacy of our system of government by free people as defined and protected by the Constitution, and a ruling class that seeks to impose another system entirely, a 2-class society of aristocrats and serfs, with the first owning and controlling everything, and the rest, virtual slaves. Marxism is their political weapon of choice. It gives a veneer of intellectualism to a philosophy that was designed to persuade people to voluntarily give up their freedom in return for the thrill of seeing other people lose wealth and political power, while allowing the apex elite to accumulate all of the power and wealth for themselves.
Prior to the 1950’s, the professional subversives already controlled the Unions. In the 50’s they infiltrated the media. In the 60’s they subverted the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. In the 70’s they took over Academia. In the 80’s they experienced a setback during the Reagan years. In the 90’s they attempted a comeback, but Clinton proved to be more interested in his own power than in working for the cause. In the 2000’s, they leveraged their assets in the media and succeeded at turning Bush into a pariah, which set the table for 2008. Probably 10 years ahead of schedule, they took a chance on their dancing bear and put Obama up for the Presidency. With the help of the well timed destruction of the world’s financial system, they got what they wanted…….a committed revolutionary in the most powerful position in the world, and a world economy in shambles. Is Obama a member of the Ruling Class or a Lenin’esque radical? It doesn’t really matter what he believes, he has the power and the will to use it.
We are in the end-game now. Every day brings a new initiative to destroy our economy, our freedoms and most importantly, our will to resist.
They must believe the culmination of their efforts is no more than 2 years away. If not, why would they let their dancing bear make the profoundly stupid error of supporting the Cordoba Mosque, or Arizona, or the Black Panthers, or conceding the 2010 election, or pushing Cap and Tax, or or or. Their final battle plan must be in place and their timeline settled. 2014 must be a last resort fallback.
It’s not going to be the potholes. They are coming in full force very soon.
They are on the march, but so too are we. In a way I welcome that all of the hard work of establishing liberty is never done. I grew up under the illusion that freedom had been secured for us by historic heroes, and all that was left for us present day slackers to do was quite minimal maintenance. It turns out that was wrong. So be it. Let’s roll.
Excellent follow-on to the Professor, proreason. I’ve long held that the Communists in 1917 Russia merely replaced one aristocracy with another – their own. And whatever the failings of the Romanov’s, they did not murder tens of millions of their own people. The Communists did.
Agreed – I think we now have what you might call a perfect storm –
- increasing demands for welfare
- debt and deficit beyond any hope of control
peak oil
- international terrorism (not that a bomb or two threatens the nation – but the fear itself
is paralysing)
- a resurgent China
- the real probablity of failure in Afghanistan (not that we will be driven off the field of
battle – but any withdrawal will be perceived as a victory by the bad guys)
- a public that is disconnected, apathetic
- media that focuses on trivia, personality and no serious analysis
put all this together and it is a potent brew that frankly I do not see us successfully
resolving, absent the emergence of some seriously strong leadership here in the US and back
home in the UK (and other like-minded nations of course).
The solutions are, as pointed out by others, obvious, but will involve pain and suffering. Massive
cut backs in state spending, cuts in personal and corporate tax, elimination of the minimum
wage and so on. This is going to be hard people – but it HAS to be done otherwise we in the
West face decades of a slow death…………..
I guess I know how some of the folks felt in the last years of the Roman Empire. The enemy is
at the gates, but no matter – let’s go to the Circus and watch the gladiators………….
Now we go to watch a Hollywod movie instead and feel good as the celluloid bad guys get taken
out by Bruce Willis. Meanwhile the real bad guys gather their thoughts and weapons in
preparation……..
What a wonderful article – I have passed this site along to all my friends!
The Fair Tax rather than a flat tax goes further, does more, and returns power from Congress to citizens.
A flat tax sets one rate, just as the Fair Tax, but we had nearly a flat tax in 1986, and it has now convoluted to 66,000 pages of tax code. The Fair Tax (a 23% consumption tax) has only 122 pages, and eliminates the IRS because it is collected like a sales tax on NEW goods & services only. The Fair Tax eliminates payroll taxes, income taxes (on business & individuals), estate taxes. It provides the proper incentives, taxing consumption instead of wages (labor), savings and investment. It puts the burden of social security on the backs of 360 million consumers (instead of 190 million wage-earners). It does away with the 16% non-compliance income tax (IRS figures) and the cost of filing, documenting, planning, and the whole non-productive tax support system of tax preparers, accountants, attornies. It removes from Congress their tax power base in granting credits to the few at the expense of everyone else. But it only works if the 16th Amendment (income tax) is repealed, and America returns again the the kind of tax our founders recoemmended.
While either a flat or “Fair” tax would be preferable to the monstrocity we have now, unless you can repeal the 16th Amendment, I can guarantee that within a few years, you’d end up with both the Fair tax and an income tax. All it would take is for some “emergency” that creates a need for additional revenue and the income tax would be back. Personally, I rate the chances of repealing the 16th Amendment somewhere between hell freezing over and Obama giving a damn about what most Americans want. If you could guarantee the repeal of the 16th Amendment, then I’d be in favor of something like the Fair tax. Without that, it’s just too big a risk IMO.
Given that, a true flat tax seems the better alternative. It wouldn’t require thousands of pages of regulations and the IRS could be replaced by a computer. With the Fair tax, you’d still need a collection agency of some sort and you know good and well that there would be politically-based exemptions for some items to be taxed at different rates or not at all. You can also count on a 23% tax rate being good for the underground economy and smugglers (e.g. cigarette taxes).
Leaving aside the relative merits of flat tax vs. fair tax, the 16th Amendment does not do
what you think it does, and repealing it would not eliminate the income tax. The 16th
Amendment was passed in response to Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895) that held that income derived from property (rents, dividends and interest) was a direct tax, and, therefore, had to be apportioned (whereas income from other sources did not have to be apportioned). The 16th Amendment merely exempts an income tax from apportionment, no matter what the source of income.
In implementing an alternative tax structure, whether fair or flat or something else, a constitutional amendment would certainly be required to establish it, ban the income
tax, and prevent Congress from legislating the change away.
Van, I agree with you about the Fair Tax, If for no other reason than to eliminate the IRS. I do agree it should be tied to repeal of the 16th amendment. Why can’t we do this? No more payroll taxes! No more withholding! No more quarterly estimated taxes! I like it and I want it!
‘Freakonomics’ author Steven Levitt and his mentor, Gary Becker would be the economists best suited to consult on the matter.
The counter argument is going to be that a consumption tax is regressive. But I wonder what results a study would show, analyzing the cost savings on average, per person by making the change to the one tax.
It would also be very interesting to analyze the likely increase in public revenue (which I would anticipate).
As for avoidance in the form of underground economic activity and barter type transactions, that occurs when the level of cynicism increases and a sense of value for tax dollars declines, a single rate consumption tax is transparent, and the opposite would likely occur with the counterbalancing sense of fairness, the ability to enforce accountability, and value outweighing the current tax mess.
Woops…. Submitted before signing.
That was my post, referring to Levitt’s ‘Freakonomics’ and Gary Becker.
Love all the suggestions, which should never be described as eccentric. They portray how the normal world works.
Unfortunately, all of this is completely dependent on throwing out the fools who are running the country now and electing some who will start the correctives.
Our voting electorate in this country has been exposed as being nauseated with self-interest and ignorance. Every single American who can vote had better vote this November, or I believe it won’t matter. (I didn’t bother putting it in quotes. I’m done with being nice. By referencing every single American, I am in fact excluding those who would elect more of the same or re-elect the ones who are burning our national house. I don’t want them voting. I want Americans voting. Only Americans.)
Excellent suggestions Dr. Hanson. The only nation that could possibly put even half of them into practice would be the New United States after secession or civil war.
I have been advocating secession for going on four years now. It is the only possible way to save the United States. The newly formed sane nation would quickly prove to its whacko socialist northern neighbors they were wrong all along. I don’t think it would take too many years before most of them would petition to join the New United States and once again live under a system of law and an actual constitution that is followed. Mass. and Mich. can become part of Canada.
Yeah Texas! The Lone Star state should lead the way.
Your list will breath air into the patient, as did Reagan, but it does not touch the disease. In fact, it many cases it uses the methods of the disease.
Thank you, Dr. Hanson. For your wisdom, for your rationality, for your optimism for America, for your commonsense, you have proven yourself to be the American citizen writ large. You are a mensch.
… and here’s my addition to VDH’s ideas of bettering this nation, in the immigration subheading:
… and make the immigration in the USA a “democratic and merit” based arrangement -
Today, we have a grossly un-democratic process that doesn’t allow thousands and thousands of skilled people in the world to enter this country, while any unredeemable yokel that manages to dash over the southern border becomes a figure that drains the system and add nothing to it, and is almost impossible to send back –
Imagine – legalize 13 million aliens – while not conquering Holland or Hungary? We’d be better off, I tell you -
Natural gas for transportation, not so much but will not quibble. Speaking of petroleum products, I see that some of your bankrupt elite at UGeorgia contends the uncapped oil has not dissipated. Well let me go to a school in Georgia for petrol/science, not Oklahoma or Texas or something. The immediate remedies are spot on with the addendum of cabinet levels of the 1840′s.
“Degeneration” is not a weasel word, and more over an inevitable consequence of time and wear patterns. It is not the end product of degeneration which is as worrisome as the rate of degeneration in any living organism.
Degeneration is coupled with maintainance and regeneration. Only regeneration, revolution if you like, or complete replacement of the degenerative body can keep the entire body (politic) alive. Great ideas and new inventions have been that which saves and transforms nations, when the freedom to think and act independently is endorsed. I vote for the revival of freedom over any of the government issued entitlements and regulations as the way out of this descent.
I am surprised that no one has noticed the sort of deja vous we are experiencing between two Democrat Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
Jimmy Carter’s Presidency was destroyed by two events, the Iranian hostage crisis which he failed to resolve, and the faltering economy and high unemployment which his White House policies failed to bring to recovery.
When, not if, Barack Obama fails to prevent the Iranian nuclear program from taking the world hostage, while his economic policies actually worsen the recession and unemployment, the same implosion will destroy the Obama Presidency as well.
The question will then be will there be a Reagan ready and willing to take the reins of power, reestablish America’s global preeminence and cut back the Federal government to a governable size?
In today’s case the “Reagan” is a “Hanson”, imo.
You must have been on safari somewhere. The comparison has been spoken of for over a year and a half.
Yeah. That comparison was made even before the election.
The other question is whether the mechanisms have been—and continue to be—put in place to assure that the 2012 elections will be rigged to assure Obama’s re-election, no matter what the real vote is.
Two alternatives/additions to your list of suggestions:
1) Instead of natural gas, electrify special commercial truck lanes along the interstate highway system and treat them as toll-roads. This would be combined with using the right-of-way for a national ‘smart-grid’ to distribute the electricity from those new nuclear power plants. As to where we site the new plants, how about military bases? That way they would be well protected and could provide decentrilized emergency power to vital services.
2) A new Civilian Conservation Corps to give employment to young people, including those ‘at-risk’, away from bad influence. Give them boot camp descipline, the experience of survival against the elements, and teach them usefull basic skills. Those who are not currently allowed to join the military because of past actions would be given a chance to redeem themselves.
These may be too ‘big government’, even ‘progressive’, for most readers of this site but the objectives may be worth considering.
Ah, the good old Reichsarbeitsdienst.
Indeed, that suggestion (at least) is “too ‘big government’, even ‘progressive’,” to be worth considering – and was 70-odd years ago also.
Insightful article, and Dr. VDH has a way with words. The problems, I believe, are deeper, and are not just Right-Responsible/Left-Irresponsible-Dangerous. Much of that is true, but there is a second rift, between Elites and Commoners.
Those who dedicate themselves to going after the Left thus miss half. The full-time anti-NWO types utterly miss the first part, and many wish for a wrecked US.
I don’t see VDH or anyone else addressing the severity of these problems. The Republican leadership has failed. There will either be a morally-guided grassroots surge or the situation will explode into chaos fueled by ever-worsening economics.
I agree with all except #3.
Social Security should be abolished, or at the least elective. The males in my family do not live exceptionally long lives. Raising the age just means that I won’t be able to get anything in return for the decades of contributions the I have made and accumulated sums can’t be passed onto my children.
Are you really certain your children would not benefit? If that’s the case we probably need to consider a provision in the law to give them a limited amount of protection. A certain percentage for a certain period of time, sun-setting once they’ve reached their majority plus four.
But I agree we need to adjust age settings to accommodate averages. It just makes more sense.
FYI…Social security benefits do pass onto your kids in a way. If you die before your children reach their majority, they will receive a monthly stipend until they come of age, 21, or 24(?) if they are enrolled in college. I was 21 when my mother passed away. Since I was enrolled in college at the time, I received a check every month for $200+ bucks until I dropped out of college at 22. (Imagine my surprise when the checks stopped coming.)
i am less optomistic about this country’s ability to rebound (not without another bloody civil war in our lifetime). we are not the same nation…our last heroic generation is passing…boomers are not cut out for greatness. the confluence of issues we face is reaching a tipping point…of no return…we are the roman empire
I urge you to look at the character and integrity displayed by our current warrior class and reconsider your pessimism. Our armed forces are certainly not “Romans”, and once their energy and dynamics are unleashed on many societal disconnects all sorts of things could quickly change. Don’t give up too soon, bojo, things could turn around quickly – given the proper circumstances.
Agreed. As one who is intimately familiar with the US Military, you are going to see and [b]are already seeing[/b], men of valor enter into the political system as candidates. Men and women who see perilous times and want to serve again. Not as activist radicals (Jean Francois, Cleland etc.), but as soldier statesman.
Lawyers should be used for pop-up targets.
just think VDH.
you are presently a witness to the greatest war ever. thw war for the freedom of the individual. you have the best seat.
http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/english/index.htm
unfortunately obama is only one small cog in this wheel and it doesn’t look good for anyone. because even if the liberal/progressives/marxist win they have really lost. …and taken us all with them into the sh!t.
“5.Don’t cut defense.”
Good list except for that one.
The founders had it right. Big permanent militaries are a bad thing, and ours has brought us nothing but trouble.
Can’t disagree with you more about the military causing trouble. It is the most highly respected governmental institution in the US. It has been a rock of stability and has gotten even better over time where our government officials and their systems have degraded. Our military is much smaller and more capable than ever recorded in history. We have a large number of reserves that are equally formidable. Look elsewhere for criticism. I think our military, their stature, their capability and their service record is one of the best things America has to offer.
Sorry, you may be a nice person but your are dead wrong. Since Washington crossed the Delaware NOT having a strong military has caused more trouble than having one.
I wouldn’t undercut the only remaining institution in this country that still gets the job done. We need an example of something that works the way it should.
WTF? I’m trying to see your point about the military buying us ‘nothing but trouble’. Let’s see if, in the spirit of comity, I can list some of them:
1) Helping defeat the Kaiser and saving Europe. Yup, pretty bad….
2) Defeating Hitler and Tojo and winning WWII. Pretty despicable….I’m starting to see your point.
3) Saving the South Koreans from the understandable desire of their northern cousins to share with them the benefits of the Democratic People’s Republic of Republics of Liberty and All That Glorious Freedom Sounding Stuff. Bastards, every one of us, for stopping that.
4) Defending the South Vietnamese – unsuccessfully – and stopping the dominos from falling? I hate dominos and stupid games like that so I see your point.
5) Collapsing the Soviet Union without having to fight a world war. I know….we’re just a bunch of imperialist bastards determined to plant McDonald’s Golden Arches all over the world, whether they want it or not. Now if it was Burger King….I might see it differently.
6) Ending genocide in Serbia? How dare we.
7) Reestablishing a sovereign nation – Kuwait – from an unwarranted invasion? I’m starting to run out of words to express my outrage.
8) Exacting a price for the treachery of the 9-11 attacks? The horror……the H…O…R…R…O…R.
Ok, so I lied. I tried to see your point but……nah…I can’t. On the bright side, I do see you as living proof that extraterrestrial life does exist – because you clearly come from a different planet than I come from.
Sunds like an impressve list of reasons NOT to have a big standing military to me.
We’re just bouncing from one war to the next…thousands of miles from home.
The Swiss have the right idea…we don’t.
And, socialism at home and militarism abroad are strangling this country.
Today’s youth never grow up and are so indoctrinated…im not sure we can pull out. It will take us old folks(im 39..which aint old) to pull us out. I was at a birthday party full of college grads in their late 20s with good jobs…it was sad how indoctrinated they are, clueless, lazy ect. I see this all the time, people under 30 dont seem to grow up and take NO personal responsibility.
Previous generations had a much better work ethic(not perfect), were more responsible and not so heavily indoctrinated by the Federal Education/Indoctrination Dept. So…yes we have pulled out of hard times, but we had people willing AND able to pull up their boots and get it done. I dont believe the current crop can or will.
SO..im my 2c…we may pull out.
Therefore i try and plan for both..the fall or eventual recovery.
The problem isnt that the problems cant be solved.
The problem is that the Left is working to thwart solving them. And the Left is very powerful, and growing moreso by the year.
An additional comment regarding the use of natural gas as an alternative to petroleum extracts:
AT&T and Verizon are currently converting their fleets of service vehicles to natural gas from gasoline. Being for-profit companies, someone high up on the food chain ran a spreadsheet that showed how many millions, if not billions, of dollars could be “retained”, i.e., not spent, over some given period of time. It not only makes sense, it makes me wonder why Ford, GM, et al, haven’t spent a couple of bucks promoting this into their fleets as opposed to electrics. Seems the infrastructure is more closely available for refueling LNG than electrics given the lack of nuclear power plants and reluctance to build more coal fired plants.
Nice article too. I think you could live anywhere in Texas and observe the same demographics, just not the same infrastructure conditions.
Robert,
It’s mystifying that more isn’t being done to convert fleets to natural gas.
Even more remarkable with all the political points that could be scored, that there isn’t a politician pounding the table on the government promoting this idea.
Add to this that Boone Pickens has spent a very substantial amount of his personal net worth promoting this exact policy where there are immediate and long term economic gains that are measurable; employment gains (switching fleets and in increased consumption of an abundant indigenous natural resource); stimulus “opportunities” in publicly financing the conversion (I can’t believe I’m actually suggesting this, but if it’s going to be spent, might as well do it usefully if that’s possible); and security gains by reducing U.S. oil consumption by what he estimates to be 25% within an 18-24 month timeframe (less dollars going to countries that support terrorism and aggression against America).
Now that’s rich… how can public policy makers be so blind to this opportunity that is overwhelmingly positive and productive!?
Outstanding analysis. We will survive all these Bozos in positions of power. Just to confirm what Mr. Victor Davis Hanson experienced in California… four years ago I was hit on a head-on collision with 4 illegal men of Hispanic origin while driving on a Saturday night. They were driving on the wrong side of the highway with their headlights off and drunk as a skunk. I lost over 2 liters of blood and have a huge abdominal scar to remind me of this. Of course, they had no insurance or papers, but they spent the night in jail only to be released the next morning, while I spend one week in the hospital and another 6 in convalescence. And all of this was in Alabama (Mr. Hanson’s home State). Just to make a point, I’m far from being a bigot. I’m a Hispanic man who grew up poor but survived while taking advantage of the opportunities that this country offers us. I’m also a senior military officer and proud of this great country of ours. Yes, we will definitely survive.
1. End the right of state employees to unionize. Jerry brown’s decision to allow that is the point from which California began to slide.
2. Get that redistricting done so there are no more “safe” incumbent districts.
3. Pass a state constitutional amendment that ANY income taxed assessed must be assessed against all income earners–not some all.
4. Another one that mandates dismissals of state employees when the budget is not balanced; not furloughs.
5. State employees have to contribute a minimum of 15% to their retirement, they don’t up the last year with vacation or sick days or anything else;
6. No ore disability payemnts to anyone unless a real MD agrees and a board approves; and
7. No stress leave.
8. get rid of those silly outmoded wage and hour laws. let people leave at 4 if they want to work thru lunch;
Love the article Professor. I’d add another item to your list – immediately outlawing gerrymandering. Drop a piece of graph paper on the map and those are the districts (adjusted for population of course) and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps the Congressional Black Caucus will double in size, perhaps be halved, perhaps it will have to give way to the Congressional Transgendered Hermaphroditic Dwarves of New Guineaen Descent Caucus. What matters is to get away from a corrupt system where elections become largely irrelevant. The reason Pelosi is a bats**t crazy lunatic who can’t be unseated is because of her distorted district, populated by equally bats**t crazy residents.
Assigning congressional districts by a random process should be on everyone’s top ten list of things to do (I’ll gladly bump one of my eccentric choices above for this). The current process of gerrymandering is a complete failure, for the reasons you point out.
All representative districts should be designed to have the maximum surface area for the minimum perimeter. A simple mathematical algorithm could design them for each level of representative. This would end gerrymandering and “safe” districts. All districts would have the same population and would consist of folks who live near (relatively) each other.
LGoP, I totally agree about the graph paper gerrymandering, been saying that for years. Who elects some of these people?!
Good commentary. May I submit my own list to your list:
1. Do away with many of the department like Education, HHS, HUD, Labor, etc to trim the government down to a workable size. That which is a state power let it be a state power.
