How did they do it and how will we undo it

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Permalink Reply by lowkey on February 10, 2009 at 10:00pm

Well I believe it took a little longer than 45 years but it has accelerated lately.

As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America:
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

And as Alexander Tyler wrote in the Cycle of Democracy (1770):
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a louse fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.”

As I see it:
1776-1870: Bondage
1870-1928: Spiritual Faith
1928-40: Liberty
1940-1955: Great Courage
1955-69s: Abundance
1970-1986: Selfishness
1986-1998: Complacency
1998-2001: Apathy
2001-present: Growing Dependency

(Dates were picked quickly and without any detailed verification. May need to be adjusted.)

I don't believe that the "shadow government" can actually exert that much control. It's more a matter that they have accepted and planed for the natural course of events. This awareness allows them to anticipate and plan for future events more accurately than others.

In the end, it's not about stopping the shadow government but rather about helping others to open their eyes to the repression of the state. As more and more people come to the same realizations that we have, the greater the chances that we can once again break free of the bondage.

Unfortunately I don't believe that the path to lasting change is something that we will see in our lives but rather something we do for the future.

As Nikola Tesla said:
"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. "

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I know too many quotes but they're three of my favorites and it came together nice, didn't it? :-)

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Permalink Reply by Giacona on March 3, 2009 at 9:46pm

We can also look at it in the idea of the Liberal-Conservative Coalition theory. Any readers of Howard Zinn's People's History of the 20th Century know this one. What's happened is not necessarily a shadow, but a dog-and-pony show put on by our ruling class. We act, and they respond. However, their response is not one of a fundamental change in policy, rather one that will simply pacify the conflagration of unrest.

We don't want war?

They simply reduce troops and leave American bases and embassies intact.

We want action on climate change?

They create a carbon-tax credit system with dubious actual gains.

It's all crap that looks great for PR and nice in a newspaper, but when it gets down to hard facts, it seems everything our government does lacks in effective, concrete change.

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