war

Is it time for RWII?

As I observe the machinations of politics in the United States, one thing has become perfectly clear to me: Our government has increasing contempt for the people, and the Constitution by which it was founded. Last night's passage of a healthcare bill is just the most recent example: Most Americans oppose this bill, and more importantly, it ignores the constitution in virtually every manner possible. This leaves some folks, myself included, in something of a quandry: I have sworn to uphold our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but what happens when enemies are now running the country and trampling the Constitution?  Where is that line? What's the trigger? How do I know when they have gone too far? When do I act? What actions do I take?

I ask these questions not as some revolutionary kook, but as a guy who looks and sees that his government is plainly in breech of its founding document. Will setting things right now require that I cast off all protection of law as it did our founding fathers? Will I be forced into a position that in order to repair this situation, I must be willing to engage my government in open warefare?

These things I know: I will never participate in the universal healthcare plan, and I will never pay for it, and I will never go to jail because of the foregoing. Must I wait until they 'come and get me' before I launch my resistance? What is the trigger? What is the point at which I become not merely an 'opponent of healthcare reform,' but instead an open counter-revolutionary warrior?

If I adopt that position, what acts must I entertain? This is dangerous ground, because my training instructs me that my best role is as an insurgent. Is this really how I wish to spend what remains of my life? Do I organize with others? What, exactly, is the right course of actions here?

I realize that some of you will respond with various insults, but my question is a serious one: When is enough enough, and when do I know that line has been crossed?  Our Congress has become a terrorist organization, implementing its will without regard to the law which had formed it. Our President is clearly bent upon casting off the Constitution in its entirety. The foxes are not merely in the henhouse, but have control of it. What's a liberty-loving, ordinary guy to do?

Last Sunday here it was cloudy and drizzly, and early in the morning, the village was deserted. In my walk I only met a young mother jogging and pushing a carriage. It was one of those with wheels as big as bicycle's wheels. She was moving at a good clip, and didn't say good morning, but the toddler gave me a toothless grin.

Then, a few minutes later, my friend Joe parked his truck across the street and waited for me. I think he wanted me to see that he had grown a beard because instead of saying good morning he asked if I noticed something new.

To be contrary, I said, "Yeah you washed your truck."

He shook his head, and called me an asshole.

"My wife likes it," he said.

"She should. It needed it. It needs painting too." His truck was red once, but now it has the color of a picture of Saudi Arabia taken from space. Joe is 85, and his truck is half his age, I think.

Joe was born In Brooklyn to Italian Immigrants, and he fought in the Pacific. He has told me more times than I care to hear it, how two guys in his platoon looked for Japanese wounded to finish them off after every battle.

Every time he tells me that, I say to him that they were Boddhisattvas sending Buddhists to Nirvana. I had to explain the joke a few times, but know he knows the terms, and we can discuss if his buddies were doing an evil, or good deed.

Joe was a Catholic, but what he saw in the war made him an atheist. He doesn't believe in life after death either. He is one of many soldiers liberated from superstition by war.

One of the biggest issues with this Russian/Georgian conflict is the fact that there is a lack of verifiable information. One minute you hear that the conflict has ended and the fighting has stopped the very next, you hear that the fighting is still happening, and that the Russians are not honoring the cease-fire agreement. It is all rather confusing, and it makes for a very frustrated blogger. Because the last thing a blogger wants to be, is wrong.

However, more than that is the lack of the Main Stream Media’s ability to look at this entire conflict in a historical context. Many are pointing to the actions of Ronald Reagan for dissolving the Soviet Union Empire, as being the cause of this conflict. I happen to disagree with that notion. I believe personally that it was the foolish actions of President Harry Truman, that is the cause of this conflict or shall I say the harvest of seeds planted by Harry Truman’s actions.

On December 7, 1941, the empire of Japan attacked the United States naval base in Oahu, Hawaii. This act of brazen hostility brought the United States of America into World War II, despite President Franklin Roosevelt’s pledge to remain neutral in the ever-growing conflict. As history would show, The United States fought the war and finally Hitler was defeated, and Japan surrendered. However, the method used to end the war, is in my opinion the underlying cause of this conflict.

