It is with growing dismay that I have observed the course of this country over the last few months. Remember life before September 2001? You should; it marked the end of your own liberty.
Many will accuse me of over-the-top dramaticism. But that all goes to show how stealthily the enemies of liberty have made their moves, and how general apathy has given these enemies their power.
There are signs that this conspiracy against American-style liberty has not gone unnoticed. But the poison has done its work, and people like me who point to the despicable abuses of power now taking place are considered radicals who must be watched and restricted lest their ideas spread.
How could the American public have become so suceptible to manipulation and so willing to directly violate the liberties and rights of their fellow Americans?
The roots go deep, probably even to the very beginnings of the republic. But two major forces did the dirty work that allowed the current destroyers of freedom to gain power. That and some fundamental human weaknesses.
The first was the increasing industrialization and therefore the increasing depersonalization of our culture. Today most Americans live in very tiny islands of disconnected humanity called families. And these are not the extended families of the ninteenth century, but nuclear families and, in our day, even more fragmented groups.
The current "pro-family" movement is largely an effort to maintain this fragmentation and to counteract forces that would bring people into larger groups. The push for sexual morality is both an attack on liberty and a distraction from the real goals of those behind the movement.
The second major force found it genesis in the financial breakdown of 1928. Many wealthy people were ruined, largely because their wealth was not based on real value but on manipulation and trading. And there was a real fear that capitalism had failed.
Enter a polio victim and powerful American named Roosevelt. He had a plan for saving capitalism. It was a bold plan that involved putting the federal government deeply in debt to provide work for millions of jobless citizens. The thinking, based on the theories of John Maynard Keynes, was that people with paying jobs would buy goods, providing more jobs and so on.
It worked, but it didn't work well. After nearly two terms, Roosevelt had yet to realize his goal of creating a robust economy. The citizens of the country had to be unified, brought together by a common purpose. Events in Europe and Asia conspired to present the perfect opportunity.
In December of 1941 the Honolulu AM radio station stayed on the air the night of the sixth. This was at the request of the United States military. When the Army Air Force wanted to move planes to Hawaii they would ask the station to remain on the air overnight. Air Force pilots could tune in that signal and follow it to the islands.
That same night Japanese fighters also followed the signal and arrived in force the next morning, raining destruction on military targets around Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt quickly condemned the attacks and vowed to avenge the dead.
Some would question if there might have been some behind the scenes plotting to generate an event that would make Americans support the war the military industrial complex wanted. A book has been written on the subject, taking the position that what happened was a bizzare collusion of mistakes.
This type of thinking is quite common, and it demonstrates the kind of apathy that has allowed this consipracy to succeed. In order to deflect criticism from those in power, we are asked to believe that the common man, the soldier in the army that won the resulting war against amazing odds, was very incompetent. The little guy always gets the blame!
World War Two, with its forced industrial mobilization and restrictions on consumption at home proved the silver bullet that killed the depression. Men went overseas to fight, and industry quickly ran out of workers. Women joined the workforce to provide soldiers with the materiel needed to pursue the war.
The war concluded in 1945, but the industrial mobilization continued, generating consumer goods with newfound efficiency. By the 1950s a strong consumer economy had developed as engineers dreamed up new ways to save time at work and at home. While the stereotypical 1950s family included a non-working mother, the barrier to women in the workplace had been broken and would eventually fall completely.
This, of course, put added strains on the family. The family looked good from the outside because social pressure demanded it. But the seeds were being planted for a social upheaval that would scar American culture forever.
The hypocrisy inherent in maintaining the appearance of moral life took its toll on the young people. This strain began to boil over in the 1960s, with much unrest at American colleges and universities. At the same time the African-American culture, whose family structure had never recovered from the strains put on it by slavery, got fed up with their failure to partake in the economic largesse of the previous decade. Rioting broke out in several large cities.
There were saner minds at work in this community, minds that started a non-violent movement that eventually sparked radical changes in society. Meanwhile young people declared their sexual liberty and began to engage in relationships outside traditional family structures.
The preachers railed against this newfound liberty. They pointed out, rather accurately, that this breakdown in the family would have dire consequences. But they pointed only to the libertine tendencies of the youth culture and ignored the real roots of this social breakdown, the forced goodness of society's attempts to look better than it really was.
Over the next thirty years society began to splinter into two groups, those who celebrated liberty, and those who abhored the moral decline (probably more likely the increasing honesty of society which made long-standing immorality stand out).
Other tensions were building. Business-labor strife had long plagued the country. Unions demanded and largely got a big piece of the economic pie. But those who benefitted from the abuses of capitalism wanted to shift the balance of power. When, in the 1980s, Ronald Regan fired all the nation's air traffic controllers for going on strike a major blow fell that reversed years of increasing union power. Business interests dared to hope that a new day had arrived.
It would take time. The unions did not go down without a fight, and lovers of liberty around the country continuously fought abuses of government power.
Enter 2001. George Bush got himself elected in part by characerizing himself as a "compassionate" conservative. He could get away with this oxymoronic lie because, as it has become very clear, he had no idea what compassion really was. This "compassionate" man believes torture may be necessary, even though he has yet to give us a single exmaple where torture has yeilded any actionable intelligence.
The similarities between the attacks on New York and Washington with the events at Pearl Harbor and even with the Reichtag fire that Hitler took advantage of to get power, has been seen by few Americans. They seem incapable of believing that their liberties are under attack. And so, abandoning the eternal vigilance that truly wins us freedom, they have lost that freedon and have yet to realize that it's gone.
Shortly after those attacks George Bush authorized a program of domestic spying. It was his intent that Americans never know that they were being spied on without judicial review and without meaningful congressional oversight. The Etta Hulme cartoon of a week or so ago clarifies his response to the revelation of the program.
A police detective labeled "Justice Department" stands over a disheveled woman laying on the street. He says, "We will not rest until we find those responsible for leaking the information that you've been mugged." The correct response should have been so swift that we would, tonight, be struggling to replace a president in jeopardy of his life on charges of treason.
Instead, a congress that has recently been revealed as "sold" promises a few hearings in which the majority party will protect its man in the White House, and the minority party will be reviled as "poor losers."
Well, I am a poor looser! I resent having my liberties taken away by a man I voted against and by people who are convinced they are so much more holy than I.
History bears record that the current religious fervor will have terrible consequences. Now that secret spying has been established as a tool of the government, and as religion takes increasing control of that same government, it won't be long until religious dissent will become a crime punishable by death.
You might have said, a few years ago, that such a terrible consequence couldn't take place in the United States, that our constitution would protect us. Where was our constitution when the Supreme Court decided the 2000 election by inserting itself into a state matter? Where was our constitution when American citizens were detained indefinitely without charges? Where was our constitution when our elected representatives sold themselves to do evil?
Today the constitution is meaningless. It is seen merely as a document to guide the administrative outline of the country. It guarantees no rights, it protects those who need no protection and exposes those who need it. And Democrats have generally agreed with this twisted interpretation. Their hand may not have been as deep in the cookie jar when they got caught, but they don't present a meaningful alternative because they too have sold themselves to do evil.
Where were you when liberty died? You were probably working overtime so you could afford to buy a huge, polluting vehicle and to provide fuel for it. Or maybe you were at the ball game cheering on the violent among us. Or maybe you were at church hearing that the Bible's ban on killing applied only to humans before they were born.
Don't come crying to me! I've been warning you for years. You weren't listening.
"They did not listen
they're not listening still,
Perhaps they never will."