Fear

"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us and our lives slip away, moment by moment. Lost in that vast terrible in between. But there is still time to seize that one last fragile moment." Emperor Turhan - Babylon 5

Every now and again, I sneak a Babylon 5 quote into the mix here. Please take a moment to contemplate this one. I believe you'll find that, while it was written by Joe Straczynski back in the 90's, that it burns very true today.

The questions that I have been contemplating lately are these:

What does our future now hold? Has too much damage already been done to the Republic? Do the citizens of this nation even have the stomach to do what must be done in order to save what's left?

The forces of evil have been working on us for decades. This is not something that started with Carter or Clinton or Bush Jr. or Obama, this has been brewing for decades. Slow gradual creeping of government into our lives, the slow erosion of the Constitution, the step by step process that made "political correctness" mainstream, schools slowly teaching children not to think for themselves and/or that any hint of imagination or true creativity must be ADD and therefore treated with drugs to suppress it.

James Madison said it best:

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788

Here is one of the things I fear:

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. ~D.H. Lawrence, Classical American Literature, 1922

I know, I'm throwing a lot of quotes in here but wiser men have said it better than I ever could. Something else that frightens me these days is that some of these wiser men said it almost 300 years ago and we seem to have forgotten the message. Here's yet another message from the past that we have forgotten:

"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." -- Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

True, the rot within may have started with a combination of greedy government and inattentive sheeple but the rot is there and it runs deep. It has infected almost every aspect of our great Republic and there will be no easy fix. In fact, I begin to wonder if it can be fixed. Could it be that we have let this rot creep for far too long?

Yes, there have been calls for change but change to what?

OK, just for discussion, let's say that the final line gets crossed and a civil war starts. Because this is purely hypothetical, let's say that those who would see the government restored to it's original power under the Constitution win. Now what? The government is restored to original specifications. The people are back in control as they are supposed to be. What exactly did we fix?

On the other hand, can we fix this through a thoroughly corrupt system that panders to political survival and world opinion rather than the good of our Republic?

We need to have more people employed but how do we do that? We need to rebuild our manufacturing base so we can produce more goods that people want and need but can we do that with a populace that has been educated away from original thought?

It's easy to carry a soap box to the corner of Main and Center and hop on it to call for dismantling the system but it's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to rebuild that which has been lost. I hope you're not going to look to me for an answer because, like many of you, all I have are questions and fears.

What is our nation becoming and why have we let it happen? What will happen to us? How can we fix it? Plenty of questions and no answers. So how exactly do we seize that "one last fragile moment"? I don't have answers for all of it but the couple of things I do know is that "We the People" had better wake up and start paying attention and that we need to be much better educated about what these folks running for office really stand for. There's a hell of a lot more to be done, but this is a start. This and to remember, the government can't do it all for you, at some point, you will have to get up off your couch and get involved yourself.