It is a known fact that the United States soundly defeated Hitler by fighting them on the ground and air, using conventional weapons. However, we stopped the war, and to end the conflict with Japan, we used atomic weapons. This I feel was a tragic mistake. This is because Truman was a different kind of a Democrat than Roosevelt. Roosevelt was an “old line” Democrat, who saw the Communist threat, knew what the Communist doctrine was truly about, the repression of freedom and he stood to defeat it. No matter how long it took.

However, Truman was another matter entirely. President Truman represented the “new line” of Democrats who felt that war was unneeded and that peace was a better path. This was a precursor to the “peacenik” Democrats of the sixties. This was evident when President Truman gave his infamous “Military Industrial Complex” speech, at the end of his term. * - See below, please.  With Hitler out of the way, Truman, feeling the ever-increasing pressure to end the war and return the country to pre-war status, devised a plan to end the conflict with Japan.

While using the Atomic bomb might have been an effective means of ending a war, its impact and stain upon the United States would be long ranging, to this very day, is to be considered a very poor decision by the United States. On many websites in Japan, including those in English, denounce America as being brutal for dropping the bomb. However, those who had friends and relatives that died at Pearl Harbor felt that Japan got what it deserved.

It is in the opinion of this writer, that the United States should have fought the war, all the way to Russia, until communism was soundly defeated. Furthermore, The United States of America, should have never dropped the atomic bomb on the empire of Japan, but rather, should have fought that war on the ground, until Japan surrendered. This would have resulted in the total defeat of communism. However, as we all know, this never happened.

Because of this obtuse neglect, the United States of America began a “Cold War” with the empire of the Soviet Union that lasted until a Conservative President, a real conservative President, whom came on the scene in the eighties to plant the seeds that would eventually bring down the soviet empire. However, as we have seen here in the last few days, Russia is not a free and democratic society; it is simply a police state, without the outright communism.

Putin, a man who is sympathetic toward the old soviet empire, filled to the brim with communist doctrine, is wagging his finger in the face of the United States and making a mockery of the supposed democracy in the European continent. This is the harvest of the neglect of the Democratic Party of the forties.

* Update: Oops! I blew it, Truman did NOT give the military-industrial complex speech, Dwight Eisenhower did. My bad. I blew it, I should have checked. But my point about the Democrats and the cold war as it relates to Russia still stands.

I hope that this won’t sound like too much of a ramble that you hear while you’re sitting at a bar getting drunk, but it needs to be said.

The longest lasting issue that will affect every other aspect of the American way of life is the economy.  I’m not saying that we’re going into the next Great Depression, but we’re in a bit of a slump, it happens.  The best way to solve that problem is to go back to the basics and start over.  The Government has taken so much control over everything that can be done and “should” be done American entrepreneurs can’t excel.  The biggest hurdle to jump is the tax system that is currently set in place.  There are so many issues and impediments that you need to hire an extra tax attorney just to make sure that you’re not breaking any laws.  The simple solution is the FairTax.   

The FairTax is the simplest, most effective, and most efficient idea that a politician has ever conceived and supported.  With the weight taken off everyone’s shoulders so that they get all of their paychecks every week, people will want to spend money.  The idea with the monthly pre-bate check also encourages the low income families to either save for the future (maybe for college so we actually have more kids learning), or purchase things now so they go ahead and contribute back to the system. 

After becoming the world’s tax haven, more factories come back home while more come here for the first time.  We open up thousands of new jobs across the country (no more unemployment issues!).  And if as the economists who have studied the FairTax are right, then the economy doubles in 15 years!  This then fixes the bankrupting Social Security that I won’t get a piece of otherwise.  It helps with welfare, the country’s growing deficit, war funding, and anything else that our economy can spit out.  No one can avoid taxes on the FairTax, even those illegal immigrants who should have been deported. 

Next issue, illegal immigration.  It’s illegal, what’s the issue?  Deport them.  If we want to give them an amnesty program just to appease people, here’s my proposal.  We pay for the materials for a Great Wall of Mexico (I want to see it from space), but we get the Mexicans who want to come into the Land of the Free to build it.  In return, they become fully legalized immigrants.  We could even let them build apartment complexes for them to live in as long as they pay the Federal government rent.  With the apartment complex built near the wall, we then can hire them as border patrol.  We also would have to put a much smaller contingent of other American citizens behind that line to keep them honest from letting their cousin Jose in.  Maybe even just a load of cameras with automatic gun turrets to keep down on the number of Americans who would be sweating in that heat. 

Next and last issue, the Iraq War.  We are there, finish the job.