American Spring View 687 20110811

View 687 Thursday, August 11, 2011

English Spring?

They’re already comparing the spreading riots in England to the Arab Spring. This will lead to the general strike, which will shut down government, which will emerge a better thing after redistribution of wealth and equalization, end of racism, end of class warfare. What is property? Why property is theft! Bring it down, bring it down! We don’t like the life we got. Bring it down!

Leading to American Spring? After all, the top 1% of Americans control more wealth than 90 % of Americans. Do something about that or the chickens will come home to roost. Obama is doing it all wrong.

"I think too often he compromises, too often he capitulates," broadcaster Tavis Smiley told ABC News in an interview to be shown tonight on Nightline. "I think the Republicans know that. I think they laugh when he’s not around."

Smiley, who organized the anti-poverty tour with Princeton University professor Cornel West, said poor people want Obama "to fight for them and I think they’re tired of seeing the Republicans clean his clock."

Smiley and West are explicit about it.

Asked if the riots we’ve seen in the UK could happen here because of these problems, the two said yes.

"One percent of the people owning and controlling more wealth than 90% of Americans, that’s unsustainable.  That math won’t hold up long-term. There is a bubbling, there is a restlessness."

"If you don’t treat poor and working people with dignity now, chickens are going to come home to roost later," West said. "And it won’t be about love and justice. It will be about revenge, hatred, and then we all go under."

Which pretty well translates into “Give us our rights, which is a fair share, and do it now, or we will take it from you. You know you’re going to have to give in one day. Do it now.” Or as Marx would put it, get in step with the flywheel of history. Become a Communist.

Of course this is just a blip in the media for the moment, but it’s pretty clear that many in the mainstream media are quite sympathetic with the idea. But since Obama is commander in chief, the United States hasn’t any means of defending itself. Neither does Britain. It’s not politically correct to defend property against those who are sure they deserve it. Open the stash, share the wealth, and all will be well.

Give us our stuff!

It has been a while since I put up a copy of this. It’s time again:

Dane-Geld
A.D. 980-1016
By
Rudyard Kipling

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
“We invaded you last night–we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ‘em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!”

In Kipling’s poem the barbarians came from outside the realm. Now the barbarians are already inside the gates, and use cell phones to coordinate their flash crowd attacks. For most of them the goal is simple loot, but they can be organized. The world is not as we were taught it would be. Where is our share? What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! Give us our stuff. It’s rightfully ours.

Of course the world ran this experiment in the aftermath of The Great War, but since the graduates of our Ivy League institutions no longer study history – we have a generation who don’t even know much about the Cold War – how is anyone to know? Socialism sounds like such a great idea. Give us our stuff. Do what’s right. But note that the call is not for distribution followed by freedom: it’s a call for a system of distribution that pays its aristocracy first. For those who don’t quite understand, look up the nomenklatura and its place in the old Soviet Union.

Our education system doesn’t show any of this. Our education no longer prepares the students to be citizens of a free republic. Our education system doesn’t know what a free republic is.

Welcome to American Spring.

While we are on the subject, I post this every few years, too:There was a time when every educated person in Britain could be expected to understand this poem. They not only knew what the gods of the copybook headings were, they knew who they were. Some of them were named Nemesis, and Catastrophe.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings
by Rudyard Kipling

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don’t work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins…

You might also want to see The Old Issue.