I'm
lost. Nothing makes sense anymore.
Do you
(still) watch "Lost"? I had an epistemological insight in the final
moments of this past season when the hydrogen bomb exploded,
hopefully to blast the island back to an earlier dimension. I
realized that the many people who enjoyed the ABC series when it
began eventually fell into two categories — those who need a drama
to make sense, so the viewer can follow the plot; and those who just
go along for the ride. The first group has dropped out; the second
can't wait for the start of the 2010 season.
I always
thought I was a first-group TV drama viewer, but I find I'm happy to
just watch "Lost"; maybe I really do expect the writers to share the
meaning of life by the final episode. Or maybe I just need to
fantasize about being blasted back to an earlier dimension, because
I am so truly lost in this year's political realities.
For most
of my life, the United States of America was the greatest
(capitalist) nation in the world, battling in a Cold War with the
Soviet Union and, should it ever awaken from the poverty of its
communist economy, ready to fight Red China as well. Suddenly it's
2009, where the Chinese own a trillion dollars of our national debt
and are lecturing us on fiscal responsibility; while a
Russian columnist writes the following warning in the April 27
edition of the Russian newspaper Pravda:
"It must
be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent
into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back
drop of a passive, hapless sheeple ...
"First,
the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard
education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics.
Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in
DC that directly affects their lives....
"Then
their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of
thousands of different 'branches and denominations' were for the
most part ... happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the
'winning' side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another ...
"The
final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed
in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and
money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's
short history but in the world ... Prime Minister Putin, less then
two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path
to Marxism, it only leads to disaster ...
"Again,
the American public has taken this with barely a whimper ...
"The
Russian owners of American companies and industries should look
thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down
and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words,
divest while there is still value left.
"The
proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight,
beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really
is. The world will only snicker."
At first
I didn't believe a Russian wrote this; I thought perhaps a
Republican was trying to make a partisan point about the Obama
Administration. But it's easy to find Pravda on the Web, and the
column by Stanislav Mishin. So, yes, a Russian is telling us that a
version of the old Soviet Union is coming to an economy very near
us.
Conservative American commentators are ridiculed when they use the
word "socialism" to describe what is happening, and much of the
public laughs because it has no idea what either capitalism or
socialism is, or why freedom can exist with only the former.
Though
readers of this newspaper may not be among them — or need me to use
"favorite TV dramas" to make my point — I'll pause to define.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of
the means of production and distribution; socialism is based on
public ownership. This week, as the government takes over General
Motors and plans to take over the health care industry, funded by a
European-style Value Added Tax, why aren't Americans outraged?
This
country was founded by people who just wanted to get the heck out of
where they already were. The writers of our Constitution were aware
of what was wrong with those other places and created a document
that would keep the new nation from eventually falling into the old,
familiar patterns which its citizens, for good reason, had left
behind.
This is
why the Constitution is not a "living document." The form of
government it outlines is based on immutable values. All nominees to
the Supreme Court should understand this. If they must empathize,
let them feel for those who will have no place to emigrate if
America fails.
All is
not lost. We can fight to regain control, to restore what has been
uniquely American — our free economic system. Or we can hang back
and just enjoy the drama, until we learn that nothing is enjoyable
when freedom is gone.
We do
not, however, have the option of dropping out and simply watching
another channel.