Why the Right Fears Transforming America -- and the Left Seeks It
The giveaway regarding presidential candidate Barack Obama's plans for America was his repeated use of the words "fundamentally transform."
Some of us instinctively reacted negatively -- in fact, with horror -- at the thought of fundamentally transforming America.
The "us" are conservatives.
One unbridgeable divide between left and right is how each views alternatives to present-day America. Those on the left imagine an ideal society that has never existed, and therefore seek to "fundamentally transform" America. When liberals imagine an America fundamentally transformed, they envision it becoming a nearly utopian society in which there is no greed, no racism, no sexism, no inequality, no poverty and ultimately no unhappiness.
Conservatives, on the other hand, look around at other societies and history and are certain that if America were fundamentally transformed, it would become just like those other societies. America would become a society of far less liberty, of ethically and morally inferior citizens and of much more unhappiness. And cruelty would increase exponentially around the world.
Conservatives believe that America is an aberration in human history; that, with all the problems that a society made up of flawed human beings will inevitably have, America has been and remains a uniquely decent society. Therefore, conservatives worry that fundamentally transforming America -- making America less exceptional -- will mean that America gets much worse.
Liberals worry over the opposite possibility -- that America will remain more or less as it is.
Two famous statements encapsulate the operative liberal worldview.
The first was attributed to Robert F. Kennedy by his brother Sen. Edward M. Kennedy:
"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were, and ask, 'Why not?'"
The other is one of the most popular songs of the last 50 years, John Lennon's "Imagine":
"Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today.
"Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too, Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
"You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.
"Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
"You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one."
Regarding the Kennedy quote, a conservative would respond something like this:
We conservatives look at America and ask, how did something so decent, so different from other societies, ever get created and last over 200 years? Of course, we always seek to improve it. But more than anything else, we seek to preserve it and its core values. We do not "dream of things that never were." We dream the same dream as our American forefathers did -- to maintain a society committed to the values of E Pluribus Unum, Liberty and In God We Trust. As for utopian dreams, we believe they are more likely to result in nightmares -- horrors that would engulf America and the world if America were to be transformed.
To Lennon's song, a conservative would respond:
Lennon's utopia is our dystopia. A world without God to give people some certitude that all their suffering is not meaningless is a nightmare. A world without religion means a world without any systematic way of ennobling people. A world without countries is a world without the United States of America, and it is a world governed by the morally imbecilic United Nations, where mass murderers sit on its "human rights" councils. A world without Heaven or Hell is a world without any ultimate justice, where torturers and their victims have identical fates -- oblivion. A world without possessions is a world in which some enormous state possesses everything, and the individual is reduced to the status of a serf.
Liberals frequently criticize conservatives for fearing change. That is not correct. We fear transforming that which is already good. The moral record of humanity does not fill us with optimism about "fundamentally transforming" something as rare as America. Evil is normal. America is not.
By Dennis Prager - Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Source: The Dennis Prager Show
It’s Not What It Is, It’s What We Think It Is
September 6, 2010 by Bob Livingston
Almost everyone believes that they see things as they are. Almost no one does.
Our perception of reality rules our lives no matter what we think. Propagandists know the very high manipulative value of peoples’ expectations based on their perception of reality.
The American people are manipulated into serfdom with semantic trickery. Word twisting and semantic trickery is used around the clock to control and manipulate the population’s perception of reality. Public perception is channeled wherever the political establishment wants it to go.
So the difference in people is the way they think. Our individual perception of reality controls our thought processes. Our thought processes control our lives. Word manipulation and semantic trickery controls our thoughts and our total being.
I have written to you that the United States system is in its final stages of collapse. The system can last a short while, any time from a few months to a few years. But the signs and symptoms of collapse are increasingly coming into focus and in plain view.
There is evidence that concern is growing with more and more people. The price of gold and silver tells us this. Gold is a tell-tale indicator of a failing system.
Although I am sure that the elite own tons of gold, including the power to manipulate and steal our national gold, they do not want a rush into gold by the population. They have an organized system of suppressing the gold price. Price suppression keeps down the number of people buying gold.
Gold price suppression extends the life of the system under the present political order. Holding down the price of gold tempers public perception of the collapsing system. The more gradual the rise of the price of gold, the fewer people can discern the decay of the economic and political system. Confidence in the system can be extended. Chaos can be disguised longer.
As long as perception and expectation can be controlled, governments can carry on stealth war against their own people. They can dilute and depreciate the currency and most won’t know it until they wake up impoverished.
Whole populations can be organized and motivated to go to war to protect their possessions, yet their own government can steal their assets and wealth simply by turning on the printing presses and calling the process of theft “quantitative easing.” It seems so simple. Did we lose anybody?
Go look at your paper money. It looks the same but it buys a lot less.
The government is extending the present order by depreciating the currency. It is controlled depreciation and controlled collapse. A gradual collapse keeps more people asleep longer.
The political order desires to control the population by controlling their perception of reality. But in the last stages of collapse the government moves from benevolent totalitarianism (invisible control) to more overt aggression toward its own people.
Remember that government produces nothing but bureaucracy. It only consumes wealth. Therefore, as government grows it consumes more of the people’s production and savings. Couple this with a depreciating currency and the paper money syndrome kicks in. What’s that? It’s that there is never enough for government or the person.
So government under many “emergency” pretexts starts wars, increases taxes (a value-added tax — or VAT — is coming) especially on the “wealthy,” passes new healthcare as a disguise for transfer payments to the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical houses, increases exchange controls and creates stepped-up fear propaganda to intensify people control etc., etc.
This overt and perceptible change triggers more people to wake up. So the system has moved into high gear of self-destruction but it has no options but to try desperately to slow the process of collapse.
The people? Well some are buying gold and silver, some are developing a mindset for revolution. Some start a “Tea Party.” Wealth leaves the country. Many people leave the country. Some store food (I hope).
Government is not asleep. It continually creates myths and counter myths to maintain peak confusion. It creates straw conservatives or “populist” talking heads like Sarah Palin. Anybody or anything that appears to be taking antigovernment root is quickly twisted, diluted or taken over by government propagandists and provocateurs.
Only the hard core, like you readers, see the whole picture of the end game. The politicians turned your stomach long ago.
The Final And Great Deception
As economic and social breakdown appear certain, the government and its politicians pull their ace from their bag of tricks. They start talking about backing the depreciated dollar with gold.
Unless there is an absolute change of regime (not a phony populist movement) any move to restore gold-related paper money will be false and phony — just more of the same.
By this time a big percentage of the people will come to understand that sovereign debt (Government debt) was a Ponzi scheme from the beginning. The bond market will collapse.
People forget or never study history. Governments never pay debts. The people who thought they got paid only received created fiat paper money which cost the money creators nothing.
But many of the readers of Personal Liberty Digest know all of this. So let’s swing out on the ballroom floor!
Source: Perception of Reality: It’s Not What It Is, It’s What We Think It Is
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