“Those who are ignorant of their history…

…are condemned to repeat it.” No truer words have ever been uttered.

In researching the situation with Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, I came across a little footnote in American history about which I was previously ignorant, and that I found astonishing and alarming. If you do not know the history behind the phrase “The switch in time that saved nine”, you might want to read this article.

It should be obvious to any thinking individual that History does not truly “repeat” itself, not exactly. But like musical phrases from a symphony, certain themes do reappear and build upon themselves. Our current economic crisis, coming at the end of a roaring period of growth in the 1990’s and 2000’s, is reminiscent of what historians now call the “Roaring Twenties”. America at that time was truly entering modernity. Our “manifest destiny” was being realized, our nation was beginning to jell. We no longer had a “Wild West” suffering frequent Indian wars, industrialization was at its peak, we had recovered from the expensive (both socially and economically) disaster of the Civil War, and our participation in World War I had resulted in America sitting as the preeminent and wealthiest nation on Earth. Deep ethnic divisions were festering and would eventually result in the explosive Civil Rights Movement which, gratefully, would be resolved “peacefully” thanks to the wise Christian leadership of Martin Luther King forty years later.

But in the meantime, the bloodiness of WWI mixed with a heady sense of relief, pride, optimism, and a healthy dose of disenchantment: after all, millions had died during the war, and intellectuals began to question the traditional values that had led the world to that “war to end all wars”. The cynicism felt by many found expression in the nihilist art form known as “Dada,” which was “anti-art” (if Art had the intention of appealing to the sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend them. Simultaneously, the relief of the end of the war resulted in an exuberance that created the “Flapper” movement, redefining the woman’s role in society, and openly disdained popular perception of what was “proper” behavior for women. The Jazz Age was born, and it should be noted that at that time Jazz was looked upon with the same disdain that Rap is now: it was hedonistic party music associated with drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, and open sexuality.

So, while Europe was rebuilding after the war, America was prospering, and “experimenting” with new and “progressive” ideals. This hedonistic attitude would eventually spread to Europe and alter their cultures as well.

But it was not all “wine and roses”: the end of the war meant an end to government spending and a deep recession, perhaps even a depression. Unemployment reached 20%. Runaway inflation was destroying the economy. Three consecutive Republican Presidents combated this trend with debt reduction, tax cuts, reduced spending, and a close relationship between government and industry. “Consumerism” was born, and while some benefitted, large portions of the population saw no real increase in their overall wealth. To use today’s Progressive jargon: The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Or remained equally poor, to be fair. The normalcy of the economic boom in the 1920s resulted in an explosive growth of government and spending that would eventually come to haunt the country. From 1929 to 1933, under President Hoover, real per capita federal spending increased by 88%.

The Republican policies worked. For most of the decade, the economy not only recovered, but also began to boom. Overconfidence resulted in a speculative bubble that sparked the stock market crash and the Great Depression. The Republicans tried to maintain a government role as “arbiter” and avoid direct intervention.

But when the stock markets crashed, and banks collapsed, the mood in the country understandably shifted, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs (there were actually two) are the historic inspiration for President Obama’s contemporary Reinvestment Act. The first New Deal was aimed at helping the Banks and the railroads, the key industry at that time. He abandoned the gold standard, and enacted “work relief” programs, in which the government would provide jobs to millions of Americans. The second act included labor union support, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid the agricultural sector, particularly tenant farmers and migrant workers.

Take a moment to reflect upon that history, comparing what you know about the period in US history from WWII, through Viet Nam, to the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the sweeping reforms he enacted, to the two decades of prosperity of the ‘90s through 2007. An historical theme runs through both periods, to be punctuated poignantly by the current economic collapse and election of President Obama. From exuberance and economic glory, to excess, moral decline, a willingness to redefine the nation's values based upon whimsical fancy, to the heady and uncontrolled expanse of government, while the investors drunkenly and greedily set aside better judgement for a quick profit.

Returning to the New Deal; Roosevelt’s plans ran afoul of the Supreme Court. That court repeatedly shot down Roosevelt’s plans for perceived constitutional violations, because the reach of government was expanding far beyond the limitations to Federal Government powers stated within the constitution.

