Archive for the ‘History’ Category

History repeats itself. Unfortunately this axiom is true when humanity fails to learn the error of its ways.  A demoralized populace in the Weimar Republic was hungry for food, self-respect and leadership. Enter Adolph Hitler who had all the right buzz words and charisma to lead sheep to slaughter. By sheep, I refer not just to the Jews but also to “the good people of Germany” who followed their Pied Piper all the way to devastation by the Allied forces.

The repeat?

We, here in the United States, have been on a slippery slope for decades. Never mind the sociological and economic reasons why. Suffice it to say it is truth. Now, having experienced staggering unemployment, an over-extended and weakened military, a dollar of diminishing value, and dangerously incompetent leadership, Vladimir Putin enters stage left via a New York Times op-ed piece.

Putin has the hubris to lecture Americans on just behavior as he arrives cloaked in language that belies his own history of repression and thuggery not to mention religious and human rights oppression. Yet, in the absence of real leadership, the forcefulness of his conviction as devious as it may be makes this one-eyed monster appear as a King in the Land of the Blind.

We, here in the United States, have become the Land of the Blind. We turned not only a blind eye but also a deaf ear to the lies and manipulations of those to whom we entrusted power even as we knew in our hearts they were abusing it and us.

We have arrived at the door to our own demise.

Do not touch the handle. Do not think there is any way back from what is on the other side. Turn now. Run as far and as fast as you can in the other direction. Leave Putin and Obama behind. Become your own leader until such time as you come upon one who is genuine and does not seek the position. There you will have found meritorious leadership.

In the meantime, act swiftly and keep an eye out for John Galt. Let’s also pray that neither he nor Galt’s Gulch are fiction.

I am a Jew. As such, I have heard the refrain “Never Forget” my entire life in relation to the Holocaust. Like other Jews, I always took it as a caution to be aware that under the right conditions, it could happen again. To the Jews. But as I hear and see what is happening to Christians in the Middle East and particularly in Egypt, I fully understand that the admonition goes far beyond we Jews. It is a mantra that every compassionate human being must recite because we, as a species, remain capable of horrific persecution and devastating destruction.

Not all of us, of course. At least not in the moment.

In the moment that perverse banner is being carried by the Muslim Brotherhood as they seek to exploit the political unrest in Egypt by scapegoating Christians, burning their churches, looting their places of business, raping their women and executing them simply because they are seen carrying a bible.

There is not a Jew alive whose stomach should not turn and whose body should not feel a chill at the familiarity of these events. Been there. Done that.

So what is the issue? The issue is, “Do we as Jews have the courage to stand in solidarity with Christians of the Middle East?” “Do we as Americans retain yet enough of what has made us a beacon of light throughout our history to now shine that light on the atrocities being inflicted upon Christians?” “Are we as humans still able feel the pain of others who, though outwardly different from us, are inwardly the essence of who we truly are?”

There is only One of Us. Today, we are all Coptic Christians.

I have never understood how so much of the world sat silently by and turned a blind eye while Hitler and the disease called National Socialism embarked upon its campaign of annihilation. I am sad to say that I have begun to understand it.  Today, the silence of our media and paralysis of our Administration are eerie portents of what may follow.

We are each responsible not for the carnage being inflicted upon Christians in Egypt, but for our silence in the face of it. God help the Muslim Brotherhood extremists who are looting, burning raping and murdering.

But who will help the silent?

In Rose, Michigan, a 6th grade student is groomed for two years then raped by a 40-year-old pedofile teacher at the public school. The teacher is then tried and convicted by a court of law and sentenced to 15-30 years. The School Board, the local Lutheran Church and the faculty stand in support of the pedofile.

In Ontario, Canada, a mother with an autistic son moves into a new neighborhood and receives an anonymous letter in her mailbox suggesting she euthanize her son and donate “whatever non-retarded body parts he has” to science because the sounds the child makes when playing outside are “not normal” and disturbing. The letter further states that no one is ever going to employ or love him. The surrounding community is silent.

Al Jazeera, a purported “news” channel owned and operated by the nation of Qatar, began cable broadcast today into 49 million homes in the United States. Not only is this the network that promoted and broadcast tapes by Osama bin Laden, but Qatar is currently the outcast Arab nation that is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda and atrocities in Egypt, much to the public dismay of its Arab neighbors who deem the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. What the Arab world deems terrorist, the United States welcome into its homes and families.

If Adolf Hitler knew one thing it was how reluctant people are to take a stand against what they know in their hearts to be wrong. Behavior can defy reason and decency and yet we humans, all too readily and in the end tragically, remain mute for fear of reprisal.

There is historical instruction on this issue. And its not WWII but rather the biblical Book of Esther. Esther, a Jew, is married to the King of Persia who is unaware of her heritage. When the King’s Ambassador and confidant Haman attempts to eliminate all the Jews, Esther’s uncle Mordechai tells her to go to the King and plead for intervention to reverse the decree. Esther, fearing for her own life should she reveal her Judaism to the King, at first declines Mordechai’s request. In reply, Mordechai tells her that if she seeks her own personal safety at the expense of her People, the Jews will die but inevitably so shall Esther. His admonition: Your silence will cost you the very thing you seek it to protect.

Whether the issue is a pedofile teacher, a cruel and cowardly neighbor lacking all compassion, or the media outlet of our sworn enemy being invited into our children’s minds, silence in opposition will cost you the protections and peace you hope it will bring.

It didn’t work in Detroit when the progressive “Model City” plan was implemented. It didn’t work when U.S. banks stopped requiring credit thresholds before issuing new mortgages. It didn’t work when Congress rammed through the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare) and it will not work as The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) now tries to cure diversity “shortfalls” in our neighborhoods by imposing mandatory diversity regulations.

Social engineering and redistribution simply do not work.

The “Model City” plan in Detroit bankrupted the city and brought the 4^th largest city in the United States in 1970 to its knees by 2013. By turning on the spigots of home loans absent verified credit, banks brought the housing market to its knees and precipitated the stock market crash of 2008. Obamacare, promised not to be a tax then upheld by the Supreme Court as a tax now seems to be underfunded, impossible to implement and creating more problems across the economy that it could ever have solved. It may bring the economy of the nation to its knees. HUD will, if it has its way, be a significant nail in the coffin of Liberty by regulating who gets to live where based upon subjective and arbitrary rules and regulations rather than effort and achievement.

Social engineering and redistribution of wealth and services are the cornerstones of this Administration. They are the tools of transformation by which Progressives in both political parties seek to ever-enlarge a centralized government while simultaneously diminishing the individual.

If you think you can do nothing you are wrong. Find like-minded people and join together to voice, in whatever ways are peaceful and law abiding, your refusal to go quietly into the night.

Robert F. Kennedy said: “Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Whether I have an aversion to herd mentality or simply have a thought process that weighs facts differently than most I cannot say. What I can say is that just as I recently wrote how I never saw the wisdom in the adulation of Oprah, so too have I never understood it in relation to Hillary Clinton. Now, as she ratchets up the Hilary for 2016 onslaught, I can hear the hoofs of the herd begin their run toward the White House. Should it turn out to be a stampede, I’d caution those participants to realize that as with all excesses there will be unintended collateral damage.

In this case, however, should she actually become President I fear the damage will be the demise of our already mutilated Republic.

Can we be so hungry, or blind, in our rush to elect the first woman President that we will ignore a lifetime and very public display of deception, immorality, and sheer lust for power? Do we think that any woman of the desired gender will fill the bill simply because of that gender? Did any black, regardless of experience, fill the bill and meet our expectations of the first black President?  Did he cure the racial divide or stoke its fires? As I look around at the current state of things the answers to these questions are obvious and disturbing.

How can we actually be contemplating, no make that eager, to return to the White House a couple known and shown to have an insatiable appetite for power and a total disregard for both ethics and morality? If nothing else, Bill’s obfuscation while President and under oath (“It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is”) and Hillary’s Benghazi cover-up and inhumanity while Secretary of State and under oath (“What difference at this point does it make?”) should be all the red flags any thinking person needs to run not with the herd towards the White House but as far away from it in the opposite direction as possible.