2. Drill baby drill
3. Pull all our troops back home from anywhere overseas
4. End the UN’s use of our land; withdrawl from the UN
5. End welfare for anyone below 65 who can work and has been on it for over three years; no additional funding for babies after two. End the ANCHOR baby clause
6. Send all illegals home by means of deportation, the threat of job closures if there are illegals there, no benefits… NO BENEFITS; deport all criminals
7. Tax awards from litigation at 99% on the lawyer and law firms; end the NLRB and kill unions; tax any union dues used for politics at 99&; reduce the scope of ADA, OSHA and EPA strangleholds on industry
8. Induce and rebuild our industrial base-steel, textile, applicance, etc concurrent with number 7 by reducing corporate taxation to below 13%
9. End the politics of education especially at the primary and seconday level. Build and send students to alternative schools those who cannot and will not behave in regular classrooms including IEP students; bring back discipline such as expulsions and suspensions
10. Tax into oblivion the ACLU, progressive 527s, all the foundtions and charities that support left wing causes such as McArthur, Kennedy, Ford, Heinz/Soros/Tides, etc. Sure some of our foundations and orgaizations will get caught in the crossfire but we nee to level the playing field
6.
#42 Blotto wrote: “1. Do away with many of the department like Education, HHS, HUD, Labor, etc to trim the government down to a workable size. That which is a state power let it be a state power.
2. Drill baby drill
3. Pull all our troops back home from anywhere overseas
4. End the UN’s use of our land; withdrawl from the UN
5. End welfare for anyone below 65 who can work and has been on it for over three years; no additional funding for babies after two. End the ANCHOR baby clause
6. Send all illegals home by means of deportation, the threat of job closures if there are illegals there, no benefits… NO BENEFITS; deport all criminals
7. Tax awards from litigation at 99% on the lawyer and law firms; end the NLRB and kill unions; tax any union dues used for politics at 99&; reduce the scope of ADA, OSHA and EPA strangleholds on industry
8. Induce and rebuild our industrial base-steel, textile, applicance, etc concurrent with number 7 by reducing corporate taxation to below 13%
9. End the politics of education especially at the primary and seconday level. Build and send students to alternative schools those who cannot and will not behave in regular classrooms including IEP students; bring back discipline such as expulsions and suspensions
10. Tax into oblivion the ACLU, progressive 527s, all the foundtions and charities that support left wing causes such as McArthur, Kennedy, Ford, Heinz/Soros/Tides, etc. Sure some of our foundations and orgaizations will get caught in the crossfire but we nee to level the playing field”
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Ain’t the internet grand? Without anyone even dying, we can be made God and give out our nostrums. It is so easy to write a list, but so difficult to achieve anything politically, without endless wheeling and dealing. Anyway, just out of curiosity, how many of these do you think have more than a snowball’s chance in hell of actually happening…or does that matter? Obviously, we might ask VDH the same thing, but his list did not jump out at me the way yours did.
VDH’s method is to select his ten favorite hobby horses, meaning his least favorite things that he sees around him, writing a bit of a folksy introduction with a slightly new twist, if we are lucky, and then coming back to the same-old, same-old, and many of the folks here are blown away by his…beats the hell out of me.
When a guy has a scholarly background, I expect more than boilerpate Obama bashing. My disappointment is essentially that more is not brought to the table, but I will also grant you that Reagan might not have brought all that much more to the table, either. However, I think that he got further away from Sacramento than VDH shows any signs of doing. It’s kind of cute, though, that people want him to run for President. He could be another Woodrow Wilson; a scholar who stoops to bring us a better society. has he ever run anything?
“I pass on east-west California arteries. There are really none much other than freeway 80″.
Except for I-40, I-10, and I-8.
“Drive Highway 101 between, say, Watsonville and the Monterey Bay area..”
I would, if 101 went to Watsonville.
“My favorite are 168 and 180, good highways that abruptly stop near the Sierra Crest — roads to nowhere.”
They’re my favorites too, but what would, say, connecting both ends of 168 accomplish except for shortening the drive time between Fresno and Bishop for ~ 4 months out of the year? It would still be a road to nowhere because there is nothing east of Bishop.
“Over a half-million acres are not farmed because academics with tenure and publicly employed scientists have decided that a fish is a better barometer of civilization’s health than are food-producing plains”
The western San Joaquin valley is a desert, and cotton and alfalfa aren’t food. That barren wasteland is only worth something if you decide that the delta smelt’s existence is worth nothing. I, for one, will stand up for the fish.
“Except for I-40, I-10, and I-8″, which all serve SoCal. Fresno, where VDH lives, is midway between I-80 and I-40.
“It would still be a road to nowhere because there is nothing east of Bishop”, except the rest of the US. The same is true for Reno, BTW.
“The western San Joaquin valley is a desert”, just like the Imperial Valley of SoCal, one of the most productive farming areas in the world thanks to irrigation. Agriculture is an important part of California’s (failed) economy, no?
“Fresno, where VDH lives, is midway between I-80 and I-40.”
That’s my point. VDH writes as though he is unfamiliar with any part of Cali that isn’t between Fresno and Palo Alto. Most Californians live in SoCal.
“It would still be a road to nowhere because there is nothing east of Bishop”, except the rest of the US. The same is true for Reno, BTW.
Check a road atlas. From Reno you can get to the rest of the US via I-80, US95, etc. What would extending CA 168 allow you to do that CA 108 and CA 120 don’t? My point is that VDH seems to be advocating a new highway in a place that has adequate capacity. I suspect he wants a seasonal, scenic highway that would make it more convenient for him to get to Mammoth, in which case he should just buy an airplane. If he really thinks that building an interstate over Kearsarge Pass would be a good use for tax dollars, he is on crack.
“just like the Imperial Valley of SoCal, one of the most productive farming areas in the world thanks to irrigation.”
An excellent contrast. Imperial Co. uses Colorado water to produce high value food crops all year long. No fish are threatened with extinction, heck, runoff supports tilapia in the Salton Sea, which are snacks for migratory waterfowl. Also, many of the Mexican citizens who work there are bused from the border at Calexico and Algodones in the am and go home in the afternoon. By contrast, the West San Joaquin valley takes water from the Delta and imports illegal aliens to do what? Grow textile and silage crops? A few politically connected people benefit while the rest of the state suffers? These farmers sound like Democrats to me.
VDH goes on about the intrinsic virtues of farming. Then he turns around and gripes about illegal aliens in Fresno, not even wondering about what activity might have brought them there. I see farming in the Central Valley as a net loss for CA.
Cotton and alfalfa are not food…Right, but cottonseed and alfalfa fed to milk cows will turn to milk and butterfat. The cows love both and produce well. I hope you really do know where milk comes from.
The movement to restore the Constitution is happening just in time.
I hope you’re right Ogletree. The stellar ‘mad as hell and not taking it anymore’ Republicans of Connecticut just put Linda McMahon on the ballot, not economic heavyweight Peter Schiff. McMahon is filthy rich, and they went for the money – hook line and sinker. Schiff’s economic proposals are the same as VDH’s and many of the ones here. Every. Single. One. They had a constitutionalist ready to go and they blew it. Beck used to have Schiff on his program all the time, before he was popular, but Beck never even tried to contact him and help his campaign – not even once.
Mr. Ogletree, unless the people who actually want a constitutional republic pay attention to races like these, and the so called ‘Republicans’ stop being “dem lite”, then I am afraid your hope is al for naught.
