Being American once meant surviving through extraordinary difficulty and thriving in the cradle of extraordinary promise. Beating the odds stood as a badge of honor worn proudly along with the red, white, and blue. Today, the need for mental toughness hasn’t diminished, but the payoff for perseverance is hardly the same. The gauntlet is a heavy burden to bear. Between unemployment, underemployment, increasing taxes, Constitutional mutiny, civil unrest, deteriorating returns on educational investment, family unit destruction, and an elite few staging the destiny of the entire planet, the citizenry has grown restless with washed up political promises.
In the age of perversion, inversion, and distortion of truth, actions have consequences, inaction has dire consequences, and words have catastrophic consequences. It’s hard completely dismissing the verbal vitriol being flung around with reckless abandon and the hypersensitivity of others to what should otherwise be well-disposed observation. Do we even recognize our country anymore?
The challenges confronting the American people are igniting passion and underscoring the collective loss of intestinal fortitude that once made us exceptional as a nation.
If we were to agree on one thing, it might be that the current geopolitical winds and social unrest couldn’t precipitate any finer of an opportunity for our own unraveling. The mix of toxic social, economic, and existential ingredients are beyond what any natural born American has likely experienced. On the event horizon we bare witness to rhetoric on immeasurable dangers that are hard to quantify, leaving the public dubious about the shadowy motives behind the leaders pushing the narratives. These dangers include threats of climate disasters, economic peril, and nuclear war. Did we mention the food, fuel, medical, and water shortages?
How do we preserve our most valuable relationships among family and friends? How do we ensure those we care about most are sufficiently prepared, despite a growing internal divide between the informed and the uninformed within our own circles?
American statesman Daniel Webster once said, “Wisdom begins at the end.” Does it have to?
We can parse the facts until (insert your idiom here about wasting time), but the debate is over. Edmond Mbiaka once ruminated, “The problem with a lot of people is that they procrastinate as if tomorrow doesn’t have some tasks of its own.”
Isn’t it that, the obvious is only obvious when it’s happening to someone else? America is in trouble, and the time to prepare is now! When massive things are in motion, the little ones get hurt, which is especially true if the little ones are who’s driving the movement. It’s clear from watching recent political events that movements within our republic are underway. It’s also evident that money and global interests from outside are funding a third and more insidious political objective.
We’re watching the rebirth of classical liberty. An uprising, driven by disgust for elected and appointed bureaucratic looters bent on concealing their crimes behind the power vested in them from the American public– financial, political, and military power that was largely built on the hard work, sacrifice, and backs of our ancestors. We are fighting for our liberty, but that doesn’t mean the pain on the other side of the battle won’t be significant, win or lose. We have to be ready to sustain ourselves for both. Many of us still seek simple prosperity. But is that even possible when our instincts tell us to substitute preparation for prosperity and preservation for righteous preeminence? The state of the union has left hard working Americans asking bitter questions. There’s plenty of unanswered questions and plenty of blame to spread around. Why are hard working people carrying the rest of the country at a nearly 1:2 ratio based on working age people? Should we blame the people, the politicians, or the elite?
There’s as much conjecture as fact and more opinions than the latter two elements combined. Preservation begins with acknowledging some important details about our current political circus:
- The vitriol of the recent election has been tantamount to civil war without the weapons.
- Why lose friends or family over something that is not in your control?
- Avoid being a keyboard warrior on social media.
- The controllers are using divide and conquer; they’re balkanizing America.
Is preparation really necessary? How are we so sure disaster is imminent? The answers expand well beyond the scope of this article, but important historical insights can help ensure we’re asking the right questions.
America is in the last of seven major stages seen with the rise and fall of all great nations, according to Sir John Glubb, author of The Fate of Empires and Search For Survival:’
- The Age of Pioneers
- The Age of Conquests
- The Age of Commerce
- The Age of Affluence
- The Age of Intellect
- The Age of Decadence – America has arrived and this stage includes: Defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, influx of foreigners, the welfare state and a weakening of religion, which are all due to excessive wealth and power for too long, selfishness, love of money and the loss of a sense of duty.
Many of the empires including ancient Assyria, Greece, the Roman Republic, Arabia, Mameluke, Ottomon Spanish, Romanov Russia and Britain, lasted approximately 250 years. Others lasted just over 200 years.
In the year 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough, expanded on “The Fall of The Athenian Republic.” Tyler explained that “a democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
Alexander Tyler differed from Sir John Glubb in his progression of a great civilization but not by much:
- From bondage to spiritual faith. Equivalent: Europeans broke away from British rule.
