As soon as the federal government establishes an agency empowered to censor all public statements by all private citizens and corporations, we will have the dictatorship the Democratic Party has spent a century trying to build.
Some time ago the Los Angeles Times began a decade-long project to track homicides in Los Angeles County. The effort produced this astounding statistic. There were 12,000 homicides in South Central L.A., known as Compton. During the same period of time, there was a single murder/suicide in La Crescenta-Montrose and a single murder/suicide in La Canada Flintridge. Those two communities are separated from Compton by perhaps 15 miles. What distinguishes the South Central L.A. community from the communities adjacent to the Angeles National Forest was the racial makeup. Compton, at that time, was almost exclusively populated by black people, and La Crescenta-Montrose and La Canada Flintridge were populated mostly by descendants of northern Europeans.
The Los Angeles Times story was a public service. It clearly showed the reader and taxpayers where major efforts should be made to make the overall community safer. But today's political climate demands articles such as the Los Angeles Time piece not be published.
The political left, the Marxists among us, always characterize any reporting of crime as racist. The accusation prohibits a public discussion of, and perhaps a solution to high crime rates. Marxism stifles discussion, thus isolating and promoting only those solutions advanced by the Marxists. In the make-believe world of the Democratic Party those, 12,000 victims of crime in Compton would not have died if only white people had no say in the justice system. Crime, you see, is a white racist plot. No matter the loss of life in Compton is caused by black perpetrators acting out against black victims.
The Times story is more than 30 year old. Today's daily headlines tell everyone the situation has become even more intolerable. The Marxists now openly refuse to block the enforcement of laws drafted by the public's elected legislators, and engage in wholesale release of the few criminals law enforcement detains.
In addition to destroying the justice system, the Marxist left is emptying the prisons. The essence of their argument is so extreme and illogical it asserts that punishing criminals is racist and people have a right to steal what they need.
The social balance of action and reaction has been disturbed, and America is in free fall. The nation will not survive the consequences of the Marxist policies pursued by the Democratic Party.
Those who came of age in the 1950s knew a different America, an America in which personal freedom existed – and it was exercised with respect for others. In that world free enterprise made things, and if people liked what was made, they purchased it. Today nothing is produced without the blessings of some federal agency. And certain products are simply banned because these do not fit into the world of the future as seen through the eyes of the socialists.
Just before mid-century, the world war ended, and the great free-enterprise engine that is uniquely American turned from the production of tanks and the machines of war to the manufacture of homes and appliances and furnishings. Single-car families suddenly became two-car families and as the teenagers of the 1950s hit 16 years old, three-car families.
At the same time the fathers who had sacrificed to much, who had seen friends blown apart in the war, who had been separated from loved ones for years, wanted the best for their families. They came home and went to work building things and making things. Often denied college opportunities, they wanted their children to have the best education and settle into careers that did not require roofing a house in 98-degree heat and having to put tools in buckets of water so they would not be too hot to handle.
But something was happening in the background, unnoticed by most Americans. John Dewey successfully introduced "progressive education" into the nation's schools. One of the pillars of Dewey's vision was to eliminate punishment and classroom discipline. Dewey argued discipline was oppressive. Traditionalists argued, unsuccessfully, that discipline was absolutely necessary for an individual to succeed in a society that valued achievement. The structure of education had to be radically altered to protect the failures of progressivism, and so teacher associations within each school district became unionized, and unions became national. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation to create the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Revolutionary control of education was ripped away from unsuspecting parents and became a function of the state, and then the federal government.
In America today, only the great grandparents grew up in a classroom where excellent work earned an "A" grade and no work earned a "F" grade. The American grandparents of today experienced a hybrid of the waning meritocracy. Today's parents were fully immersed in the Marxist "equity" outrage and so are their children.
"Equity" tears down social order to the lowest common denominator. Government equity takes from those who have something to take, and gives it to those who have earned nothing and so have nothing. Equity does not have a plan to create wealth. That is why socialism always fails, and always will fail.
Imagine pushing a stalled automobile up a hill toward a distant town and as it reaches the crest and begins its descend, the people struggling uphill realize there is no driver. The car has reached center mass, and its descent will be rapid and destructive.
That car is America today, We have passed the point of salvation, and we are watching as the signs of social collapse gather strength and speed.
We are about to lose our freedoms. The physical manifestations of our society's past success are crumbling and spray-painted and locked behind iron grill work. The public can no longer use sidewalks. Those are reserved for squatters. The purpose of government has morphed from doing things for the greater society to denying access to things people want.
Government now exists to build government. Government has only one master, itself.
To that 80-year-old who came of age in the 1950s, America is not recognizable. And soon there will be no one to make the comparison because those teenagers are now great grandparents and there are few of them left.
History gives us an idea of the time required to build a world based upon individual responsibility and personal freedom. Since humans were able to record human events, it is evident America was the result of 5,000 years of effort, by virtually every race of people on every continent. Even the great failures of cultures served as a framework of what not to do.
The social, economic and military collapse of the United States of America could come at any time, and when it comes, it will be like a great break in the San Andreas fault. There will be minutes of terror following by endless days, weeks, perhaps even centuries, of misery.
If we wish to end our plunge into chaos, the first thing we must do is stop electing people who promise us things. If ending the chaos is important to you, it is far too important to leave up to government.
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