Eating the Elephant One Bite at a Time

"It has been observed in a former paper that “the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.” If the justness of this observation be admitted, the mode of appointing the officers of the United States contained in the forgoing clause must, when examined, be allowed to be entitled to particular commendation. It is not easy to conceive a plan better calculated than this to promote a judicious choice of men for filling the offices of the Union; and it will not need proof that on this point must essentially depend the character of it administration.” Publius, Number 76

As a young man in my early twenty’s, I took to the road as a transient bum, a spiritual depression having grabbed my gut with the force of a vise. I was apolitical and inwardly lost. After several years of that fruitless endeavor, the Vietnam war was escalating. Since I was no good to anyone, I decided it was my duty to help the other young men already over there. I joined the Army.

I have spent the last 40 years wondering if any of the decisions I made back then were good or bad. Along that path, however, I have made some discoveries that I have no doubts about. Political decisions, right or wrong, do not change the fundamentals of what many everyday Americans still stand for. Unfortunately, our government does not seem to either care, encourage, or enforce the foundations of what America was while in the process of driving it to what it is becoming and apparently stands for today.

I have come to realize that what we stood for is slowly eroding, and that that erosion is escalating at an exponential pace. I have learned that the Silent Majority is irrelevant; that people remain in denial of even the least of the salient changes in their lives. I have learned that revolt does not come as long as people’s bellies are full, and they have work. I have learned that the much sought after utopia is impossible, and that some people just need to be shot.

There is no denying that in those 40 years our country has undergone changes that moderate what we once were, and that I believe would horrify our founding fathers. With each passing administration the government grows, and with each passing year they take a more authoritarian role in telling its citizens what they believe, who they are, and what they must give to a cause they don’t understand.

Factions work tirelessly to change the fabric of America. While examples of these changes go back almost to the turn of the last century, the most influential and apparent of them were kindled in the 1960’s. Some of the most active factions of the 60’s were kids from influential families. The protest against the Vietnam war gave them a platform to air and defend their own irresponsibilities, examples of which were Jane Fonda, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and Paul Krassner. They fueled a worldwide protest against established cultures, almost of any kind. Theirs was not so much a protest against the war as a protest against their parents, against a culture that held back their desire for fractious fame and childish irresponsibility, and to buttress their leadership within the ranks of their peers.

Many of these people became our senators, businessmen, and university professors. And thus a strong left, liberal autocracy began to unravel the traditional fabric of America. Gay rights, abortion rights, the attack on gun rights, multiculturalism, and socialist idealism were simply outward manifestations of a deeper disease.

To the young, these ideals seem reasonable, attainable, fair, and lofty. They appear as threads to cling to with philosophical nuances substantial enough to argue their point with an older generation they want to distance themselves from.

The end run of all this stupidity is socialism, universal healthcare, higher taxes, bigger government, massive welfare programs, the demise of the promise of America, and economic ruin. The fruit of anyone’s labor will become the livelihood of those who do not labor. Our foreign policy will become the obsequious gesture of a spineless nation. We will acquiesce to the meaningless demands of the UN. We will appease the world’s tyrants. We will pay homage to our enemies and forget our allies. We will encourage a diversity to support disunity. Our youthful naiveté will encourage despots to laugh at us. Elitist criminals will run with our money. And in the end our name and our flag we once held dear will become vestiges of something only within historical accounts that are unavailable.

The fact is, Americans are reverting to a less civilized state. Tattoos, piercings, body art, sloppy clothes, and an ungroomed appearance are swiftly becoming the norm. On the Barnes and Noble magazine shelf I counted eleven different tattoo magazines, yet many conservative books cannot be found. It was interesting that in a recent trip to Europe, I saw very few tattoos, and most of those were mutilating the bodies of American tourists. Americans are rebelling against personal responsibility and the generations who gave them a prosperous, civilized country, many of whom gave their lives for it. Pornography, violence, and profanity are becoming the norm.

President Obama in his first few weeks in office is playing into this modern movement. He has alienated millions of Christians by supporting abortion here and abroad. He has lifted the ban on stem cell research. And now he tells the world that America is not a Christian nation.

He referred to Gioacchino da Fiore three times during his campaign. According to the most ''vogueish'' interpretations, the utopian mystic proposed a new liberal and spiritual Church able to move beyond dogmas and hierarchies.Catholics object to this view because believers must be guided not only by the spirit but also by the laws of the Church. “It can be fatal to do without one or the other of these guides''Gioacchino da Fiore, whose theories were confuted by St Thomas Aquinas, inspired several heretical and esoteric theologists and thinkers including Francis Bacon.In his campaign speeches, Obama referred to Gioacchino da Fiore as a ''master of contemporary civilization'' and someone who wanted to create a fairer world. Italy's most famous literary figure, Dante Alighieri, referred to Gioacchino da Fiore as a ''gifted prophet'' in his famous work The Divine Comedy.

