The End of American Military Power

We haven't yet reached the end of American military power, but you can see it from here.  Wes Pruden has the story:

Many of these soldiers, sailors and Marines feel betrayed by the senior officers of the services, beginning with the commander in chief. The old customs and traditions which have held the services together through war and peace have been scorned and trashed, replaced with the politically correct attitudes and regulations that gag real men. Even saying so is a sure way for an officer to ruin a career. The men in the ranks understand this, too.

The Army’s Center for Army Leadership at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., asked 16,800 commissioned and non-commissioned officers whether they think “the Army is headed in the right direction to prepare for the challenges of the next 10 years.” Their answers, as reported by CNS.com, ought to be enough to scare a commander in chief straight. His defense chief, too. But it won’t, because they’re exactly the men responsible for the survey results.

Only 26 percent – 1 man in 4 – say they think the Army is on track to continue as the scourge of evildoers who yearn to do the republic ill. Nearly 40 percent say the service is headed in the wrong direction, and 36 percent say they don’t have an opinion (and no doubt if they did, they’re smart enough to keep it to themselves).

The pessimists – or “realists,” as they might be called – cite two reasons. One is the hollowing out of the military as proposed by President Obama, and the other is the stifling effects of the politically correct run amok. They don’t understand why the men entrusted to manage the Army go along without protest with the nonsense mandated by the White House. Generals and admirals, just like shavetail lieutenants, know who punches their tickets.

 The Politically Correct Army depends on a poor economy for its recruits, and the public schools training those recruits will, increasingly, produce men and women who are poorly suited to the discipline of military service.  One shudders to consider what will be left of the military after four more years of President Obama. 

And yet, consider it we must.  With the automatic budget cuts coming to the military at the end of this year, which no one has acted to prevent, new projects will have to be cancelled, old ones scaled back.  Ships will be mothballed, without being replaced.  Manpower will be cut, but it may still be difficult to find sufficient recruits of adequate quality.  Personnel currently serving should not be counting on pay raises between promotions.

Moreover, with declining discipline, I predict a day when we see surveys rating military bases as the best "party bases", much like we now people rating colleges as the best "party schools."  I can't wait to have my tax money go for that; can you?

Planning for the Revolution -- by the U.S. Army

The Army is making plans on how to operate with the U.S. against U.S. citizens:

A key and understudied aspect of full spectrum operations is how to conduct these operations within American borders. If we face a period of persistent global conflict as outlined in successive National Security Strategy documents, then Army officers are professionally obligated to consider the conduct of operations on U.S. soil. Army capstone and operating concepts must provide guidance concerning how the Army will conduct the range of operations required to defend the republic at home. In this paper, we posit a scenario in which a group of political reactionaries take over a strategically positioned town and have the tacit support of not only local law enforcement but also state government officials, right up to the governor. Under present law, which initially stemmed from bad feelings about Reconstruction, the military’s domestic role is highly circumscribed. In the situation we lay out below, even though the governor refuses to seek federal help to quell the uprising (the usual channel for military assistance), the Constitution allows the president broad leeway in times of insurrection. Citing the precedents of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and Dwight D. Eisenhower sending troops to Little Rock in 1957, the president mobilizes the military and the Department of Homeland Security, to regain control of the city. This scenario requires us to consider how domestic intelligence is gathered and shared, the role of local law enforcement (to the extent that it supports the operation), the scope and limits of the Insurrection Act--for example maintaining a military chain of command but in support of the Attorney General as the Department of Justice is the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) under the conditions of the Act--and the roles of the local, national, and international media.

The Scenario (2016)

The Great Recession of the early twenty-first century lasts far longer than anyone anticipated. After a change in control of the White House and Congress in 2012, the governing party cuts off all funding that had been dedicated to boosting the economy or toward relief. The United States economy has flatlined, much like Japan’s in the 1990s, for the better part of a decade. By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises. Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high. A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants. After almost ten years of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues, nearly one in five Americans reports being vehemently opposed to immigration, legal or illegal, and even U.S.-born nonwhites have become occasional targets for mobs of angry whites.

In May 2016 an extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina, occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council, and placing the mayor under house arrest. Activists remove the chief of police and either disarm local police and county sheriff departments or discourage them from interfering. In truth, this is hardly necessary. Many law enforcement officials already are sympathetic to the tea party’s agenda, know many of the people involved, and have made clear they will not challenge the takeover. The militia members are organized and have a relatively well thought-out plan of action.

With Darlington under their control, militia members quickly move beyond the city limits to establish “check points” – in reality, something more like choke points -- on major transportation lines. Traffic on I-95, the East Coast’s main north-south artery; I-20; and commercial and passenger rail lines are stopped and searched, allegedly for “illegal aliens.” Citizens who complain are immediately detained. Activists also collect “tolls” from drivers, ostensibly to maintain public schools and various city and county programs, but evidence suggests the money is actually going toward quickly increasing stores of heavy weapons and ammunition. They also take over the town web site and use social media sites to get their message out unrestricted.

When the leaders of the group hold a press conference to announce their goals, they invoke the Declaration of Independence and argue that the current form of the federal government is not deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed” but is actually “destructive to these ends.” Therefore, they say, the people can alter or abolish the existing government and replace it with another that, in the words of the Declaration, “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” While mainstream politicians and citizens react with alarm, the “tea party” insurrectionists in South Carolina enjoy a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups. At the press conference the masked militia members’ uniforms sport a unit seal with a man wearing a tricorn hat and carrying a musket over the motto “Today’s Minutemen.” When a reporter asked the leaders who are the “red coats” the spokesman answered, “I don’t know who the redcoats are…it could be federal troops.” Experts warn that while these groups heretofore have been considered weak and marginal, the rapid coalescence among them poses a genuine national threat.

The mayor of Darlington calls the governor and his congressman. He cannot act to counter the efforts of the local tea party because he is confined to his home and under guard. The governor, who ran on a platform that professed sympathy with tea party goals, is reluctant to confront the militia directly. He refuses to call out the National Guard. He has the State Police monitor the roadblocks and checkpoints on the interstate and state roads but does not order the authorities to take further action. In public the governor calls for calm and proposes talks with the local tea party to resolve issues. Privately, he sends word through aides asking the federal government to act to restore order. Due to his previous stance and the appearance of being “pro” tea party goals the governor has little political room to maneuver.

The Department of Homeland Security responds to the governor’s request by asking for defense support to civil law enforcement. After the Department of Justice states that the conditions in Darlington and surrounding areas meet the conditions necessary to invoke the Insurrection Act, the President invokes it.

Chilling.  Contrary to what you may think, the Army is under the control of liberals, and they are making their plans to deal with what they expect from conservatives.

Read the rest here.

A Fool's Game

a manifesto

Western culture has all but fallen.  Only a few dominos are left, and little stands in the way to prevent their fall.

Our culture has been nearly been defeated not by people who exploited its weaknesses, but by those who abused its strengths:  its generosity, its liberty, its sense of order and justice, its courtesy, its idealism, but most of all its tolerance.  In balance, these things made for the richest, most free, most virtuous society in history.  We fought wars for good causes, we went to the moon in peace, we elevated the highest moral values, we treated each other with respect and goodwill -- not perfectly, never perfectly, but better than any human society had ever done in history.

The America of the future has three classes:  A ruling class, a productive class, and a dependent class.  The ruling class will tax and regulate the productive class in order to give largesse to the dependent class, who will then continue to vote to keep the ruling class in power.  One class is to be hosed for the benefit of the other two.  The election of 2012 is our last chance to forestall this from coming about, and our only hope, God help us, is Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. 

It's really not fair.  If President Obama is re-elected, and particularly if the Republicans fail to decisively take control of Congress, America will be locked into course for at least a generation that no future president will be able to substantially alter.  The relationship between the government and the governed will have been altered.  Government will no longer exist for the people, but the people for the government.  People will no longer be self-reliant, they will be reliant upon the government.  The exceptions will be despised, reviled, and eventually hunted down and eliminated.

But if Obama is not re-elected, or if the GOP takes Congress to such an extreme extent as no one is today predicting, it won't mean that we are saved from that outcome.  It will only mean the the outcome will be, temporarily, less certain.

Our choice is not between good and evil, but between mediocrity and evil.  The good work of the Tea Party remains incomplete.  It must now unseat a president if it hopes to gain time to complete its reform work.  This is a completion that is by no means certain.  In the last 70 years, only three incumbent presidents have been defeated for re-election.

The rules of the game of life in America have changed fundamentally.  Increasingly, those who have tried to play by the rules find that the game is rigged against them.  Advancement, at least by honorable means, is less easy, and much less common, than it used to be.  Advancement by dishonorable means, on the other hand, has been easier and more common.  Costs have risen faster than wages.  Government growth has outstripped population growth.  Interlocking directorships, crony capitalism, liberal redistributionism, conservative apathy, and greed at every level have combined to place the middle class everyman in the sights of a cannon that will blow him away entirely.  His slavery is nearly complete, the last of his shackles has only to be locked.

The re-election of Barack Obama will put the seal on a time of public dependence and government oppression unheard-of in the history of the North American continent.  Government will choose whether a man will be born, when he will die, how he will be educated, and what will be his work.  Government will dictate what he is to believe, how he is to be entertained, and how he will live.  It will be done in the name of "fairness" and "equality", but the result will be neither.

This prediction may seem extreme.  But things in America are far worse under Barack Obama than anyone predicted in 2008.  Did anyone in 2008 predict the outrages, the enormities, the privations we have in fact experienced?  No.  As it is, things in most sectors are worse than most people realize.  Our economy is depressed, our culture degraded, our freedom denigrated, and our military decimated.  Morality has been turned upside down.  Virtue has become a weapon used by the immoral against the virtuous.  Courts, once the guardians of justice, have become our black-robed masters, who ride roughshod over law, and precedent, and justice itself, to rule like feudal lords over legislatures and their constituents alike.  Judges in America now order legislatures to pass laws, wielding power that executives can only dream of.

Our borders are porous, and, lured by tales of streets lined in gold, uncounted millions illegally cross them, a silent invasion that depresses wages, and creates a sullen, exploited underclass beyond the protection of law, at once both perpetrators and victims of crime.

A million or more of our children die each year by abortion, and those who disapprove are sued or legislated into silence, and forced to pay for the procedure through both their taxes and their insurance premiums..  The federal government has declared open war on traditional religious morality, and with the approval of huge swaths of the populace, notably those influenced by the mainstream news and entertainment media, academia, and those seeking benefits from government cronyism.

The much pleaded-for (by liberals, gays, and other minority groups) age of tolerance has been brought to an end as these groups have gained ascendance, and turned upon authentic Christians with a level of bile and vitriol never before seen in modern America, nor, indeed (outside of communist nations) since the days of ancient Rome.  The sole societal institution oriented towards the care of children has been weakened to the point of collapse, and the wrecking ball is poised to destroy it utterly.

The rules of the game have changed, the playing field altered, the goalposts have been moved.  If you are still playing by the old rules, you are playing a fool's game.

With this blog, I will discuss these trends, and how you can address them.