THE GREAT DIVIDE OF CURRENT EVENTS

Everywhere I look, on every issue, I am seeing America split into two camps. You are either a "Progressive" big government, gay promoting, pro-amnesty, green zealot, or you are a "Constitutionalist" small government, freedom lover. Our country divided is unfriendly, uncivil, unhappy, and suffering from a lack of cohesive citizenship, pitting false ideas of victimhood against the formula for individual success. There is no joy in Mudville lately.

Our country is broken in a way I believe is comparable to the days leading up to the Civil War. And like the Civil War era, this has come upon us gradually and insidiously. Families and friends were lined up on two different sides of the issues of the day; slavery, states rights , tariffs, and a wide divide in economic prosperity between the states. You could say that slavery was the underlying most critical issue of all and that is what drove the divide to the ultimate culmination of war. And I believe you would be mostly correct on that point. But I would also add that states rights - federalism was the Constitutional structure most challenged over the issue of slavery. In that way, slavery became a Constitutional crisis.

Since the days of the Civil War and the construction of the Communist Manifesto, the divide has only grown. Each current issue (as slavery was) is now an attack on the Constitution. Every issue arising in the public square becomes a divisive sticky wicket that people don't seem to know how to address and/or dismiss as either part of our way of life or not. This is what happens when chaos begins.

Does the Federal government have the right to force you to buy healthcare? Does the Federal government have the right to dictate what lightbulbs are sold? Does the Federal government have the right to use our taxes, i.e. grant money, to implement United Nations' projects? Does the Federal government have the right to force states to educate illegal aliens? Legally, under the Constitution, the answer is no to all of the above. Yet we are surrounded by people who have no idea that the government does not have those rights.

What was a racial slavery issue in the early days of our Republic is now an all encompassing class issue, teetering on the brink of enslavement of the entire mass population of America....all because the Constitution is being ignored and because government bureaucrats are, quite simply stated, completely out of control. Power over others is an aphrodisiac. Give a man or woman a job as a bureaucrat, where he or she can wield power over fellow citizens, and the man or woman will go home every night feeling drunk with power. Convince young students that their role in life is to go forth and tell everyone else how to live and what to do...and you have a generation of people who don't know how to do anything else. Conversely, do not teach young students to create anything or learn a skill of real worth...and you have a generation of people who will flounder and depend on government to pay their way. (by real worth I mean..farming, manufacturing, engineering, communicating, managing wealth, fishing, retail management, etc. etc.) The culmination of this is a huge segment of the population who knows nothing but regurgitating the government rules they have been taught to force onto others.

The goal of Progressives is collective Federal force against the individual. The goal of Constitutionalists is celebrating individual gifts and successes, forcing no one into paying for someone else, i.e. allowing individual liberty. The dichotomy is that the slavery issue from the Civil War has been translated into whether or not you can buy an incandescent light bulb or purchase your own healthcare insurance. In this way, the Constitutional crisis of slavery has become a Constitutional crisis of personal choices, a catalyst for enslavement of the entire population of America. Federalism has been turned on its head.

I am struck by the vehement adherence to these un-Constitutional dictates that I see in some people around me. It is as if our cultural conversations are on two completely different planets. It's nice to think we have common ground, but it is obvious we don't. "Never the twain shall meet" is the motto of the day. Opposites, in this case, do not attract, but repel each other. I am repelled by the Progressive, Marxist, big government people I hear and see in our society. Seriously repelled. I don't see common ground with them. There is none.

I read recently (sorry I didn't grab the link) that the Progressives' admonition of "old white dead men" being responsible for the Constitution somehow never becomes "old white dead men" are responsible for the Progressive movement, i.e. Marx, Engels, Popper, Wilson, Lenin, Mao, George Bernard Shaw, and more. I'm not ashamed to say, I like our "old dead white men" better than theirs.

The Constitution can and should prevail in its brilliant assurances of individual freedom from slavery, from slavery by the Federal government, from slavery by tyranny at all levels of government. Those who wish to enslave others to their own power agenda have no place in America...just as those who wished to continue the practice of African slavery had no place in America. The slavery of Progressivism is the same, only this time it is slavery of all people. Our current events are just that...current incarnations of the same old divide. We need to let them know this, in no uncertain terms. The beginning of the end of the Progressive Era has come. We've fought this fight before and we won. They don't win....we do.

This post is also seen at PunditHouse.com
This post is also seen at Conservatives On Fire!
Another great post on this subject at Crockett Lives

TICKING TIME BOMBS BY PROGRESSIVES IN AMERICA

IED's are strategically placed right there in the road, like land mines, and like floating mines in the water, just sitting there waiting to go off at a moment designed to do the most damage. Such is the work of leftists in America with politically charged laws that disguise themselves as "for the good of all," but in reality are conceived for the distinct purpose of taking down the United States.

