Saturday, December 29, 2012

Just How Awful will 2013 Be?

By Alan Caruba

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.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

6 comments:

TexasFred said...

We truly are a nation divided. The United States is anything BUT united, this nation is as close to breaking apart as it can be, as close, or closer than the spark that set off the War of Northern Aggression.

There is one HUGE difference today, the South is not that poor part of America relying on the production of cotton to get by in the world market.

Ronbo said...

@Alan:

Welcome to the revolution!

Lime Lite said...

Another prediction that has proved hugely incorrect is the CBO which predicted in 2002 that the 2012 US debt would be 7.4% of GDP. In reality, it was almost 73% of GDP - and it's climbing. One has to wonder if Obama has any clue as to the damage he's causing - of if he truly is a brilliant strategist, who we have underestimated and who has managed to execute a pre-planned sabotage of America. Either way, he's managed to destroy your country in less than 4 years - the once mighty USA is now a tragic country in it's death throws. Who would have thought 4 years ago that your government would stab most of her allies in their backs and get into bed with the Muslim Brotherhood? And the liberals in your country cheer their own demise. They truly are useful idiots.

sykes.1 said...

The message of Katrina is clear. The great majority of local and state police will enforce any orders given by the Obama administration, including even shooting down protestors.

MacArthur cleared Hooverville, and he took his oath seriously. The current collection of careerist brown-noses who comprise the Joint Chiefs of Staff will do much worse.

whiteson said...

Thanks for this insight mr Caruba. It's really sad days ahead of you. But I want to wish you a very good 2013.

Unknown said...

Yes, Alan, many will prefer the chains to freedom. I see this in the attitudes of a lot of people I know. A lot of Americans are like cattle and just go with the flow.

One has to wonder how many gun owners voted for Obama because they are union members and put the union ahead of their right to bear arms.

Lime Lite... I think destroying America has been Obama's plan all along.