I posted last week on having a positive outlook at our current world so now, for the flip side. I have often wondered if we as a people really appreciate what our founders went through.
In 1776 our forefathers and sisters had to come to grips with actually taking a stand, possibly shooting their neighbors, culling the loyalists and shoring up their circles of trust. This stand was a choice between life and death for not only themselves but for their families as well. The British Crown did not become the masters of an Empire Upon Which the Sun Never Set by being flexible, accommodating and accepting and executing without question anything other than the dictates of their monarchy.
Fast forward to now and the sun indeed sets on the remnants of that empire (as it does of colonial Spain).
For us as the first to break away, through the implementation of organized violence (I love people who say “violence solves nothing” – besides ours and others revolutions I always point to World War II and to the fact that policemen are armed and may indeed use violence to obtain peace). I fear the same forces that have destroyed every great society, forces from within are hard at work to accomplish the same goal for their selfish wants.
Our founders suffered greatly, under conditions so harsh I doubt any currently living human could endure. It is not the British to fear but the state of medical treatments available and the hygiene associated with food and disease.
Even after their hardships the resulting constitution was not ratified until 1788, so it took almost 12 years to come up with a document that the 13 original colonies representatives could agree upon. Talk about a “sigh of relief” moment.
In the words of John Adams ““Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I never took half the pains to preserve it.”
Only the child and the fool think that politics and government were ever pure in purpose, strictly for the benefit of others and benevolent. And of the two only the fool not taught history continues in that belief. What we see today was around long before there was an America, was there at our settlement and founding and has been there through our history, as it has in the histories of all countries. We are, after all, not perfect. Every generation has had to deal with the internal strife of political dissension. Have the margins changed? Were we always close to a 49% vs 49% split?
Yes, government has a purpose, a limited purpose, such as providing for the common defense, and other things but the list of “other things” has not only grown out of control but in fact, has been used as weapon to enforce control. How does one balance “my body, my choice” with being penalized for not purchasing government mandated health care (at great expense)?
In the Now
We could review history ad infinitum and find example after example of how this same circle has repeatedly brought about the end of societies. We would merely see the same forces at work, cloaked differently perhaps due to their period in time, but with the same underlying purposes.
I Blame My Generation
I am a tail-end baby-boomer, an outsider to the madness of the 1960’s, the drug-fueled hysteria, and the corruption that financed politicians then. It was a time of social upheaval, political assassinations (ones with still more unanswered questions than facts), never-ending wars, and a press that sent it all into your home in full-color every night. But we were naive enough to trust the press then.
I for one claim outsider status because I never was interested in the loss of control that drugs offered, just maintaining control with hormones raging, the pressure of college entrance being the only way to avoid being drafted and sent off to war, was challenging enough. I did not avoid the draft, extended my enlistment for a better MOS, and ended up spending 14 months in Vietnam anyway. I was not alone, there were others like me but it was then that my illusions of control were shattered.
But those with an agenda in the 1960’s became masters of the long-game. They patiently sought to infiltrate the education system at every level, to gain positions in politics at the local levels and to work those into careers. They were all representative at a lesser success level than the Senators from Vermont and Delaware that never worked a day in their lives, never earned a paycheck for their labors, and their success were on smaller stages.
But these became the most influential of all the political class because they targeted the very foundation of society – the education system. They ascended to the School Boards who decided what textbooks were to be used, what subjects were to be taught and what the very syllabus of those classes would contain. They now decide that Dr. Seuss is politically incorrect, self- anointed demigods, working from the underbelly of society up, planting their seeds.
The Magic Fertilizer
What has brought all this to a head (almost) – what magic? It started as the ARPNET (I had an account on the original implementation). That was the seed, and the rest we have all seen blossom to today’s Internet. The speed and shear size of this parallel to the universe (ever-expanding in every direction) is a double edged sword. No, I am not a Luddite, and I am a frequent user, but for the price of convenience has come the cost of control, there are no checks and balances other than uncontrolled “experts” claiming they do checks and balances. This brave new world is still unfolding as media giants become mega-corporations and who dictate policy from their secret chambers. This monster breeds the need for control, and who better to control them than “the government” and thus these two feed other.
Obscure Examples
In the ongoing trial of Navy Seal Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher the military Judge in the case, Navy Capt. Arron Rugh, dismissed the Prosecutor. Rugh chided Navy investigators who refused to testify about putting spyware in an image sent to all principals in the on-going proceedings. He asked who authorized the tracking scheme, saying the “lack of candor or cooperation in this process, I think, could be huge as a sign of culpability.” The defense discovered the tracking code hidden in a suspicious logo of an American flag with a bald eagle perched on the scales of justice beneath Czaplak’s (the prosecutor) signature.
The official excuse given – they were looking to find the source of a leak. Such is the power of the internet. As a prepper I find this troublesome, and I have known about such things for decades.
We have institutionalized “accepting less” in everything, from academics to acceptable social behavior to integrity and it is now corrupting every facet of our lives. When my nephew graduated for a high school with a 3,000 plus student body he was Valedictorian, well actually one of 72 valedictorians, with One Scholar of Scholar’s (the real singular valedictorian.) 72 students who failed to reach the top rung, but had demonstrated academic excellence but not the maturity to accept reality.
Enough Already
With all the advances of our world I would surmise that out founders would find our current world nightmarish.
Unbelievable in the diseases that have been conquered, mystified as to why they have been permitted to again fester and spread in the name of political correctness and globalism.
They would marvel at our machines and question our loss of community, our “parade-wave” at neighbors only seen, not known.
As preppers, the continued growth of government, their ability to peek into every corner of our lives, is troublesome. Actually scary on a level that would even make George Orwell step back. The message here is vigilance. My years in the defense industry taught me many things, but since leaving that two decades ago the advances are beyond my imagination and keeping up is important.
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