Yep, happened here in California too. To many people voted for Meg Whitman (who’s only saving grace is she’s running against Jerry Brown) instead of Steve Piosner. They believed the propaganda that her money paid for.
Great “to-do” list Dr. Hanson. Regarding action item #9: add to that the elimination of bilingual education. It’s a deeply entrenched tool of the education “establishment” and the professional La Raza agitators to prevent assimilation and create a perpetually dependent second class of citizens.
Our Superintendant of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, did it here in AZ last year. To find the public support for it though, he had to demonstrate how poorly education was serving the ESL students in every regard (and they WERE!).
“… So the problems are solvable, given the natural and human strengths of the United States….”
What human strengths does he mean? The strength of voting for politicians who look best, sound best, or promise the most benefits? The strength of desiring new, harsh federal laws for every unwanted circumstance? The strengths of selfishness, greediness, mendaciousness, and other failings that result in more government entitlements, more fraudulent tax avoidance, and more demands to tax everyone else?
With strengths such as those permeating our people, I believe we have no chance of reversing our accelerating slide towards the abyss.
I think the great (and awful) aspect of the VDH recommendations that have been made is that they are really no longer optional… things have hit a wall to such a degree that we are in a kill or cure moment… Like the emphysema patient warned by the doctor for the last time to stop smoking.
The 30% may well be suicidal… but the other 70% sure as hell isn’t.
November! Faster, pussycat– kill, kill! ; )
I was sitting in the beauty parlor with goop on my hair reading Dr. Hanson’s piece when I hit this line:
“The United States is so naturally endowed, its Constitution so aptly crafted, and a majority of its population so wedded to a meritocratic, free enterprise system, that recovery, both material and psychological is within our grasp.”
When the gal sitting next to you is reading a magazine featuring young women with the latest hair styles, it’s a little tough wiping away tears of gratitude without looking foolish.
Thank you, good man. Thank you patriot. For wisdom born of un-blinkered seeing.
For faith in the vision of our founders, and ultimately for your faith in the ‘us’ of this great good land.
Would that the good Dr. Hanson would consider politics. He’d have my vote. The trouble is that he would be surrounded by a pack of snarling hyenas. Estimating the odds of prevailing in such circumstances I leave an exercise for the reader.
Let’s face it – many of the most hardened, the most cynical realists among us simply do not want to admit that it’s not merely the fact of slo-mo trainwreck that’s happening now – it’s that we’re also riding in one of the cars. With no way off.
We’re caught in a stunning contradiction – between our faith in the rule of law and the unspoken trust that underpins the social contract, and the fact that in the back of our minds, we know that that trust has been corroded to the point of vanishing. This is the trust that allows us the confidence that we can honor each other’s business AND personal transactions and that the rule of law, not that of men, stands behind them.
From the handshake deal to the most complex of business transactions; from the trust of friendship to the bonds of marriage and love – all have been assaulted, battered and railed against by the reigning popular orthodoxy. From the pulpit to an evening’s worth of television, the message that we get is that our collective salvation lies in servitude and that our partners in business and love can’t be trusted. All pretty much as Gramsci envisioned. Those of us with any sense of history know the final destination of that train.
These two views are irreconcilable. We must both deny and vociferously reject the destructive anti-values and de-civilizing messages emanating from our pastors and our popular culture, or settle for surrender and something worse than servitude. How many of us will go for the latter case is a question yet to be resolved.
Never forget that the stakes in this game of suicide poker with liars wild is – us.
And to what end? Orwell told us over half a century ago:
“We are the priests of power-do not forget this, Winston. Always there will be the intoxication of power… If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever.”
I would like to make one observation regarding raising the retirement age: I always assumed that I would work until at least 68.
And then in a perfect storm of a tanking economy, an imploding industry (publishing) that was sending design, production and editorial work offshore (to India), and being over sixty when I was laid off, I’m wondering how I’ll find work til I’m 65, never mind 68.
It doesn’t do any good to raise the retirement age, if there aren’t any jobs.
Well, OK, but my mother still gets to use “inappropriate.” She nails it every time.
“A $12 trillion economy can, if it wished, pay off $12 trillion in debt rather quickly by freezing spending and cutting useless programs, while reforming Medicare and Social Security.”
Yes, absolutely. Acquaintances of mine and I were speaking on just this last evening.
When the economy was really tanking here, the idea of severe budget cuts were seriously thrown around. One program to be cut was, I kid you not, “Fishing Camp” for inner-city kids. Politicians and do-gooders came out of the woodwork: Nope, can’t cut that, no sir. So they didn’t cut it. In the midst of the worst economy for decades.
Freaking Fishing Camp.
Multiply that by, oh, several hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of other nonsensical, “feel-good” programs, and soon you’re talking real money (Thanks to Everett Dirksen for that paraphrase).
And there’s the insanity of the Democrat Party right there: when was our government ever intended to be a cornucopia of entitlements? How did these nitwits get from “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” to this crap?
“How did these nitwits get from “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” to this crap?”
Good question. Short answer: see #19 above. Long answer: everything VDH has written these past few years.
That’s why I frequent here.
40. Smith
End their right to strike! That’s the problem. Also end MANDATORY unionization. That will make what’s left of the unions useful to members and society at large.
.That would be wasteful. When you terminate someone like that they are owed a balloon payment settlement of all their benefits. Much better to vacate the offices of legislators who do not bring in a budget on time. Kick THEM out. They were the ones that caused the problem.
I agree public employee wages and benefits are out of control. But the employees themselves are not the ones that caused this. It was embedded unions and weak or stupid [your choice] legislators. Don’t deal with the symptom, deal with the disease.
1. 50. Gina Your comment is awaiting moderation.
2. I would like to make one observation regarding raising the retirement age: I always assumed that I would work until at least 68. And then in a perfect storm of a tanking economy, an imploding industry (publishing) that was sending design, production and editorial work offshore (to India), and being over sixty when I was laid off, I’m wondering how I’ll find work til I’m 65, never mind 68. It doesn’t do any good to raise the retirement age, if there aren’t any jobs. August 19, 2010 – 5:11 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
I am not even sixty. I can’t do the hard labor I did when I was 40 and in my early 50′s.
You are out of touch with reality. Do you really think that people are capable of working after
their youth is gone? At a typewriter maybe, on the roads and in the factories, get real, get a grip,
heck, get a job where you have to stay on your feet and carry things for 8 hours a day, grampa.
Most suggestions I’ve seen are about raising the age limit in small steps, a year at a time, over a period of years.
I retired at 72.5 and wouldn’t have quit then, except for maxing out my pension. Further work would have meant taking a slightly lower payout down the road. However, I knew workers 20 years younger who had worn out their bodies, so it is probably a case-by-case thing.
The cure is do away with SS altogether. Let PEOPLE invest their own money(you know the money they take out of our paychecks every month for SS)…if they dont invest…well then they will not have a nice retirement and whos fault would that be? If they invest and are smarter about it they can retire whenever they think they have enough money socked away(again..the Gov needs to stop taking money out of our pay checks for SS, let us invest it)
SS is forced investing in crap.
Dr. Hanson has been on or around farms his entire life. I believe that meets your requirements.
Downie
If dancers and athletes can “retire” at far earlier ages than 40 and successfully move into less demanding employment, you can too. You aren’t locked into any particular brand of work. Young people aren’t going to tolerate sky high taxes to provide you with a twenty year retirement.
VDH! You are the bomb! I’d vote for you too! Thank you for your thinking and for the kind way you write about it. Good on you!
Is this the right time to point out that the Umayyad caliphate in Spain came about only after the last remaining Umayyad grandson barely escaped with his life when the rival Muslim Abbasids came into Damascus and slaughtered everything in sight? So what do do after you’ve conquered and stole and looted and invaded, only to be thrown out by another more powerful gang of killers who butcher your entire family? Well, you get on a boat, sail someplace else, and them declare yourself caliph of wherever you land, and then start taking whatever you can. This comes after so many wars and conflicts and butchery and bloodshed and more wars and slaughter and bloodshed between rival Muslim gangs and sects and allegiances that it takes a great act of recollection to keep them all straight. The minute Mohamed dies, the whole thing erupts in bloodshed–for centuries, and it hasn’t stopped to take a breath since. It’s a death cult, not a religion.
Oh, and the California highways VDH notes are horrible, and woefully inadequate for the amount of traffic. The 5 alone is a disaster; the biggest artery in California, running from the two busiest ports on the US, runs two lanes all the way up the state. The state is in third world decline.
Your facts are bad. VDH’s favorite roads are great. Others, maybe not so much. Generally I agree with your description of the condition of I-5 in the Central Valley, but I-5 doesn’t anywhere near the top ten ports of the state. Sacramento? San Diego? Get real. If you know the road at all you know some sections in metropolitan areas are 8 or 10 lanes wide. Nice try, though.
And compared with some sections of I-35 in Texas or I-39 in Wisconsin, I-5 is paradise.
War, pillaging, slavery, killing, looting, conquest …
That’s been the history of most of humanity, of all religions.
Instead of term limits for lawmakers, we should have term limits for the laws they make. On April 20 of every odd-numbered year, every single Federal law should expire automatically, unless Congress and the President agree to renew it after January 20.
There must be no exceptions. Social Security, national defense, and payments on the debt should continue only if Congress decides to continue them.
This way, there need never be any budget “cuts” because each new Congress would raise taxes and spending from a base of zero.
This works best when combined with a line-item veto. Otherwise Congress would tie all their pork to a sacred cow, and dare anyone to kill her.
Recriminalize adultery and divorce. That is , punish them with felony convictions. Anyone else here man enough to support that proposal for moral and cultural renewal? I didn’t think so. We’re sunk. Pop a beer, hire a lady.
Has anybody noticed the scarcity of liberla trolls? Maybe George Soros ran out of money? We can only hope. Great job Dr Hanson. Another terrific article for my archives.
I was thinking the same thing, while reading the last three or four of Dr. Hanson’s articles. Perhaps, the depression of Obama summer, is finally sinking in.
or the Moderator sharpened his chainsaw.
Hi ! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah ! ! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !
! I’m Viivo ! I’m an idiot ! Hah Hah !
VDH is correct but we need a president, a senate and a house of representatives that want the United States to thrive. The
US has recources that if utilized can put us in clover in ten years. We have the following:
1. 4 times the known oil reserves of the entire rest of the world combined (enough to keep us moving for 2000 years)
2. 9 times the mineable gold as the rest of the world combined (enough to gold back our currency)
3. The ability to grow more cerial crops than any other country in the world (enough to control the world prices)
4. The greatest technology that if utilized could end 60% of our oil dependence
Our problem is simple. Our elected representatives have become dictatorial rulers who are so power mad they could care
less about the long term survival of our country.
I’m not worried about the United States because the power mad bureaucrats have never had a handle on the “rednecks”.
America is finished for two reasons.
Reason one: America currently has about 30-40 million illegal aliens, in addition to the 15-16 million legal Mexican ancestry residents. The differential birth rate, with Mexican-Americans having 4 kids to Whites having below 2 (replacement level) AND the continuation of Mexican style poverty and culture (single motherhood, low educational achievement) make a mockery of Dr. Hanson’s assertion that the US CAN assimilate the current Mexican population inside the US.
We can’t.
Because Mexicans are not Cubans. In that, the Cuban exiles were upper class, educated, anti-Communist aristocrats, mostly high IQ folk, desperate to rebuild their middle or upper class lives. Mexicans on the other hand are dirt poor peasants, of mostly Indian background, with ingrained poverty culture ideas, great resentment towards American/European cultural norms (completely opposite of Cuban elite’s embrace of those values BEFORE they fled Cuba), and with Mexico right at the border, constantly re-inforcing culturally and demographically the failures of Mexico. Instead what we get is a RAPIDLY expanding class of permanent Mexican peasants, a society like Brazil’s favelas, only super-sized.
Secondly, we will NOT close the border. Mexico is collapsing before our eyes, in narco-trafficante violence. The drug gangs rule Mexico, and they are predictably turning it into a version of Sierra Leone, or Ivory Coast, or Liberia. A violent hell-hole. We will shortly see about 50-70 million MORE Mexicans fleeing en-masse to the US and …
TAKING OVER.
Which frankly, they are. Dr. Hanson describes the flagrant violation of laws by illegals, with no consequence. That is what conquerors do.
So, no, America is FINISHED. Done. Put a fork in it.
America is Mexico. With the population, mostly of Mexico. Meaning it will have the technological achievements of Mexico, the wealth of Mexico, the middle class of Mexico, the safety and security of Mexico, the military power of Mexico, the economy of Mexico, the social mobility of Mexico, the justice under the law of Mexico, and everything else Mexican.
Sure, you’ll get great tacos almost anywhere. “Charming” and “authentic” Mexican restaurants. That seems small change in exchange for turning America into Mexico.
When exactly did we vote on turning America into Mexico?
America is done. Its over. Its just another Mexico.
Nice to see you here, Whiskey. In general you are spot on re: the difference between Cuban v. Mexican cultures. But as to your total “it’s over” meme I’m not so sure. I’ve seen too many instances where an illegal struggled and became legal, then assimilated, then became a citizen and now “gets it”. After a dozen years here that guy has zero allegiance to Mexican interests and politics. Those are the successes.
But you are right about the ones that won’t struggle or assimilate. Total deadbeats on the economy and useful fools for the idiot Pelosi’s of the world, imo. They are the problem.
When exactly did we vote on turning America into Mexico?
When Americans chose to hire Mexicans by the tens of millions.
I hear you Whiskey, but you may be listening too loudly to the other side.
The situation is dire, but not as hopeless as you portray. A rebirth is definitely in progress. It may be too little, too late, but the ultimate outcome isn’t as certain as you seem to think. There is no question that tens of millions of Americans are in full arousal, and tens of millions more beginning to see the truth.
Remember. If there is one thing the vermin are good at, it’s propaganda.
And we have one thing on our side that isn’t said enough. Why would anybody even consider changing the most successful country in world history into a system that has never succeeded?
I have commented here on the dysfunctional relationship between the state charity/welfare in California, and the dependent/parasitic/resentfulness of the provider cycle it breeds. But i feel compelled to share that in the state I live, in Texas.
Anecdotally speaking the situation is not as dismal and hopeless as it is there, most illegal immigrants are friendly kind and courteous, most but not all speak english, and have a strong work ethic. Sure there are a few bad apples, and those can be found in road rage incidences at 2:30 am in the morning, and whatnot. Yes, they don’t pay income taxes, work cheaply and therefore uncompetitively in lawn moving jobs, and probably get emergency treatment free at hospitals and the like, but here they also fix up and repair the poor and shabby neighborhoods they move into, I don’t know if housing subsidies are involved) and seem to be pursuing happiness as most diametrically opposed to the resentment and herd-resistance-to-assimilation, cultural mentality you describe in California.
I don’t know what to do with situation except to say that a guest worker program be instituted, and possibly a path to citizenship be in the offering, but in California, it is such a bad situation, and it has been so institutionally politicized as to breed further resentment and political manipulation if the right steps were to be attempted. Demz and social worker ward heelers would balk, as in the way social security reform was demagogued as a “third rail” of institution dem ponzi schemes are, with regard to reformation.
So what to do? It’ll probably have to be accomplished at a state by state level basis, with mixed results depending on the state, and proportional as well to the will of the electorate in that state.
Dear VDH, most actual problem these country faces are so easy to solve.
In a nutshell, just use ‘common sense’.
You do not mention the BIGGEST problem we have, though. The cancer that was contracted at the beginning of the last century, and has since metastasized since then —the takeover of american government by the Left. No, you are right, the country by itself is not ‘in decline’ etc … On the other hand, it certainly is on its death-bed, being actively, and with malice aforethought, destroyed by its Leftist enemies. And i have not heard a single REALISTIC solution to that, the most pressing, and most dangerous, ‘problem’, nay, a threat clear and present—a solution offered either by you, or by anyone else. So, how about bringing your formidable knowledge of history to bear on that particular problem? For instance, in the history of the Left, has any Leftist government as aggressively anti-constitutional and tyrannical as the current one, has EVER given up power willingly and peacefully—without imposing a staggering toll on lives of the citizens first? What is it about our current situation that allows you to sit quietly and write such hypothetical solutions to individual problems, and not talk about the root cause of the problems, which presently has grabbed our neck? How do you propose that these solutions will be translated into reality without first tackling that pack of hyenas dismantling the Republic with an exponential acceleration?
Immigration: without the welfare programs, I do not care about it. As long as it is “Root hog, or die!”, we will cease getting the world’s trash and start getting the world’s best again.
16th Amendment: was an expansion of governmental power. If a preacher speaks from the pulpit about politics, he can lose his tax-exempt status. His speech literally gets taxed. They silence the moralists, so we become immoral.
17th Amendment: Restore some power over the federal government to the States. No more popular election of U.S. Senators.
(16th and 17th, as well as WWI, brought to you courtesy of Woodrow Wilson, the Great Progressive.)
Life has to become hard again, for folks to regain basic values. The collapse is coming, by design or by happenstance. We shall not escape this decade without it happening.
The Revolution is coming. The question is, “Whose? Theirs or ours?” In the end it will come down to who controls the guns. It will also come down to whether we have the will to fight or not. Will they succeed in boiling the frog, by using our own decency against us, or will we jump from the pot? Will we call it evil or not? Do we dare?
Stated quite simply, VDH is a National Treasure. I wish there was enough money in Texas to buy the Hanson farm in California and replant this intellect and wisdom in one of the better private schools here. We could certainly put him to good use, I’d even chip in to buy him a newer and better Honda.
Even better would be to have a “Victor Hanson For President” sign in my front yard.
LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE OUR PRESIDENT AND HIS CABINET ALL READY TO GO
Thank you, Doctor Hanson.
even bird brain pallin can see we have problems; but the real test is how do we solve them right you can moan and groan all you want but that don’t get us any closer to a solution then we were give the president a chance at least he is trying to make a difference
Currently, Obama seems fixated on car analogies, the most common one that gets the biggest cheers from his sycophants is that he and Democrats want the car in D for drive, while Republicans want to put the car in R, reverse.
He also likes to repeat that Republicans have “no ideas”, as he said after that prickly, phony televised exchange prior to the passage of Obamacare that he held with Republican Senators. Senators who, in fact, offered all kinds of ideas which Obama ignorantly brushed off in the spirit of …”I won, deal with it.”
(He actually said to McCain in that meeting…”The election’s over John. You lost.”) (tactless, classless, stunning, all rolled into one)
Here are some additional ideas. I haven’t read them all, but the few I have (like education, and the whole shallow and wacky emphasis on test scores that has happened with federal interference) I endorse wholeheartedly.
Solutions for America
I’ve got a car analogy for Obama, but I doubt he’ll like it :)
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
~P.J. O’Rourke
The intelligence and writing in comments to Dr.Hansen are invariably impressive. My comment here says nothing that has not been said already by numbers of others, but is a side-step in the dance.
WHAT is to be done about the members of Congress who need not stand for re-election in November? Members in both parties in the Washington Elite ? (Of course the MAJOR concern at the moment is accountability of those “up for audit”).
That 2/3 of the Congress/Senate, many of whom have been in the game most of their adult lives. Who KNOW from long experience how easy it is to lie to and gull their electors with promises to “burn the rich” OR “give” power back to the people, OR “give” them goodies expropriated from other people who have no choice in the transfer not being electors in their districts
If this is called “democracy” it is still the behaviour of powerful bullying gangs. With rare exceptions how many of these representatives have stood
up for the people in the past half-century ? Most, in all parties to public knowledge, that’s how complacent they are, acting on and modelling the premises “what’s in it for me”, and “I’m all right Jack”.
HOW DID THEY GET THE IDEA AND ACT ON IT SO SUCCESSFULLY
THAT THE “POWER OF THE PEOPLE” was in their gift, and not a natural right of the people? Codified in the Law they swear oath to Uphold and Defend when accepting the office of Congressman, Senator, Judge, Executive.
HOW ELSE ? The oldest trick in the book, and many Americans fell for it. The pitting of citizen against citizen, calling it political correctness. To UNDERMINE the freedom of expression, AND thought AND congress. To assure no community actions in defense of rights OWNED by them IN LAW in a country of Law Not of men. when they see them limited or stolen from them.
Political correctness instead of CENSORSHIP of the
population. To SILENCE, AND to change the meanings of words of common understanding has been an essential plank in their platform from the beginning of their entry in the 1960s onto the stage of the powers of the State.
Beginning early in THEIR LONG MARCH TO THE THEFT OF THE IDENTITY OF THE USA. With the acquiescence of large numbers of Americans. AND in all the civic institutions of the nation the continuous and insistent advertisement for the “goodness” of their programs. “For the Good of the People”. Many who beat the drums and blew the trumpets merely useful idiots, including many of the “best and brightest”.
I ask again, WHAT is to be, WHAT can be, done about those members of Congress and Court who need not present themselves for the judgments of their electorate come November? OR even before? Many of whom, of both political parties, have enabled the affronts, with defiant salute to the Polity. WHAT is to stop them in continuing the dis-enfranchisement of the American Population, in its coats of many colours?
The upcoming Nov elections are critical. If the Democrats are not thrown out of their leadership positions in the House and Senate,
this country is toast. If the Democrats manifest corruptness, incompetence and socialism aren’t enough to get them voted out of office,
then it proven that the US has truly and forever crossed a threshold where the parasites, ignoramuses, and corrupt outnumber the
producers, educated and ethical. The Democrats will never lose control of the Congress, Presidency or Judiciary. For this can be said
about them, they know how to play politics.