- From spiritual faith to great courage. Equivalent: We had the American Revolution.
- From courage to liberty. Equivalent: We declared our independence and crafted the Constitution.
- From liberty to abundance. Equivalent: Start of the Industrial Revolution
- From abundance to complacency. Equivalent: Period following WWII
- From complacency to apathy. Equivalent: Period of Woodstock through the 1980’s
- From apathy to dependence. Equivalent: 1990’s – present and continuing
- From dependence back into bondage. Equivalent: Actively happening with destruction of U.S. Constitution, social welfare dependence, and credit debt
Additional harbingers that America is on the brink of a catastrophe include:
- In the first six months of this year, foreign central banks sold (dumped) a record of $192 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds. (U.S. Debt used to operate the government) –Source: CNN Money
- Investors are moving toward precious metals because paper isn’t safer these days.
- The U.S. dollar depends almost entirely on petroleum to prop up its own value. Crude is trading at or below $50 a barrel, which is not only unsafe, but unsustainable
- Nations are increasingly trading currencies outside of the dollar. Consider the Gold Trade Note now traded by the BRICS nations.
- Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s largest banks, is close to complete failure holding a whopping $75 Trillion in derivatives, the very cause of Lehman Brothers failure. Just for perspective, the U.S. banking system was bailed out with a mere $13 Trillion.
- Russia has moved ships into the Baltic and is headed toward the Mediterranean Sea with eight nuclear-armed ships to prepare for war with the United States.
No wonder the citizenry is on edge. If you’ve been feeling like things just weren’t right, you’re correct. The list we provide here is just the tip of the iceberg.
Preparation begins with a reality check. We live in a time of giants, and it’s going to demand guts, the guts to confront the persistent evil devouring our common struggle with the falchion of tyranny. However, being a giant isn’t measured only in how we fight large-scale battles. We’ll depend more on our communities and our networks to sustain ourselves during difficult times. How we handle friends and family today, who don’t share our political views, will largely determine the outcome tomorrow.
Q: Where do we go from here? How do we begin to solve our differences?
A: Consider sticking with the Constitution and the tenants of time-tested faith by focusing on a Higher Power to guide your reason. Despite the spread of online lies, our Founding Fathers based the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence on Ancient Israel and their belief in God. There is nowhere in our Constitution that you’ll find the words “separation of church and state.” Those were words written by Thomas Jefferson in a letter he wrote in 1802. Of course, you can find quotes from John Adams and others about the church, but you’ll find many more with talk about belief in God. Any argument against God is for the sake of argument rather than a legitimate constitutional basis for destroying religious freedom.
Q: What about the U.S. Supreme Court?
A: Its only job was and is to ensure that new laws are consistent with the Constitution. Robust arguments persist online about the Founding Fathers intentions. Were they against God and people of faith in government? As many thrust themselves into their newfound fame on social media and use it to attack the system we’ve known, by substituting of their own version of reality, patriotic Americans are left with the proverbial head-scratch. We’re forced to ask how many times we need to revisit the law of the land that was settled just over 225 years ago.
Q: How do we make room for everyone at the table when the lines are already drawn?
A: Consider treating others how we expect to be treated and respecting their God given rights– those same rights that progressives argue originated from Godless men and thus can be taken away. Don’t forget the part of the Declaration of Independence that says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
When someone’s attacking your faith by calling it a fairy tale or myth, just remember believing that everything is random and somehow worked out this way has no scientific basis with any substantiated evidence. Guess what that’s called? A fairy tale!
Q: How do we have discussions with relatives and friends that are adversarial? Knowing how their positions are formed, helps tolerate their intolerance. Modern progressive logic is built on three major tenants:
1. Insisting that what’s wrong is right.
2. Believing the truth is lie and a lie is the truth.
3. That stereotype labels used by the Main Stream Media are facts and constantly using them as reason enough to avoid further discussion.
A: Take the George Patton approach: “Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” Remember, the debate is over and even progressives will admit that the outlook isn’t good, even if they disagree on the solutions.
I recommend following five critical preparedness tips:
- Extend the olive branch before you eat the olives.
- Understand, it’s never wrong to do the right thing. Live it, teach it, and encourage it in others.
- Correct critical shortfalls and come together. Which skills are missing in your community? Learning brings us together and instills pride in what we provide.
- Lead by example. Never attack those you care about in front of others. Show restraint until you’re in private.
- Set priorities and stick to them to ensure survival. When we’re hungry, thirsty, and short on supplies following a major systemic failure, it won’t matter who won the argument.