I am a student of history.

Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it

all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not

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believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis.

Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that

is only now coming into a sharper focus.

 

Something of historic proportions is

happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks

like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there

is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten

to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

 

 

 

We demand and then codify into law

the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can

never pay back? Why?

 

We learn just days ago that the

Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned"

two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but

will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours

and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously

just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the

terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was

a government of "we the people," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders.

Apparently not.

 

We have spent two or more decades

intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

 

We have intentionally dumbed down our

schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we

are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot

write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting,

teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

 

 

We have now established the precedent

of protesting every close election

(now violently in California over a

proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between

one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade

ago?)

 

We have corrupted our sacred

political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically

change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others

to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

 

Now our mortgage industry is

collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our

banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt,

as is Medicare and our entire government, our education system is worse than a

joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is

staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten.

 

 

And we are at war with an enemy we

cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait

to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

 

 

And now we have elected a man no one

knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a

town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with

real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn

about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have

heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense

force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh of course.

The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer

it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

 

 

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be

boiled down to one word: Change. Why?

 

I have never been so afraid for my

country and for my children as I am now.

 

This man campaigned on bringing

people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In

my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart,

and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure.

Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation

again.

 

And that is only the beginning.

And I thought I would never be able

to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those

times, the savior (Hitler) was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the

streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know

was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around

people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage

through great oratory. Conservative "losers" read it right now.

 

And promises. Economic times were

tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and

waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that

his "brown shirts" would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly

elected to office, a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great

Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power,

department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids

joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How

did he get the people on his side? He (Hitler) did it promising jobs to the

jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial

complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control,

health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill

pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world. He did it

with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of

justice and . . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

 

 

(Look it up if you think I am

exaggerating.)

 

Read your history books. Many people

objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun

of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while

seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was

booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

 

 

Don't forget that Germany was the

most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums,

hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years-a shorter

time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency-it was rounding up its own

citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents,

and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The

road to Hell is paved with them.

 

As a practical thinker, one not

overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what

the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with

disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of

seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another

latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.

 

Some people scoff at me, others

laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never

been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and

why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.