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Jewish World Review Nov. 9, 2012/24 Mar-Cheshvan, 5773 Changing Demographics? More Like Enduring Ignorance By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
By now, you've heard from most of the chattering classes as to why Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, did so well on election night. You've heard about changing demographics, an opportune storm, media malfeasance, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.
Let me make it much simpler. On election night, for the umpteenth time, I went to the local food mart, and gave the high school kid working the register a five dollar bill for something that cost $2.32. She punched it into the computer, after which I gave her the thirty-two cents. By now, most of you know where this is going: the dazed look, alternating between the change and me, as if I'd handed her the Dead Sea Scrolls and demanded a translation on the spot. Of course if I'd used that analogy to make light of the moment, it wouldn't have mattered: these kids aren't just mathematically illiterate, they wouldn't know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are either — unless it was the name of a new app for their I-phones.
On the way home, I had the radio on. Without a trace of embarrassment or irony in his voice, the newscaster spoke about a mock vote taken at the local high school. "Barack Obama won in a landslide," he gushed. After two generations of leftist indoctrination by unionized educators, whose quid pro quo relationship with the Democrat party is written in stone, I don't doubt it for a minute. Nor was I particularly shocked earlier this year when I wrote about three kids in their late teens and early twenties, who couldn't place the date of the Civil War within the 50-year spread I gave them to do so. Literacy? If it can't be reduced to 140 characters for Twitter's sake, it no longer matters.
None of this is particularly new. In fact, when I taught reading and study skills in NYC schools thirty years ago, it was exactly the same. Those "kids" are now in their 40s. The only thing that semi-shocked me back then was the fact that most of them were no longer ashamed of being ignorant. In fact, many of them were proud of their cluelessness. Now, most of them barely know what shame is, other than having someone say something bad about them on FaceBook. And pride is all about owning the latest gadget, replacing the gadget that replaced the gadget before that.
There's your so-called demographic. We've become a nation with a majority of weak-thinkers, allied with those more than willing to do their thinking for them, as long as they get "free stuff" in return. What is the minority offering as an alternative? Freedom.
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Unfortunately, freedom is hard. For one thing, it requires critical thinking skills. For another, it requires effort. Tyranny is easy. Just do whatever someone tells you to do, whether it's a bureaucrat — or a cash register. What was this election really all about? We are now certain that it is impossible to change the trajectory of nation comprised of millions of people who can't make change.
As a result, I have a suggestion for the Republicans, one they won't hear from anyone else: give Barry and Company everything they want, without an iota of resistance. Let 'em raise taxes and the debt ceiling, gut the military, and run up trillions of dollars of additional deficits and debt. Then stand back, and let an utterly corrupt media chronicle the demise — without being able to pin an ounce of the ensuing socialist catastrophe on an "obstructionist" GOP.
Harry Reid wants to end the filibuster? Tell him it won't be necessary. For the next four years, Republicans will do what a certain Senator from Illinois made a career of doing: they will simply vote "present" on every bill put before them in both houses of Congress. In effect, give Democrats they same unassailable majority they had in 2008 — the same one that led directly to the passage of Obamacare.
Radical? Compared to what? Watching a president get re-elected, despite four major scandals, the worst recovery on record, and the explosion of entitlements — all of which was blamed on the aforementioned Republican obstructionism? Being blamed for everything that will go wrong from 2012 to 2016, completely irrespective of reality or the truth?
It's time to get real: the only thing Republicans can do is delay the inevitable. Why bother? The sooner progressives and the media bring America to its knees, the sooner the people who know better can put the nation back on its feet.
I know what you're thinking. What about the hell we'll have to go through between now and then? A couple of answers. First, it's time for the voting majority to get exactly what they voted for — in spades. Second, and this applies not just to America, but to every socialist country that has also run out of other people's money to spend: better an out and out meltdown and genuine recovery after two or three years, than the ongoing twilight of semi-misery we're currently enduring. Misery that could last a decade more — or longer.
Any attempt to meet Democrats "half-way" is a fool's errand. There is no split-the-difference, get along to go along, compromise that can be reached between tyranny and freedom. With respect to the rule of law and the Constitution, you're either in or you're out. A nation is either solvent or bankrupt. It is either exceptional or ordinary. The American majority voted for tyranny, bankruptcy and mediocrity.
Give the people what they want — until they can't stand it anymore.
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© 2012, Arnold Ahlert |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||||||||
