It Can’t happen Here

Revolutions happened in other countries.  The USSR, their satellite countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, African countries, and of course those banana republics somewhere down south, but one thing is for sure, it can’t happen here.  Following in the footsteps of giants who have used these prophetic words of Sinclair Lewis I want to examine how it did happen here.

In the America of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, in the America we inherited from our forefathers we knew that there could never be a revolution.  We had the Constitution with its checks and balances, its separation of powers, and its Bill of Rights.  These were rock solid, carved in stone, and strong enough to preserve the Republic and safe guard the freedom of its people.

Besides the American people would not stand for some wannabe dictator and his brown, black or whatever color shirt followers marching through the streets and into the White House.  The sons of the Pioneers wouldn’t sit still for any attempt to curtail limited government, personal freedom, or economic opportunity.  No way!  No how!  Others might accept censorship, surveillance, and rigged elections, but not us, not Americans.  We had fought wars to defend our independence, wars to defeat totalitarianism; we had even fought wars to spread freedom.  No, we wouldn’t quietly allow homegrown tyrants to grasp the levers of power.

I sounds so comforting, “It can’t happen here.”  If you take a beginning Political Science class in either High School or College you will learn how the government works. How bills become laws, how the legislature is made up of the freely elected representatives of the people, how the President runs the executive branch and the Supreme Court sits atop the judicial branch.  You will learn about the Declaration of Independence and how the Constitution was written to replace the Articles of Confederation which were too weak to work.  Yes, you will learn all about how it’s supposed to work.

In most schools you will also learn that the Constitution is a “living Document” that can be re-interpreted to fit every generation and every age.  The results of 100 years of re-interpretation have led us to the brink of ruin and me to recommend that the study of the Constitution be moved from Political Science to History, since what rules us today is legal precedent and bureaucratic regulation.  The courts use foreign laws and traditions to interpret our laws and traditions.  The legislature passes laws they don’t read filled with thousands of pages of vague platitudes and goals that the bureaucrats fill in with no oversight and the force of law.  And the President does whatever he wants and no one says a thing.

So how did America fall for the oldest con in the world: “Give me your freedom and I’ll give you security?”

Those who wished to gain power had no ideology or theology which inspired them.  They only sought power for power’s sake.  They espoused whatever populist themes gave them the broadest support.  To bring as many interest groups as possible into their coalition they embraced an “I’m okay you’re okay” relativity that rejected absolutes and extoled the fringe as the mainstream.

And all the while the decedents of the blacksmiths and farmers who once congregated on corners to discuss the latest political pamphlet or to debate the merits of economic policy snoozed on the couch waking up long enough to go to work or watch the game.

The Revolutionaries of the New America first took root in the faculty lounges of academia providing the intellectual and cultural cover for an American movement that promoted the opposite of everything America stood for.  From the classrooms of our colleges, came the next generations of teachers, journalists, lawyers, artists, and politicians.  Soon it was common knowledge that our once rock-solid Constitution was a Living Document to be twisted and changed whenever those in power found the need.

From here it was just a matter of time until a revolution was accomplished through evolutionary change.  Once the centers of power were secure in Washington, Hollywood, and in the media the trickle of change became a torrent and the torrent became a tsunami.  Two wings on the same bird of prey, perpetually re-elected representatives from the twin headed party of power pander to the lowest common denominators, buying votes, using taxes to punish enemies, and tax money to reward friends. 

Our tyrants-in-training have captured the government and the economy, created a dependent class of motor-voters, convinced people that a continually growing debt is sustainable, and turned the government into the one who picks winners and losers instead of a free economy.  The slow slide down a slippery slope has accelerated into a precipitous procession over a predictable precipice.  To those who have seen this coming it is like watching a slow motion train wreck.  The coming destruction is not mitigated in the least by the decades or warning.

Our prideful boast of it can’t happen here has become a heart wrenching analysis of how it did happen here.  How did the Progressives capture our land and subvert our Republic?  They did it gradually inch by inch, step by step.  When they lost a round they held their gains and as soon as possible recovered their long march toward a totally transformed nation.

How they changed it brings us to the question, “How do we change it back?”

Violent revolt is both repugnant and obviously suicidal to people who understand that once that genie is out of the bottle there is no way to know which way it will go, except that the odds are heavily against it ever landing back in a stable land of limited government and personal freedom.  The power of the state is overwhelming.  Millions of shot guns, pistols, and even those terrible assault rifles we are constantly being lectured about would make no headway against Abrams tanks and F-18s. 

There are only two ways to have a successful peaceful revolution.  One: the vast majority of the people must go on strike and refuse to operate as a society until the changes have been made.  Or two: it must happen gradually line upon line verse upon verse always keeping the goal in sight and moving forward at every opportunity.  In other words we must do to the new establishment what they did to the old: not overthrow it, supplant it, and replace it in the hearts and minds of the people.

We can rest assured that all people at all times eventually yearn for freedom thus the stage is set by the very nature of man that God imprinted on us in His creation.  Free choice is the natural state of man and in the end we will return to it.  This pall of totalitarianism which is falling like a shadow across the land will one day awake to find the light of liberty cannot be quenched forever.

What should we do?  Education is the key.  If you are not a teacher become one.  Learn to show yourself approved.  Teach anyone who will listen of freedom, of the true History of the American experiment.  Become involved in any way you can to retake control of our education system so that we can train the coming generations to love freedom, truth, justice, and the American way.