The liberal movement in the United States is an attack on America’s traditional public faith in the footsteps of Gioacchino da Fiore. The movement toward a socialist economy is as well. A trip to the internet forums in the matter of the Catholic church’s disagreement with President Obama’s reference to Gioacchino da Fiore brings not just a single disdainful entry against the church, but all of them, many of whom describe themselves as atheists. This debate may be healthy, but it takes another bite out of America’s public faith. Notre Dame has withdrawn its claim to America’s primary Catholic University by having him speak at their graduation ceremony and bestowing an honorary law degree on him.

Public faith and its icons were not the only sustaining force of American life. The inviolability of private property, the right to defend oneself against a tyrannical government or violence brought against its citizens, the right to happiness, the right to liberty, and the right to intervene when the government demands of you that which it has no right to enforce, each contribute to the strength of America, the America you grew up in.

But they are quickly becoming rights of the past, seemingly relics in a new world order as socialism worms its way into the American fabric. Communism is simply socialism with its foot on your neck, something we have fought against throughout our history.

And where is the upheaval among the majority of Americans? But of course, they are irrelevant!

And so, like the elephant, America is being eaten, one bite at a time.

A united front is called for, a swelling of discontent among those of us who contribute by a call to arms, who work and pay taxes, who wish to hold on to America’s public faith, a free market economy, and respect for personal responsibility through one’s efforts. As naïve as all that might seem, to what haven of apathy has escaped our once noble birthright? Where is our will to take America back?

IN THE JUNGLE AGAIN

“But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government . . . .” Publius

The scenarios we encounter in life often repeat themselves in the uncanniest of ways. Allow me to explain.

As a young man, I found myself in jungles half a world from home. Part of my military team’s goal was to befriend indigenous peoples so as to gain their trust and to lead them to our side of the conflict. One of the primary ways we did that was to offer medical care and advice. Many made their way through difficult terrain, walking for miles in order to present us gifts, such as king cobras, pythons, and bundles of bananas. They frequently came for relief from common illnesses, which were of a variety rarely, if ever, seen by Americans. Some of the diseases were ghastly to behold.

One young man came with what appeared to be a boil on his leg. The symptoms were common: an inflammed appearance, fever, and considerable pain. I feared the possibility of systemic involvement. I therefore made the decision to incise the boil, to remove its contents, and to administer antibiotics in the hope of averting infection.

Upon lancing the area, my worst fears were confirmed. I discovered that the offending substance was far more invasive than that of any common boil. Its tentacles reached well into the patient’s leg, both between and around muscle bundles. I did not use general anesthesia, and the surgical procedure was causing excruciating pain. Yet the patient remained stolid, as if concentrating upon some distant pleasantry.

I found that the way in which this man embraced pain, while stoically heroic, was not exceptional. His people accepted similar surgical procedures in the same manner.

It took time for me to address each tentacle of infection through the various muscle groups of this man’s leg. Once the task was completed, I forced iodoform gauze into the wound to drain and to keep it open. I administered antibiotics and instructed the patient to return each day to have the gauze changed. My intent was to ensure that the wound was properly closing without forming voids.

We were trained as soldiers to work independently, in very small teams. Each of us was cross-trained and capable, if need be, of taking over the job of a comrade. We planned and executed each mission on our own.

Fast forward forty years. Now, as an older man, I am physically removed from the jungles of my youth. Yet I remain as trained -- an independent thinker, not manipulated nor easily led by others, and wary of the mentality of the rabble. I remain cognizant of how symptoms and outward appearances often hide what lies beneath them. I understand how the tentacles of a malignant cancer can wind through the society within which it exists. While I am no longer a soldier as such, I still wage war. I do it not with a rifle, but with my keyboard and a lifetime of experience.

Consider this: I find myself once again in a jungle, not in the Orient, but here in the USA, the birthplace of traditional American culture, with its cherished public faith and its once free economic system which was the envy of the world. The government is out of control, like a rogue lion in the jungle, walking about seeking human beings to devour. We the people seem indifferent to the fact that we are on the verge of a disastrous fate. I observe now, as I did years ago, how corruption and fulminating infection can tear the body apart, resulting in gradual dysfunction.

Make no mistake about it: there is a cancer growing on America’s body politic. Surgery is required if the nation is to survive. There is no anesthetic available. Pain is guaranteed. Will and courage are the primary orders of the day. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or a charlatan. Both pedigrees are amply represented in Washington.

Will we stop America’s unraveling? The great James Madison, writing as “Publius” in Federalist No. 51, emphasizes that we the people are the primary check on governmental authority. So what will we do about our country’s current crisis? Sister rallies on July 4, with every concerned citizen in attendance, is an excellent idea.

With regard to civil causes, subtleties almost too contemptible for refutation have been adopted to countenance the surmise that a thing which is only not provided for is entirely abolished. Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide difference between silence and abolition. But as the inventors of this fallacy have attempted to support it by certain legal maxims of interpretation which they have perverted from their true meaning, it may not be wholly useless to explore the ground they have taken.

The maxims on which they rely are of this nature: “A specification of particulars is an exclusion of generals”; or, “The expression of one thing is the exclusion of another.” Hence, say they, as the Constitution has established the trial by jury in criminal cases and is silent in respect to civil, this silence is an implied prohibition of trial by jury in regard to the latter. Publius, Federalist Paper 83

Alexander Hamilton, pictured above, was brilliant. He was an impulsive person as great intellects often are, and his reasoning was such as to take few, if any, prisoners. The passage above exemplifies the point.

When the Constitution was first proposed, its detractors zeroed in on the fact that it did not guarantee a trial by jury in civil causes. But Hamilton pointed out that there is a quantum difference between not providing for a right and abolishing it. He emphasized that silence and abolition are not one and the same. How true!

Fast forward to today. Academicians like Isaac Kramnick and Laurence Moore, followed by a host of others, argue that our Constitution is “godless.” Why? Because it, unlike the Articles of Confederation, is silent about “God.” This silence, such critics seek to instruct us, means that the founders intended to create an entirely secular republic. L. Scott Smith’s book, America Unraveling, explodes this myth, and I encourage everyone to buy the book and to read it. Go to www.lscottsmith.com.

Hamilton was the one who wrote President George Washington’s “Farewell Address” in which the first President extolled a common culture and highlighted the value of religion and morality. He was anything but a secularist. But, aside from the historical deficiencies in the “godless Constitution” argument, what do you think he would say about the reasoning on which it relies? Can there be any doubt? He would maintain that it is unquestionably flawed, because “silence” does not amount to “abolition.”

The Supreme Court has uncritically followed Kramnick and Moore, along with other academic gurus, in its embrace of secularism. The matter of God and religion, we are told, has no positive place in American public life. The Court has mandated that there be no prayers or devotional Bible reading in public schools, no posting of the Ten Commandments in public outside a secular context, and no heartfelt celebration of Christmas or Easter in the public square. Mr. Obama, when speaking recently at Georgetown University, even requested that during his address officials cover a Christian symbol which would have been otherwise visible to the public. All of this amounts to a complete denial of the generically protestant mindset which pervaded the country’s culture since Plymouth Rock and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

This loud secular refrain is the only one we hear from the tendentious media. It is the point of view with which we have become indoctrinated. Need I belabor the point that it is wrong-headed and misguided? The founders, when giving us the Constitution, did not start from scratch. Our Constitution sprang from a common culture, with deep roots in England and Protestantism. Our culture is therefore aptly described as “Anglo-Protestant” in character. The multicultural hodgepodge that we see in America today is nothing but a nightmare of which the founders could scarcely have dreamed.

Please understand that I am not advocating a society in which only one race, ethnicity, or religious perspective prevails. Far from it! I am, on the contrary, advocating a return to our cultural roots and away from multiculturalism. Three cheers for the Great Melting Pot, which has so sadly and unfortunately been relegated to a dark hole filled with relics from America’s past.

I hope that my readers will begin to see the “godless Constitution” argument for precisely what it is – secular propaganda! It has no basis in history and is, if Publius is to be believed, hopelessly flawed in logic.

When was the last time you stood up for American culture against secularists and liberals from the Far Left and exclaimed, “Enough is enough.”?

“The erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety: and these may, in a particular manner be expected to flow from the establishment of a constitution founded upon the total or partial incorporation of a number of distinct sovereignties. ‘Tis time only that can mature and perfect so compound a system, can liquidate the meaning of all the parts, and can adjust them to each other in a harmonious and constituent whole.” Publius

Several years ago doctors told patients with allergies that it would help their condition to move to Phoenix, Arizona. And it did. But as the years went by, Phoenix became a haven of pollens that now cause some of the worst allergies in the country. Why? Because those people with allergies who followed their doctor’s advise and moved to Phoenix brought their baggage, namely their pet plants, with them.

