Sunday, June 15, 2014

How America Was Lost: A Chronicle of Our Decline


“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”
 -George Orwell
I just picked up a copy of the new book by Paul Craig Roberts “How America Was Lost” and must say that it is an impressive chronicle of the decline of what was once at least theoretically a free country into a sucking black hole of fascism, corruption and the moral abrogation that has made it all possible. Dr. Roberts, a former assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration, associate Editor at the pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal and a prolific columnist calls it as he sees it and it is not a pretty sight. In “How America Was Lost” a wide ranging selection of his columns spanning the years from 2008-2013, the author spares the criminal Washington establishment nothing in crusading against the moral rot of the warfare and police state that erupted out of the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center to wage a bitter war of attrition against the US Constitution as well as traditional American values.
 I have long been a fan of Dr. Roberts having first read his work when as a principled conservative he dared to utter the heresy that the Bush administration and the larger Republican party were something of an abomination with much in common with traditional foreign totalitarian regimes. He as others who dared to blaspheme the gospel of the neoconservative Project For the New American Century were run out of the GOP as the ideological purity purge raged.  Those were dark days, prior to the advent of the modern internet and social networking as they exist today as the last refuge for those who dare to seek the truth and to question the agenda and actions of the criminals in high places, primarily Washington.
EXCERPTS
Will Americans wake up in time? I wish I could answer, “yes,” but I regret that Americans are an insouciant people. They are unaware. Americans are more concerned with sports events, sales, and which celebrities are sleeping together than they are with their liberty. Washington can create a police state, because there are insufficient citizens with the intelligence, education, and awareness to stop Washington.
(from Obama’s Expanding Kill List)
US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.In other words, to obey the law constitutes “treason to America.”
US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by “a culture of disclosure” and that this “serious and growing problem” could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.
If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state that we don’t need.
(from The Collapse of Western Morality)
Republicans and conservative Americans are still fighting Big Government in its welfare state form. Apparently, they have never heard of the militarized police state form of Big Government, or, if they have, they are comfortable with it and have no objection.
Republicans, including those in the House and Senate, are content for big government to initiate wars without a declaration of war or even Congress’ assent, and to murder with drones citizens of countries with which Washington is not at war. Republicans do not mind that federal “security” agencies spy on American citizens without warrants and record every email, Internet site visited, Facebook posting, cell phone call, and credit card purchase. Republicans in Congress even voted to fund the massive structure in Utah in which this information is stored.
But heaven forbid that big government should do anything for a poor person.
(from The Institutionalizaton of Tyranny)
The only shortcoming and this is by no means any sort of criticism is that the book really only covers the descent during the period of the reign of Barack Obama. This may sell the great work of Dr. Roberts short in the opinion of some in that he has not included the Bush years in which he was as honest and vigorous a critic of Obama’s war criminal predecessor as he is of the current occupant of the Oval Office. I would love to see a future volume published that includes the hundreds of fine pieces that he wrote during the period leading up to 2008. He does however have a website which has an archive of this work and I would strongly recommend checking it out. It can however be argued that the Obama regime has been far more damaging to the long-term prospects of America in that the current narcissist in chief has not only codified the crimes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their burgeoning list of accomplices in a myriad of high crimes but in many ways refined upon them.
Obama as we have learned thanks to the patriotic efforts of former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden presided over the expansion of a metastasizing high-tech surveillance colossus that spies on millions of otherwise law abiding Americans and then stores the data that has been mined for some vaguely defined future use. This will surely be available for when one of Obama’s successors decides that it is time to truly up the ante and begin the pickups, inquisitions, detentions, show trials and perhaps even executions. He has also presided over the new drone warfare programs that have been used for the targeted killings of American citizens without due process.
The true measure of one’s credibility in these sad days of imperial overreach and ultimately collapse is consistency and Paul Craig Roberts has been as much so as they are when it comes to taking on the forces that have overseen the transformation of America into The Homeland.
Published by Clarity Press

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