The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: Bigun on August 12, 2018, 02:31:50 am
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Is There Enough of America Left To Be Saved?
Paul Craig Roberts August 9, 2018
As many readers of this website have noticed, the United States has lost its character and become a dysfunctional society. In place of a largely homogeneous population once united in veneration of the Constitution, there exists today massive diversity which Identity Politics has used to disunite the population into separate interest groups.
No clause or article of the Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights, is safe. The George W. Bush and Obama regimes destroyed two of the most important protections of civil liberty—habeas corpus and due process. Bush declared indefinite imprisonment on suspicion alone without evidence or trial. Obama declared execution of US citizens on accusation alone without due process. The Justice (sic) Department wrote legal memos justifying torture, thus destroying the constitutional protection against self-incrimination. One of the authors of the memos is now a professor of law at UC Berkeley. The other is now a federal judge, indications that respect for the Constitution and enforcement of US and international laws against torture is fading in law schools and the federal judiciary.
A third important protection of civil liberty—freedom of speech which is necessary for the discovery of truth and to serve justice—is being destroyed. Apple, Google/Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, university speech codes, legislation against protesting Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians, and the presstitute media that has been turned into a propaganda organ in behalf of vested interests are all actively involved in protecting lies against truth.
Excerpt: Much more at https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/08/09/is-there-enough-of-america-left-to-be-saved/ (https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/08/09/is-there-enough-of-america-left-to-be-saved/)
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I honestly don't know Mr. Roberts. But IMHO the next few months will tell the tale once and for all.
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Roberts is a crank. Some of the things he says might make sense, but that could be true of any run of the mill nutjob. A blind squirrel finding an acorn and all that.
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Roberts reflects and offers opinions which are accepted or rejected. So?
Anyone believing that a robust economy is the answer to our malaise, is a fool.
We have very serious problems because of the type of people we have become.
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Roberts reflects and offers opinions which are accepted or rejected. So?
Anyone believing that a robust economy is the answer to our malaise, is a fool.
We have very serious problems because of the type of people we have become.
:amen: @Absalom and I can tell you that it isn't easy watching the country you and every generation of your ancestry have fought and bled for die.
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Anyone believing that a robust economy is the answer to our malaise, is a fool.
We have very serious problems because of the type of people we have become.
^^^ THIS!!
We are become a people incapable of maintaining liberty, we have become slaves. Slaves to perversion, stupidity, idiocy and a ravenous government that we feed with everyone else's money and have made a god over us.
I'm no fan of PCR, but he always manages to get a line or two in his rants that are golden.
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Every era has its challenges, look at the '60s and prominent leaders assassinated. I guess, the '70s and '80s were pretty good but I'm not one to always hearken that it was better in the old days. That said, we do need to be careful to not lose American principals and values.
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Every era has its challenges, look at the '60s and prominent leaders assassinated. I guess, the '70s and '80s were pretty good but I'm not one to always hearken that it was better in the old days. That said, we do need to be careful to not lose American principals and values.
No, the 70's were horrible. Hippies and riots and crime and all sorts of other stupid ideas. And, we had that "rolling recession" in the 80's and a number of my neighbors had to declare personal bankruptcy. Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
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Roberts reflects and offers opinions which are accepted or rejected. So?
Anyone believing that a robust economy is the answer to our malaise, is a fool.
We have very serious problems because of the type of people we have become.
Yes we do. I have for my entire life automatically assumed the old America will win over creeping globalist/socialist - Godless - influences. The advantages to our traditional heritage were so obvious, or so I've believed. But there is a pattern of thought in recent generations totally foreign to me and it seems to be gaining in momentum. I don't think it can be overcome much longer.
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Yes we do. I have for my entire life automatically assumed the old America will win over creeping globalist/socialist - Godless - influences. The advantages to our traditional heritage were so obvious, or so I've believed. But there is a pattern of thought in recent generations totally foreign to me and it seems to be gaining in momentum. I don't think it can be overcome much longer.
When I was in a foreign land fighting Communists in my youth I never remotely imagined that I would wind up fighting them at home much later in life but it has come to pass.
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When I was in a foreign land fighting Communists in my youth I never remotely imagined that I would wind up fighting them at home much later in life but it has come to pass.
Communism is greed and a desire for power cloaked the rhetoric of good intentions. It is the default mode of ambitious people everywhere when they decide to go their own way.
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Yes we do. I have for my entire life automatically assumed the old America will win over creeping globalist/socialist - Godless - influences. The advantages to our traditional heritage were so obvious, or so I've believed. But there is a pattern of thought in recent generations totally foreign to me and it seems to be gaining in momentum. I don't think it can be overcome much longer.
When society rejects foundational principles for the empty promise of equality, safety and provision; when it rejects it's past and rewrites it to assuage modern ideas; when it eschews the biblical religious heritage that made liberty possible here; when it does not pass on those values to their children - the 'old America' is lost and we arrive where we find ourselves today: on the way down off the cliff.
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Communism is greed and a desire for power cloaked the rhetoric of good intentions. It is the default mode of ambitious people everywhere when they decide to go their own way.
And, greed on the part of the less ambitious: "someone else will take care of me if I don't do it myself".
I'm not sure we really understood that about human nature. Many of us assumed that people really do want to be free and in charge of their own destiny. Turns out that sentiment isn't as common as we had thought.
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When society rejects foundational principles for the empty promise of equality, safety and provision; when it rejects it's past and rewrites it to assuage modern ideas; when it eschews the biblical religious heritage that made liberty possible here; when it does not pass on those values to their children - the 'old America' is lost and we arrive where we find ourselves today: on the way down off the cliff.
Absolutely 100% correct. Well said.
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When society rejects foundational principles for the empty promise of equality, safety and provision; ....
The unkindest cut of all is the generation poised to assume power has no idea what foundational principles are ... and what they are throwing away by rejecting them.
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Lots of sniping so far, but no one has addressed the original premise:
"Is There Enough of America Left To Be Saved?"
I believe there's "enough left", but that we won't be able to "save it all".
Some appendages will have to be let go -- for the same reason that it's sometimes necessary to amputate a gangrenous body part in order to save the rest. Fortunately, most of these geographical "appendages" are "extremities", and the inner core of the nation can survive without them.
For example, it's almost certainly necessary that we "cut California loose", or at least the coastal/southern third of the state. They want to be a separate nation, well, let them have at it. We'll keep the central agricultural region, and the north full of timber.
Same thing with southern Florida, particularly the Miami region.
That place is no longer a part of the America that I remember. Let it go, perhaps unite with Puerto Rico to form a new Caribbean nation. We'll be better off, free of both.
New England/New York state is more difficult. New Hampshire and Maine at least have semblances of sanity remaining, while such sanity has long since departed from Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Perhaps we could exchange those states with Canada, in return for the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Hey, if Canada will throw in the Yukon, we'll offer them Hawaii in exchange!
And of course there are New York state and New Jersey. But... draw a horizontal line through the map at Poughkeepsie, divide the state into two states, and northern New York (let's call it the new state of "Adirondack") would actually become red. So... merge New York City and Long Island with New Jersey, forming the new nation, "Metropolis". Might as well give them the "Philadelphia corner" of Pennsylvania, too (but definitely KEEP the rest!).
Maryland/northern Virginia -- not worth keeping. Let them become their own nation, and take DC with them, perhaps as part of Metropolis. We'll build a new capital for the red states somewhere else, more in the heartland. New Pentagon, too.
Chicago/Minneapolis -- give 'em to Ontario. Do you really care if Chicago remains part of the USA? If so, why?
Finally, Georgia (or at least a major part of it). In time, it's going to become the first "black majority" state. They can't stand the thought of whites ruling them, so... let them go their own way. The new nation of Kwanza, or... whatever. Just be sure to build a tall wall around the borders.
Yes, there is still a large -part- of America which can be saved.
Will we take the steps necessary to save it?
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There is another option, @Fishrrman, though it would be at least as difficult to get to as what you propose. Go back to the FF's vision of states' rights and a very limited federal government. If NY and California want to provide free college tuition and a living wage, have at it. Of course, in short order, all of their productive residents will move to other states where they can keep some of what they earn and deserve. NY and CA will be rapidly forced to borrow money to keep up the social programs, and will be unable to pay that money back. Consequences will be swift, clear and inescapable.
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Communism is greed and a desire for power cloaked the rhetoric of good intentions. It is the default mode of ambitious people everywhere when they decide to go their own way.
@skeeter
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Daniel Webster
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Sanguine wrote:
"There is another option, @Fishrrman, though it would be at least as difficult to get to as what you propose. Go back to the FF's vision of states' rights and a very limited federal government."
Which option -- mine or yours -- is more likely to actually happen?
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The unkindest cut of all is the generation poised to assume power has no idea what foundational principles are ... and what they are throwing away by rejecting them.
That would be the fault of parents and the churches, who abdicated their responsibilities to teach and left the education of their children to corrupt Godless Communistic school systems for the purpose of equipping them to earn wealth, devoid of wisdom.
So they have been indoctrinated into the dogmas of Socialism and Communism, having learned a history of the country that is entirely and willfully perverted so that it might be rejected.
And those generations are now of age to assume power, without any conscience beyond self, and the pursuit of obtaining wealth from others using the government to take it for them and to use the same to impose ideas hostile and anathema to liberty itself.
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Sanguine wrote:
"There is another option, @Fishrrman, though it would be at least as difficult to get to as what you propose. Go back to the FF's vision of states' rights and a very limited federal government."
Which option -- mine or yours -- is more likely to actually happen?
Neither, I think. I think we will slide into a Venezuela-lite kind of situation, where we're not third world, except in places, but not exactly first-world either. People will eat and have shelter, but it will be more Rust-Belt and less Silicon Valley.
What do you think?
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The unkindest cut of all is the generation poised to assume power has no idea what foundational principles are ... and what they are throwing away by rejecting them.
And THAT @Right_in_Virginia is no accident! FAR from it in fact!
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And THAT @Right_in_Virginia is no accident! FAR from it in fact!
I agree @Bigun The question is: What the hell do we do about it?
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I agree @Bigun The question is: What the hell do we do about it?
@Right_in_Virginia
As for me, no grandchild of mine will ever see the inside of a government school if I can prevent it and that's just the beginning!
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@Right_in_Virginia
As for me, no grandchild of mine will ever see the inside of a government school if I can prevent it and that's just the beginning!
Good move. 888high58888
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And we should all make ourselves aware of crap like this currently going on at our institutions of "higher" learning @Right_in_Virginia.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/47769/ (https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/47769/)
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In the interior of this nation - yes.
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:amen: @Absalom and I can tell you that it isn't easy watching the country you and every generation of your ancestry have fought and bled for die.
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When historians take the measure of a culture/society
they ask/answer the question:
"What were the values (be it Persia, Ancient Greece, Aztec Mexico,
Renaissance Italy, Imperial Britain, Czarist Russia or anyone else) that
allowed them to survive and thrive or conversely, decline and fall.
Suggest it's way past high time we asked this question of ourselves,
leaving out the pious platitudes, sanctimonious malarkey and
constitutional banalities, so beloved by far too many.
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When historians take the measure of a culture/society
they ask/answer the question:
"What were the values (be it Persia, Ancient Greece, Aztec Mexico,
Renaissance Italy, Imperial Britain, Czarist Russia or anyone else) that
allowed them to survive and thrive or conversely, decline and fall.
Suggest it's way past high time we asked this question of ourselves,
leaving out the pious platitudes, sanctimonious malarkey and
constitutional banalities, so beloved by far too many.
Yet those pious platitudes, sanctimonious malarkey and constitutional banalities WERE the values that established us and were cause to thrive.
Discarding what many consider to be the pious platitudes, sanctimonious malarkey and constitutional banalities is why we have arrived where we have culturally and societally.
They have been replaced with new platitudes, new malarkey and a banal idea of a living Constitution that changes with the wind depending on the cultural zeitgeist.
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That would be the fault of parents and the churches, who abdicated their responsibilities to teach and left the education of their children to corrupt Godless Communistic school systems for the purpose of equipping them to earn wealth, devoid of wisdom.
I see something else.
Yes, I see what you do - But I also see Millenials returning to the land. Late 20's/early 30's families, fed up with the system and endeavoring to learn the old ways... homesteading is a massive movement - Buying up old farms, restoring them, and trying to live on what the land will produce... Tiny House is a massive movement. Home schoolers are burgeoning.
It is easy to see a particular doom, taking a snapshot of early 20's Millenials... Especially the university crowd.
But sooner or later, those young, aspiring idiots must leave their protected bubbles and safe spaces, and find out all they have been taught are lies. And what comes from that is often astounding.
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I see something else.
Yes, I see what you do - But I also see Millenials returning to the land. Late 20's/early 30's families, fed up with the system and endeavoring to learn the old ways... homesteading is a massive movement - Buying up old farms, restoring them, and trying to live on what the land will produce... Tiny House is a massive movement. Home schoolers are burgeoning.
It is easy to see a particular doom, taking a snapshot of early 20's Millenials... Especially the university crowd.
But sooner or later, those young, aspiring idiots must leave their protected bubbles and safe spaces, and find out all they have been taught are lies. And what comes from that is often astounding.
True.
But since you and I and the Founders both understand that liberty was a gift of God, rooted in His Word - do we have the hubris to think that a generation of those you cite above - can regain what these generations have discarded without repentance and works to receive the blessing?
Liberty had to be fought for to preserve in this land. It was preceded by serious national trials to test the people in hardship to see if they were worthy to be forged into the instruments necessary to allow liberty to flourish. Had the Great Awakening not occurred in the 1750's-60's, we would never have won the contest with England in the 1770's.
Is this people, who are now being outbred by aliens in this land 10 to 1, whom are without any allegiance or homogeny to the culture that once was, capable of such a task?
I would have more hope if the churches were leading the movement instead of self-preservation fads.
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True.
But since you and I and the Founders both understand that liberty was a gift of God, rooted in His Word - do we have the hubris to think that a generation of those you cite above - can regain what these generations have discarded without repentance and works to receive the blessing?
Liberty had to be fought for to preserve in this land. It was preceded by serious national trials to test the people in hardship to see if they were worthy to be forged into the instruments necessary to allow liberty to flourish. Had the Great Awakening not occurred in the 1750's-60's, we would never have won the contest with England in the 1770's.
Is this people, who are now being outbred by aliens in this land 10 to 1, whom are without any allegiance or homogeny to the culture that once was, capable of such a task?
I would have more hope if the churches were leading the movement instead of self-preservation fads.
What churches? The majority of them seem to be playing for the other side.
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Is this people, who are now being outbred by aliens in this land 10 to 1, whom are without any allegiance or homogeny to the culture that once was, capable of such a task?
I would have more hope if the churches were leading the movement instead of self-preservation fads.
I don't think it is merely a fad... It is a large movement. These people have found their lives to be hollow in academia, and hollow in suburban materialism, and are finding life in the frugal bounty of the land... which of course, invariably comes with Conservatism and Christianity.
Can they do it? They ARE doing it.
We just got done with a chicken slaughter... 60-ish Cornish Cross... Second slaughter this year...
A handful came to learn - Their first time killing anything other than a fish (if that)... There is something profound in a thirty-ish woman cutting her first throat, and weeping uncontrollably for the act of it. But in it, she learns the value of life. It's a whole nuther thing from buying meat on a tray, as any farmer or rancher or hunter knows inherently.
I don't know nothing. I don't know if they will in fact be up to it... But they are trying. And more and more are hearing the call. Their crazy friends who went out to the backwoods come to visit, full of life and faith, with young sons grown tall and hard... The comparison is easy to make, and thus another family sees.
Revival may be on the way - and I will pray for it every day.
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A depression would save us.
If they run off Trump, the market would crash (Another 1929).
The money people would get what they could thru their stop loss programs and leave this country.
The nasty people would kill each other for food and or dope.
Then in about twenty years, the country would be fit to live in.
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Revival may be on the way - and I will pray for it every day.
This is why we need to keep up with the warnings.
At minimum, they will serve as a witness, at best they may be the catalyst towards what you pray for.
There are enough Joel Osteens out there for the masses to scratch itching ears.
Doing a Jeremiah, is a lot less welcome to a people who have become the epitome of Isaiah 30:10.
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When society rejects foundational principles for the empty promise of equality, safety and provision; when it rejects it's past and rewrites it to assuage modern ideas; when it eschews the biblical religious heritage that made liberty possible here; when it does not pass on those values to their children - the 'old America' is lost and we arrive where we find ourselves today: on the way down off the cliff.
@INVAR
I lived through the time no houses were locked, cars were not locked on the street; people left their car key in the car. People were safe walking alone by themselves. Almost all people were in church. Now, we have no safe country or town or house, unless the house is protected and we will kill if it's safety is violated. I can live well a very long time if I lock my door right now and I know you can - this country is no longer a country - it is a place to live, that is all.
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@INVAR
I lived through the time no houses were locked, cars were not locked on the street; people left their car key in the car. People were safe walking alone by themselves. Almost all people were in church. Now, we have no safe country or town or house, unless the house is protected and we will kill if it's safety is violated. I can live well a very long time if I lock my door right now and I know you can - this country is no longer a country - it is a place to live, that is all.
It's still here.
I am a mile out of town though...
Don't lock the doors, other than the front one, because I don't want Chewy getting out if someone were to stick their head in and 'halloo!'
Never lock the truck or the van... and the keys have never been out of the ignition on either one... there's good sound in the van, and a laptop, and there's a .357 mag in the side pocket of the truck... Ain't worried.
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It's still here.
I am a mile out of town though...
Don't lock the doors, other than the front one, because I don't want Chewy getting out if someone were to stick their head in and 'halloo!'
Never lock the truck or the van... and the keys have never been out of the ignition on either one... there's good sound in the van, and a laptop, and there's a .357 mag in the side pocket of the truck... Ain't worried.
It used to be that way out here.
Not any more.
Meth and heroin are epidemic. With it all the insanity that comes with it. Gangs have erupted in the big towns and cities within an hour's drive of us. Corporate farms have brought in villages of Mexicans to work the fields and they are here all the time now, not just in Spring and Harvest on worker Visas anymore. Lots of Locusts from up North who have fled their Socialist People's Republics of Democrat strongholds have moved into the rural hills out here during the last 12 years - building McMansions and changing the slow-paced Southern culture into yet another suburbia. Voting for the same crap that caused the unaffordable high-tax cesspools they left. Then there's the Somalian refugees settled overnight in a county South of us. The locals were all let go from a chicken plant and 200 or so Somalis suddenly had jobs there. Now there's a Mosque on Main street out there - all thanks to Obama.
The times they are a changin'. Old timers out here are shocked at how fast everything has changed locally.
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It used to be that way out here.
Not any more.
The times they are a changin'. Old timers out here are shocked at how fast everything has changed locally.
Yeah... in town it's not safe... West side, and Evergreen especially... And even the east side, which used to be the rich side of town, is not very safe. Anyone who can has relocated into the developments (suburbs if you will, though the whole town wouldn't really make a suburb) and gated communities.
Me, I am making moves to move further back in the sticks where it remains sane. But for now,I am safe and comfortable here. Had some auto breakins a while back, but it was quickly found out to be a renter a coupe doors down - Made him gone pretty quick. Other than that, no troubles at all.
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@INVAR
I lived through the time no houses were locked, cars were not locked on the street; people left their car key in the car. People were safe walking alone by themselves. Almost all people were in church. Now, we have no safe country or town or house, unless the house is protected and we will kill if it's safety is violated. I can live well a very long time if I lock my door right now and I know you can - this country is no longer a country - it is a place to live, that is all.
I don't lock my house. I don't lock my car. In fact, I didn't even have a house key until a couple of weeks ago when I walked out of work and came home early. The wife was gone and had locked the house. There is a guy (with some mental problems) down the block that will come in and kipe smokes. We have a place for cigs, keys, and the dog leashes by the front door. We smoke outside so we leave packs by the door. That is as far in as this guy will come.
This is a quiet little place where we live. People work at keeping it that way. People in urban areas can have it. And I don't know if many of those ARE worth saving.
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No, the 70's were horrible. Hippies and riots and crime and all sorts of other stupid ideas. And, we had that "rolling recession" in the 80's and a number of my neighbors had to declare personal bankruptcy. Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
Yeah. I remember when nostalgia was great! Not like today.... :tongue2:
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No, the 70's were horrible. Hippies and riots and crime and all sorts of other stupid ideas. And, we had that "rolling recession" in the 80's and a number of my neighbors had to declare personal bankruptcy. Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
@Sanguine
GENUINE "hippies" were some of the finest Americans alive because they dared to question power. Every generation must do this if we are to remain a free people.
Despite the accepted stereotype,I had no trouble meeting,partying,and staying several days with hippies when I came back to the US from Okinawa in 1967,and as a soldier traveling under orders at the time,I was required to wear my uniform. As you can imagine,I stood out in San Francisco while walking around in army dress greens with jump boots and a green beret. Never met any hostility at all. Just people asking sincere questions I wish I had been better prepared to answer. They mostly disagreed,but that didn't stop them from offering me a place to stay and taking me to parties. Very nice people.
These were genuine hippies,not the communists agents that took over and became media favorites a year or two later.
I'm with ya on the rest of it,though.
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@INVAR
I lived through the time no houses were locked, cars were not locked on the street; people left their car key in the car. People were safe walking alone by themselves. Almost all people were in church. Now, we have no safe country or town or house, unless the house is protected and we will kill if it's safety is violated. I can live well a very long time if I lock my door right now and I know you can - this country is no longer a country - it is a place to live, that is all.
@Victoria33
At the risk of being called a pessimist or a defeatist, I think we’re past saving the country. The left owns the culture; that’s not going to change. There’s not going to be a day when trends reverse and people suddenly start believing gay marriage is wrong again. Or when the love of man grows warm again and the now default state of rage simmers down.
Not going to get into a religion debate with anyone, but if you believe the back of the Book is more than allegory, you know that society—the culture—will continue to deteriorate. It has to.
This area used to be one where you could leave your doors unlocked, too. It was before my time but I’ve heard my parents talk about it. My in laws were slow to realize things had changed. They went on vacation in the early nineties (before I knew them) and didn’t bother with locks. When they came home, the place had been ransacked.
When I get in the car, my first move before taking my bag off my shoulder is to slam the locks.
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Lots of sniping so far, but no one has addressed the original premise:
"Is There Enough of America Left To Be Saved?"
Do you really care if Chicago remains part of the USA? If so, why?
Is Chicago and Minnesota a part of America now? You can't lose what is already gone.
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@Sanguine
GENUINE "hippies" were some of the finest Americans alive because they dared to question power. Every generation must do this if we are to remain a free people.
Despite the accepted stereotype,I had no trouble meeting,partying,and staying several days with hippies when I came back to the US from Okinawa in 1967,and as a soldier traveling under orders at the time,I was required to wear my uniform. As you can imagine,I stood out in San Francisco while walking around in army dress greens with jump boots and a green beret. Never met any hostility at all. Just people asking sincere questions I wish I had been better prepared to answer. They mostly disagreed,but that didn't stop them from offering me a place to stay and taking me to parties. Very nice people.
These were genuine hippies,not the communists agents that took over and became media favorites a year or two later.
I'm with ya on the rest of it,though.
I'm a little younger than you, and the hippies I remember were of the Ayers ilk, misogynist and ready to "tear it down".
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I'm a little younger than you, and the hippies I remember were of the Ayers ilk, misogynist and ready to "tear it down".
That was "The New Left". They are hijackers, who not only hijacked the hippies, but the whole Democrat Party. (While we might not have agreed with JFK and HHH and their ideas for solving America's problems, there was no doubt that they were patriotic Americans, they just had a different idea how to go about things.) But not The New Left. They were communists, socialists, Marxist sympathizers, agents, and useful idiots who proselytized "turning on, tuning out and dropping out, and then got on the plane to fly cross country and deliver another speech.
Plane fare was hardly the sort of scratch that someone who genuinely was living the life of "peace and love and sharing" could afford, but it didn't stop them from flying all over and 'sharing their message'. That's when I knew those people were a fraud.
@sneakypete The folks you met were much like the bikers I have known and rode with, back before the 1% clubs started having turf problems with a serious profit motive behind the worst of it. Also solid people, who would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. In both cases, the Media image of what who was and stood for has dominated the American psyche, not reality. Like a crucible of smelted metal, the slag rises to the top and that's what the media focus on.
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I'm a little younger than you, and the hippies I remember were of the Ayers ilk, misogynist and ready to "tear it down".
@Sanguine
Yup. That was the generation that became hippies because it was stylish and cool,and all of them thought that THEY were too "special" to go to VN. I was seeing them getting dropped off on Haight Ashbury by their parents in new luxyry cars while walking down the street with the ones I was friendly with. In FACT,the ones I had been talking with warned me to stay away from the army recruitment center and some other area of town I forget now because "everybody there is looking for trouble and wanting to be on tv".
The REAL hippies were mostly apolitical when it came to party politics. What they wanted was to live in a world where they would be left alone to enjoy their lives as long as they weren't harming anyone else and nobody was trying to harm them. They listened politely to my arguments that communism MUST be fought or they and everyone else would not be allowed to live in peace,but I am not sure they believed me. They did listen,though.
The ones you are talking about and the media focused on were violent leftists,not hippies. They just liked to dress like hippies and do drugs. Stories about people wanting to live and let live have no interest for the media because stories about them don't attract any attention,and attention sells advertising.
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@sneakypete
The folks you met were much like the bikers I have known and rode with, back before the 1% clubs started having turf problems with a serious profit motive behind the worst of it. Also solid people, who would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. In both cases, the Media image of what who was and stood for has dominated the American psyche, not reality. Like a crucible of smelted metal, the slag rises to the top and that's what the media focus on.
Yup. I started riding in 65,and build my first "chopper" (1940 Knucklehead) in 1970. Rode a fat bob Pan before that. I got along GREAT with clubbers because I understood a couple of rules and was careful to NEVER violate them. I NEVER asked about or showed any interest in "Club Business",mostly because I never HAD any interest in club business,and despite being offered membership in a few clubs,turned them down because I am a loner and not all that social by nature. I like people just fine,but not so much after there are more than 3 or 4 of them around. They respected that,and I respected them doing their thing.
Once had a club official in the Outlaws MC club offer to pay me to allow them to steal my shovel when he heard me say I had insurance on it,and turned him down. No problem. One thing they all understood was nobody likes having anybody screw with their scoot. The president had a bike shop in Denver,and used to lend me tools and sell me parts wholesale. Little John,the guy that invented the 5 speed trans and sold Harley the right to build it even gave me parts a couple of times. Little he wasn't. I once saw him start a shovelhead using his arm on the kickstarter,not his leg. He used to bet people that didn't know him that he could do it.
I also got along with everybody I met in the Outlaws, Renegades,Pagans,Galloping Gooses,Brother Speed,and a couple of smaller clubs whose names I can't remember now.
All those guys are good guys if you are dealing with them one or one as scooter trash to scooter trash,but the minute two or three of his buds show up is the instant you want to leave because then it tends to turn into "us versus them",and you are the only "them" there.
And this bears repeating. You NEVER ask ANY of them about Club Business,and if they start to discuss Club Business while you are around,you leave right then. NO exceptions.
Got along with everybody BUT Hells Angels. Never once met one of those bastards that didn't have a attitude.
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@sneakypete I stayed independent, too, but I was an ABATE Rep for over a decade and didn't want club friction to get in the middle of the political goals of keeping the freedom to choose what safety equipment to use, when. We were successful in keeping that for adults, anyway, which is a good deal.
As far as Club Business goes, start that and I leave the room. It isn't my business, like you said, whether an AMA club or not, if you get my drift. I can't think of any club who had members I did not get along with, and was asked if I was interested in prospecting a couple. I, too declined, partly because what I am doing for a living did not allow me to schedule anything much in advance, and almost all clubs have 'mandatory' events/runs. Knowing I would not be able to make those in advance pretty much did away with that idea, even after I was no longer ABATE Rep for the District.
I met a lot of fine folks, and a couple of a$$hole$, but those are everywhere, and not necessarily flying any particular patch. Yep, I even got along with the few Angels I encountered, but those guys were far from home. As long as it was biker to biker, things went well, you have to establish cred if you look like a civilian. Still have my Shovelhead but it needs work and is lower on my priority list than it would have been 20 years ago. It's stored and will keep....
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I just came back from my nephews HS graduation party who lives in another state. Small town USA. He is conservative but said 75% of his class is liberal.
We are screwed. I do not have much hope. Conservatism we have experienced the last few years will not continue. White conservatives are being bred out of existense.
Brown immigrants from sh*t hole countries is going to increase because most Republican in office also want it to continue.
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I just came back from my nephews HS graduation party who lives in another state. Small town USA. He is conservative but said 75% of his class is liberal.
We are screwed. I do not have much hope. Conservatism we have experienced the last few years will not continue. White conservatives are being bred out of existense.
Brown immigrants from sh*t hole countries is going to increase because most Republican in office also want it to continue.
With labor laws that keep most kids from getting a job until they don't want to, fewer of them are going to have the sensation of being 'mugged' until they are in their twenties, and half of them will blame themselves due to liberal indoctrination. Which means that if there is going to be any hope, it is a thin margin, and we have to actively seek opportunities to overturn the nonsense (best done with socratic questions) and seize them.
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Killers are some of the best people you could ever meet in prison. Not the punks, the gang bangers, the nutjobs. Just your average everyday killer. The best. :beer: