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December
26, 2001
By
Jon Christian Ryter
Copyright 2001 - All Rights Reserved
To distribute this article, please post this web address or hyperlink
It
is generally at this time of the yearnot so much because of the
Christmas season, but simply because its winterthat we think
about our youth, and memories of good and bad bygone days. I dont
know if youve ever thought about it, but where we are more inclined
to think about the future each spring, in the dead of winterwhen
it is cold and forlornwe think about the past: of the friendships
weve made and lost, of loved ones come and gone, and most of all,
of an America that is radically different from the one in which we now
live.
Humanswittingly or notgo through
a mental metamorphosis every year as the seasons change. Admittedly, no
two cases of metamorphosis are the same. Many peoplemy wife among
themawait the winter snow with the anticipatory glee of a small
child with a new sled. In my case, I see the spring of the year as the
season of rebirth.
The fall represents, in my mind, the death thralls of the year as the
bright green leaves age and wither, changing from a vibrant red, to beautiful
orange to yellow, at which time they fall to the earth and die. They then
await a blustery white burial shroud of snow to cover them until spring.
While I am likely revealing my age (not
quite as old as Methuselah) I am one of those who, as a young boy, did
actually walk five miles to school each dayeven in a blinding snow
storm when the snow reached waist level on a ten year old boy. In fact,
in my boyhood years, there was no such
thing as a snow day. Snow was a fact of life, and because
it was, the schools remained open and you were expected to be there.
In fact, as a student in the public school
system of my youth, every student was expected to know how to read, write,
add and subtract because the teachers were expected to earn their paychecks
by actually teaching their students the 3-Rs: readin, ritin
and rithmatic. If they failed in their task, they did not get tenure
and, after a year or two they could be found working behind the notions
counter at S.S. Kresges, F.W. Woolworth, J.C. Penney, Sears & Roebucks
or Monkey Wards. Todays teachers are too involved with
political activism to actually waste their time teaching our kids how
to read, write, add and subtract. Todays classroom activist spends
too much of his/her time and too many of our precious taxpayer dollars
brainwashing our kids with the idea that homosexuality and lesbianism
are not forms of debauchery but are, instead, viable and perfectly acceptable
alternate lifestyle choices that dont clutter the world with more
unwanted people. In addition, the NEA-controlled school teachers today
are also too busy teaching our kids the four isms: multiculturalism,
interracialism, multilingualism and separatism to teach them how to read
the new revisionist text books used in the classrooms of todays
schools that have all but eliminated nationalism in favor of globalism.
Two more isms.
It is more important to prepare our kids
for their entrance into the blended society of the New World
Order in which there are no black people, no white people, no yellow people
or tan people. In the Utopian society of the future in which racism (which
admittedly is a scourge on anyone who practices any form of it) the Utopians
want to blend all races into a boiling cauldron that is neither white,
black, tan or yellow. In addition, the NEA agenda is to raise the cultural
differences of the nations minorities while
attempting to blur the cultural apple pie distinctions that proudly boast:
Hey, Im an American! As the cultural distinctions that
are inherently American disappear, the constitutional tethers that tie
America together can be eradicated as the true meaning of liberty is diluted
into the socialist limbo of the limited freedoms of the Utopian democracy
of the New World Order.
In the America
I remember, promoting homosexuality as a viable lifetstyle
would never be toleratedand those who practice deviant sexual practices
would be rightly ostracized from the community. In fact, the homosexual
would be charged with
sodomy, tried for his crime, and incarcerated. Any school principal who
would allow homosexual or lesbians to recruit on any school
campus in this land would be tarred and feathered and run out of town. The America I remember was a Christian
nation based on Christian ideals fistered by God-fearing people. Today,
members of Congress like Barney Frank or entertainers like Ellen DeGeneres
proudly flaunt their abhorrent tastes, expecting Christian America to
accept that lifestyle as normal. And, God forbid, if we object to having
their our exposed to the recruiting tactics of homosexuals and lesbians
under the guise of tolerance, we will suddenly find we have
been branded as bigots and extremists. In the new America, only the Christian
is viewed as intolerant.
In the America
I remember, this was a church-going, God-fearing nation. As
a naturally inquisitive boy, I remember going to a local movie theatre
in 1958 to see the most sinful movie of that generation. It was a bawdy
film called Gods Little Acre. The movie starred Robert Ryan,
Aldo Ray and Tina Louise with Michael Landon appearing as the treasure
devining albino. The Catholic Church condemned itand those
who saw it. That, of course, made any normal red-blooded 17-year boy want
to see it even more. But, just to be safe, I watched most of the movie
with one-eye closed, believing that if God was going to blind me for watching
it that He was only going to get one eye.
When the movie was over, you could walk
safely through just about any town in the America
I remember without getting mugged and robbed. A woman could
walk safely down just about any street in town without running the risk
of being raped. There were no drive-by shootings because there were no
street gangs fighting for two square blocks in a turf war to see who would
control the sale of cocaine in that part of town. In the
America I remember there were no headlines in evening newspapers
or lead stories on the 6 p.m. news about school kids being murdered for
their designer jackets or shoes. Lives were worth more than articles of
clothing. And, if you left your doors unlocked at night, or left the keys
in your car in the driveway, your car would still be there in the morning
and so would your personal belongings.
The America I remember was a safe place to live. In the America I remember the cost of a student ticket for a movie was a quarter, and
a box of popcorn and a soda cost about the same. You
could take a date to the movie and spend a buck or maybe two
at the most. The burger and fries at the local drive-in cost another buck
or two. The average teen date in the late 1950s? Four bucks and some change,
maybe five. The average teen date today? Twenty bucks or so and, if the
guy is lucky, sex in the backseat of his moms three-year-old Chevy
Cavalier. And, if hes really, really lucky, he wont get herpes
or AIDS from that backseat sex. In the America
I remember, you were lucky to snag a kiss. If the girl you
dated let you kiss her on the first date, she would be practically branded
as a harlotbut her popularity would skyrocket overnight. A girl
who actually engaged in sex with the boys she dated usually found lots
of offers for dates but, even if she managed not to end up pregnant, she
found very few serious offers of marriage. A moral society can, at times,
be hard. Particularly a moral society in which abortion was illegal.
In the America
I remember abortion was murder. Abortions happened during that
period of our history, but they were generally performed in secret because
both the abortionist and the mother would be charged with
murder if they were caught. Those who had them, and those who performed
them, did not talk about them. And, whats more, in the
America I remember before the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford
Foundation, Scaife Foundation and Carnegie Trust funded Planned Parenthood
and spent millions of dollars to brainwash America into believing that
the world was overpopulated and as a result, that over half the people
in the world would be starving to death by the year 2000, 91% of the American
people were opposed to abortion in any form, for any reason. Life had
an inherrent value that surpassed the transplant value of their organs
or the stem cells of their unborn babies.
The abortion industry in the
1950s was not the billion dollar-a-year industry it is today. And contrary
to the rhetoric you hear from the feminists talking about back alley coat
hanger abortions, most abortions were quietly performed by licensed
physicians in many of Americas most prestigious hospitals. They
just didnt call them abortions. Many were listed as appendectomies.
Others, when the pregnacy was caught soon enough, were listed as D&Csa
procedure used when a natural abortion occurred but the fetal tissue is
not expelled by the body. In some cases when no other options were available,
the physician performed a hysterectomy, concealing the fact that a living
baby was contained within the patients womb. But regardless what
the doctor called it, the result was the same: the expulsion and death
of an unwanted, unborn baby.
The America I remember was a much better, and much safer nation than the America we live in today.
Since January 22, 1973 over 49,000,000 unborn American babies have been
denied a constitutional right to be born in the land of liberty. Because
in the America I remember before U.S.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun decreed that a fetus
is not a living person, an unborn baby was not only viewed as a human
being, but had legal rights as such. The courts of America not only recognized
the fetus as a living person, it accepted lawsuits on the behalf of the
unborn. And juries across this nation awarded damages to the unborn when
their constitutional rights were violated. The
America I remember as a youth in the 1950s was
a good place to live. We respected life because we respected each other.
In the America
I remember, a brand new Chevrolet Bel-Air cost less than $2,000
new. The Chevy Bel-Air and the traditional four-door Ford sedan were the
two most popular family cars on the road.
Today, if you can find a 1954 to 1957 Chevy
Bel-Air you will pay anywhere from $12 to $30 thousand for it. While the
America I remember was largely dominated by General Motors,
Ford-Mercury-Lincoln and Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth, it was also the world
of Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, and Kaiser. And in the
America I remember as a youth, a Jeep was a Jeep, not a Cherokee.
