And Rome Burns
Historians disagree on whether or not Nero played some sort of instrument while Rome burned, or whether he might have even set the fires himself in order to clear the canvas, as it were, for shovel-ready projects that included a colossal statue of himself. It is doubtful, however, that history will be quite so ambiguous regarding the current President's role in the many conflagrations that threaten to devour a great country. Barack Obama can forgo the statue, having left a monumental debt for future generations to remember him by. And who needs a fiddle when you have full orchestral accompaniment from a compliant press corps?
At his creative best, Cecil B. DeMille himself couldn't have depicted the sheer cataclysmic scope of President Obama's signature accomplishments. The highest sustained unemployment rates since the Great Depression, a health care law that adds over 16,000 IRS agents but not a single doctor, a national debt to cripple future generations, a downgraded national credit rating, a post-constitutional government that retroactively mocks the Founders, more people added to the disability rolls than to the employment rolls -- these are the offspring fathered by the centralized planning of human fulfillment. But the blessings of progressivism don't stop at our borders.
Thirty-five years ago, Jimmy Carter proclaimed us, "…free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear. …We've fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is better quenched with water." Carter then picked up the garden hose and watered down American influence, resolve, credibility, intelligence and military power, while managing in the process to germinate a new Soviet outpost in our hemisphere, the Red Army's invasion of Afghanistan, and a bumper crop of Islamic moon bats in Iran who threaten the peace to this day.
Almost four years ago, President Obama announced that, "We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken, you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." Such was the President's strength of spirit that he sat dumbstruck and paralyzed when Iran opened fire on pro-democracy civilians, proving that he could indeed outlast their anguished cries for help. But he regained his footing just in time to help the Muslim Brotherhood ascend to power in Egypt, from which position they present new and ominous threats to Israel and stability throughout the region. As Israel finds itself surrounded by a fanatic death cult that straps bombs to its children, while facing a growing nuclear threat, they look to America and see …what exactly? That we've exchanged Jimmy Carter's garden hose of vacillation for a Biblical flood of self destruction?
Meanwhile, America suffers from the Democratic Party's continuing problem of premature capitulation. President Obama undertakes America's retreat in two theatres of war, proving that terrorists can indeed outlast us, a lesson which, when last learned by Osama bin Laden, resulted in mass slaughter on American soil. The President has cancelled the deployment of ballistic missile defenses in Central Europe, to the disappointment of our allies and the cheers of Moscow. And if current trends are any indication, he will reduce America's military strength back to that which is only necessary to secure the breeding ground of the caribou, or fly reconnaissance missions over American farms.
Weakness doesn't go unnoticed, and power, like nature itself, abhors a vacuum. If America will not lead, others who do not share our values of individual liberty and national sovereignty will. Even now, Russia is dispatching its naval craft, complete with arms, equipment, and a unit of its marines, to Syria. Just in the last few months, Russian strategic bombers crossed into US airspace near Alaska and California. We recently learned that a Russian submarine made its way, undetected, into the Gulf of Mexico, sailing alone the US coastline. Meanwhile, China increases its own military spending by 11 percent, and threatens Japan, Vietnam, and even the Philippines. The Middle East is on the verge of what could be a catastrophic war as Israel, yet again, sees its very survival threatened.
What is the President's response? What is the response of his party? To demand Mitt Romney's tax returns, wage class warfare, protect public sector unions at the expense of the people who pay their salaries, and claim that Republicans are waging a war on women even as Democrats prepare to welcome an accused rapist and sexual predator as their keynote speaker. In another generation, William F. Buckley, Jr., quoted Hilaire Belloc, and the statement is as appropriate today as it was then:
We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on those faces there is no smile.
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Comments:
Sep '10
Re: And Rome Burns
I believe the basketball player in chief dribbles instead of fiddles.
Aug '10
Re: And Rome Burns
I love this line : a health care law that adds over 16,000 IRS agents but not a single doctor !
And then there's this : http://youtu.be/XsFR8DbSRQE
That's what really scares me about the future with this guy.
Jul '11
Re: And Rome Burns
A strong America is the only glue capable of holding the world together. My prayer is that Mr Romney uses this strength very wisely.
Jul '10
Re: And Rome Burns
Well said, Dave, and worrisome. Too many of our countrymen seem content to let things go along as they are, and we're going to be caught unawares.
Nov '11
Re: And Rome Burns
Our republic has survived a civil war, two world wars, 1968 and four years of Jimmy Carter. It will survive our current trials.
And Rome survived Nero and didn't really start to fall apart until a century and a half after Nero was dead.
Mar '11
Re: And Rome Burns
That Carter quote is just ringing in my ears. Inordinate?
Carter, clearly and unsurprisingly, was under the spell that many in the West were--that communists were fellow travelers. Sure, maybe they were eccentric cousins, but they believed in equality, right? Sure, maybe they're a bit out in front, and maybe a little extreme, but essentially they're friends, colleagues, all working for the same goal of the universally fair, peaceful state.
These blind men never considered the possibility that communist regimes were the places modernity went to die.
May '10
Re: And Rome Burns
We can't talk about Rome without including Victor.
May '10
Re: And Rome Burns
Most governments don't last as long as ours already has. And ours technically didn't survive south of the Mason-Dixon.
Our nation will survive. A nation is not a government. The Constitution is only relevant so long as it mirrors the values of our culture.
Agreed. America's withdrawal from world affairs, be it voluntary or involuntary, will leave a power gap which dictators are set to fill. Many nations have already allied against us. What they lack in nobility, they make up in confidence.
Aug '12
Re: And Rome Burns
This election is the 'Red Pill vs Blue Pill' fork-in-the-road for our country.
Do we want to make the hard choices that result in equality of opportunity?
OR:
Do we want emotionally satisfying rhetoric and a promise of something for nothing (with strings attached, of course)?
Red Pill or the Blue Pill?
Jun '10
Re: And Rome Burns
Rome is not burning yet, but the tinder is dry, stacked, and ready to go. I'm going to offer you a bold prediction. Rioting and civil disorder won't break out following the election. It's going to start before the election, maybe as early as next week. OWS graffiti is starting to show up in Tampa. They're already there. In addition, American communists are starting to come out of the closet. They are boldly proclaiming that now is the time for a communist putsch. Before you denounce this as a fantasy, you need to understand how thoroughly American labor unions have been infiltrated by communists and other radicals. And all this is just a harbinger of worse. The messiah won't fall without significant collateral damage. The time of troubles has arrived. Prepare yourselves.
Jun '10
Re: And Rome Burns
Assuming Israel goes in on it's on in October and Romney wins in November, how much damage is going to be done between then and January 20th? The Middle East aside, how much damage will be done to our country in the interim when, in the midst of a crisis of biblical proportions, a lame-duck president gets out his executive order signing pen and extracts his revenge on an ungrateful nation?
Assuming all the dire possibilities that come to mind for the immediate future are simply the nightmares of a paranoid, we still live in interesting times.
Nov '11
Re: And Rome Burns
Brilliant post, as always, Dave, and I cannot disagree. I do try to remember, though, that it almost always looks like the end is at hand, and maybe it almost always is, and maybe the old saying about fools, drunks, and the U.S.A. is about to be disproved. Still I sense (though inchoately) that there is a sea change in public opinion. Let us pray.
Dec '10
Re: And Rome Burns
~Paules, I wouldn't worry too much about Tampa. One thing anarchists and Democrats lack is basic, common sense. Isaac is on his way and I actually look forward to occupiers in their rain-soaked hoodies, face-scarves whipped aside, huddling near their collapsed tarp hovels. No person with any sense will be hanging out to watch protests and rock throwers, when there is lawn furniture to be tied down. If it gets just average-bad by Monday, (probably 40 mph winds and constant rain), the protestors will have no one but cops on the streets to greet them, if they even venture out of their hovels. More likely, they will sit, cringe, and shiver, through days of rain. Ironically, the anarchists may have to head for government shelters.
Now Charlotte? That may be interesting.
Jun '12
Re: And Rome Burns
At the risk of starting a war, we've already chosen the blue pill. The chance to take the red pill is quickly slipping away, and will be gone when Romney gets the nomination.
(go Ron Paul! :-)
At The Rubicon: This election is the 'Red Pill vs Blue Pill' fork-in-the-road for our country.
Do we want to make the hard choices that result in equality of opportunity?
OR:
Do we want emotionally satisfying rhetoric and a promise of something for nothing (with strings attached, of course)?
Red Pill or the Blue Pill? · 20 hours ago
Nov '11
Re: And Rome Burns
(go Ron Paul! :-)
I was thinking that but I didn't wanna go there.
Apr '11
Re: And Rome Burns
Fred Cole: Our republic has survived a civil war, two world wars, 1968 and four years of Jimmy Carter. It will survive our current trials.
And Rome survived Nero and didn't really start to fall apart until a century and a half after Nero was dead. · 23 hours ago
My deceased Grandfather survived a lot before he went, too, albeit with an overseas civil war and only one World War. He saw more years of World War action than America, though.
The full financial collapse of the government, should it take place, would be more likely than any of those events to destroy America (outside the South, where the Civil War wins). WMDs, likewise; the World Wars were mostly fought overseas.
That said, WWII combined with the Depression was a big threat (I'd say the Depression was more problematic than the war). America was lucky to get through it, and cannot guarantee that luck in the future.
Jun '10
Re: And Rome Burns
I read a book called The Strong Horse, which argues that Arab culture is a competitive tribal culture, where, when the fecal matter strikes the air circulation device, people tend to look to and back the strong horse. I argue that is true of all groups under threat, or just with a choice.
Libs chuckle when they see Vladimir Putin bending metal pots, with a reeeeeeal gun [eek!], etc. But when a world in trouble looks at who can help them in dire times:
who would you put your money on?
Jun '10
Re: And Rome Burns
Come to think of it, I would go with this guy: