The title of this post is a common expression. Most people don't know what it means. It has its roots in the Roman era of Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon river in Italy in 49 B.C. which at the time was considered an act of war. It has come to mean reaching a "point of no return", such as initiating a war.
In this post, "war" might be too strong a word. Perhaps not as we are in a culture war.
I am starting to believe this is a war we will ultimately lose.
I read letters like this over at Kevin's. It has been a common, yet underground, theme for months. People are angry, upset and tired about the continued, unwarranted and unwanted intrusion into every aspect of our lives. For gun rights supporters we always were aware of such things. But now it has gone way, way beyond that. We always thought that any attempts by government to rule us and gain control would be incremental because that was they it had always happened. Based on our experiences in guns and numerous other areas, control and advancement of government power always seemed to creep forward because the people would never stand for a Hitleresque, Maoist or Chavez-style power grab done in plain sight.
Not anymore. It seems as of late our elected officials have decided to simply sidestep the issue and move on without any pretext at all. They just going to do it in the interest of all of us.
TARP. Phone calls to our representatives nearly melted down the Capitol switchboard. They did it anyway. They got the message the first time, threw in some bribes and magically the exact same bill passed without resistance not a few days later. Did Congress twitter all their constituents or something?
AIG and others were "too big to fail". So the government propped them up or let them die and be absorbed by others. And despite tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars injected into these companies we have no idea if any of it will have any effect at all.
GM, Chrysler and Ford were in trouble. We were told that if they were to go bankrupt, the results would be catastrophic for the nation. So we injected $15+ billion dollars into them despite us saying back in the fall that it wasn't going to work.
End result was those billions wasted without even so much as a "Sorry" and two out of three in bankruptcy anyway. Except now with the government hand involved, they are dictating the terms under which those bankruptcies will be discharged. By hook or by crook, they will get what they want and will do it at all taxpayer expense. Ford, smartly, saw the writing on the wall and decided they would sit that one out. I hope Alan Mullaly gets a hefty bonus for saving his company from the road to Hell. And the government calls these bankruptcies a necessary step and act like it was all planned. Leave it to the government to spend $15 billion dollars to prove themselves wrong and make it look like a success.
And now it is healthcare. So far, that price tag is $1,000,000,000,000 and climbing. Yes, one TRILLION dollars. And that number will only cover 16 million Americans over a 10 year period and still leave 35 million without health insurance. Think about that for a moment. If one trillion dollar is the price of a decade's worth of health insurance, what would the cost be for everyone? That number should scare the living daylights out of you.
Especially when we do not have a trillion dollars now or a decade in the future.
All of these things, healthcare, bailouts, spending to save us from catastrophe, cannot be sustained. It is being placed on the taxpayer Visa with a promise to pay in the future. And when that bill becomes due, we won't even be able to make the minimum payment due demanded by China to cover a fraction of the interest let alone beat down the principal. When the rest of the world figures this out, and they will, we as a nation are going to be well and truly fucked.
You haven't even seen a crisis yet.
It isn't a surprise this is happening. It was expected. But not the scope or speed of it. It seems everything now has to be rammed through. Every thing is a crisis that our benevolent, all-knowing, wise and all-seeing government will be able to fix for us. Just trust them and we'll get through this.
We've gotten what we deserve. An empty suit with no legislative accomplishments to his credit but with a silver tongue managed to convince enough of the populace that he would solve all their problems and lead this country into a better place. So guess where the blame lies? Not with him but with us.
A minority of us are screaming about the train wreck that is coming and no one cares. And that is really the crux of the issue. Actually, it is worse than lack of caring. It is the ultimate outcome of a generation of "me, me, me!" come full-circle.
Not only does the public-at-large not care, I am in agreement with other bloggers like the Geek with a .45 that they will happily thrust they wrists forward and accept the chains willingly. As long as they have food, a roof over their head, the pablum of television to soothe them and a nebulous promise of being taken care of whether it be financially, health care or job-wise, they will accept servitude readily.
I feel that this is the outcome just based on casual conversation. Any of you ever talk about these issues and have the other person say, "Well that's true but I've got mine. If it is going to happen anyway, I might as well get something out of it."? They're close to retirement and looking for a piece of their contribution back or young and never had it to begin with. They don't care about it being taxpayer money or your money or even their money. Just get a piece, to hell with the others.
I've heard a lot of such talk over the past several months.
40% of our electorate has no income tax burden to speak of. They don't make enough to qualify or the tax credits they receive reduce their tax burden to zero. "Tax credits" is a code word for "refund". Except when the amount of the tax credit is greater than what you paid, it isn't a refund. It's wealth redistribution.
Where do you think that $8000 home buyer tax credit is coming from? Thin air? Anyone taking advantage of that credit (and I know someone who has) is collectively reaching into our pockets to cover that windfall. We as a society are paying a percentage of their American Dream. I can't blame anyone for doing it but unlike the rest of the country, the government cannot create wealth to offset its expenditures. All it can do is tax or not tax, spend or not spend.
And 40% don't care one way or the other because they benefit regardless.
In this country, 40% is more than sufficient regardless of political ideology to drag the rest of us down. As long as they have a roof, food and entertainment, where it comes from is immaterial. They will vote it and demand it. And because the representatives in government enjoy their jobs, they will give it to them. Directly from our wallets and purses if need be.
I believe we now stand on the shores of the Rubicon with a choice to make. And I fear the choice has already been made and we are approaching the opposite shore, waist deep and not even looking back.
Of course, we're screaming from the back ranks, begging our leaders not to do it. But they choose to ignore our cries because they know what is on the opposite shore is better for us. They know best. And they will do it.
I think this health care debate, which has not fundamentally changed since the early 1990s, will be the final shove we need. I think between the damage already done and what they want to do that we will not be able to recover. Our country is already being irreversibly shaped into a future we don't want and are likely powerless to stop. The effects of these current policies will be far-reaching and their unintended consequences have yet to be seen. The die has already been cast.
Does anyone honestly believe that the government will rehabilitate GM or Chrysler and then divest themselves of their stakes and influence and allow them to go back to being private enterprises competing against Ford?
Does anyone honestly believe Obama can actually achieve savings from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for his $1,000,000,000,000 vision of insuring a fraction of Americans when GAO reports year after year after year have consistently pointed out problems with the system and fixes that need to be made that have never materialized? What makes now so different? Because the "right people" are in charge?
Does anyone honestly believe spending money we don't have is going to make things easier and better in the future? Or do you believe our kids and grandkids will just punt the problem to the next generation in the belief that it is someone else's problem?
If any private individual or organization attempted to operate their finances the way the government calls a spending increase a "tax cut" because they decided to only rack up $75,000,000 in charges instead of the $100,000,000 they proposed, they'd be bankrupt or in jail. And yet, we let them do it. The notion of not spending money they don't have never occurs to them. After all, votes are at stake.
Have you noticed that over the past few months the justifications for these various actions have more or less dwindled away? What was a primetime speech from the President to explain why such actions were necessary just doesn't happen anymore. We are merely informed of what is going to happen, some brief platitude about "saving our country" and that is that. No one even feels the need to justify their actions to those who placed them there.
I think because they know now and have found the American version of ruling through fear. For us, it isn't gulags, party membership (although that's on the radar) or purges but economy, money and jobs. Invoke the spectre of us losing one or all and the slaves fall into willing rows, ready to accept their chains. Especially if accompanied by a "submission tax credit" or "happiness stimulus".
I always thought our Rubicon lay decades in the future. Preferably with me as an old man or gone and waiting for the next round. I believed that bright shining line of "No further or else!" would be a dim glow on a hazy horizon.
No longer.
I am told by my mother-in-law that the Republic will endure, that it always managed to weather its doldrums and come back strong. After all, it survived the Civil War, two World Wars and the Great Depression. It will survive this. Unfortunately, I do not believe that despite my most desperate desire to do so.
I think next year we will begin to have an answer to our future. If come 2010 we let the same people run the show, I feel that we will not be turning back from this course. I think even if there is sufficient outrage come 2012 to oust the lot of them, short of a new government capable of having the courage to actual roll back these excesses and tell the American people "No more! We are doing this to save the Republic. It will hurt for you, you will suffer but we must stop this!" and actually do it, there will be nothing we can do. Such courage has not existed within government in a long time.
By 2012, as I echoed at Chris Byrne's, we will begin to see the ramifications of today's policy choices if left unreversed. We will begin to see the unintended consequences. And this is assuming that no other crises arise to draw us down even more rapidly than we are headed now. A few more Holocaust shootings and another Virginia Tech and we might even lose our last box of persuasion.
The soap box is fun to stand on but without a new Publius, it will not work despite Geek's belief to the contrary.
The jury box is fading. The law, like our government, is becoming too frozen and set in its ways to do the right thing.
The ammo box, despite the damage it would cause, has watched its time go long past. I think in this political climate even if 10,000 armed citizens showed up on the Mall in defiance of everything to have their voices heard, we'd witness troops gun them down and treat the survivors just like the Taliban at Tora Bora. I have no doubt that active armed resistance would be crushed and I think those watching on the sidelines would cheer the government on in doing do.
Lastly, the ballot box is showing signs of being ignored. Yes, we will still use it and think we are making a difference but at this point I think even the most ardent leftist would agree that it is pretty much being ignored. It doesn't matter to them anyway since their people are in charge.
All that remains is for us to finish our journey across the Rubicon and then there will be no going back.
By 2015, I don't think we'll recognize this country. Oh, it will still be called the "United States of America", it will still have a Constitution and people will still go about their lives but it will not be as it is today. We will be a beaten people, unable or unwilling to fight back, living in fear and being happy for what little we've managed to hold on to and what is being given to us. Many of us will still protest but we will be marginalized and dismissed as "paranoid" at best. Or maybe enough of us will be charged and jailed under numerous anti-terrorism laws that already exist today to cow the rest of us into submission.
Our economy will be gone. Our savings will be taxed, taken and spent. We will live on the largess of the Chinese and any bank who holds our bonds. We will be enslaved. Or we will be bankrupt and we will be two people, poor and those in charge, and a nation of laws and not men on paper only. 200 years of prosperity and the greatest experiment in human history cast aside in the name of "social justice" in the span of just 24 months.
We're halfway there. I feel the end coming. I will see it in my lifetime. I figure we've got 4-7 years.
And then the Rubicon will be behind us and we cannot go back.
I hope I'm wrong.
In this post, "war" might be too strong a word. Perhaps not as we are in a culture war.
I am starting to believe this is a war we will ultimately lose.
I read letters like this over at Kevin's. It has been a common, yet underground, theme for months. People are angry, upset and tired about the continued, unwarranted and unwanted intrusion into every aspect of our lives. For gun rights supporters we always were aware of such things. But now it has gone way, way beyond that. We always thought that any attempts by government to rule us and gain control would be incremental because that was they it had always happened. Based on our experiences in guns and numerous other areas, control and advancement of government power always seemed to creep forward because the people would never stand for a Hitleresque, Maoist or Chavez-style power grab done in plain sight.
Not anymore. It seems as of late our elected officials have decided to simply sidestep the issue and move on without any pretext at all. They just going to do it in the interest of all of us.
TARP. Phone calls to our representatives nearly melted down the Capitol switchboard. They did it anyway. They got the message the first time, threw in some bribes and magically the exact same bill passed without resistance not a few days later. Did Congress twitter all their constituents or something?
AIG and others were "too big to fail". So the government propped them up or let them die and be absorbed by others. And despite tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars injected into these companies we have no idea if any of it will have any effect at all.
GM, Chrysler and Ford were in trouble. We were told that if they were to go bankrupt, the results would be catastrophic for the nation. So we injected $15+ billion dollars into them despite us saying back in the fall that it wasn't going to work.
End result was those billions wasted without even so much as a "Sorry" and two out of three in bankruptcy anyway. Except now with the government hand involved, they are dictating the terms under which those bankruptcies will be discharged. By hook or by crook, they will get what they want and will do it at all taxpayer expense. Ford, smartly, saw the writing on the wall and decided they would sit that one out. I hope Alan Mullaly gets a hefty bonus for saving his company from the road to Hell. And the government calls these bankruptcies a necessary step and act like it was all planned. Leave it to the government to spend $15 billion dollars to prove themselves wrong and make it look like a success.
And now it is healthcare. So far, that price tag is $1,000,000,000,000 and climbing. Yes, one TRILLION dollars. And that number will only cover 16 million Americans over a 10 year period and still leave 35 million without health insurance. Think about that for a moment. If one trillion dollar is the price of a decade's worth of health insurance, what would the cost be for everyone? That number should scare the living daylights out of you.
Especially when we do not have a trillion dollars now or a decade in the future.
All of these things, healthcare, bailouts, spending to save us from catastrophe, cannot be sustained. It is being placed on the taxpayer Visa with a promise to pay in the future. And when that bill becomes due, we won't even be able to make the minimum payment due demanded by China to cover a fraction of the interest let alone beat down the principal. When the rest of the world figures this out, and they will, we as a nation are going to be well and truly fucked.
You haven't even seen a crisis yet.
It isn't a surprise this is happening. It was expected. But not the scope or speed of it. It seems everything now has to be rammed through. Every thing is a crisis that our benevolent, all-knowing, wise and all-seeing government will be able to fix for us. Just trust them and we'll get through this.
We've gotten what we deserve. An empty suit with no legislative accomplishments to his credit but with a silver tongue managed to convince enough of the populace that he would solve all their problems and lead this country into a better place. So guess where the blame lies? Not with him but with us.
A minority of us are screaming about the train wreck that is coming and no one cares. And that is really the crux of the issue. Actually, it is worse than lack of caring. It is the ultimate outcome of a generation of "me, me, me!" come full-circle.
Not only does the public-at-large not care, I am in agreement with other bloggers like the Geek with a .45 that they will happily thrust they wrists forward and accept the chains willingly. As long as they have food, a roof over their head, the pablum of television to soothe them and a nebulous promise of being taken care of whether it be financially, health care or job-wise, they will accept servitude readily.
I feel that this is the outcome just based on casual conversation. Any of you ever talk about these issues and have the other person say, "Well that's true but I've got mine. If it is going to happen anyway, I might as well get something out of it."? They're close to retirement and looking for a piece of their contribution back or young and never had it to begin with. They don't care about it being taxpayer money or your money or even their money. Just get a piece, to hell with the others.
I've heard a lot of such talk over the past several months.
40% of our electorate has no income tax burden to speak of. They don't make enough to qualify or the tax credits they receive reduce their tax burden to zero. "Tax credits" is a code word for "refund". Except when the amount of the tax credit is greater than what you paid, it isn't a refund. It's wealth redistribution.
Where do you think that $8000 home buyer tax credit is coming from? Thin air? Anyone taking advantage of that credit (and I know someone who has) is collectively reaching into our pockets to cover that windfall. We as a society are paying a percentage of their American Dream. I can't blame anyone for doing it but unlike the rest of the country, the government cannot create wealth to offset its expenditures. All it can do is tax or not tax, spend or not spend.
And 40% don't care one way or the other because they benefit regardless.
In this country, 40% is more than sufficient regardless of political ideology to drag the rest of us down. As long as they have a roof, food and entertainment, where it comes from is immaterial. They will vote it and demand it. And because the representatives in government enjoy their jobs, they will give it to them. Directly from our wallets and purses if need be.
I believe we now stand on the shores of the Rubicon with a choice to make. And I fear the choice has already been made and we are approaching the opposite shore, waist deep and not even looking back.
Of course, we're screaming from the back ranks, begging our leaders not to do it. But they choose to ignore our cries because they know what is on the opposite shore is better for us. They know best. And they will do it.
I think this health care debate, which has not fundamentally changed since the early 1990s, will be the final shove we need. I think between the damage already done and what they want to do that we will not be able to recover. Our country is already being irreversibly shaped into a future we don't want and are likely powerless to stop. The effects of these current policies will be far-reaching and their unintended consequences have yet to be seen. The die has already been cast.
Does anyone honestly believe that the government will rehabilitate GM or Chrysler and then divest themselves of their stakes and influence and allow them to go back to being private enterprises competing against Ford?
Does anyone honestly believe Obama can actually achieve savings from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for his $1,000,000,000,000 vision of insuring a fraction of Americans when GAO reports year after year after year have consistently pointed out problems with the system and fixes that need to be made that have never materialized? What makes now so different? Because the "right people" are in charge?
Does anyone honestly believe spending money we don't have is going to make things easier and better in the future? Or do you believe our kids and grandkids will just punt the problem to the next generation in the belief that it is someone else's problem?
If any private individual or organization attempted to operate their finances the way the government calls a spending increase a "tax cut" because they decided to only rack up $75,000,000 in charges instead of the $100,000,000 they proposed, they'd be bankrupt or in jail. And yet, we let them do it. The notion of not spending money they don't have never occurs to them. After all, votes are at stake.
Have you noticed that over the past few months the justifications for these various actions have more or less dwindled away? What was a primetime speech from the President to explain why such actions were necessary just doesn't happen anymore. We are merely informed of what is going to happen, some brief platitude about "saving our country" and that is that. No one even feels the need to justify their actions to those who placed them there.
I think because they know now and have found the American version of ruling through fear. For us, it isn't gulags, party membership (although that's on the radar) or purges but economy, money and jobs. Invoke the spectre of us losing one or all and the slaves fall into willing rows, ready to accept their chains. Especially if accompanied by a "submission tax credit" or "happiness stimulus".
I always thought our Rubicon lay decades in the future. Preferably with me as an old man or gone and waiting for the next round. I believed that bright shining line of "No further or else!" would be a dim glow on a hazy horizon.
No longer.
I am told by my mother-in-law that the Republic will endure, that it always managed to weather its doldrums and come back strong. After all, it survived the Civil War, two World Wars and the Great Depression. It will survive this. Unfortunately, I do not believe that despite my most desperate desire to do so.