And don’t lose hope.  God created us to be free, and though tyrants always seek to ensnare people in their self-serving systems we will one day be free again.  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  Remember what we thought couldn’t happen here has and what they think can’t happen to them will. Freedom will rise from the ashes and one day the light of liberty will once again burn brightly in America the beautiful.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

Empires Rise and Empires Fall

Most of us, even those of us who are the products of America’s collapsed public education system have heard of the fall of Rome.  The greatest of ancient western empires began to fall as soon as the vigorous Republic which had created it was replaced by an autocratic military dictatorship.  A dictatorship which hid behind a veneer of republican forms while devolving into a cult of personality around whichever thug happened to have murdered his way to the throne.  For centuries this once vibrant nation of freemen sank beneath the weight of regulations, taxes, inflation, and tyranny.  For centuries after their power had been usurped by the ever more absolute Emperors there was still a Senate, there were still elections, and there were still courts charged with safeguarding the Republic.

Freedom was extinguished, and the yeoman farmers who had supported the Republic and filled its armies became first tenant farmers.  Then they morphed into an unemployed rabble choking the streets of an imperial capital living on government bread and entertained by government circuses.  The armies of the Empire were not filled by native Romans they were filled with provincials who were granted the coveted status of citizen for serving.  When the expanding decay of the central dictatorship undermined the vitality of the provinces and the culture of helpless subjects swallowed the pride of citizenship, Germans and other barbarians were imported to fill the armies.  By the time Rome fell it was no longer Rome.  The capital had moved to Constantinople in the East and Ravenna in the West.

The barbarians had long ago supplanted the native Romans and their provincials as the generals and power brokers in the West.  In the East the Greeks had taken control of the military and the culture even though they still called themselves Romans.  

In 476 AD when Rome officially fell in the West it didn’t fall as much as it was replaced.  There were no massive charges of barbarians against fortified walls on the Rhine or the Danube.  Those walls had been manned by barbarians for many years.  Instead when the king of the Visigoths, Odacar who was already a Roman general, grew tired of the charade he pushed aside Romulus Augustulus the effete boy emperor taking control of the Western Empire.

When Odacar refused to pay taxes to the remaining Roman Emperor in Constantinople he resorted to a tried and true Roman strategy.  He hired a barbarian to do the dirty work.  Thus Theodoric of the Ostrogoths stabbed Odacar of the Visigoths passing power from one barbarian nation to another.  Once in possession of Rome Theodoric saw no need to hand that prize over to a distant Greek who called himself a Roman but had no power in Rome.  When Theodoric declared himself the King of Italy we mark it as the fall of Rome though the Greeks continued to call their empire Roman for another thousand years.  It seems T. S. Elliot was correct, at least as far as the Roman world was concerned, it ended not with a bang but a whimper.

Looking closer to home the British Empire came out of World War One as the largest empire in the history of the world.  It stretched around the globe controlling thirteen million square miles and 460 million people covering ¼ of the earth’s surface leading the proud imperialists to boast that “The sun never set on the British Empire.”  They were such dedicated conquerors that the Indians had a saying, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”  Nothing would stop them from pushing forward to victory.

However twin victories in Europe’s World War suicide dance combined with a welfare state and the confiscatory taxes it always brings brought Britain to its knees forcing them to voluntarily renounce their empire.  They transformed it into a Commonwealth of Nations with member nations still upholding the fiction of British authority.  However, the amount of real power the Queen or the British Parliament holds in Canada or Australia gives voice to the fall of the empire even if they want to pretend it is still there.

In Rome on the Potomac Boehner’s Plan B becomes Obama’s plan to tax you and me.  After all the huff and buff of a con man’s bait and switch it turns out Washington doesn’t have a spending problem .  No, the problem is we aren’t sending them enough money.  Never fear, elections have consequences and since the ignored corruption of fraudulent voters and whacky voting machines has given Mr. Obama an uncontested victory, he and his Progressive Vandals win, and we American Romans lose.  Our new national motto might as well be “Stand and Deliver.” 

The Barbarians have been inside the gates for a long time.  The Kennedy Immigration Bill of 1965 breached the walls and the Progressive indoctrination camps we call public schools combined with an entitlement culture to turn generations of Americans into know-nothing couch potatoes waiting for a government check. 

Our worldwide military posts are necessary for the policeman of the world.  Our mounting debt fuels our endless wars for peace and our ever expanding welfare state.  All of which brings us to the crushing taxes and the regulation strangulation that guts our economy of innovation and productivity.  The givers shove the producers out of the way as they waddle to the trough for some more free lunch.  Our leaders are perpetually re-elected demagogues pandering to the lowest common-denominator of the takers. They are Santa Clauses giving away vote buying presents paid for by the unwilling and given to the undeserving. 

Like Rome this empire won’t fall it will collapse.  Like Britain we will pretend that the empire exists long after we know the emperor has no clothes.

Our only hope as a nation is to jettison the Empire to save the Republic.  On a personal level we must lead our families in a restoration of the work ethic and a return to moral sanity.  Either we individually spark a revival of what made us great or we sink into the hole dug by moral rot and the decay of ambition.

Empires rise and empires fall; however, though a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.  Because you have made the Lord the Most High, your dwelling place.  No evil shall befall you for He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.  Trust Jesus, open up before God, and keep nothing back. He’ll do whatever needs to be done.  He’ll validate your life in the clear light of day and stamp you with approval at high noon.

Keep the faith, keep the peace, we shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens