Negligible and Stupid

A relative sent this quote:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." - President Dwight D. Eisenhower, l952

My assumption is that Ike was reassuring the American people that after 20 years of Democratic rule and the imposition of these programs (most accurately described as economic fascism), electing a Republican to the White House would not bring back the days of Herbert Hoover. He did not say that these new government programs and laws were good things, but rather indicated that they were now popular and so much a part of our lives that it would be stupid to try to get rid of them.

Now lets imagine fifteen years from now:

1. Random check points and strip searches of Americans going about their business; abuses such as rapes and molestations of teenage girls and other victims by security brutes will be covered up. Maybe even joked about like prison rape is today.
2. "Hyperactive" children and "rebellious" teenagers will be medicated and hospitalized (incarcerated) under federal law
3. The states will have become nothing but provinces of the federal government, administering federal decree, because nothing anymore will be considered a state or local matter.
4. Critics of the nation's wars will be presumed to be "enemy combatants" subject to arbitrary and permanent imprisonment and torture.
5. The USA will have on at least one occasion launched a “preemptive” tactical nuclear strike against some “rogue state.”

And opponents of these federal government tactics? Will it be said of them: "their number is negligible and they are stupid?"

That isn’t far-fetched; the seeds of all of these things have been planted already. It is an American tradition to give credit to all that is GOOD about America to war, taxes, regulation, and loss of liberty. You don’t see Edison and Ford on Mt. Rushmore. Robert Bork complained that we are “slouching toward Gomorrah,” but it is more accurate to say that we are slouching toward the Gulag.

The more we tolerate federal spying on Americans, national ID cards, the revocation of due process rights, etc., the more we will accept them, perhaps even grow to like them as means to “get the bad guys.

There is a Culture War going on, and it isn’t about homosexuality or multiculturalism. It’s about the Police State, and the wrong side is winning.