By Alan Caruba / Opinion
New Jersey –-(Ammoland.com)- Pundits and experts of every description love to predict and pontificate. That they are often famously wrong doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
The Great Depression began on October 29, 1929 with the stock market crash. On October 17th, Irving Fisher, a professor of economics at Yale University, said, “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” A month later Fisher said, “The end of the decline of the stock market will probably not be long, only a few more days at best.” The Great Depression stretched for ten years, in good part due to the “progressive” policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was elected and reelected to four terms!
Not to be outdone, the Harvard Economic Society issued a number of predictions that were equally idiotic. “Since our monetary and credit structure is not only sound, but unusually strong…there is every prospect that the recovery which we have been expecting will not be long delayed.” It took the advent of World War II to energize the manufacturing sector and increase employment. By the time the war was over the U.S. had, for its time, a huge national debt, but it was far better positioned for recovery than Europe or other war damaged nations.
Every recession since then has had experts predicting upturns just around the corner, but as Obamacare and its hidden taxes kicks in this year and next, when the Bush tax cuts have been allowed to expire, at a time when the nation is $16 trillion dollars in debt (and growing), and when its credit rating—for the first time in its history—was downgraded, a new recession is not going to go away any time soon. And this time Obama will not be able to blame it on George Bush.
Matthew 26:11 says, “The poor you will always have with you”, but there is a strong possibility that most progressives have not read either the Old or New Testaments or, if they did, dismissed them as fairy tales.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “So here is the Great Society. It’s the time—and it’s going to be soon—when nobody in this country is poor.” How did that government program work out? Johnson would be been better served if he had listened to Thomas Jefferson who said, “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” And “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
Like Europe before it, America has succumbed to the siren call of Communism because (a) no one seems to learn anything from history and (b) most people would rather have the government tell them what to do and how to spend what little money they are permitted to keep. When Karl Marx died, most of his obituaries were wrong. The Neue Freie Press in Vienna, Austria wrote “Marx’s scholarship was an imaginative lie, his doctrine despair. The damage he created will pass like a corpse.”
Published in 1997, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression documented a history of repressions by Communist states that included genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and artificial famines. At the time of its publication, the total stood at 97 million.
Former Soviet premier, Nikita Krushchev, addressing Western diplomats in 1956, said “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” It helps that Americans elected—twice—a dedicated Communist. The history of Communist infiltration goes back to the Russian revolution that took power in 1917. By the 1950s, the U.S. government was shot through with Communists and “fellow travelers”, sympathizers. In the 1960s the subversion of the nation’s schools began in earnest and it should come as no surprise that former domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, a longtime ally of Obama, transitioned to academia where he became an “expert” on education in America.
Just as liberals would wish away war, there hasn’t been a day since the end of World War II when war has not been occurring somewhere on the planet and the U.S. engaged in them in Korea, in Vietnam, and in the Middle East, not counting peace-keeping efforts and minor engagements. War is the natural condition of mankind, occasioned by the lust for power in the hearts of despots of every description.
In the run-up to World War Two, Frank Knox, the publisher of the Chicago Daily News and a former Republican Vice President nominee said “It is simply unthinkable that we will ever again send overseas a great expeditionary force of armed men.” The year was 1940. So, yes, Republicans can be wrong, too. That same year, Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans, “I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” That changed on December 7, 1941.
You could fill a book about how wrong those making predictions and promises have been, so it behooves us all to view what is being said in the White House, in Congress, and elsewhere as to the direction the nation is taking. Extreme skepticism is the only way to approach the politicians and the “chatterati” on the airwaves.
The nation’s media has already hidden the scandals of ‘Fast and Furious’ and of Benghazi from public view. They make no mention of how an unread, 2,000-plus “Obamacare” was foisted on the nation by a Democrat party-line vote in the Senate on December 24, 2009, Christmas Eve! Obama signed it into law in March 2010.
There’s a reason thousands of Americans have been purchasing guns of all description and laying up stores of ammunition and it may go beyond concerns of gun bans. A lot of patriots think that 2013 could turn very ugly, very fast, with fears of martial law, Homeland Security goons, mass arrests, secret incarcerations, and worse. I have doubts about these scenarios, but they have long been a part of the arsenal of oppressive governments.
The trigger, however, for such scenarios would be the collapse of the U.S. dollar and there are signs—the massive national debt, the continued government borrowing and spending—that suggest this is a very real possibility. If and when that occurs, all bets are off.
What stands between most Americans and those who might wish to engineer the end to the Constitution is the fact that America is home to hundreds of thousands of hunters who comprise, by virtue of being armed, the largest army in the world. A goodly portion of our law enforcement community and our military are going to refuse orders to turn their guns on their fellow Americans and doing so would prove to be unhealthy.
