“Never have so many been duped and conned by so few.” Ron Ewart
Something must have fried the brains of most of the American population, with the possible exception of those over 70. People over 70, for the most part, managed to escape the intense Progressive brainwashing that has dumbed down the lion’s share of Americans over the last four decades. This is in evidence because most of the people that respond to our weekly column are over 70, some well over 70. It is further in evidence by the millions of millennials coming out in support of the socialist, Bernie Sanders for President.
Those over 70 appeared not to have been as badly infected by the new math, political correctness, globalism, ideological irrationality, social justice, radical environmentalism, amoral living, cultural relativism, or psychological mumbo-gumbo. One plus one is still two, the honor of their word is sacrosanct, hard work is a virtue and unrestrained sex, substance addiction and foul language are not acceptable in any circumstance. They know of the pitfalls of multi-culturalism, socialism and communism and they believe very strongly in individual freedom, self-reliance and constitutional freedom.
There appeared to be more clarity seven decades ago than there is now, even with all the magical toys that technology has created since then. Sadly, the new technology has become an obsessive distraction for those under 70, and even more so for those under 50, leading to an “I don’t care” mentality when it comes to their individual freedom.
Instead, rising population and greater government involvement in our lives, has led to much larger divisions among us, with a good deal of that division purposely imposed on the people by Progressive government, for political, financial and ulterior motives. A nation divided is much easier for government to control, than a nation united. God help government, if Americans ever become united in freedom ….. again!
However, anyone who has been paying attention knows that America has always been a divided nation. The simple fact is, put two people in a room and you have two people with opposing views, jealousies, wants and wish lists. Husbands and wives, whose union was forged out of the emotion of love, can’t seem to get along with each other with a divorce rate that hovers above 50%. Siblings, who grow up together, fight constantly, with some fights ending in tragic outcomes. The infamous Cain and Able myth in the Bible described a sibling rivalry between two brothers that couldn’t get along with each other because of some perceived favoritism with God. Evidently, Able was God’s favorite. Enraged with jealousy, Cain killed Able.
But when we fight with each other, we are in danger of forgetting about and ignoring the enemy at the gate and there is always an enemy at the gate, or our front door. What most people fail to realize is, government is very likely to be that enemy, not necessarily because government intends to be that enemy, but because government is helpless to stop its own pursuit of absolute power. Only the people can stop that pursuit. But the people can’t hold the government in check, if they are fighting with each other. Government, by its very nature, exploits that weakness, to the detriment of the people and the benefit of government.
In June of 2014 Pew Research released an in-depth report on “Political Polarization in America.” The report described the widening gap between Republicans and Democrats since 1994 to the present, but did not discuss the reasons why the gap was widening. The reasons for the gap are much more important than the statistics. To make that explanation, perhaps we should go back to the beginning when the concept of individual freedom was first conceptualized in America, because freedom is what the gap is all about.
In order to preserve, maintain and protect individual freedom, a tight system of government controls must be put in place upon that government. That tight system of controls needs to be created by the very people that created the government in the first place. The US Constitution became that tight system of controls. If individual freedom is the goal of the people, then anything that interferes with that freedom must be added to those controls and enforced by the people. That was the far-reaching vision of our Founding Fathers.
Now advance forward to the early part of the 20th Century. Interference with individual freedom almost became an obsession of the Progressive Party (Democrats) when they ratified the 16th Amendment in 1913 that created the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service. Progressives clamped down even further on individual freedom when FDR came along in 1933 and introduced an early form of socialism to the American people through the New Deal, massive government subsidies and Social Security.
For a time, after the war of the Greatest Generation, Progressive-driven socialist moves quieted down for a while to allow the people to adapt to more intense regulations on their individual freedom. But the attack picked up again when President Johnson forced that cesspool of socialism, the Great Society, down our throats, at great and rising cost to the taxpayer. It bought a lot of votes, but not much else. Poverty continued to grow.
Then a strange thing happened in the early 1980’s after the American people had a belly full of the limp-kneed, lily-livered, Democrat Jimmy Carter. To just about everyone’s surprise, but mostly the Democrats, Americans elected a Constitutionalist, free-market actor/governor, Ronald Reagan, to be President of the United States. Taxes and interest rates went down, the economy significantly increased and individual freedom started rising again.
But by then it was too late. Socialism was so embedded in all of our institutions, rooting it out was impossible. The bureaucratic DEEP STATE became all-powerful, with little to no accountability. Constitutional restraints on government were almost gone.
