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From The Mailbag

20 years

December 26, 2001

     It is generally at this time of the year—not so much because of the Christmas season, but simply because it’s winter—that we think about our youth, and memories of good and bad bygone days. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it, but where we are more inclined to think about the future each spring, in the dead of winter—when it is cold and forlorn—we think about the past: of the friendships we’ve 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.
     Humans—wittingly or not—go through a mental metamorphosis every year as the seasons change. Admittedly, no two cases of metamorphosis are the same. Many people—my wife among them—await 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 day—even 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.” Today’s teachers are too involved with political activism to actually waste their time teaching our kids how to read, write, add and subtract. Today’s 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 don’t 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 today’s 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 nation’s minorities while attempting to blur the cultural apple pie distinctions that proudly boast: “Hey, I’m 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 tolerated—and 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 God’s 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 it—and 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 mom’s three-year-old Chevy Cavalier. And, if he’s really, really lucky, he won’t 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 harlot—but 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, what’s 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 America’s most prestigious hospitals. They just didn’t call them abortions. Many were listed as appendectomies. Others, when the pregnacy was caught soon enough, were listed as D&Cs—a 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 patient’s 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 bucks—if 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?
We’d 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 nothing—and then sell those newly created dollars to the government of the United States—we 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 Coke—which came in a 10 oz. bottle—cost 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. Woolworth’s 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 people—and 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 People’s 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, Truman’s 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 diplomat’s 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 society—encouraged by separatism rather than any sense of national pride—maintained 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 Sam’s tax bite did not consume 40% or more of the family’s 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 moms—who actually have the toughest job in the world: homemaker extraordinaire—experience 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 Mertz—the America I remember with fondness—is 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 nation—a nation that will experience its tri-centennial in 2076—we must do more than simply reminisce about America’s past, we must restore the principles by which this nation became great before it is too late.
     The America I remember demands it.