No one would dream of spending $30,000 on one. They were Army surplus.
You could buy one for $500 bucksif you wanted one. And nobody except
a hunter, a farmer, or a good ol boy redneck did.
What makes a $2 thosuand 1957 automobile
worth $30 thousand or more forty-some years later?
Nostalgia?
Wed like to believe that.
Or rather, the private banking families
in the United States and Europe who own 100% of the stock in the Federal
Reserve would like us to believe that was true since if it was, that would
suggest that nostalgic treasures actually do appreciate in
value, and that investing in obsolescence is prudent. That type of logic
necessitates our believing that junk, like rare wines, fine paintings,
gold, silver and precious stones has an inherent value that appreciates
with age. In point of fact, a $2,000 1954 Chevrolet Bel-Air in mint condition
can likely be sold for $30,000 not because the $2,000 car is worth more,
but only because the dollar is worth less.
In the America I remember I bought
my first brand new fire engine red Chevrolet 327 Camaro in 1969. The sticker
on the 327 Camaro was around $3,000. I drove that car until 1978 when
I bought another new Camero. The sticker on that car was $8,500. The price
of the Camaro almost tripled in nine years. Or, did it?
In reality it did not. What happened during
that nine year period was the American dollar, because it has not been
backed by gold since The Gold Reserve Joint Resolution in 1934, became
so elastic that one 1969 dollar was only worth around 35¢ by 1979.
Because we allowed private bankers to remove us from the gold standard
and create our monetary system from nothingand then sell those newly
created dollars to the government of the United Stateswe have created
a dollar that is so elastic that it depreciates itself each new dollar
that is issued by our government.
The commodities we purchase with those elastic
dollars remain pegged at the anvisible benchmarkthat was established when
the dollar was backed by gold. In other words, the commodities we buy
have neither appreciated or depreciated in value. They have remained constant.
Because the supply of dollars in the open market in 1978 was three times
greater than it was in 1969, a $3,000 Camaro cost almost $9,000 that year.
In the America
I remember, a Cokewhich came in a 10 oz. bottlecost
a dime. Pepsi cost the same, but you got 16 oz. for your shiny new Roosevelt
dime. A Hershey bar cost a nickel. So did a Milky Way, Snickers or Forever
Yours. The America I remember in the
1950s was a world in which you could buy a Black Cow, a Hollywood or Zero
candy bar. Milk Duds and Jr. Mints were big, as were Clark Bars, Butterfinger,
and Zagnut. And America chewed Teaberry, Beemans and Blackjack gum. There
were no K-Marts or Wal-Marts in the America I
remember. Both of those chains were started in the late 1950s,
but it would be decades before they spread out to fill every available
corner in America. Wal-Mart began as a Ben Franklin store and K-Mart,
of course,
was S.S. Kresge. Woolworths started a discount chain, too. Remember
the Woolco stores? Woolco, like Grant Stores, were among the first casualties
in the retail war of the 1970s.
But most of all, in the
America I remember, are peopleand their attitudes about
their nation and about their fellow citizens. We were one nation then.
We did not think of ourselves as African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans,
Hispanic-Americans, or any other form of hyphenated-Americans. We were
simply Americans. And, we were proud to be Americans because America was
the greatest nation on Earth.
The
NEA taught us to hypenate our heritage. The hyphen was a powerful wedge
that was used by the Utopians to psychologically divide Americans and
exascerbate the problems of racism in America. Today, we are a nation
which is almost singularly focused on promoting division, not unity. We
promote division within our schools with a scholastic agenda that purports
only to help minorities in America protect and nurture their native heritage
when in fact the purpose is to create separatism. A nation unified by
a common language and common customs is a nation united against tyranny.
The Utopians among us have borrowed a page from the history of the Soviet
Union and, for the past three decades, have been writing that page into
the history of the United States. As the Stalinists in the Soviet Union
attempted to enlarge the Union of Socialist Soviet Republlics from the
North Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and southward through
the Balkans to the Mediterranean and through the Peoples Republic
of China to the South China Sea, they demanded that the Allies give them
the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Balkan States
of Yugoslavia, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina; and
the eastern European nations of Czechloslovakia, Hungary, Romania at the
end of World War II. And, because the Soviets occupied not
only the Stans in Asia Minor: Tajikistan, Turkenistan, Kashistan,
Uzebekistan, and Afghanistan, but most of the oil rich nations on the
Arabian peninsula, Stalin was determined to make all of the nations occupied
by Soviet troops satellites of the Soviet Union. Running the bluff of
the century, President Harry S. Truman told Josef Stalin that if the Soviets
did not get their troops out of the Mideast B-52 bombers would be on their
way to Moscow with an atomic bomb that would be dropped on the Kremlin.
(Lt. General George Patton urged Truman to drop the bomb since, he told
Truman, America already had troops in Europe to clean up the mess after
the bomb was dropped. Patton thought that since we already had troops
there it was pointless to delay the war with the Soviets that America
would ultimately be obligated to wage.)
As a concession to Stalin, and to avoid
a new war with the Soviet Union within months of the end of World War
II, Trumans State Department, urged to do so by the Council on Foreign
Relations, acknowledged that the Baltic States, the Balkan States and
the Stans were all within the Soviet sphere of influence.
With the stroke of the diplomats pen, a new war was avoided and
17 nations were trapped within the Soviet Union as the Iron Curtain dropped
with a deafening clang all over central Europe.
Stalin, however, learned that while you
can take various people captive, assimiliation is impossible as long as
those captured people maintain their native languages and cultural distinctions.
Before his death, Stalin (and later Nikita Khrushchev) admitted that the
Union of Socialist Soviet Republicans could never be solidified into a
single nation because of separatist views of those captured peoples. The
Soviet government mandated that Russian be taught as the primary language
in all schools, but since less than 25% of the people in the eastern provinces
of the Soviet Union attended school, the USSR remained a multilingual
nation. Compounding that problem, each segment of the Soviet societyencouraged
by separatism rather than any sense of national pridemaintained
their own native culture and customs, driving an even deeper wedge into
government efforts to unify the nation. After the Soviet Union collapsed
in 1991, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said that, in his view,
the Soviet Union fell because the USSR remained a multicultural, multilingual
nation throughout its entire existence. National unity did not happen
because the Soviet Union was too diverse with too many languages spoken
and too many cultural distinctions divided the people.
In the America
I remember as I graduated from high school, John F. Kennedy,
Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had not yet been assassinated and
Lyndon Baines Johnson had not yet initiated the Great Welfare Society
that would shackle millions of impoverished Americans to the public feeding
trough in order to guarantee that their votes would always be cast for
the socialists in the Demoratic Party who would perpetuate the economic
bondage system for four decades. The America
I remember was a Father Knows Best world in which
dad was the wage-earner and Mom worked at home. Of course, in the
America I remember, the family could survive on one income
because Uncle Sams tax bite did not consume 40% or more of the familys
financial resources, and would not for another decade.
It was not until Lyndon B. Johnson began
to fund his grand welfare scheme from the pockets of the American taxpayer
that mothers were forced to hang up their aprons and join their husbands
in the workplace in order to make ends meet. Today, it is rare to find
a stay-at-home mom. Not only are they a rarity, they are viewed by the
liberated females in the pinstripe suits as oddities. In fact, most stay-at-home
momswho actually have the toughest job in the world: homemaker extraordinaireexperience
an uncomfortable moment whenever a new acquaintance asks them what they
do for a living. The era of the Cleavers, the Andersons, Ricky
and Lucy Ricardo and Fred and Ethel Mertzthe
America I remember with fondnessis gone. The era of the
latch-key kids is here. With the latchkey kids are the before and
after school daycare centers in which daycare providers rather than
parents now shape the character of our children.
And because in a majority of the homes in
America both parents are forced to work, teachers in the public school
system, and the bureaucracy that governs them, have now assumed politically-correct
custodial authority over our children, claiming that the State possesses
superior rights over parents in determining how their children should
be raised. Parents who protest this usurpation of parental authority over
their own offspring usually find themselves so much at odds with local
law enforcement and social welfare agencies that they are hauled into
court where they must then engage in expensive legal battles in order
to keep their own children.
If we are to remain a safe and secure nationa
nation that will experience its tri-centennial in 2076we must do
more than simply reminisce about Americas past, we must restore
the principles by which this nation became great before it is too late.
The America I remember demands it.
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