Revolution is never pretty, but Americans did it once and can do it again to protect the Constitution and our rights. In a sharply divided nation, however, the level of resistance is unknown when so many now depend on the government for support. Many will prefer their chains.
c Alan Caruba
About:
Alan Caruba’s commentaries are posted daily at “Warning Signs” his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews.2
For someone to compare Alan Caruba's article with watching Glenn Beck is actually quite an endorsement as to the substantive nature of its contents. It's illuminating to observe how the left constantly paints Glenn Beck as an extremist… if you look at what Mr. Beck has been predicting since shortly after 9/11/2001, he has a pretty amazing track record. With all due respect, Chevas, Glenn Beck's words carry a lot more weight than do yours. And as to your comment that the only proposal that you have seen is limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds, have you seen Diane Feinstein's… Read more »
Right to the last moment, I see certain deluded folks saying,'they won't come for your guns'. How novel such thought! (not!) These are the people who willingly buy into the incremental, bit by bit disarmament of the population. Starts with banning certain weapons, mostly cosmetic characteristics that scare the liberals just by their looks, the 'evil' high capacity magazines for these 'evil' guns and this time additionally certain shotguns and pistols. What you refuse to acknowledge is that the fish hooks in this bill, while grandfathering the owners of these 'evil' guns allowing them to (temporarily) keep them, we must… Read more »
I disagree that "no one is coming for your guns." This government is already full of criminals and outright traitors. It is a tyranny. Tyrants always want to disarm those who they would enslave or murder.
the libs practice what the Bosheviks srarted…'Lie long enough & people will believe it's true'. This has been happening for 40 yrs now. They will come after our guns unless we unite….organize defense groups in your community. There are more of us then them. But better we avoid armed conflict as only Americans will die in the clash. Write your congressmen weekly. Deluge them w/ your displeasure w/ their unpatriotic cowardice. Then go meet your state assemblymen. Tell them you want your state to 'Nullify' the unconstitutional 'executive mandates & laws'. Organize w/ like minded patriots NOW. We can start… Read more »
If we must, we will. Revolution is probably the only things these people will understand.
I read a book when I was a young lad in high school that in one line quoted Franklin Roosevelt saying that any time some thing happens and government is involved you can bet it did not happen by accident. As far back as 1961 our government had been planning this. Any time our government wants to go to war or pass some law in which there is a possibility that it will not be popular there is an event created. The government does not care how many or what age or sex of lives affected as long as they… Read more »
Alan Carube, You are out there, man. The picture of Obama as a secret communist says it all. The communist, though, generally to not give large subsidies to private industry and not take them over. Communism does not support or foster entrepreneurs. In fact, mostly vestiges of pure communism are left and are failing. Our foreign policy is much more nuanced. Reading this is like watching Glenn Beck. People are afraid the "Boogeyman" is coming. I have successfully sued and won against the government for violation of civil liberties and had local laws changed. The dollar is not going down,… Read more »
Democrats are not the same as Nazi's. No one has put forth legislation that would come after every weapon. The only proposal I have seen is a limit on 10 round magazines. If you plan to take up arms against your government, the fight will not last long. You will be dead soon. Remember, the National Guard has a Special Forces Batallion. Likewise, not every gun owner sees a "slippery slope" of throwing out the second amendment by limiting the size of a magazine. FDR did not cause the depression. He did not extend it. Keynesian economics were deployed and… Read more »
Well Alan, I think that might put you high up on the list of the "disappeared". I say that, sadly, only in half-jest. Don't worry too much about those who may opt for the chains. The leading edge of the coming storm is economic. Those chains will evaporate and unleash a frightened, then angry, then violent portion of the population. That is the beginning of the next civil war which will turn to revolution. At the onset it will be called "civil unrest" as the cities begin to burn. Those populations will divest themselves of resources and take to the… Read more »
What upsets me and angers me the most is that the draconian gun laws that they will force on the American people will destroy the Second Ammendmentm, most of our liberties, and essentially gut the U.S. Constitution. This happened in Germany prior to WWII. The Weimar Constitution was destroyed by socialist-fascists in the same way. Progressive Demorats are the same as Nazi's.
A good article, but you should not accept the widely held notion that WWII brought the end of the Great Depression… "It took the advent of World War II to energize the manufacturing sector and increase employment." It was freedom, and the free market, that overcame the government-caused economic disaster that was the Depression. If wars (mass government spending) have the ability to repair the economy, shall we accept the fallacy that Obama's so-called "stimulus" spending will help us now?