We all know the government is spending freely…. but do we really understand how much? Can we truly put things into proportion? I hope this video helps do just that.
H/T: Jason Pye
This past weekend, I took my wife to see the film Valkyrie. Featuring Tom Cruise, Valkyrie is already ranked among the top five films of the season. Valkyrie details the plot of July 20, 1944 devised by German officers to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Cruise played the mastermind of the plot Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
I make no claim to have a depth of understanding of Hitler’s National Socialism and the details of the War effort. However, I was raised by a father who was a World War II veteran who was present on D-Day and both uncles served in the European theater during that great War.
One of my duties as Music Associate at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, AL, is to play the organ for the annual Veterans Day service. The first of these for me was one year ago. The one part of the service that really struck me was the reading of the names of all U.S. military personnel who had died in all wars during the past year. A staggering 336 names were printed in the program and read, amidst the background of a snare drum roll, with the ominous boom of a bass drum after each name. With each boom of that drum, a penetrating, sinking feeling came over me as I thought of how the loss of that one life impacted so many loved ones. It was the longest part of the service, and it went on and on, for some 45 or 50 minutes.
Tom Hanks has caught a great deal of controversy for comments he made regarding World War II:
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods,” he said. “They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different.”
In both interviews, he made the same conclusion:
“Does that sound familiar to what’s going on today?” he said on MSNBC, comparing the 60-year-old conflict to the modern war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This, of course, raised the ire of some very high-profile conservatives, including the immensely distinguished Victor Davis Hanson:
“Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus,” wrote Victor Davis Hanson of Pajamas Media.
As I watch the tragic news footage emanating from Haiti, certain pieces of news are significantly striking. Among them is reports from news of calm in the country. While the calm may be due to despair over what has happened to them, I can’t help but be reminded of books like Hiroshima by John Hersey, in which a degree of acceptance and calm befell the Japanese after the complete devastation of their country from world war.
Like the Japanese, the Haitians may have a chance for real renewal. With everything destroyed and everyone left in the same boat, the division that leads to civil war is not there. Like Japan as well, Haiti will need the support of the world to create the infrastructure for a lasting and functional society. Nothing is impossible.
To aid those affected by disaster, please go to the website of the American Red Cross.
As Obama continues his negotiations on nuclear weapons with the Russian government, he would do well to remember the mistakes made by American policy-makers who wished to drastically reduce the threat of nuclear weapons in the past. After World War II and the Truman administration’s use of atomic bombs in Japan, many Americans, awed by the power of the bomb to change the nature of war, pressed for policies that would reduce the risk of nuclear war.
President Barack Obama’s skin color clouds one other progressive aspect of his presidency: he is the first post-Baby Boomer elected to the nation’s highest office. This is a cause for celebration, as the Baby Boomers may likely have done more harm to America than any previous generation.
Don’t believe me? Here is a list of the sins of the Boomers, or as I call them, “the Worst Generation:”
The Worst Generation’s crowning achievement is Woodstock. They’re actually proud of the fact that they spent their youth dressed like transients and having sex in the mud. The Greatest Generation’s crowning achievement, on the other hand, was defeating fascism on the beaches of Europe.
Whereas divorce was frowned upon by the Greatest Generation, the Worst Generation left millions of children fatherless and directionless.
The Worst Generaton has left us with a Social Security time bomb.
Economist Ludwig von Mises, a man who witnessed the rise of totalitarian systems of fascism and communism, noted that totalitarian governments thrive in the soil of etatism, or “the trend toward government control of business”. On Mises’ view, etatism went hand-in-hand with economic nationalism and the glorification of war. There is no better example than Nazi Germany, the home of national socialism. Before Hitler could mobilize resources and support for his Lebensraum-oriented war machine, he first nationalized businesses, turning them from entrepreneurial market ventures to servants of the state. But what does that have to do with us?
In my lifetime, several individuals have displayed a quality in public life that sets those individuals apart as giants. Few have epitomized character and principle in public life as did US Senator James B. “Jim” Allen.
Born in Gadsden, AL in 1912, Allen graduated from the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama Law School. Elected to the Alabama Legislature, Jim Allen left the State House to serve in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. Upon his return home, Allen was elected to the State Senate and in 1950 progressed to serve as Lt. Governor of the State of Alabama. Allen served a second term as Lt. Governor from 1963-67 and was elected to the US Senate in 1968.
There was a period in American history where economic turmoil turned Americans over to unprecedented expansions of governmental authority. This was the sort of thing we got in return:
jason [at] unitedliberty [dot] org
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