I'm not sure we ever realize the exact moment when things go pear-shaped in society, but I think we are looking at that time right here and right now for the United States of America. Why you ask? Let's look at some of the reasons the good ol' U.S. of A. is changing for the worse.
War in Iraq: We are winning the effort. The facts bear this out. The low-life bastards blowing up innocent people in Iraq know it too. The Iraqis have held an election, created a government, are creating a constitution, raising a security force, etc., etc., etc. You might not actually realize this because unless you actively look for the good news you will not get it. As I have stated before, the left in this country (including politicians and the mainstream media) are in full Vietnam mode. They know they can still derail our success and turn it into failure. Hell, they are saying as much now! Listen to Pelosi, Reid, Durbin, Dodd, Biden, Kennedy and any one of the other complete morons in D.C. and they will tell you that we are losing in Iraq and that the whole war is a disaster. They could not be more separated from the truth. Terrorists in Iraq (who on the whole are not Iraqis, by the way) continue to blow up U.S. military, Iraq security forces and innocent Iraqis on a regular basis. That's what they do. Terror is their only weapon. Unfortunately the people they are terrorizing are not just the average Iraqi but the weak-willed, lilly-livered members of the United States Congress. They insist that we must announce a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. WHEN WE'RE DONE YOU FECKING MORONS! You don't telegraph to your enemy when you plan to quit, especially a bloodthirsty and immoral one like the one we now face. God, these people are either completely stupid or so consumed with the quest for power that they cannot see their own folly. Either one is unforgivable.
Campaign finance reform:
Our leaders (and I use that term derisively) in Washington have decided that
they can tell the citizenry what they can say and when they can say it. Funny
how the First Amendment protects strippers, pornographers, Nazis, artists and
every kook out there with an agenda that may
or may not be popular (which it should) but it now does not protect political
speech which is what it intended to protect
in the first place. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, otherwise known
as McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform, prohibits all soft money
contributions to the national political parties and federal candidates from
raising soft money. The law tries to compensate by slightly increasing the limit
for hard money contributions. What the politicians are saying is because they
cannot be trusted to act ethically with campaign donations you cannot make them.
After all it is money that corrupts the system. Without it, politicians would be
pure as the driven snow. And that's not even the part that pisses me off the
most. There is now a ban on certain political ads within sixty days prior to a
federal election. It's the Federal Incumbency Act. They like their jobs with
which they wield absolute power. They don't want unimportant people like the
American public going around opposing them. Spineless politicians supported this
bill because they thought it would make them look good and because they thought
that there was no way it was constitutional. This includes congressional
Democrats, Republicans and President Bush. Well surprise! The Supreme Court did
not strike it down. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." That's
the new First Amendment. Well as of right now anyway. Congress and the Supreme
Court reserves the right to eliminate other parts of it in the future.
Eminent domain rulings: This is why we need
originalists on the Supreme Court. These knuckleheads have just given the green
light for local governments to seize property from private individuals and give
it to other private individuals for their own use. This should scare the hell
out of every man, woman and child in this country. If you own a house, your
municipal government can knock on your door and tell you that you must sell it.
Not necessarily for any public use like a road or school, but to a developer who
wants to build a subdivision or shopping center. "But it's my land!" you say.
Well yes and no. It's yours unless someone else can do something else with it
from which the local politicians think they can reap more tax revenue. Don't
bother and cry about how the house you live in has been in your family for a
hundred years or that it is the place where you will spend your hard-earned
retirement. It is all irrelevant to five of the nine member of the Supreme
Court. A Wal-Mart takes precedence over your rights to private property. "No
person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime,
unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising
in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time
of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to
be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal
case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation." That's the new Fifth
Amendment.
Flag burning amendment: God how many times will the Congress keep trying this? If an artist can float a crucifix in a jar of urine, I should be able to burn my flag if I want to. IT'S FREE BLOODY SPEECH! Assaults on free speech come from from both the left (in the name of political correctness) and the right (in the name of patriotism and public decency). This one smells of the right. Free speech is great when I say something that you agree with. If I express an opinion contrary to yours I should not be forcibly silenced, whether I am burning a flag or a bible or a picture of Malcolm X. I can criticize anyone I want to in these stupid comments of mine and there's nothing you can do about it. Well, that is until the government decides to regulate the Internet, which is coming to be sure.
We already know that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments have been ignored for many years now. Does it bother the average American to see parts of the Constitution's Bill of Rights struck through like that? Do average Americans even know what the Bill of Rights is? That could be the origin of the problem. The powers have sufficiently made the common people ignorant to the workings of government and the rights they are losing. I have to wonder at what point does violence becomes the answer to opposing some of the attacks against our civil liberties. The reason we have a Second Amendment right to bear arms is to prevent the very thing that is happening all around us. That's how revolutions get started. It has been said that great societies do not fall by attack from without but commit suicide from within. We have already taken most of the bottle of sleeping pills. All we have to do now is wait for sweet oblivion.
And another thing...
I listened to a radio program this morning that had my head spinning. The round table featured a liberal with whom I usually disagree about most everything and a fellow who calls himself a libertarian. The issue was the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London and the wider war against the bastards who do things like that. The liberal sees the value in what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and had the situation pretty much right. The libertarian was proud to state that he is a pacifist and insists that these evil attacks are a result of us not living by the example of Jesus. (He is a devout Roman Catholic.) I cannot for the life of me understand pacifism. There is always something worth fighting for. I don't trust anyone who will not fight for anything. He tried to give examples of how peaceful means changed the course of certain countries. Sure, Apartheid was ended in South Africa without a shot and Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. did wonders with non-violent means, but that is not what this conflict is about. It is not about getting a policy of a government changed via changing the hearts and minds of its citizenry. The enemy wants you dead. He does not care about how much you really want to live or that you would like the opportunity to make him see the errors of his ways. Get it? Boom! Dead! The anti-everything pacifists have one basic tenet of this conflict completely wrong. The fact is that we are trying to change the hearts and minds of the Islamic world by what we are doing. "By killing Iraqi children? By enforcing our way of life at the point of a gun?" they would predictably shriek. No, you brainless freaks, we are not pointing guns at innocent Iraqis and telling them that they must be free. We are pointing the guns at the enemies of freedom so that the innocent Iraqis can create a free nation. We are setting up an example of freedom in a place where the problems are rooted. Freedom is better than tyranny. There should be no argument about that. People who insist that some citizens of the world cannot live in freedom should be ashamed of themselves. By completing the job in Iraq by setting up a duly elected government and allowing capitalism to flourish, it will set an example for the people of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and everywhere else that people a bred into hatred. In order to discuss things with reasonable people, there have to be reasonable people with which to have the discussion. They aren't there now. Hey pacifists, why don't you go to Iraq and try to talk to Zarqawi? (By the way, he is not an Iraqi. Just like so many of the so-called "Iraqi insurgents".) That would sure be a short conversation. "Excuse me, Mr. Zarqawi, we'd like to talk to you about stopping all the..."SLICE! PLOP! (That's the sound of a head being separated from a body and hitting the floor.) The libertarian pacifist also tried to claim that by breaking up the Taliban / Al Qaeda central command in Afghanistan that terrorists were scattered around the world and is now worse. I almost burst a blood vessel after that. The alternative would have been what? Leaving them be to plot more massive attacks? Memo to stupid people: They were all around the world and hated us before we took them out in Afghanistan. They still hate us and are still scattered around the world. What do you think, they used to decide on a plan, hop on a Delta flight to wherever they were going to blow something up and then flew back to Afghanistan like it was a business trip? There are cells in the U.S., U.K., France, etc. There were before September 11, 2001 and there are after as well. The hornet's nest analogy is constantly used. We smashed the nest and now the hornets are buzzing and angry. It is a ridiculous analogy. We cannot wear protective clothing and carefully remove this nest without disturbing it like in real life. The only options available were to do nothing and continue to be stung or smash the hell out of the nest (and risking more stinging), killing as many as we could, and then killing the rest who no longer have a safe haven until they are all gone. The latter make infinitely more sense to me than the first. Pacifists and other like-minded children are operating under the incredibly naive assumption that by leaving terrorists alone they will get bored and stop killing people. I thought Fantasyland was only found in Disney theme parks.
And another thing...