Alabama
The year 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the War Between the States.
The American Interest has penned three essays to commemorate the historic occasion. Personally, I can’t resist the temptation to forcefully respond to their apologetics. This kind of stuff is like catnip to the Sons of Dixie who are “unreconstructed” in the 21st century.
After taking the time to read this essay, I can’t help but observe that the only compelling answer that poor Allen C. Guelzo is ultimately left with is that the War Between the States advanced the fantasy ideology of “liberal democracy.”
Yeah, it cost hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed our communities, impoverished the South for a 100 years, decimated entire states, enthroned the corporation, enthroned the banks, enthroned the U.S. dollar, enthroned a tyrannical consolidated government, degraded the quality of America’s political leadership, and its utopian experiments with “civil rights” was a catastrophic failure in every conceivable respect …
Yes, but … “liberal democracy” was advanced the process! Just like “liberal democracy” was advanced in WW1, WW2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the Cold War, the Second Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Serbia, the “War on Terror,” the “War on Poverty,” and now the War in Libya, and god only knows what future wars must be waged for “liberal democracy.”
Just what is this “liberal democracy” that is so great and wonderful? Hollywood’s version of American culture? The “partisan divide” in Washington? The Federal Reserve’s magic money machine? Wall Street’s sound investments? New York’s brand new gay marriage law? The millions of illegal aliens that infest California and Texas? Jersey Shore, American Idol, and The World According to Paris?
The golden opportunity to live in Black Run America where Al Sharpton has a television show, but where Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun couldn’t serve in the U.S. Senate? The Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday? Maybe it is the opportunity to be a debt slave to China and the Countrywide mortgage?
Barack Hussein Obama’s political leadership? The SPLC and ACLU view of White America? Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN? The opportunity to defend Turkey from foreign aggression? The “flash mobs” that terrorize our major cities? Seriously.
Is that supposed to compete with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson? Is that supposed to compete with Remember The Alamo? I don’t think so!
Update: It hasn’t yet dawned on Charles Blow that BRA’s Mountaintop was reached on November 4, 2008.
The pivotal moments of world history are only obvious in hindsight. In 1955, no one could have predicted what the Montgomery Bus Boycott would lead to in the year 2008. Just imagine what the year 2077 will look like in North America and Western Europe.
This is the highwater mark:
Yes, I too suspect this is a high water mark. But we will only know in hindsight.
I am not so sure about the election of Emperor Zero being the high water mark, either. If he gets reelected in 2012, can you imagine what would be in store for us during his second term? Perish the thought.
The Guelzo essay dances around the facts and comes up short in the conclusion department because it proceeds from the usual flawed assumptions. It simply represents the increasing unease most feel when reconciling the official history with its tragic consequences that continue to bedevil us.
Maybe Jersey John “Born-a-commie” could chime in here to help “get your mind right” about the war and BRA?
There is a scenario I can imagine that will see Hussein re-elected. Call it the 2008 scenario where a financial panic over another set of failed banks takes place. The conservative ideologues who have feet of clay will be shouting their free market bromides and defending the big banks, Rinos will be looking to be bipartisian and Obama on one hand will be blaming “big banks” and the congressional conservatives for the problem and on the other hand raking in billions from the I-bank and hedge fund jews.
Don’t write Obama off just yet. I can see the Tea Party “leaders” on TV come post bank collapse and in the middle of a panic jabbering on and on about abstract financial principles and free markets (for Loyd Blankfein) while Obama and Co. pin it all on them. Really folks you want to put your future in Sean Hannity’s hands?
I’m sure it is the highwater mark.
Obama is already the president. Unfortunately, Obama is powerless. He is facing structural problems which are insoluble. It doesn’t really matter if he is reelected. There is nothing anyone can do to solve the underlying problems.
Whoever inherits the throne will be as helpless and powerless as Obama is today.
In Europe, there is nothing anyone can do about the fact that there are so many more old people than young people, and the old people refuse to retire, and when they do retire they add to the burden of the unsustainable welfare state.
How do you solve a problem like that? It is impossible. For everyone who is about to retire over the next ten years is already here and everyone who must pay the taxes to support them is also already here.
How do you solve the long term problem with Peak Oil? It is possible that we could adjust to Peak Oil over the course of many decades with a competent national leadership. Yet we are ruled by incompetent fools who believe in “green jobs” and who subsidize ethanol.
There will be no adjustment. Just more speeches about economic growth.
How do you solve the race question? You can’t solve the race question because everyone is young will one day be middle aged and everyone who is middle aged will one day be old. It is “baked in the cake.”
How do you solve the spiritual question? You could conceivably use the means at our disposal (television, radio, and print) to construct a healthy culture and civilization instead of a hopelessly degenerate one, but the people who control those mediums are ideologically committed to promoting decadence which undermines both our economy and national security.
How do you solve the financial question? You could conceivably get rid of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve and tie our monetary system to the creation of real physical wealth, but these institutions have too much wealth and power to go quietly into the night, and they will take us all down with them.
Projection: Dark Ages
We are inevitably headed back to the Middle Ages.
You can’t escape fate:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/8711508/The-markets-fear-a-fresh-disaster.html
What are the social sciences? Psychology, economics, political science, philosophy, religion, anthropology, sociology, etc?
Mere extensions of the human being. Markets panic because crowds of people are afraid. Economic systems collapse because they are mere extensions of households. Religion waxes and wanes because people have faith or lose it.
Globalism and multiculturalism simply mask an economic and cultural void. The convergence of catastrophes is unavoidable. The lack of vision among the ruling elite is palpable and completely ineffectual.
These people are rank opportunists who can no longer distract anyone from the inevitable collapse of the current dysfunctional system. Only the willful blindness of certain self-deluded parts of the population sustains the current system.
The curtain has been pulled back to reveal the craven fecklessness of our so-called political leaders, but a substantial part of the population still remains indifferent. Reality will intervene in short order. When it does, the only sources of sustenance and order, political, economic, cultural or otherwise, will be those found locally.
Trust and confidence in the local and the particular remains the true legacy we have inherited from our forefathers. If anything will ensure our survival outside of divine providence itself, it is that legacy.
I completely agree Hunter… we are absolutely headed toward the “Black” Middle Ages.
One Executive Order at time:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/19/obama-whites-need-not-apply/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
We can expect the final blows to be felled between no and this time next summer… 2012 will be of little to no consequence. I feel there is nothing to do to stem the tide of the damage Obama has already done…let alone that which he still has planned.