Successive presidents and their respective parties continued to eat away at individual freedom through the Bush I, Clinton and Bush II years, until at last the coup de’tat of all Progressive goals and objectives came to fruition under the Saul Alinsky tutorage of one Barack Hussein Obama. Obama held a radical view of what America was supposed to be like and set about to fundamentally transform America into that view. In just eight years, he and the Democrats, managed to foist a failing health care system on all Americans that defies a solution, doubled the national debt, managed to increase welfare and entitlement spending into the stratosphere, presided over a weak economy that couldn’t grow, gutted the military, increased regulations on individual freedom by several orders of magnitude, allowed radical Islam to explode in the Middle East and trashed America by apologizing to the Muslim world for Obama’s perceived American injustices.
This 100 plus years of Progressive socialist tinkering with our Constitutional Republic ended up creating a society of US versus THEM, where there are more people in the cart than those pulling the cart. Those in the cart think they are victims and are entitled to ride in the cart for free, thanks to government Progressive propaganda. While those pulling the cart are jealous of those in the cart who aren’t doing any of the “pulling.” Meanwhile, Progressives have ridden on a wave of political popularity by buying off those in the cart with “goodies” from the Public Treasury, which never seemed to have enough money in it to keep those in the cart satisfied, thereby exploding the national debt. The cart riders always wanted more and the Progressives were only too willing to give it to them ….. for their votes, with little to no regard for those paying the bill, (or pulling the cart) or whether there was enough money in the Treasury to pay the bill. There wasn’t and there still isn’t.
AND YOU WONDER WHY AMERICANS ARE DIVIDED?
Then in 2016, along came Trump who promised to unravel the corrupt Progressive benefits-for-votes system, drain the swamp, pump the bilges and set the ship of America on the right course again. Those pulling the cart said “YEAH” and elected him as their President. But those in the cart said, “NO WAY, it ain’t going to happen.” Yes, the Trump “YEAH’s” won, but for how long ladies and gentlemen? The “NO WAY” crowd has set about to destroy the Trump presidency from within the bureaucracy, with the help of the perpetual left-leaning news media and socialist billionaires like George Soros. In the end, the American DEEP STATE system could very easily win by subterfuge, resistance and open and notorious violence, sending America deeper into a police state and totalitarian government.
Unfortunately, we predict that the “NO WAY” crowd will probably win, because there are more of THEM than there are of US and they have been conditioned to fight dirty to maintain their “free” stuff, aided an abetted by the DEEP STATE system, the news media and socialist billionaires. All the “THEM’S” have to do is to vote in large numbers for the Progressives making all those promises they can’t keep. America will go deeper in debt until the whole DEEP STATE system blows up in our faces, leading to what could be the next Civil War, as those pulling the cart say “enough-is-enough“, quit pulling and pick up a gun.
The only chance for America’s survival as a free and prosperous nation is for Trump and the Republican Congress to be successful in growing the economy to the point that more people have jobs and our national debt is starting to decrease every year. Together Trump and Congress must reduce taxes, send illegal aliens packing, close our borders, complete a repeal and replace of Obama care that shows it’s working, build up our military, return education to the states, cut down on refugee immigration, stop terrorist attacks in America, turn Russia into an ally rather than a foe and kill radical Islam once and for all. And they had better do it in the next two years without breaking the bank, or the conservative game is probably over for well into the future. A Trump administration success will draw more people away from the Progressive movement and Progressivism will begin to disintegrate under its own weight and failed policies. But if the “YEAS” don’t get behind Trump and Congress in very large numbers, in spite of the attempts to torpedo Trump by the bureaucracy, the news media and socialist billionaires, Trump and the Congress have no chance of success.
Someday, hopefully soon, the people will realize that this is a war between two, mutually exclusive, opposing ideologies that cannot co-exist with each other in a nation of individual freedom, unless one ideology moves closer to the other. Until that time, the war will go on, and on, and on, Americans will remain irreconcilably divided and weak and government will just get ever more stronger. Because you see ladies and gentlemen, in a world of predators and prey, only the predators win. Conservatives had better start acting like predators and fight as if their lives in freedom depend on it ….. because it does. Right now, the Progressive predators in government and those riding free in the cart, have the edge ….. and the votes. The question is, can Trump and the 63,000,000 Americans that voted for him, change that reality? Divided as we are, the chances are slim unless those 63,000,000 come out of the shadows and turn the Progressive predators into prey.
Let us know if you “AGREE” with this assessment, or “DISAGREE.”
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