Another such similar thing happens when people from the west and east coasts, eager to shed themselves of the city and its fast paced and stressful life style, move to the beautiful and tranquil rural towns of the Rocky Mountains. They suddenly realize that the conveniences, such as unlimited amounts of water and electricity, they had previously enjoyed are either not there or are frequently disrupted. They bring themselves angrily to the town meetings, demanding that the services they were accustomed to be provided. Unhappily they find that small towns don’t have the funds for them to resume their cushy live styles.

And so it has become with much of America. People from other countries come here because some seek prosperity, some seek liberty, and some seek relief from an oppressive and tyrannical government. They did so in many other Western countries as well, to wit, England, France, and Denmark to name a few. But they brought their baggage with them and with it the demise of what they sought. Some refuse to assimilate, learn and speak English, abide by our laws, and expect what they have not earned. They expect America to change her ways to what they left behind. And with it they change America into what they, supposedly, wished to escape. Their baggage is full of pollens: Fundamental and radical religious practices that are oppressive and demeaning, cultural differences that are counter productive to life in America, and the idea that America should change to suit them. And now, with a vocal liberal faction and administration, the promise is being made that Americans will do just that.

The dictionary carries several definitions for the term Diaspora. The most common definition being the dispersion of the Jews outside Israel from the sixth century B.C, when they were exiled to Babylonia, until the present time. Another definition is the dispersion of an originally homogeneous entity, such as a language or culture. Americans fought for and built a language and a culture that saw them through 200 years of prosperity, unity, economic stability, and a fierce pride that made it the most wealthy and powerful nation on earth. It was dedicated to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was dedicated to allowing individuals to pursue their dreams. It did so partly by demanding personal responsibility of its citizens. One is rewarded by one’s efforts. At least we all hope for and believe in such a society, even if it is often run by corrupt leaders.

That is changing, just as our new president stated so many times during his campaign speeches. His administration caters to those who envision big government being the panacea to all their ills, where everyone is equal regardless of one’s efforts or one’s idea of personal responsibility.

Chaos is an attribute of human nature. The founders of this country understood that and tried with foresight and eloquence to enact rules that would, through the ages, hold chaos to a minimum. Morality cannot prevail without a certain respect for human nature. Understanding that utopia is not possible renders us secure. To dilute our culture, to make that which helps us maintain an upper hand available to our enemies, to try to appease them with obsequious gestures, to denigrate the military and those who continue to believe strongly in the ideals and values provided by our public faith will surely put an end to what we were and what we are.

A reverse or imploding diaspora may be an apt description of America today. Instead of being sent “out of”, we are being dispersed from within.
The Taliban have imposed their harsh brand of Islamic law in the 90 percent of Afghanistan under their control. The Taliban say their version of Islam is a pure one that follows a literal interpretation of the Muslim holy book, The Koran.
Under Taliban laws, murderers are publicly executed by the relatives of their victims. Adulterers are stoned to death and the limbs of thieves are amputated. Lesser crimes are punished by public beatings.
Yes, you say, but such abuses and barbaric practices are not a part of our culture. No? There were approximately 5000 honor killings in America over the past few years. Do Muslims believe in such brutality?
“An Egyptian Arab Muslim father in Dallas, Texas allegedly shot his two beautiful teenage daughters to death because he disapproved of their American-style ways. Their names were Amina and Sarah Said and their father’s name was Abdul Said. The girls looked sassy and full of life; they looked like Dallas teenagers. They were 17 and 18 years old and their friends considered them “geniuses.” Abdul was a taxi driver. (In parts of Europe, taxi drivers are known to aid and abet honor murders).
“Perhaps how Amina and Sarah dressed, and how they thought, shamed their father Abdul. He was no longer in control of his women—a mark of shame which provoked his need to kill them. Perhaps their flowering sexuality enraged him because it made him desire them—and from this he concluded that other men might desire them too and if he could not have them, no man could.”
“In the CBC documentary, a clear distinction was made verbally: "honor killing" is not an Islamic practice. One of the women interviewed also mentioned this. This is a cultural one. It was even mentioned there are Jews and Christians in Jordan who engage in this sick practice.”

But if you believe that, read what the woman pictured at the top of this blog says about it in the second link below.

Shira law has found its way into England and Denmark. There are hints of following suit in this country, and of allowing schools to be disrupted 5 times a day for prayer to Allah, for atheists and Buddists to decry America’s public faith, for America’s melting pot to become more like oil and vinegar, for liberal ideals to convict conservative values as radical extremism, for allowing the vote by convicted felons, and for convicting those with any common sense who think one ought to be responsible for one’s actions.

And now, if you believe as your founding fathers did, we are labeled racists, radical extremists, and a danger to American society.

http://www.sullivan-county.com/wcva/index0.htm
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id4/honor_killings.htm