And, as I agree with Proreason, the resulting dark ages will come sooner than later. If the Democrats are not thrown out in November,
good citizens better start arming themselves and get ready to fight.
How come the legalization of Industrial Hemp wasn’t on the list ? Industrial Hemp could create many millions of jobs in thousands of industries. What the country lacks is leadership, leadership that is loyal to the country, the kind of loyal leadership the Founding Fathers had, leadership that considered their word to be “sacred honor” and never faltered in their resolute determination to build a free and honorable country. Please read the last line of the Declaration of Independence and ask yourself who in government is worthy of that pledge today.
VDH–I read your PJM articles first. This one shines.
Reading your suggestions, though, was a little deja vu-ish. Mike Huckabee was suggesting much the same in 2008.
I concur with almost every word except #3 would have to be phased in (if we do it at all). Also, just being picky, in #9 the word “employee” should be “employer;” employees hire no one.
Get rid of the laws supporting the creation of “minority majority” legislative and Congressional districts. That and stop allowing officials to selecte their voters instead of the other way around during redistricting.
There are enough barking moonbats in places like San Francisco to form compact and contiguous districts for a handful of people like Pelosi, but a great many other so called progressives would find themselves rushing to the political center if they could no longer pick and chose votes.
Take a look at the shapes of districts in Arizona, California, Illinois and North Carolina. Indeed click on any state here and see the tortured shapes designed to favor in advance one party over the other.
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/printable/congress.html#list
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Agreed on all points EXCEPT the “national test” for a BA. Any such test would be a thoroughly leftist one and it would have the effect of delegitimizing traditionalist or Christian schools.
Beware ANY attempts to nationalize school standards beyond very basic literacy and numeracy.
The ONLY restraint on total leftist takeover of education is what little remains of decentralization.
“Any legislation authorizing military intervention would result in draft by lottery of 5% of Congresscritters (or their children of military age) for 6 mo temporary duty assignment to Army or Marine Corps combat units slotted for employment. Those with specialty training (eg. MD’s, RN’s, pilots, other designations) would serve in front line combat support. Those with no other background or experience (eg. lawyers, bureaucrats, assorted grifters) would serve as E-1/11B in rifle platoons. Veterans would be excluded. 4F/non-deployables would serve in Graves Registration stateside. Conscientious objectors would serve 6 months as Peace Corps volunteers in poorest Muslim third world country available.”
TLM, you the man ! LMAO !!
People are dropping out of more things than public schools. “Dropping out” is all the rage with my adult friends. We’ve stopped voting or participating in any civic minded activities. We are convinced beyond any doubt government on every level is corrupt and self serving.
How can you not feel this way when you buy a $300 product and pay $200 in registration fees on top of sales taxes (bought a trailer or gun lately?). Or when property taxes go up during the real estate boom and go up again because of the collapse. Or police spending inordinate amounts of time hiding behind trees to enforce arbitrary speed limits with obscene fines.
Take a look at your phone and utility bill – wtf?? The private sector worker puts in 45 years and saves for his own retirement while public sector workers put in 20 years and collect ’till they die? It’s madness. The firefighters in my town work 2 days/week.
The public sector is completely out of control and could care less about the public.
Nothing at all eccentric about the Hanson 10 Step Program. Why aren’t these suggestions nothing more than intuitively obvious? If these politicians don’t get off their butts and act like the Statesmen they should be a Black Swan will surely catch up to us when it is far too late.
#27 Dixie, remember the natural gas VDH is talking about is all OURS. We’ve got plenty. It’s our only hope to transition into new future technologies.
I wish academics would teach people how to THINK. Not just cut and paste sources from the internet that support preconceived opinion. We need more science fact based reasoning rather than therapeutic palliatives. We need libraries too, not ephemeral throw away devices.
“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
“Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth:”
So it is with the West, as intellectuals seek to leave their stamp on culture by casting off everything, good, bad or indifferent, about the past, and replace it too often with their own myths: deficits will boost the economy, learning shouldn’t be work, government can be kind or cruel, America’s wealth is infinite, paying higher taxes is patriotic.
My only criticism of Islam is that it has no central authority and so “scholars” have moved into the void, and like all scholarship, that can be all well and good, but it can also become temptation of power. There is too much commentary and common law in the Muslim world for most Westerners to fully comprehend, but most of is about simple virtues, not excommunication and murder or overthrowing the world or imposing “faith” by force. Sadly, the hard line primitive teachings of Wahab, the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafism are being spread through the wealth of the House of Saud, along with new mosques and imams paid for by Riyadh in a move to dominate all of Islam. Meanwhile, the Shiite have countered with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, a sharp shift from the tradition in Shia that to be holy, one should avoid politics.
Either way, any reminiscence about Cordoba by Muslims should be a tip off, that they’re after a reestablishment of the Caliphate and world conquest. That way lies madness and more murders and warfare, largely in the lands of Muslims themselves.
Mr. Hanson, I was curious. My question is not meant to be snarky, but why don’t you just pack up and leave California? You are a man of many accomplishments, and so I would think you could very probably find decent employment and a new home in some other state where things are not falling apart. I was born and grew up in California, and I remember what a great place it once was, but there came a time about 17 years ago when I saw that the “mene mene tekel upharsin” was getting written on the wall. So I took a chance and got out while the getting was good. And indeed back then, while driving out of the state, I noticed that the roads were already crumbling. I hate to think how bad they’ve gotten now.
All these are good suggestions but will work much better and a whole lot quicker if they are implemented after we march on the White House, frog march this muslim marxist usurper out in handcuffs, then try him for treason.
Ignominious, Mr Hanson most likely isnt going to leave California for much the same reasons I have no intention of leaving.
I was born and raised in California, my family is all here and close enough that I very regularly see my 2 daughters and my 5 grandchildren, my business investments are all here, and when its all said and done, California, or at least the coastal town where I live, is PARADISE!
So even though there are things here that certainly could be improved upon, I look around this nation and this world and understand that there is no place to run, no place to hide, so I work to install leaders that hopefully can mitigate some of the problems caused by the rinos and marxist dupes and fellow travelers the voting morons of this country have placed into positions of power.
We hopefully will survive this marxist in the White House.
God Bless America!
whosebone: “Ignominious, Mr Hanson most likely isnt going to leave California for much the same reasons I have no intention of leaving.”
Your reasons for staying are interesting, Mr. whosebone, but actually I was hoping to hear more from Mr. Hanson himself regarding his thoughts on the the matter.
Victor Davis Hanson has a glimmer of what is possible but does not grasp the future we face. First a quiet decline is impossible in the next thirty years. Society will change four times more in that period than in all of recorded history. I wish corporations Would fund Victor Hanson for some confrences or prsentations along the lines os “Free to Choose” or the “Connections” serise.
Not only is Mt. Hanson right about the technology he touches on but cultures have, though history, changed on the basis of the inverse of cost and speed of comunications. That driving force changed more between 2000 and 1010 than it did from the begining of the world to 1776. We are in for a very tough ride these next thirty years and anyone trying to pull the wheels off is nobodies friend.