My first example of a strategic ticking time bomb comes by way of Jimmy Carter. The Community Reinvestment Act he signed in 1977 was a vehicle to force banks to lower standards for loans and money to people who could not support a mortgage loan with their own income. The loans were structured as adjustable rate mortgages which had balloon payments. Over time, the Feds put more and more pressure on the banks to create more and more of these loans. Clinton put the CRA on steroids in 1995 and increased the amount of risk to the taxpayers by subsidizing Fannie and Freddie's purchase of the high risk, subprime loans. Meanwhile, Fannie and Freddie stocks were sold to the public as a "safe" investment to the public, touting the idea that the whole thing was backed by the solid and sound U.S. Treasury. The FDIC and the SEC were charged with oversight to assure that banks were complying with the "quota" system set up by the CRA. A bank could not expand, grow, continue to operate, or even put in an ATM unless it was giving away low interest risky loans to low income folks in the proper percentages to satisfy the Federal Government. These loans, which are now referred to as toxic assets, were money losers for the banks. What does a good bank do to make up the difference? Any number of creative things, some of which were bundling the loans as derivatives and selling them to other financial investment institutions such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, Washington Mutual, Lehman, etc. The derivatives were bought and sold again to international banks who wished to own American investments. Voila! What do we get when the loans implode? An international, global financial crisis. Who gets rich from short selling the derivatives? George Soros, who told everyone last year he was having a very good crisis.

The "Progressive's" ticking time bomb always involves investments from either unsuspecting investors or the taxpayers of the American public. This is what happens when America allows its government to create a maze of tangled money systems which co-mingle private money with government money. A few people who are aware of the machinations of the systems know how to benefit from them. Those at the top of the schemes know exactly what is going on and come out of it with boatloads of taxpayer monies, while taxpayers get soaked and the solvency of the American privately held corporations, having been manipulated by the Federal Government, goes straight down the tubes. For a hundred years or more, there have been deals struck between private corporations and individuals to buy favor from the U.S. Government. But the size and scope of the Community Reinvestment Act and its damage to the solvency of privately held banks is the largest ticking time bomb ever invented by Progressive politicians. The bomb went off in the fall of 2008, but the answer from our government was to double down on the explosives and use more taxpayer money to prop up the redistribution schemes.

Meanwhile, back at the press desks across our nation, Progressives have infiltrated nearly all of the media outlets in our country. The message from these Progressive newscasters has been to promote the redistribution of private wealth into the hands of socialist programs, and emphatically demonize banks, wall street, and any other successful private business that does not play their game or adhere to the socialist goals of redistribution.

In each of the ticking time bombs is forced and complicit cooperation of private industries. The Feds forced the banks to comply. Wall Street paid boatloads of campaign contributions to Democrats to try to ward off regulations which would limit their abilities to operate successfully. AARP donates tons of money to and supports the Democrats on Health Care to try to position itself to survive the take down. GE goes off promoting "Green" all over its media outlets, NBC and MSNBC and pushes "Green" appliances, lightbulbs, etc. Why? So GE can stay in business with the blessings of the Federal Government....and then GE can buy off political favortism for its business. It has become a circular back patting convention of industries greasing pols and pols greasing the skids for industries. Eventually all of these players become arms of the Feds. Now we have an entangled web of lies and schemes being foisted onto the American public

The ticking time bomb enacted this year by the Progressive Socialist congress and Obama? The Health Care Bill. It won't work for the very same reasons the CRA took down the financial system. It will do to our health care exactly what the CRA did: create insolvency, reduce the availability of care, take out insurance companies and medical facilities across the country. Who did you hear were the demons? Doctors and Insurance companies. What do you get? Voila! Complete Federal take over of health care, a la Britain and Canada.

Next up: Cap and Trade...taking down the energy industries.

The formula is always the same. The outcome is always the same. Failure. In our case, the death of America. It's the Marxists dream come true.

None of this is the way our Constitution was constructed. The Constitution was constructed to protect the American people from just this sort of abuse. Limiting the power of the Federal Government was and is the only answer to stop this type of tyranny. Yet, here we are. Ticking time bombs going off all around us and the Constitution being ignored by politicians and tycoons alike. We didn't get here over night. It is going to take monumental efforts by Americans to reverse the damage and heal America. Not sure if this is comforting or depressing but here is a stat: It only took 300,000 Bolsheviks to take down 130,000,000 Russians. If we are the majority in America, for God's sake, we cannot let the Bolsheviks take us down.

Sources:
On Health Care and the Tenth Amendment
American Thinker on the Financial Crisis
National Review on Communism
Pajamas Media - Who Caused the Financial Crisis