But I said “thinking” person…didn’t I?

No one enjoys feeling like a broken record. It’s especially frustrating when the urge to inform is overwhelming and the reception is, at best, lukewarm. I am certain Paul Revere felt like a broken record as he blazed through New England announcing “The British are coming!” However, what differs from Colonial times is that those of us who are currently awake and concerned enough to perceive imminent danger are ringing a bell whose sound is falling upon deaf ears.

I have been writing you for over two years about the inevitable harm to our way of life, particularly our personal freedoms and free enterprise system, that will result from our government’s deceitfulness, corruption, negligence and sheer incompetence. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about the lust for power regardless of party affiliation. We are way beyond politics now. We are into survival.

What humankind in general, and Americans in particular, shrinks from accepting is personal responsibility for creating the brink at which we now teeter. We have arrived at a government out of control, forcing upon us rules and regulations that defy our founding documents as well as our present will, because we have been too self-indulgent and momentarily satisfied to stand for what is right rather than acquiesce to what is expedient.

I have written about history’s pattern of enslavement and how we choose to remain blind to its teachings. I have written about power versus force and where true power is found. I have written about personal responsibility and the hell that follows its willful abdication. I am not alone. There are other voices, other “riders ringing the bell,” who also grow weary and disillusioned by your silence and inaction.

You and I are each but one voice. But one voice has changed history time and time again for better and for worse. One voice has joined with many voices time and time again to change history for better or for worse. So whether it is your lone voice speaking loud and clear with a firm determination to be heard, or your voice joined with other like-minded individuals to unite in a chorus of humanity’s best, it matters not.

What matters is that those of us who grow weary of ringing the bell, but who will not cease to do so, hear and are refreshed by the sound of an approaching army of voices who say, yet again, to the corrupt and oppressive powers that be, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

I never understood the fascination with Oprah Winfrey. Not ever. I was always perplexed by why she became the go-to source for so many women (and a fair amount of men) on what to read, what to wear, whom to emulate, and the list goes on. She became a cultural icon… but for a culture that was dying from lack of standards, principles and values. Now, with the release of the movie “The Butler” and her marketing efforts to promote it, she has revealed herself to be devoid of decency and at ease with re-writing history to serve a political agenda.

By equating the horrific torture and murder of Emmett Till with Trayvon’s Martin’s death, I can only conclude she will say absolutely anything, regardless of its veracity, in order to get ratings and attention for herself and her commercial ventures.

We are living in tenuous times when up is down and deceit is deliberately sold us as truth. There is bad news and good news. Which do you prefer first?

Well, in the absence of your vote, allow me to choose.

The bad news is that any individual who does not think for themselves and verify, to whatever extent possible, the facts of what we are being told is abdicating their individuality and humanity in lieu of becoming one of the many in a national herd of sheep.

The good news is that there is still time, albeit ever decreasing, to take back the reins of personal power and responsibility in order to demand that those who have failed to uphold and protect the Nation as is their job, be removed and replaced by others who value integrity and liberty.

We must hurry. The Middle East is crumbling. Tensions with Russia are escalating. Our government oscillates between incompetence and full-blown deceit.

If we are to break the patterns of history which have repeatedly ended in enslavement of the many by the few under such preconditions, then those of us whose eyes are open and hearts are committed to a higher calling must now stand and be heard.

Are you following the herd or in search of the truth? If it be truth, what are you doing about it?

We The People  do nothing regardless of how deceitful, corrupt or perverse our government, through its elected officials, has become.

We The People  do nothing as all the deceit fuels our separation from one another.

We The People  do nothing as Truth is called lie and vice versa.

We The People  do nothing while our instincts warn us that the abyss is near.

We The People  do nothing but act like slaves even while our individual faiths teach us that we are created free and in the image of divinity.

We The People do nothing but allow our children and their children to be burdened with irreparable harm.

We the People  of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Exactly Which People are we?

Who would have ever thought that the Egyptians would be teaching us anything about Civil Disobedience or “Hope and Change”? But as the Egyptian people take to the streets and raise their voices in opposition to deceit, oppression and incompetence…we here in American remain disturbingly silent in the face of the same issue: a President and Administration that is not, it turns out, what they purported to be when seeking office.

Tellingly, during the Arab Spring, President Obama was quick to support the “will of the Egyptian people” and equally ready to praise the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in replacing the ousted Hosni Mubarak. Now, as Morsi has been revealed to be the incompetent, radical Islamist that he is, President Obama’s silence is deafening, not to mention indicative of his true stance on “the will of the people.” For it seems that to President Obama, the will of the people is nothing more than a tool to be implemented when it aligns with his goals and an annoyance or obstacle to be ignored or circumvented when it does not.

But I digress.

I have to admire Egyptians for their unwillingness to allow Morsi any more time that he has already been given to right the country’s economic and social ills. While I do not condone violent revolution (deaths and rape are still a part of the unfolding “democracy” in Egypt) it is none-the-less admirable that those people are willing to take to the streets, raise their voices and risk their lives to bring down an Islamic dictatorship bent on, not democratic principles, but rather a global Caliphate. Their bravery and willingness to stand is something we Americans used to pride ourselves on before we became greedy, sated with materiality, and disconnected from our Creator.

While no one knows for certain the outcome in Egypt, I have a bit more certainty when it comes to the outcome here. If we don’ take heed of the Egyptians (a sentence I never thought I’d write) and read their signs (“Wake Up Americans…Barack Obama Backs Up A Fascist Regime in Egypt”) it is we who will soon be lugging stones to build a pyramid under the direction of a Pharaoh.

Perhaps two of the most frequently posed questions about the reluctance, even failure, of German Jews to stand and fight against Hitler’s onslaught is “Why didn’t they do anything? Why didn’t they fight back?” Over the past 70+ years many theories have been postulated in response to that inquiry. Yesterday, in Great Britain, I believe we witnessed the answer.

As an evil Muslim terrorist brutally, viciously, and without conscience hacked to death and then nearly beheaded an innocent young man in broad daylight, onlookers stood by and watched. Not one man in the crowd lifted a finger or raised a voice to either stop the slaughter or even try and take down the assailant. The onlookers might just as well have been thought to be watching a passing parade.

Slavery is a slippery slope. While physical enslavement can come upon someone by a single act (such as capture or seizure of the means of defense a/k/a/ “gun control”), psychological enslavement is a more subtle and prolonged process. Most often, it is achieved by manipulation of the truth and implementation of fear through threats or physical pain. Slowly, over time and given the right conditions, even the strongest of individuals is susceptible to relinquishing autonomy of thought. Once that occurs, submission follows.

Terrorists and political elites have been using manipulation and fear to enslave us for some time now. One might argue its been occurring intermittently for as long as recorded human history. However, with the advent of modern technological advances, and simultaneous removal of all things spiritual from our lives, it has reached a dangerous tipping point. Humanity is on the verge of psychological enslavement. It will not be necessary to physically enslave us once this becomes complete.

In Great Britain, people watched because the unthinkable and inhumane is hard to process. People watched because terror is becoming a way of life. People watched because in the face of evil it isn’t uncommon to become immobilized. People didn’t do anything because they feared for their own safety. These are the same reasons given in attempts to analyze the non-action of so many Jews in Nazi Germany.

But there’s a glitch. One woman in Great Britain DID act and speak.

A mother of two, who was a passenger on a bus moving past the horrific scene, disembarked after seeing all the blood. She thought an accident had occurred. When she realized what was happening, she approached the terrorist and asked him if he had done this and what was it that he wanted. When later interviewed and asked why she took the risk, she said it was because of her faith. There were children standing by and she thought better she be harmed than one of them.

The presence of God knows no fear.

This is the 11^th hour.  This is the hour to exercise your autonomy. This is the hour to find your voice. This is the hour to demand accountability from the few who are misusing power to enslave the many. We have been cooperative and complacent for far too long. To not push back now is to irretrievably abdicate our birthrights of Freedom and Free Will.