Superpower
Deborah Venable
09/17/11
It’s
getting harder to decide what to write about these days. That is mainly because there is too much
nonsense out there to write about, and because I have already written about
most of it anyway. Too few care to hear
another opinion, albeit a unique one, expressed in logical argument at this
point. As I have said before, logic is
not persuasive regardless if you may think otherwise. The disease of political correctness has stripped away most of
the ability to understand a logical argument, so we are left with a confusion
of more and more subject matter to discuss and far fewer ways to discuss it.
Directives
from the Whitehouse tried to determine how the public officially commemorated
the 10th anniversary of the 911 attacks. This isn’t the first time we have been told how to feel or
express ourselves of course, but it never gets easier for some of us who grew
up in a much freer America. It really
hurts when you take stock of how much freedom has been lost in just the last 10
years. It is a palpable anger mixed
with fear for our country and what it is becoming.
It
isn’t just the last 10 years of course that we have been trading more and more
freedom for imagined security. I try to
look at it in past decades just since my own adulthood and am almost crushed
with that same feeling of anger and fear.
The fact that it cannot be adequately communicated, and therefore
understood by those who haven’t lived all that long is the most frustrating
problem of all.
If
I had to whittle the whole thing down to a singular cause, I’d have to say that
it mostly involves the lack of average Americans these days to understand
America as a Superpower. We are, you
know – still. America is a
Superpower. The fact that too many
Americans and non-Americans are uncomfortable with that terminology is
disconcerting to say the least. Even
though the term is a relatively new one, having come into our common lexicon
after World War II, in simplest terms there have always been and will always be
at least one Superpower on this earth.
I, for one, would rather it be a country founded in individual freedom
that seeks to influence the rest of the planet (which is part of the very
definition) in that direction instead of telling the rest of the world to bow
and scrape to tyranny – any kind of tyranny.
The
truth is that never before in human history has the success of America been
equaled. Never before in human history
have so few influenced so many in a positive direction. Never before in human history has a system
of government provided the tools necessary for individual liberty over
crippling tyranny. And finally, never
before in human history has truth refused to sit down and shut up, even as
would-be traitors to the freedom loving human condition try to insist on
it.
Yes,
we ARE still a Superpower because we refuse to be silenced – even as a
government cancer that has metastasized weakens us. Individual liberty is still the best philosophical argument to
make in the venues of political, religious, and other community meeting places,
but we must remember how to define it before we can do the argument
justice. We must stop passing the
factual argument through a lens of political correctness so as not to offend
anyone. Honesty needs to lead the
argument.
I
don’t believe we have ever had to fight so many different enemies
simultaneously as we are required to do now – just to save individual liberty
in this superpower. They are invading
us even as they pervade our heritage and culture – and they are doing it in
many different ways and taking many forms.
From the religious angle that so many Americans refuse to acknowledge to
the philosophical angle that twists around falsified history and ignores basic
facts, we are compelled to “stand up” against or for ideas that too many
Americans cannot even define. It is
confusion on parade as the truth slips by in shadow.
Communism
ate away at us for several decades in the 20th Century until one day
somebody announced (falsely) that it was dead. Atheism sought to obscure our Judeo-Christian roots until one day
somebody announced (falsely) that they were never there in the first
place. Radical Islam has been creeping into
our very fabric, worrying us from the inside and attacking us from the outside,
and we are being told by too many ignorant Americans that Islam isn’t a problem
to be reckoned with, that we can coexist with it, even though it teaches
exactly the opposite. These three
enemies take many forms, invade every social structure in this country, and
they will collude with each other until they defeat the original Superpower –
unless they are all defeated.
Make
no mistake, none of these enemies believe in individual freedom. They may all wrap themselves in a cloak of
various brands of democracy, but democracy does not now nor has it ever
defended individual freedom. Democracy
is a horribly misused word and our Founders never wanted it. Democracy has never sustained a
Superpower. Just ask the Greeks.
Do
we even teach our children the difference between a Democracy and a
Constitutional Republic any more? I
don’t think so. The difference is that
the latter, (which defines the government that our Founders left us – not
necessarily the one we have let it become) is dedicated to championing
individual rights, while the former allows collectivism to rule. In so many ways our government has become
more and more a democracy turned upside down, yet maintaining the idea that
“majority rules” is a good thing. Don’t
get me wrong, the whole idea of voting in a free election to select
representatives for our republic is a very good thing, but the system has many
defective parts that keep the engine of streamlined government from running
smoothly. That is precisely why it is
less and less a “streamlined” government – rather it is a bloated monstrosity
that threatens to destroy the very idea of individual liberty. It will, indeed, be up to our children and
grandchildren to get all the wrinkles ironed out of that one, for the rest of
us have literally run out of time to do the job.
The
upside down part of our so-called democracy is that at a rapidly expanding rate
we see that the opinions and/or perceived “offense” of a few now determine
policy in many cases. One person can
suddenly decide he is “offended” because a prayer is said in a public school,
collectively organize a small minority to put pressure on the powers that be,
and voila! Prayer is banned in public
school – all public schools over a comparative short period of time!
That
is but one example of what I have seen happen in my adult lifetime. Unfortunately, there are many more.
As
for the “majority rules” idea, well, if the so-called majority happen to be
made up of an unconscionable, ignorant, morally challenged collective, the
question then becomes, why should they rule?
A
true representative constitutional republic takes care of both situations. Never before in the history of man had such
things been thought out and thoroughly discussed, debated, and written into law
which would trump human failings to govern a people – not until America’s
founding. That is why America was and
is exceptional. That is why America was
able to grow into a Superpower status with worldwide influence. That is what our progeny must learn about
and fall back on to fix what we have allowed America to become.
If
something seems to be missing from my otherwise logical argument, (even though
I know I am not persuading anyone) it is the financial backbone of our
Superpower status and where it all fits in.
That financial backbone is under constant attacks simply because too
many Americans do not have a firm grasp of simple economics and how it has
played out in history. As long as the
accumulation of individual wealth can be philosophically vilified as unjust,
unequal, unfair, undemocratic, ungodly – you name it, there will remain the
problem of maintaining that strong financial backbone of our Superpower. If nothing has made sense up to now, that
should certainly ring a bell.
Financial
security has always played a very big part in our ability to believe in and
follow the path to the American Dream.
Although, to a free individual nothing is impossible unless we decide
for ourselves that it is, too often our circumstances can be artificially
altered to make impossibility overrule the possible in our own minds. The thermometer gauging that is sometimes
simply the state of our national economy.
As it declines, so too does our individual ability to overcome the
impossible. Governments have always
known this. That is precisely why the
most tyrannical forms of government insist on collective thought of the very
poor and the rich simultaneously.
Excessive rules make that oh-so-much easier to accomplish.
Over
the last few years a few dedicated individuals and organizations have dedicated
themselves to the re-education of the American public about the foundation of
American government. Our schools, for
the most part, have been doing a terrible job of this for generations now. Our “watchdog” press and media have failed
miserably in public oversight of policy and politicians to the point that they
simply cannot be trusted to do that job for us any more. When we have members of the press and media
thinking that the public can’t handle the truth unless it has been properly
sanitized, the problem speaks for itself.
It will take due diligence on an individual basis for the public to pull
themselves up out of the quagmire of ignorance and take their rightful place at
the helm of this Superpower. There is
no better place to start than at the forgotten history of our founding.
Reading
and understanding the Constitution and the men who put it together is a first
step. I can think of no better place to
start on this Constitution Day. Can
you?