Infuriated, Roosevelt devised a plan. The US Constitution does not expressly limit the number of justices on the court to nine justices. So Roosevelt created the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, also known popularly as “The Court-Packing Plan.” He would expand the court to 15 judges and appoint six new, liberal judges to swing the court in his favor and allow him control the Supreme Court.

About the time the Court-Packing Plan was about to be enacted, Justice Owen Roberts, who had consistently voted against most of the New Deal provisions, changed his votes and started approving the plans. This is the source of the phrase, “a switch in time saved nine”: by changing his vote, acquiescing to the dominating mood at the time, Roberts avoided a major overhaul of the Supreme Court.

The implications for today’s America are not trivial. The level of disenchantment caused by the economic collapse following on two decades of economic prosperity is deep and radical. The common mantra that “we must act to avoid disaster” has allowed politicians to leverage off the people’s fears, and guide the nation onto an unprecedented path. The Obama administration, enjoying an almost cult-like following, has been given free rein to spend more money in less than 100 days than previous administrations combined. The government has interfered with the contract obligations of investors and given unwarranted ownership to unions in today’s auto-making industry.

But the Obama administrations goals are far grander than this. The Progressives want to force the nation to redefine marriage, remove limits on even the most reprehensible forms of abortion, radically alter the medical industry, and force through “transformational” policies based upon hysterical fears about global catastrophe that would fundamentally alter American society in every respect. They have repeatedly suggested their interest in controlling access to guns, and nominated as a Supreme Court Justice a woman who believes that gun ownership is not a “Fundamental Right”. They want to grant amnesty to tens of millions of people who entered the country illegally and oppose local and state police forces from working with the federal government to enforce immigration policy.

Annoyed that Americans would dare to defy them and instead rally around popular media spokesmen like Rush Limbaugh, they float the idea of imposing a “Fairness Doctrine” that would force radio stations to essentially subsidize unpopular beliefs and create “popular commissions” to monitor and report on compliance. And at a time in which our national security is threatened by a cabal of rogue states and radical terrorist organizations, they are gutting the national defense, hamstringing our intelligence organizations, and persecute the previous administration’s officials for the tactics they used to keep us safe.

So, if the wheels continue to come off the cart, what’s to say that the proposals will not become increasingly radical? This administration has already admitted that their philosophy is to use “crisis” as an “opportunity”. As the Obama administration looks back at the radically populist policies of the Roosevelt administration, who is to say that Obama could not “resuscitate” the Court-Packing Plan in order to lock in control over the Supreme Court?

When the effects of Obama’s massive spending results in inflation, when the dollar has collapsed due to their uncontrolled printing of worthless money, as fuel prices rise and the cost of basic necessities such as food, energy, and transportation necessarily rise and result in greater unemployment, hunger, desperation, a natural outcome will be for the administration to use the next crisis as an opportunity to enact even more desperate “temporary” measures.

Everything I’m describing is exactly what happened in Venezuela over the past ten years. Step by step, President Chavez took control of the Congress, then declared a crisis and took control of the court, then expanded the court from nine to thirteen judges. He decreed price controls that forced private industries to deliver “basic goods” at below cost. When they could not do that, he nationalized them, giving them to his friends and supportive interest groups, such as unions. He closed down the largest opposition television network by refusing to renew their “broadcast concession,” and has now threatened the last major free network with the same. He funded community activist groups that performed acts intimidation, as well as electoral fraud. All the while, he maintained popular support by saying that he was doing this in the interests of the poor, the unemployed, the ethnic minority victims of capitalism, even “to save the world” because capitalism is destroying the environment. His next step was to attempt to alter the constitution to give himself perpetual re-election.

So, tell me: is what I described about Chavez, and Roosevelt, all that different from what we know about Obama?

When government owns the press

Life is full of ironies.

I remember the grand days of the GOP, when Reagan stated so astutely that “Government is not the solution to our problems; Government is the problem.” For a wonderful period of time afterward, the fashion was to reduce government, and by the end of the Clinton era, the Democrat President and the Republican Congress and Senate had reduced government enough that we actually had a budget surplus.

After the September 11th attack, however, the Republicans suddenly forgot their roots and decided that we needed new bureaucracies to “keep us safe”. That was the first irony. The pendulum began to swing in the opposite direction, heralding a return to the era of big government. The ultra-liberal Obama administration is taking this to its orgiastic conclusion, and we now see a promise of massive, intrusive government, massive spending, and massive debts. Oh, and of course, massive taxes to pay for it all.

We’re informed that “It’s patriotic to pay taxes.”
Then we are told that “higher taxes will stimulate the economy because the government won’t have to borrow so much, there will be more private capital available for investment, so interest rates will go down.”
“All this government spending will stimulate the economy and we will see record growth,” they promise.
“We have no intention of running the automobile industry,” said the Obama administration, as they “rescued” the company, declared that they owned it, fired the executives, cut their advertizing budgets in half, gave majority stake to the Unions that did not own sufficient stock to warrant this gift, and violated the constitutional protections of the shareholders by bullying them in the bankruptcy negotiations.
“We don’t want to nationalize the banks,” they soothed, while gobbling up one after another, controlling their boards, refusing to allow the banks to repay the money, and tinkering in their internal policies.

But now we have some great news to celebrate. Washington State has approved a bailout of its newspapers! Yes, it’s true. And isn’t it glorious?

No, they won’t be actually giving the papers money. You see, in these challenging times, the Seattle Times can’t compete with online news sources. They are going to collapse, just like the Rocky Mountain News and others before them. Sound the bugles, the liberals have come riding over the hills with—irony number two—a 40% tax cut.

Wait a minute. Aren’t tax cuts the hallmark of Republican policies?

Well, why stop there? As Conservatives have been saying, if you want to stimulate the economy, cut corporate taxes! Don’t stop with the newspapers, cut the taxes on the auto industry! Cut taxes on the medical industry! Reduce the costs of doing business and watch how they grow.

The flip side of the tax cut for the newspapers is something that should alarm us all. I heard a radio commentator state that the newspapers should never be given “government money”. In reality, they are not being given “government money”, but rather are being allowed to keep a greater share of their own money. But the perspective is clear: they are being given “government money”.

If a newspaper receives money from the government, how can it possibly continue to be an independent watchdog of those same politicians that gave them the funds?

I’m sure we will be calmed with promises that “we have no intention of owning the newspapers, controlling their content, or restricting their editorials.”

And we would believe them because they have already demonstrated their noble intentions with the auto and banking industries.

If anything, we already were witness to the voluntary prostration of the news media to the socialist agenda during the 2008 elections. We are witness to their continued unwillingness to ask tough questions of Dear Leader Obama. We see how they verbally berate, assault, insult, and malign conservatives, invoking accusations of treachery, vulgar references to oral sex, and misogynist denigrations of innocent women who dare to express their values.

So why should we be concerned that these same papers are now accepting bailout bucks from the socialists?

Go back to sleep, people. There is nothing to see. Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chavez has already closed down opposition channel RCTV, forcing them to broadcast from Colombia, and now promises a “little surprise” as he prepares to shut down the last free television network, Globovision.

But that would never happen here. This is America. OK, sure, Chavez is a socialist, and Obama is a socialist, but Obama is a nice guy. We can trust Dear Leader with our freedoms.

The Global Trend Toward Fascist Restriction of Speech

Imagine for a moment a world in which individuals who do not believe that the Holocaust occurred are jailed for publicly stating that belief. Well, that doesn’t take much imagination; this can actually happen in Europe, where laws in some EU nations prohibit individuals from denying the historical basis for the claims of systematic mass-murder against the Jews.

So, imagine now a world in which it is forbidden to deny that global warming is caused by human activity, and could be penalized—even jailed—for daring to speak out against the anthropogenic theory of climate change. That could never happen, right? I mean, that’s the kind of thing that happened to heretics during the inquisition, but surely that would never be done by open-minded, secular governments.

Well, think again.

We have all been witness to the recent, systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement of scientists who have begun to rethink the current global-warming dogma. Former Vice-President Al Gore has repeatedly denigrated these scientists as “Flat-Earthers”, as described in an article by James Murray:

“In an interview with Lesley Stahl to air on "60 Minutes"…, Gore piously declares those who don't buy his climate change theories are akin to crackpots who believe the earth is flat and don't believe man landed on the moon in 1969.”

At subsequent events, Gore maneuvered to deny access to these heretics, in order to avoid embarrassing disagreements over the accepted liberal environmental canon.

