Alan Keyes
American patriots: brainwashed
By Alan Keyes
There are many these days who bloviate passionately against Barack Obama's misdeeds. Meanwhile, they refuse to back the only strategy that can constitutionally end his abuses before it's too late.
President Warren G. Harding described bloviating as "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing." Reportedly, he himself was one of its primordial master craftsmen.
But what politician these days is content to "say nothing" when he or she has the opportunity to advance one of the lies, false appearances, or plausible misrepresentations the whole Machiavellian scheme of our politics depends on for its power?
The Harding era's infamous "Teapot Dome" bribery scandal once flagged the pinnacle of American political corruption. Especially at the top, America's current twin-party scam makes the Harding era look like the good old days. In Harding's day, the people involved in the scandal lost their positions. Even at the highest level they were investigated and held accountable.
These days the elitist faction's twin-party puppets won't even investigate wrongdoing seriously. I think they're afraid that doing so would actually do some good, raising the standard for public service. But where evil and lesser evil are the prevailing standards of political "integrity," a good standard for public service threatens the whole system.
Just as bad money drives good from the marketplace, the ascendancy of Machiavellian corruption drives all but the semblance of true public service from the political arena. The measure of political skill now lies in the gap between what a politician claims to be and what the factual record proves he is.
To WND's editor, Joseph Farah, it rightly seems incongruous, for example, that someone with Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor's provably antithetical record dares to put on the mask of a Bible-believing Christian. But if, like Bill Clinton before him, he pulls it off successfully, the grotesque political standards of our time will mark this as proof of his fitness for admission into the innermost circles of the elitist faction's domain of power.
I suspect, however, that Pryor falls short of qualifying for the inner circle of that domain. His act too obviously gives away his bluffing. By contemporary standards, the consummate political performers are those who keep their hold card hidden until after it is too late for their marks to do anything but turn out their pockets, grimly marveling at the skillful cheat who emptied them.
Such are the Republican "Judas Goats" now paddling out from shore to meet the wave of grassroots reaction roiling toward the Obama faction's expanding socialist beachhead. Turning to ride the wave, the GOP's political surfers will stand firmly upon their moveable platforms. And they will pretend to be moving toward the same objective as the turbulent wave they ride upon.
But once that wave sets them ashore, the Republicans who ride it to victory will end up on the self-same beachhead as Obama. As they run ashore, it will finally become clear that they were all along running toward the same elitist faction objective as Obama. How sad that many well-intentioned Americans, rising up within the grassroots tide that is critical to their prospect of victory, still fail or refuse to take account of the evident facts that plainly foretell this treacherous result.
Of course, human beings have a more than metaphorical advantage over waves. Voters do not have to support the (probably treacherous) would-be pilots paddling out to guide them toward the elitist faction's beachhead. They could construct a vehicle capable of turning away from the destination chosen, in the elitist faction's agenda, to be the Devil's Island of their renewed captivity.
America's founders adopted a form of government in the United States that recognized and took advantage of this human natural advantage. Provided we accept the God-endowed natural rule that makes it possible, Americans can, by election, choose a destination that represents our divinely-appointed better destiny, raising up as we do so the pilots and crews to get us there.
But many well-intentioned and patriotic Americans have lost sight of their God-endowed capacity for political choice. They have been brainwashed by more than a generation of conformity to the standards and practices of a morally debased understanding of politics. Consciously or not, they have imbibed the notion that, when they act as citizens, they are forbidden to guide their thoughts by anything that has to do with God's authority.
Yet and still, the true possibility of their liberty has everything to do with God. So the blindness induced by their aversion, as citizens, to His name and authority cuts them off from the capacity to see themselves clearly. For, with God as their leader, they are not just supposed to be the matter but the makers of their nation's political destiny.
This raises the question I examine in the most recent posting on my blog: Without God, are Americans no longer a nation?
December 10, 2013
There are many these days who bloviate passionately against Barack Obama's misdeeds. Meanwhile, they refuse to back the only strategy that can constitutionally end his abuses before it's too late.
President Warren G. Harding described bloviating as "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing." Reportedly, he himself was one of its primordial master craftsmen.
But what politician these days is content to "say nothing" when he or she has the opportunity to advance one of the lies, false appearances, or plausible misrepresentations the whole Machiavellian scheme of our politics depends on for its power?
The Harding era's infamous "Teapot Dome" bribery scandal once flagged the pinnacle of American political corruption. Especially at the top, America's current twin-party scam makes the Harding era look like the good old days. In Harding's day, the people involved in the scandal lost their positions. Even at the highest level they were investigated and held accountable.
These days the elitist faction's twin-party puppets won't even investigate wrongdoing seriously. I think they're afraid that doing so would actually do some good, raising the standard for public service. But where evil and lesser evil are the prevailing standards of political "integrity," a good standard for public service threatens the whole system.
Just as bad money drives good from the marketplace, the ascendancy of Machiavellian corruption drives all but the semblance of true public service from the political arena. The measure of political skill now lies in the gap between what a politician claims to be and what the factual record proves he is.
To WND's editor, Joseph Farah, it rightly seems incongruous, for example, that someone with Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor's provably antithetical record dares to put on the mask of a Bible-believing Christian. But if, like Bill Clinton before him, he pulls it off successfully, the grotesque political standards of our time will mark this as proof of his fitness for admission into the innermost circles of the elitist faction's domain of power.
I suspect, however, that Pryor falls short of qualifying for the inner circle of that domain. His act too obviously gives away his bluffing. By contemporary standards, the consummate political performers are those who keep their hold card hidden until after it is too late for their marks to do anything but turn out their pockets, grimly marveling at the skillful cheat who emptied them.
Such are the Republican "Judas Goats" now paddling out from shore to meet the wave of grassroots reaction roiling toward the Obama faction's expanding socialist beachhead. Turning to ride the wave, the GOP's political surfers will stand firmly upon their moveable platforms. And they will pretend to be moving toward the same objective as the turbulent wave they ride upon.
But once that wave sets them ashore, the Republicans who ride it to victory will end up on the self-same beachhead as Obama. As they run ashore, it will finally become clear that they were all along running toward the same elitist faction objective as Obama. How sad that many well-intentioned Americans, rising up within the grassroots tide that is critical to their prospect of victory, still fail or refuse to take account of the evident facts that plainly foretell this treacherous result.
Of course, human beings have a more than metaphorical advantage over waves. Voters do not have to support the (probably treacherous) would-be pilots paddling out to guide them toward the elitist faction's beachhead. They could construct a vehicle capable of turning away from the destination chosen, in the elitist faction's agenda, to be the Devil's Island of their renewed captivity.
America's founders adopted a form of government in the United States that recognized and took advantage of this human natural advantage. Provided we accept the God-endowed natural rule that makes it possible, Americans can, by election, choose a destination that represents our divinely-appointed better destiny, raising up as we do so the pilots and crews to get us there.
But many well-intentioned and patriotic Americans have lost sight of their God-endowed capacity for political choice. They have been brainwashed by more than a generation of conformity to the standards and practices of a morally debased understanding of politics. Consciously or not, they have imbibed the notion that, when they act as citizens, they are forbidden to guide their thoughts by anything that has to do with God's authority.
Yet and still, the true possibility of their liberty has everything to do with God. So the blindness induced by their aversion, as citizens, to His name and authority cuts them off from the capacity to see themselves clearly. For, with God as their leader, they are not just supposed to be the matter but the makers of their nation's political destiny.
This raises the question I examine in the most recent posting on my blog: Without God, are Americans no longer a nation?
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
