It is instructive to think about how our country slowly came to a point where we are facing a socialistic takeover. I have commented on “Maleficent Disingenuousness.” Below are some of my recollections of how this phenomenon unfolded in my lifetime.
- As I recall, President Nixon, fought the Democrats in Congress for the greater part of his term in office over “escalating the war.” Finally, after winning the “Tet Offensive” decisively, he bombed Hanoi and its Haiphon harbor for over a week, whereupon the North Vietnamese signed a peace treaty in Paris. After the US withdrew most of its forces from that war torn country, after about 3 years, the North renewed its hostilities against the South and the Democrats in Congress would not authorize the forces necessary to stop them. Our allies in the South were defeated, and some like the Montagnards were subjected to genocide. Although the Democrats in Congress were responsible, the liberal press has distorted the facts enough for history to record that the USA lost the war. The result is that our honored veterans were cheated of their efforts and today’s youth are being mis-informed about the truth of the struggle by those on the liberal left that did not have balls enough to fight in the conflict in the first place.
- Along those same lines, do not forget that MacCarthur was sacked for suggesting that Chinese army in North Korea could (should?) have been cut off in China. After he sacked MacCarthur, President Truman forbade our soldiers from going North of the 38th parallel. Repeating that strategy in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense, Robert Strange McNamara forbade our soldiers from going North of the 17th parallel, actually defoliating the jungle along that line with an additional gift to our soldiers called “Agent Orange.” He additionally, like President Truman forbidding incursion into China, forbade our soldiers from chasing our enemy into Laos or Cambodia, giving the enemy the free zone of the Ho Chi Min trail. Nowadays, our new President has announced that we will be leaving Afghanistan at a time certain; he additionally tells our soldiers (or they can call the Defense Department from the battlefield to get permission to find out) at whom they may fire and when. Is it just me or is telling your enemies where you will go or not go, do or not do, or when you will leave the field akin to giving your enemies “aid and comfort” in time of war?
- George Bush had lots of shortcomings, but when he decided to invade Iraq, he did so because America’s intelligence agencies, and those of our foreign allies, had given him information that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. He shared all that he knew with the Congress and the Congress voted overwhelmingly to support his actions. However, when the war went sour, the Progressives saw an opportunity to hang an albatross around not only Bush’s neck, but also all Republicans by the demonizing epithet … “he lied.” Their disingenuousness was in their lying about him lying.
- One of America’s great industries is logging, particularly in the Northwest. Most environmentalists do not seem to understand that trees are living things; they are born (sprout), grow, mature, die and return back into the atmosphere from whence they came. When man undertakes the husbandry of the forests, if he doesn’t harvest the trees, Mother Nature will: either by bugs, blight, burning or rot. In any case, the major component of trees is carbon from carbon dioxide. Trees (all plants) take CO2 from the atmosphere and eventually give it back to the atmosphere by the action of either Mother Nature or man. Farmers, stockmen, loggers, any other users of natural resources are the real environmentalists, the husbanders of our natural resources, and they understand this process, because they are intimately involved with nature. Most of the shrill, militant, self appointed, mostly urban “environmentalists” (including brainwashed school children) are probably too ignorant of natural phenomenon to understand the processes of nature involved. Or if they know what is going on are disingenuously ignoring the facts in order to preserve their agenda. If they are in the leadership of the movement, they are almost certainly trying to protect the profits gleaned from the donations of their uniformed, unsophisticated, and in many cases, naïve contributors. The enemies of logging couldn’t kill the logging industry by direct attack, so they invoked the power of the Courts. The combination of fallacious testimony about the “Spotted Owl” and the evil disingenuousness of judges with socialistic agendas combined to ruin the American logging industry.
- As I recall, the Progressives used to call for farm price parity to protect the earning power of the “little farmer.” Where is the little farmer today? The socialistic progressives have put him out of business with their “cheap food” policies. Many of today’s young people would be astounded to find out that many of their parents and grandparents and their siblings were raised, happily, on 40 and 80-acre farms. They would be incredulous if they were informed that the budget of the US Department of Agriculture is mostly for “food stamps” for urban welfare programs and only in a minor way for “farm subsidy.”
- Unrealistic unionization: with its super high wages, its governmentally sponsored intrusion into the business world and its unsustainable pensions and perks; coupled with draconian environmental regulation; and confisicatory taxation of corporations and regulation and taxation of investments has killed heavy industry nationwide. The industrial behemoth that once was the engine of the wealth of America has all but disappeared.
- America’s great mining industry is under constant attack. Mining requires that the Earth’s bounty be ripped from the ground. A mine is always a gash in the scenery … fresh meat for the “Environmentalist” feast upon. The fact is that although mining may be unsightly to some, it covers an infinitesimal amount of the Earth’s surface. Modern mining does everything possible to mitigate the aesthetics of that which is disturbed. But American governmental interference makes mining so expensive that it too is disappearing.
- The refining of minerals requires huge amounts of energy. The smelters of ores have in the past caused air pollution. Although the pollution has been controlled in modern units, once again, unions and governmental controls have combined to almost completely remove this industry from the American scene.
- America’s greatest resource for energy is coal. There is enough mineable coal in the US to provide for all our energy needs for at least 1000 years, yet those in political power purposely denigrate or disregard it … because, some think, to develop it would negate the energy crisis. No crisis, no reason for government control. Some say that burning coal is dirty and polluting … they dramatize their contentions by showing pictures of 19th Century plants spewing pollution. Others say that burning other fossil fuels is cleaner. Let’s see: Coal: C + O2 –> CO2; Natural Gas: CH4 + 2O2 —> CO2 + 2H2O … it looks like that on a molecular basis that coal produces one molecule of greenhouse gas and natural gas produces three. Obviously, on the same basis, the oxidation of natural gas produces more heat by the burning of hydrogen to water (also a greenhouse gas), but each fuel produces the same amount of carbon dioxide. Both fuels contain impurities, notable among them sulfur, but modern coal plants scrub their emissions for ash and sulfur so that none is emitted. The truth is that any generation facility or engine that burns fuel emits CO2. The only commonly known methods to obtain “green energy” are wind, solar and nuclear. One quits with the whims of weather, one quits at sundown and America’s foremost nuclear authority, the seventh grade-educated expert, Jane Fonda, says that nuclear is unsafe. Although there are lesser-known additional alternatives, they are never touted by zealous environmentalists who are always talking about “alternate forms” of energy. I suppose because they are oblivious to them.
- The attack on America by the environmentalists through the Environmental Protection Agency has gone from the bewildering torpedoing of a hydroelectric dam to protect the “snail darter” to more sinister court ordered legal injunctions. Injunctions that stopped logging in the north west in order to “save the spotted owl.” From there the movement went to direct attacks on agriculture. The minions, knowing or unknowing, of totalitarian socialism have discovered that any act of husbandry by man is almost certain to disturb some hitherto unknown unseen, unseeable micro-plant or animal. All that is necessary to destroy any natural resource based enterprise is to hire some zealot biologist (with an agenda) to find some kind of minor bit of biology. The zealot can then give the support necessary to his co-agendists in the government or in a “conservation group” to assert that the biological form is “endangered.” The EPA will then list the form as endangered; the zealots will then venue-pick a Court in which to sue before an activist judge; the judge will then have the “evidence” necessary to issue an injunction killing or at least dangerously compromising a vast resource industry. Among those recently compromised by this tactic are logging in the North West, virtually every mining venture, grazing all over the west, irrigating on the Klamath River and now an attempt to dry up the huge and magnificently productive San Joaquin Valley in California to save the super unimportant and hitherto unknown “delta smelt.” These efforts are a blatant attack on the most basic strengths of the country and can only be part of a diabolical effort to destroy vital parts of our economy.
- Progressives in Congress pass Populist laws forcing banks to make loans to unqualified borrowers and then blame business for the defaults. Duplicity!!!
- Socialists in the government, practicing class warfare, lull voters into supporting profligate spending by promising to tax only the rich. This is done with the full knowledge of the sophisticated that such spending cannot be paid for by the rich. Knowledgeable people know that the end result will be not only the ruin of the rich, and since “rich” is a subjective word … it means you too. The final result will be the bankruptcy, in one form or another of America and most of its citizens. These policies point to only one end, a ruining of the old order, the American Republic, the United States of America and with it human Freedom. It is the sophisticated child of the old Marxist saw, “the end justifies the means” in order to achieve the Socialist Revolution.
The list of attacks on our way of life being done by the enemies of the Republic is almost endless. I am sure that each of you can (and should in your comments) add to my list as I am sure I could too if wanted to write a book.
The point is that we must, each of us, begin to fight these enemies of Freedom with every ounce of strength in us, in every way that we can. We must make every one that we care for aware of the danger and encourage each of them to ardently join the fight or our children will live in a tyranny far worse than that of our ancestors.