Out With The Old, In With The Old
By James Bowden (12/03/04)
Here are some end of the year thoughts you might actually ponder before celebrating Christ Jesus’ birth amongst the crush of the annual cycle of shopping, family gatherings and social events.
I offer as much a prospective as retrospective. So much of the year past will be present in the future. For better and far worse. So say I, based on my day job as a military ‘futurist’. Seriously, I can lay out the directions and drivers for change. I can’t say exactly which option will happen when. If I could, my day job would be psychic hotline entrepreneur.
First, I’m filled with gratitude, still, from the election victory. I’m grateful that our Nation understands the significance of the Iraq War. We will stay the course, painful that it is, for the greater World War IV against Islamist Terrorism. Also, I’m gratified that everywhere homosexual marriage was on the ballot, the People rejected it. I’m confident other social issues, like partial-birth abortion, would fail in fair votes. The American People are wiser than politicians, pundits and tyrannical judges.
The wisdom is that most Americans don’t like or listen to politics. They live their lives and want to be left alone, in freedom, to do as they please. The overwhelming majority of Americans, and Virginians are prime examples, only pay attention when it’s really important – during wars, recessions, and at elections. The People speak in simple terms for candidates or constitutional issues at the ballot box. The People didn’t mumble in 2004.
The vote supporting the Iraq War, I believe, was an encouragement to press on with WW IV for greater stability and security. It wasn’t an endorsement of President Bush’s Wilsonian rhetoric about promoting democracy. Nor was it approval of the many mistakes made at the strategic and operational levels of war. Frankly, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should be fired. The three reasons Iraq isn’t Vietnam, yet, are geography, no Soviet Union, and GEN. John Abizaid is the Commander.
Iraq can collapse into a long, brutal civil war – today, tomorrow and ten years from now. The U.S. will kill Islamists who flock there and impose a heavy booted stability for as long as America has the will to do so. WWIV will last for decades, maybe centuries.
Our will to win WWIV will be determined by who wins, Liberals or Conservatives, the Culture War – which is our second American Civil War (ACW II).
The irony of ACW II is how Liberals and Conservatives agree on the biggest words – peace, freedom, prosperity, etc. Yet, we rapidly diverge along clear cutting lines of worldview, Weltanschauung, on the ideas of how to achieve those words. The further irony, perhaps tripping into tragedy, is how Liberals and Conservatives see each other in mirror images of totalitarianism. Each sees the other side as a genuine threat to truth, liberty and the American way of life.
Naturally, I think many good-willed, kind-hearted, caring Liberals are clueless that they serve a Humanist Secular Totalitarianism that manifests itself in Liberal Puritanism. Meanwhile, the Liberals who compare Christians to the Taliban forget, among many other things, how fractionalized Evangelical Christians are – by definition. Evangelicals are the antithesis of monolithic churches, let alone states. Evangelicals can’t impose one set of beliefs on their own membership, let alone a Nation. Just visit one church business meeting to watch the intramural fussin’ and fightin’.
Speaking of intramural fights, stayed tuned for Virginia Republican primaries in ’05. Virginia and New Jersey are the only statewide elections in 05.
Where candidates of courage and convictions can be found, there will be challenges to the Republicans who raised our taxes – even as the FORMER, LOWER taxes produced 12% growth in spending AND a budget surplus. All politics ‘is’ local. We have a problem in our back yard.
These Republicans would have been Democrats twenty years ago (and many were). In China they would be Communists. In France they would be Socialists. Their only principle is power to stay in power. Read Shakespeare and the Bible. It’s all about their personal power.
Most Virginians know it in their bones. Virginians are neither Democrat nor Republican by DNA. Virginians are bone-deep dedicated as traditional values, family, freedom and fun in life folks. The majority thinks little of politics and focuses, appropriately, on CHRISTmas and a New Year. Then, next year, Virginians will just live life until elections force new choices.
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