A reader comment over at Dollard's place nails it. Plain and simple .... and
true. This is what I see. I wish I had written it. (hat tip mg)
I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six
languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something
monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a
mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single
facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know
how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a
perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our
country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen years. The pace has
dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive
loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?
We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real
oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is
$2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or
why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three
times the 700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who
has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who
asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the
people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy.
Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no
longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are
worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or
articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards
continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now
violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it
wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such
a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political
process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way
of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our
voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major
industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social
security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government, our
education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I
am talking about)–the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It
is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for
fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the
throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so
much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his
associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of
employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if
not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create
and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use
inside our borders? No? Oh of course. The media would never play that for you
over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and
$150,000 wardrobe is more imporant.)
Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change.
Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.
This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever
done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along
philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a
new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes,
you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning.
And I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral
German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former
smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German
knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups
that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he
edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises.
Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker.
And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak
out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then,
he was duly elected to office, a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the
Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power,
department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids
joined a Youth Movement in his
name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his
side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and
goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the
children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better
jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across
Europe, and across the world.
He did it with a compliant media–did you know that? And he did this all in the
name of justice and . . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for.
(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.)
Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down,
called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out
the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he
was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy
troublemaker. He was right, though.
Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It
was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And
in less than six years–a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S.
presidency–it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its
laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All
with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a
choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even
if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to
me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing
my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.
Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both.
Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell
them exactly what I believe–and why I believe it.
I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs
