Category: Culture

Tom Brokaw wrote a couple books invoking the idea that the generation prior to the Baby boomers should be referred to as “The Greatest Generation.” Now, this generation includes my parents (barely) and my grandparents. Now, I love my kin as much as the other person but to suggest that that generation is “The Greatest Generation” begs a great number of questions.

After all it was this generation that,

1.) Made communism an international phenomenon. Sure, the greatest generation contributed to victory in WW II but what kind of victory was it when we put all of Eastern and much of Central Europe behind the Iron Curtain? What kind of victory was it when we put much of Asia behind a Communistic Bamboo curtain?

2.)Gave approval and participated in the un-Christian and barbaric acts that were the bombing of Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuking of Japan. If Christian views of warfare had been followed such a thing could have never happened.

3.) Were standing guard when abortion was legalized. I’m supposed to get all misty eyed about a generation that stood by while abortion became a sacrament of the West?

4.) Were responsible for “The Great Society,” “The Welfare – Warfare State,” and the Military Industrial complex. In short it was on the “greatest generation’s” watch that we became increasingly and perhaps irretrievably socialist.

5.) Stood by and watched while gambling became legalized, while contraception became socially approved, and while immigration laws were changed in such a way that this country was assured that it would no longer be have a singular identifiable culture. Further the greatest generation watched as laws were put into place that feminized us as a people.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the generation in question didn’t have strengths. Neither am I suggesting that my generation has done well. It’s done even worst than their parents and grandparents. What I am suggesting is that is stretches credulity to suggest that the generation prior to the boomers should be referred to as “The Greatest Generation.”

This is why I’ve never bought into the whole “Greatest generation” bumble-fumble.

During the New Deal the Roosevelt administration came up with a bright idea as to how to keep agricultural prices high. Roosevelt, through his Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), proposed to pay farmers for decreasing their production. The thinking was that by decreasing the supply they would increase the prices for agricultural products. This however was deemed not sufficient enough. The Roosevelt administration went further in their price propping schemes and legislated the killing of six million pigs and the plowing under of ten million acres of cotton. At the time, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, described the wholesale destruction of crops and livestock as “a cleaning up of the wreckage from the old days of unbalanced production.”

Now in 2009 the Obama administration has come up with the bright idea as to how to prop up the auto industry. Obama, through his “Cash for Clunkers,” is paying the owners of older cars to destroy their automobiles. The thinking is that by decreasing the supply of bad cars that will increase both the productivity of the auto industry while at the same time saving on energy. The effect of this action will be to,

1.) Increase the price of used cars.

As older cars are destroyed the effect will be to shrink the supply of older cars. With the number of older cars diminished the effect will be that the older cars that remain on the market will increase in price since demand, remaining consistent, will find that it takes more dollars to purchase a older car since supply is constricted.

This is bad news for those young people who are looking to purchase their first car.

2.) Increase personal debt

People, who are pursuing the “Cash for Clunkers” program, are people, on the whole, who will go from owning their vehicles outright to people who have taken on debt in order to finance that new car they purchased.

3.) Increases public debt

The government is going into debt to the tune of billions of dollars it doesn’t have in order to fund this “cash for clunkers” program. The government doesn’t have any money that it does not first steal from its citizens. Funds to pay for “Cash for Clunkers” are funds stolen from the American taxpayer.

4.) Create an entitlement mentality

“Cash for Clunkers” is a middle class entitlement. These kinds of programs turn the middle class into a slave class as the expectation grows that entitlements are acceptable as long as they are entitlements that serve my wants and needs. With this program the government is not giving away money as much as it is buying slaves.

And none of what we have said so far begins to approach the problem of taking perfectly good used cars and destroying them. “Waste not, want not,” keeps pounding through my head.

Oh, and could anybody point to where the Federal government finds authority in the US Constitution for “Cash for Clunkers”?

http://www.covenantnews.com/selbrede090201.htm

If Dr. Selbrede is correct then one serious implication of his article is that it would be counter productive to the interest of King Christ for Christians to go into the military in order to support a Empire-State that is seeking to advance what amounts to a Christ-hating Christian destroying agenda.

Look, there was a story recently where American military chaplains were destroying bibles in Afghanistan so as not to offend our Afghan “hosts.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/bibles-destroye.html

Why would any Christian think it is acceptable to support a military and government by their involvement in supporting a policy that forbids witnessing for Jesus and burns Bibles that were printed in the language and local dialect of the Afghan people?

The State is the current closest approximation to the Anti-Christ. When Christians do anything to support the state on the scale that enlistment into the Military reflects, they are at the same time not supporting the Kingdom of God.

Scripture commands that Kings are to kiss the son but we American Christians lend our support to a state that refuses to Kiss the Son by turning a blind eye to our sons (and daughters) enlisting into the military.

I don’t get it, and I don’t get why such reasoning is that difficult to understand OR agree with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwrBAMOgS_Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5h4PFBuzvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmr-tFPUx9M

“Theodore Forstmann and George Will are the latest in a long series of writers and national leaders who have warned against the seductive appeal of government handouts. For example, 1960’s lecturer / columnist Henry M. Wriston, politician George Romney, and even a Vogue magazine editorial once admonished Americans about ‘luxuries-become-necessities’ leading to a complacence in which security is valued over freedom. Today, the typical scenario for weaning the masses from independence, says Forstmann, goes like this: ‘Give as many people as possible a taste of entitlement — give everyone, as our President likes to say a ‘stake in the system.” Notice this is not the same as a stake in liberty, or a stake in being an American. A ‘stake in the system’ means dedication to milking as much from the bureaucratic process as possible….

In pushing the Universal health care scheme, the Clinton Administration sought technical advice from countries already awash in socialized medicine. What most people don’t know, says Forstmann, is that the administration also sought political advice from those countries regarding how to push the idea. For example, ‘the German parliament advised that the most certain path to becoming a permanent governing entity was to socialize health care.’ Presumably, as soon as everyone had a taste of ‘free’ health care they would be reticent to give it up and, in fact, would insist on more. In the end, no amount of health care provided would ever be enough…”

From B. K. Eakman’s
Cloning Of The American Mind