Pop Quiz:
What American journalist said: “Americans tend to focus on external threats to our democracy: foreign adversaries wielding disinformation and subversion. But the most serious dangers have always come from inside the house, products of our own demons and dysfunctions.”?
What author said: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”?
What English philosopher said: “All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.”?
What French philosopher said: “The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.”?
What President said: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”?
Answers at the end of the post.
In 1858 Abraham Lincoln observed: “A house divided against itself cannot stand”.
In 1860 Lincoln was elected President. He won 59.4% of the electoral votes but only 39.7% of the popular vote. As is the their wont the Democrats threw a hissy fit after the election. Before Lincoln’s inauguration seven Democrat controlled states seceded from the Union, such was their enthusiasm for enslaving people. It became a full-blown insurrection.
For comparison it should be noted that in 2016 President Trump received 56% of the electoral votes and 46% of the popular vote. After the election and before the inauguration President Obama threw a similar tantrum. On December 9, 2016, Obama convened a meeting in the White House with his misnamed “intelligence team” at which this assemblage of mediocrities confected what became the Russian collusion hoax. The actions of this cabal were designed to undermine his successor’s administration. Insurrection Part Deux.
Today America is, once again, a house divided. This division calls into question our ability to survive. It is being driven by a pernicious Fifth Column.
Our last four posts have identified several examples of the handiwork of internal enemies:
- The disappearance of traditional American values particularly our “can do” attitude. When President Kennedy challenged us in the early 1960s to “put a man on the moon” by the end of the decade America got it done.
- The unchallenged diminution of our individual freedoms.
- The growing absence of parenting and the family.
- The breakdown of our moral compass.
In the past we had, what some called, an inordinate fear of external threats to our country and people. In fact President Carter, in 1977, announced that “we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism”. It is not disputed that the KGB, the CIA of the USSR, was tasked with crippling our society. We are facing a continuing threat to our sovereignty that is being driven by self-ordained organizations such as the UN and the WEF. They cloak their efforts by arguing the need for Global Sustainable Development…a meaningless cliche.
This is not done without some level of irony. During the 2012 election President Obama’s trainers instructed him to attempt a bit of sarcastic humor while debating Mitt Romney. Romney had the temerity to suggest that the biggest threat to America was Russia. Obama threw aside his reputation for being humorless and flawlessly followed his script: “The1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” Please disregard the fact that the entire Russian Collusion fantasy was a reprise of our “inordinate fear of communism”.
In the context of the upcoming crucial mid-term elections we need to discuss what must be done to restore our historic strength and structure without which we would not have survived for 250 years,
In our prehistoric days, i.e. the 1960’s, we had a number of stabilizing influences that are now under attack and what follows is brief summary of what we may have lost.:
The Family
The esteemed Smithsonian published a document that dismissed the nuclear family as an artifact of “White Culture” as if that were a bad thing. Since the Great Society was inflicted upon us by the the Johnson Administration there has been a geometric increase in the number of single parent families. This is especially true among the poorest Americans. In addition we see families being torn apart by such inanities as whether Uncle Fred watches Fox News or CNN. The word trump has become an emetic.
We should revive the stability provided by a family with two parents who can provide moral and behavioral guardrails for children. Parents should begin reading to their children before they start school and encourage them to be curious about the world around them. Parents must emphasize the importance of individual responsibility and accountability.. .
Education
The failure of our education system is a recurring theme on this site. In the 1960’s teachers were apolitical, reading was encouraged and intellectual curiosity was the goal for every student. An accurate history must be part of the curriculum starting in elementary school. Fabulist history such as the 1619 Project must not be taught. Critical theory should be avoided together with the concept that we are all either oppressed or oppressors. Students must be taught how to think not what to think and critical thinking should be a basic building block for future learning. Open and vigorous debate should be encouraged in every classroom.
We must end the open warfare between the education establishment and alternative educational delivery systems such as home schooling and charter schools.
The News Media
In the olden days the news delivered, well, news and not opinion. The television brought into our living rooms the launch of Sputnik, the assassination of Kennedy, the culmination of Kennedy’s challenge to have men walking on the moon and the Viet Nam War. The news media endured a tectonic shift when Richard Nixon was forced to resign…the media found they enjoyed making news rather than merely reporting it.
Today news outlets are identified as Left leaning or Right Wing and are, more often than not, engaged in propaganda rather presenting food for thought. On-line news sources are subject to algorythmic controls, i.e. censorship. The Federal government has actually proposed a Disinformation Governance Board, i.e. censorship..Everyone can have their own opinion but not their own facts.
Social Media
Many on-line sites are addictive and appeal to our baser instincts. Influencers are engaged in a not very subtle brainwashing and the lemmings that suffer from the addiction are subject to intense social pressure. The result is a herd mentality and individuality leads to ostracism. Political discourse is reduced to a mob chanting monosyllabic rhymes and dissent is not tolerated.
The end product: apathetic,.hedonistic citizens who are slaves to immediate gratification. They are libertine rather than free because they have been deprived of access to a moral compass. They are unable to understand that our individual freedoms are disappearing and seem indifferent to the loss of such freedoms. They may be discouraged by the fact that Freedom comes with responsibility.
Do we want a future that is mismanaged by such AWFUL governors as Whitmer, Hochul, Spanberger and Sherrill? Or mayors of the caliber of Michelle Wu or Katie Wilson? An AWFUL is an Affluent, White, Female, Uneducable Leftist. These elected “leaders” have no understanding of basic economics. They have no interest in protecting the integrity of American elections. They support the elimination of the police, prisons and ICE, a recipe for anarchy…a word they probably cannot define.
Do we want candidates running for the US Senate such as Abdul El-Sayed, Graham Platner or James Talarico? In the 1960s there was a call to Ban the Bomb. El-Sayed’s playmate Hassan Piker thinks America deserved 9/11 and he believes that giving Iran the bomb would bring stability to the world. The last time we saw such a group of misfits it was in the cantina scene in Star Wars.
Wake up America!
If we can restore the American character, restore the values that are instilled by a stable family, recalibrate our moral compass and liberate future generations from the debilitating influence of the propagandist “news” and social media we can avoid being relegated to being a mere cog in a one-world government rather then the Shining City upon a Hill.
Answers to the pop quiz
What American journalist said: “Americans tend to focus on external threats to our democracy: foreign adversaries wielding disinformation and subversion. But the most serious dangers have always come from inside the house, products of our own demons and dysfunctions.”? Jamelle Bouie
What author said: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”? Isaac Asimov
What English philosopher said: “All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.”? John Stuart Mill
What French Philosopher said: “The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.”? Blaise Pascal
What President said: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”? Abraham Lincoln