The Global-Warming hysteria is reaching the point at which proponents believe that their cause will “save the world”, and therefore, anyone who opposes them must threaten the world, and should therefore be treated like criminals, almost as terrorists. James Nash, writing for Environment, said:

“The British foreign secretary ‘has said that skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and denied access to the media,’ Doctors for Disaster Preparedness report in their January newsletter. George Monbiot wrote in England’s “Guardian” that ‘Every time someone drowns as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.’”

Read that again, and consider very carefully the wording: skeptics should be treated like terrorists and their access to the media should be blocked! In Britain, Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the government, went on record as saying that, "Global warming is worse than terrorism."

How ironic that global warming skeptics are to be treated “as terrorists”, since the liberals are perfectly willing to invest time trying to sympathize with the real terrorists, in order to understand what we did wrong to make the terrorists hate us, but won’t think for one moment why some scientists are skeptical about the anthropogenic causes of global warming!

But the excesses do not stop there. Brendan O’Neill, in his article “Global warming: the chilling effect on free speech”, writes:

“The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.”

According to O’Neill, one Australian columnist proposed outlawing the public expression of “climate change denial”.

Ian Murray, in his analysis of the behavior of the environmental inquisitors, quotes the Times' economics editor having described the fervor of the environmentalists pushing these policies as being similar to "the medieval monks who favored self-flagellation as the road to virtue. For a Government to enshrine such thinking in policy is truly perverse." He continues: “In equally medieval fashion, adherents of the environmentalist religion have launched an inquisition against scientific views that they consider heretical.”

The trend for secular governments to adopt a popularly held belief and penalize opponents appears to be growing. Muslim nations have managed to convince the United Nations that the world is suffering from Islamophobia, and are pushing for the criminalization of any speech they believe “offends Islam.” A simple cartoon by Jyllands-Posten of Prophet Muhammad triggered violent reactions by Muslims around the world. So what is the natural reaction among “freedom loving” nations in the UN? Ban any criticism of Islam. No such support for Catholicism will be forthcoming, allowing artists like Andres Serrano to continue display more “Piss Christ” creations. Perhaps, if Catholics burnt a few art museums and murdered the artists, they would get the same sympathy the Muslims do.

And now the UN “torture envoy” has declared that the United States must prosecute the Bush administration lawyers whose only “crime” was to offer legal advice that certain “enhanced interrogation” techniques were legal.

“Manfred Nowak, who serves as a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, said Washington is obligated under the U.N. Convention against Torture to prosecute U.S. Justice Department officials who wrote memos that defined torture in the narrowest way in order to justify and legitimize it, and who assured CIA officials that their use of questionable tactics was legal. …‘That's exactly what I call complicity or participation’ to torture as defined by the convention, Nowak said at a news conference. ‘At that time, every reasonable person would know that waterboarding, for instance, is torture.’”

The most recent example of the chilling effect these attitudes have on open and reasonable debate can be found in Andrew C. McCarthy’s letter to Attorney General Holder, in which he rejects the invitation to participate in the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy. “The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls ‘individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.’ “

Why?

“Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people.”

More importantly, McCarthy explains that the current administration’s openness to prosecution of Bush-era lawyers who advised the President about the legality of using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on the al Qaida detainees in Guantanamo Bay prison:
“Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.”

Western values are at risk of being subverted by ecstatic fervor of liberals who are so convinced of their own moral certitude, they are willing to silence any discussion on the topics, punish lawyers who provide legal opinions that differ from their own (which is not a crime, by the way), and treat the skeptics worse than terrorists.

***UPDATE***
As if to prove my point, the English Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said "she decided to publicize the list of 16 people banned since October to show the type of behavior Britain will not tolerate..."

Number three on that list is conservative talk-show host Michael Savage.

Savage responded reasonably: "She's linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?...It's interesting to me that here I am a talk show host, who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values – borders, language, culture – who is now on a list banned in England," Savage said. "What does that say about the government of England? It says more about them than it says about me."

Why did Smith do this? In an interview with the BBC, Smith said Savage, the No. 3-rated radio host in the U.S., is "someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country."
We again see that the "progressives" are willing to ban free speech if it might make certain "communities" uncomfortable. And YET they don't ban the "free speech" of Muslims who call for the destruction of Western civilization and repeatedly call for Jihad!

We need to update the dictionary, and add "cowards" as a synonim for "progressives".