I think next year we will begin to have an answer to our future. If come 2010 we let the same people run the show, I feel that we will not be turning back from this course. I think even if there is sufficient outrage come 2012 to oust the lot of them, short of a new government capable of having the courage to actual roll back these excesses and tell the American people "No more! We are doing this to save the Republic. It will hurt for you, you will suffer but we must stop this!" and actually do it, there will be nothing we can do. Such courage has not existed within government in a long time.
By 2012, as I echoed at Chris Byrne's, we will begin to see the ramifications of today's policy choices if left unreversed. We will begin to see the unintended consequences. And this is assuming that no other crises arise to draw us down even more rapidly than we are headed now. A few more Holocaust shootings and another Virginia Tech and we might even lose our last box of persuasion.
The soap box is fun to stand on but without a new Publius, it will not work despite Geek's belief to the contrary.
The jury box is fading. The law, like our government, is becoming too frozen and set in its ways to do the right thing.
The ammo box, despite the damage it would cause, has watched its time go long past. I think in this political climate even if 10,000 armed citizens showed up on the Mall in defiance of everything to have their voices heard, we'd witness troops gun them down and treat the survivors just like the Taliban at Tora Bora. I have no doubt that active armed resistance would be crushed and I think those watching on the sidelines would cheer the government on in doing do.
Lastly, the ballot box is showing signs of being ignored. Yes, we will still use it and think we are making a difference but at this point I think even the most ardent leftist would agree that it is pretty much being ignored. It doesn't matter to them anyway since their people are in charge.
All that remains is for us to finish our journey across the Rubicon and then there will be no going back.
By 2015, I don't think we'll recognize this country. Oh, it will still be called the "United States of America", it will still have a Constitution and people will still go about their lives but it will not be as it is today. We will be a beaten people, unable or unwilling to fight back, living in fear and being happy for what little we've managed to hold on to and what is being given to us. Many of us will still protest but we will be marginalized and dismissed as "paranoid" at best. Or maybe enough of us will be charged and jailed under numerous anti-terrorism laws that already exist today to cow the rest of us into submission.
Our economy will be gone. Our savings will be taxed, taken and spent. We will live on the largess of the Chinese and any bank who holds our bonds. We will be enslaved. Or we will be bankrupt and we will be two people, poor and those in charge, and a nation of laws and not men on paper only. 200 years of prosperity and the greatest experiment in human history cast aside in the name of "social justice" in the span of just 24 months.
We're halfway there. I feel the end coming. I will see it in my lifetime. I figure we've got 4-7 years.
And then the Rubicon will be behind us and we cannot go back.
I hope I'm wrong.
1 comments:
Great post. With a complicit media, I can definitely see us inching across that Rubicon. I'm probably grasping at straws here, but recent polls consistently show America's growing concern with President Obama's policies, especially as they relate to the economy and the deficit. Furthermore, Congress' approval rating continues in the toilet, which probably explains why we haven't heard much from Nancy Pelosi lately. The recent development that a draft proposal in the Senate Finance committee does not include the public option for health care reform is encouraging as well. Obama campaigned as a moderate, understanding that this country still has center-right leanings on some significant issues. And while the President has taken a leap to the left in his actions, two phenomena continue to force him, or at least his rhetoric, to the center. 1.) His pollsters. When they report to him that less than half of the public approves of how he is handling the deficit, he calls his speech writers up to craft him something that Americans want to hear (the fact that his actions are contradictory to his words is a different topic for a different day). 2.) The Democrats in Congress. I know, it doesn't make sense, but with their approval rating in the toilet, midterms on the horizon and scars from the 1994 shellacking still showing, they have wisely pushed back when the President seeks to go too far to the left. That scaled back health care reform draft proposal excluded the public option because of concerns from at least 10 Senate DEMOCRATS.
With respect to anti-gun legislation, I don't foresee anything in the near future. I don't think Democrats in Congress will have a choice but to raise taxes--and not just on the rich--to pay for the President's spending spree. But Democrats in Congress also understand that raising taxes AND any type of anti-gun legislation (assault weapons ban maybe) is a recipe for an electoral disaster.
If the GOP can get their house together soon (and that is a big if), I believe they have a chance to at least take control of the House (whether or not an AWB is passed). I think the stars have been knocked out of the people's eyes (by Obama himself), and the hope is that they will go to the polls and make a rationale decision based on facts, not lofty rhetoric. However, if the House remains under Democrat control come Nov. 3 2010, we will be crossing that Rubicon shortly thereafter.
Like I said, I'm probably grasping at straws here. A lot can happen between now and the mid-terms.
Sorry for the rant.
Post a Comment