"Despair is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due" - Sir Winston Churchill
This is where things get real.
A number of my readers and other people whose opinion I respect deeply have let me know that the recent debacle in Washington has disheartened and disturbed them to the point of despair.
I hope none of you take what I'm about to say personally, but I think the obituaries are a mite premature...and even harmful.
Part of what fuels decadence (and eventual destruction and defeat) is the belief that everything is rotten beyond repair, so why even try anymore? If enough people feel that way, then they contribute to the defeat and it's over. So it's important to act with optimism and positive energy even when it seems hopeless.
One of the things that surprised me in reading Winston Churchill's history of World War II is how frequently he succumbed to despair during the run-up to the Second World War when he could see where things were headed, and afterward,when he finally took power and the Nazis were expected to invade at any moment.
Sir Winston referred to these periods of depression as 'the black dog'...but he made a point of never sharing these emotions with anyone, and indeed made a point of acting especially cheery and unperturbed when things seemed darkest. And there were plenty of such moments.
He understood instinctively one of William James' basic principles of psychology, that moods are infectious and affect others and that a positive attitude, even a partially feigned one, can have positive results.
And there are positive results to be had. We have a country to win, and one that's worth fighting for.
What we are seeing here is the final act of Gramscian Warfare, named after Communist strategist Antonio Gramsci, who theorized that the Soviets could best export their poisonous ideology to free societies not by military means but by attacking a country's culture and institutions from within. The Soviets first planted this virus in our country as early as the 1930's, and Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, David Axelrod and a great many of the others in and around the current administration are the ultimate products, the dancing and the disease all at the same time.
What's happening in Washington is beneficial because it brings things out in the open where they're readily apparent even to people who normally don't focus on such things in daily life.This is just the recovery phase of the Marxist virus first implanted here 70 years ago, and sometimes recovery has a certain amount of discomfort, especially if a major regurgitation of something poisonous is involved.
For years, there's been a certain constituency for a quasi-fascist welfare state in America in very broad terms because it was couched in appealing language like 'fairness' 'equal opportunity', 'diversity', 'progressive' and 'rights' to various entitlements never mentioned in our Constitution. The Smart People and tenured radicals in the universities supported it and the media and Hollywood promoted it, so the average American vaguely endorsed it because the alternatives were never promoted with anything like the same fervor.It seemed like the right way to think and sounded good, because the pitfalls to the socialist nirvana were never clearly explained to them and few of them had experienced it up close in person.
That's all changed now, and it will be even more apparent in the future. When your enemy is out in the open, he can be defeated. This is a threshold moment.
When Mark Steyn says that Obama and his minions have been thinking strategically, he's only half-right. Because they've also succumbed to hubris and dropped the mask, a major tactical error at this point in the game.
It's the classic conman's mistake, underestimating the mark and pushing for the kill too soon.
There's nothing Obama and the current regime can do that can't be overturned, and that includes everything in the ObamaCare bill, notwithstanding the language Harry Reid put in requiring a super-majority to dissolve the Independent Medical Advisory Board in charge of rationing care, AKA the Death Panels.*
It would have been much harder to dismantle with an expansion of Medicare or the so-called public option, something the more astute Leftards understand all too well.
And if ObamCare passes as it now stands, it will be a massive club to beat Prez Zero and his accomplices with at election time, especially as the high taxes, increased premiums, rationing and penalties kick in immediately and the 'benefits' don't begin until 2014. The average voter understands this instinctively, especially seniors, and we're all going to get a firsthand look at what Obama's neo-Marxist paradise looks and smells like. Only without the job security, of course.
Where Steyn and other usually astute observers are perhaps being influenced by is the current state of the Republican Party.However,that's already changing, in spite of the best efforts of the GOP establishment. The biggest segment of the electorate right now consists of independents and mad-as-hell tea party adherents, and they are already moving the party in their direction....just ask Charlie Crist.
So far, the only mainstream political figure to pick up on this new energy and channel it has been Sarah Palin, who has a huge advantage simply because she was first out of the box by a long shot. However, there will be others, and the Republican Party will have to accommodate them if it doesn't want to go the way of the Whigs.
However, to take advantage of this opportunity to remake the country requires that we work, and even more importantly, it requires faith.
I believe that America is exceptional, and I have no doubt that that was part of G-d's plan, just as the challenges we face now are part of His design.He does nothing by accident, and I think he has good things in store for America in the future.
However, it's up to us to choose that future.
This comes down to the old free will versus divine will puzzle. For my part, I've always felt like G-d is several steps ahead of the game, but allows us to move the pieces he sets on the board. We play in the cosmic chess game, but with a Master Player who can see where the game's going at all times.
I just got through celebrating a holiday that commemorates the miraculous victory of a bunch of untrained farmers and artisans over one of the most advanced professional armies of its time, the heirs to Alexander the Great. They could never have done it if they had allowed doubt to triumph.
The quasi-fascism Obama and his buddies are flirting with is a wake up call for our beloved Republic. In the end it will not kill us, but make us stronger.
And we will need that strength. If even tools like Tom Friedman are recognizing that we will have to defeat Islamic fascism to survive, the real war is not far off.
Remember....when it comes down to it, Americans still rise superbly to challenges. So rise up and don't succumb to despair, because this is a fight we can win. Rise up, and fight harder,because the alternative is you telling your grandchildren what it used to be like to live in a free country.
The choices are really that stark.
-selah-
*Aside from the fact that this violates Senate Rules and was likely unconstitutional under Article I, if the rest of the nonsense is repealed there's nothing much for the 'advisory board' to ration.
And to the extent this section is legislation, it doesn't prevent a future Congress from ignoring it and amending the statute anyway - the 'last in time' rule would preclude a court assault on any act doing so.
On the other hand, if it wasn't a rules change but a 'procedures change', as the Dems blithely told Jim DeMint, a future (Republican) presiding officer could easily concur that yes, the applicable wording was not rules change, and the usual rules still apply, thus allowing a repeal without a super-majority. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
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