Remembering 2004 in an Emerging Old World

Yesterday I finished Newt Gingrich’s “To Try Men’s Souls,” a novel about the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776. In this battle, American forces defeated heretofore unvanquished Hessian mercenaries who were in the pay of the British Crown. The Hessians viewed the American Revolutionaries as a peasant rabble and when Americans tried to surrender during their defeats of the late summer and fall of 1776, the Hessians massacred them without mercy. After the Americans won at Trenton, the Hessians were expecting a lynching, or worse and greatly feared this. Against all their expectations, George Washington ordered that Hessian prisoners be treated in a Christian (not Deist) manner. They were given medical treatment and Washington promised to deal severely with anyone who tortured or molested them. Washington said that he was showing them a new way in a new world, so different from the old. Many Hessians defected to the American Cause because of this and other astounding new ideas of Liberty.

Since then America has gone from triumph to triumph, ending slavery, Nazism and Communism, bringing about a New Free World. It would be difficult to forget the heady days of 1989-1991 when the colossus of liberty seemed to bestride the world and the latest apparition of Statism, Communism, went to the ash heap of history that Reagan prophesied for it and that it so richly deserved. The New World had defeated the Old World where life was nasty, brutish and short, and ruled by tyrants.

In 2004 we seemed on the edge of a new glorious moment, and many at the time compared where we stood that year to 15 years earlier in 1989. For the first time since their ancestors built ziggurats for their Kings, the Iraqi people voted to elect their own leaders. This triumph had ripple effects throughout the Muslim world and wider world as well. In Libya, Moammar Khaddafi gave up a massive stockpile of WMDs-in-the-making and there was talk of his opposition returning to Tripoli. The Lebanese rose up much like the Berliners of 15 years earlier and restored their republic and made the Syrians leave. Even some old enemies of America in Lebanon, like Walid Jumlat, were praising us. Egyptians were demanding more freedom. Saudi Arabia made a Parliament to check the power of its heretofore unchallenged monarch. The newest and most vile apparition of Statism, Islamofascism, was very much on the run and their world was crumbling. And Statist regimes in places like Vietnam and Cuba were very afraid of their future. Old Europe, with its embracing of decay and decaying ideas just sat and pouted.

Bush was very close to being Reagan the Second. He could have been. And his slip was not ALL the fault of his enemies, but he bore much of the responsibility. He was greatly slandered, but some of the criticism of him is true too.

How little the Statists had to fear! Once the pendulum swung back to the Left here in America, the Old World with its rotten old Statism made a comeback too. No one remembers the heady days of 2004 and the nearness to world Liberty we achieved. Today is a day where Statists crack the skulls of any who breathe a word of freedom and the few free people in this world are distracted by trivialities and frivolities.

Western Europeans increasingly kow-tow to Islamofascists and are likely to be under their rule by the end of this century. Russia is rising again and Eastern Europeans, without American help will once again kiss the hand of whatever potentate sits in Moscow. China in control of East Asia. The Warsaw Pact is being resurrected in Latin America by Hugo Chavez. America is truly the last best hope. There is no other bastion of freedom.

The only freedom movement in the world besides the Tea Parties was the Iranian Resistance to its Islamofascist government. This was brutally quashed while we were fixated on Michael Jackson during the Summer of 2009.

What we can expect if the Old World takes over from the Anglo-American New World:

1. Abandonment of Republican Principles or the pretense thereof. At the present time most governments subscribe to republican principles or at least maintain the charade that they do so. Some straddle the fence between these two. If England becomes Muslim and America comes to have little political influence beyond North America, there will be no impetus to remain free in the eyes of Statists around the world. Tyrants will openly flaunt their monarchist/dictatorial designs. Nations which straddle the fence between a pretend republic and the genuine article will also return to dictatorship or possibly oligarchy. And many Republics will be gone with the wind. The modern Republic is an Anglo-American thing. India, China, and the Muslim world do not have republican traditions. Many there will be more than happy to dispense with them.

2. The Restoration of the Institution of Slavery: Slavery is a lucrative business in the Old World. Human beings, useful ones, are almost literally worth their weight in gold. Slavery today does exist, but it is kept on the down low, except in remote areas. If we return to the Old World way of doing things, look for huge slave markets to appear from Lisbon to Hong Kong. Slavery was a part of the human condition of all races until Christian imperative led to its abolition less than two centuries ago. With the Christian Imperative gone and replaced by ideas like Socialism and Islam, which encourage slavery, look for this eternal institution to make its most unwelcome. Most people reading this who live in the New World will never believe this. But bear in mind the goings on in Darfur, Timor, Somalia, Nazi Germany and other places where people are still taken against their will. Without the West to enforce its moral prohibition of slavery, that institution will grow exponentially again.

3. A Medieval Economy: Statist Regimes tend to control their economies. Out of control bureaucracies strap layer after layer of ridiculous regulations on those who do business. This makes economies slow and top-heavy and quite probably collapse. This is not a certainty, but it’s what happened to all nations that went down this road, including Rome and China. Our economy relies on dynamic Capitalism, and if this is encroached upon, our economies, infrastructure and technology will whither.

This is far from it, there will be unintended consequences that no one can think of or imagine. But civilization will definitely be headed towards what they call an Intermediary Period, of which the Middle Ages was a most recent example. An empty era of darkness in between two high civilizations.

But the future is not etched in stone. We do not need to bring back the Old World, we can preserve the New. But we must stand and fight the rising Statist tide. I will not let go of the dreams we dreamt in 2004. We were close. We’ve lost a few battles along the way and the Statists think they are safe again, with their boy Barack in the White House. We can still turn it around. Here in America, the forces of Liberty have the initiative again. We must oppose the Statists as if the entire struggle depended on us. YES WE CAN!!!!!