How Good People Get Duped Into Supporting Evil

This is a great article from the American Thinker website about how being uniformed on history and current events and not taking the time to look a little below the surface of the prevailing narratives that are present in today's society can cause people to end up supporting evil in a similar way that the German people supported Nazism.

It's interesting how history cycles around to the same old thing, over and over. Ecclesiastes 1:9 reads: 'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.' Ominous words that are sadly true -- a warning that mankind continuously fails to heed.

Historically, societies have good people and bad. The good people tend to live their lives with good intentions to stay informed, be involved in the community, heed their belief system, behave in a moral way, raise their children to be good people, and work hard. They innocently get swept up in the assumption that everyone else is also, basically good. So, they overlook the evil that encroaches upon their society in dribs and drabs. They look the other way, they make excuses for the bad behavior of others, maybe even taking blame for being the cause of the bad behavior -- all because of their internal belief that everyone wants the same things they want, and believe the same things they believe.

But eventually, and out of nowhere, evil takes command of the society. The good people finally see the evil that has been there the whole time. While evil was still powerless, the good people did not see it, or did not want to see it, so they were blind. Perhaps they could not see it because they did not know what it looked like, smelled like, or sounded like.

Evil is silent. It sneaks up in the night, gaining footholds one drib at a time; one drab at a time. While the good people sleep, it sets a trap for its prey. When morning comes and the people awaken, they find themselves impossibly ensnared by the power of the beast, as it rains terror down upon the land, with full abandon.[...]

As the historical cycle goes, the good people don't stand a chance for they don't study history with the same rigor and attention to detail. Good people learn the stories of evil historical events, such as the Holocaust, with the focus on the horrible outcome. What they learn from the personal stories, the destruction of lives, and the devastating aftermath, is what evil looks like in its death. This is important, to be sure, but much more than that is required if they are to truly learn from history in order to avoid repetition. Good people must study the events that led to the horror with greater scrutiny. They must learn what evil looks like at its birth. What gets lost in the message of history is how, nearly always, good people were duped into complicity and cooperation, with and by, evil. Only if history is analyzed in such a way to determine what the silent evil looks like, and how it draws the good people to its side, will societies avoid allowing the evil to rise, again. And it always rises again.[bold text is my doing]

Evil studies and analyzes history so adeptly that each time it resurfaces it is able to advance more quickly and more powerfully than before, simply because it has learned from history. Good people must then do the same. They must be sure their children learn history -- the causes as well as the effects. If they aren't learning it in school, then it is up to the good parents to teach them. If they don't, they may find themselves like the good people of Germany -- duped, complicit, and guilty.

The evil haunting, or specter as Marx calls it, us today is communism/collectivism that is being prepared to be thrust on the whole world by economic circumstances. Just as the gulags and concentration camps didn't just appear out of thin air but were the end result of a long line of prevailing narratives from philosophy and culture that slowly filtered into the very fabric of society, so too is this modern day evil that is in the "birth stage" about to pop its head out into the world. Some of the prevailing narratives of today consist mainly of lies: man is causing the climate to change, therefore man must reduce his standard of living to save the earth; capitalism has failed and led to the current global economic mess, therefore capitalism must be scraped and replaced by a new system; no one culture is superior to another, therefore it is good to emulate a culture that is not conducive to human prosperity; the IMF and World Bank's stated goals are good, therefore they must be good; and etc. Not taking the time to look beyond the prevailing narratives of our time and taking a look at the foundation that these narratives are built on can lead one to end up "duped, complicit, and guilty" in supporting what can ultimately be called evil, using wisdom and summing up a very complex system into a simple word. It would suck to end up like the German people did after their country had been destroyed and their women rapped.

Post Pax Americana?

A cool post at Hot Air  for strategy geeks, illustrating the re-emergence of regional, Nation-state strategizing because of the withdrawal of American influence and power in the world.  The author touches on many places around the world where groups of countries are manuevering with and against each other in local groups, rather than the great geopolitical groups that have dominated the world since WWII:

• They touch on the situation in Central/Eastern Europe and the Visegrad group, which I discussed a while ago
• The games being played between Russia, Iran, and Turkey, and Turkey's apparent attempt to resurrect the prestige of the Ottoman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean
• Israel's response by teaming up with Greece and Cyprus
• India & Japan's attempts to contain China in the Far East
• etc.

Super cool stuff.  The tone of the article is a little sad that American can't dominate everywhere like we used to, but it doesn't seem as depressing to me: make these sponges deal with things themselves.  It'll make them all better countries, and save us money and blood.  We still need to be able to punish our enemies when we need to though and help our friends...that'll have to wait until Obama's gone of course.

Anyway, read the article; fascinating, if somewhat speculative.

OBAMACARE

When discussing the recent government overhaul of America's health care system, one needs to look at it through the prism of this video where Obama states how a public insurance option will lead to a single-payer health care system-- or a government run health care system that "will control the people" in the words of another politician.

Aside from the fact that the new health care law will entice employers to drop their health care plans for their employees:

'Now, it should surprise no one that more and more companies are exploring the possibility of dropping their employee health coverage in 2014. A new study from the benefits-consulting firm Towers Watson finds that nearly 10 percent of midsized to large companies are seriously considering doing just that, and another 20 percent are thinking about it. Still others don't know. 'Many are uncertain how they will respond to the looming impact of state-based insurance exchanges in 2014,' says Towers Watson.

Obama did say that this would happen in the video above.

And there is some new information about parts of Obamacare. It appears that a part of it was know to be "fiscally unsustainable" before it was passed:

Administration officials knew before they even passed the CLASS Act that the voluntary long-term care insurance program it created would be fiscally unsustainable, a new report from select House and Senate Republicans shows.

Obamacare will be one of the most lasting legacies of Obama's presidency that will "fundamentally transform" America: it will transform the relationship between the individual and the government in a profound way and will change the character of the American people by making them look to the government to meet one of their most basic needs. It will also create another unsustainable entitlement program that will bankrupt America and help to "collapse the system". It is one more reason that Obamacare should be completely repealed.

Middle East Update: America Encouraging And Helping Its Enemies

It is still looking like what the Arab Spring might not be such a good thing for Israel and the West. Remember that the Arab Spring was encouraged and cheered on by our President and media with organismic praise. Also Egypt was given money by Western nations; and in the case of Libya, the West fought a war against our enemies who were the enemies of a less dangerous enemy.

It looks like the Muslim Brotherhood is still becoming the dominant political force in Egypt and is still somewhat unfriendly to Israel:

The Muslim Brotherhood's new message is very similar: all Islamic men in Egypt, whoever they may be, should stand and be counted as members of Hamas. Whether one sees this message as analogous in the sense of ideology, however, would likely be a matter of perspective.[...]

The aim of the Muslim Brotherhood, as it is with other anti-Zionist Muslims throughout the world, is to have the followers of Islam hold dominion over the holy land that Israel now occupies, to be governed by Islamic law. To them, having the Jewish "apes" and "pigs" govern with the notion of "freedom" and allowing equal worship at holy sites in Jerusalem is a slap in the face to the prophet who has promised the right to govern that region to Muslims. Therefore, they would much rather see Islamic clerics and mullahs allowing preferential rights to be granted for Muslims, while non-Muslims are subjugated, as Allah intended (Surah 9:29).[...]

The Muslim Brotherhood has held rallies recently that have seen the incineration of Israeli flags and the exhibition of Nazi symbols, complete with taunts to Israelis suggesting that "the gas chambers are ready." It seems rather interesting for a group that has denied the Holocaust to clearly reference the means of its historical practices. Apparently, the infidels' false history is not without its charms in the Brotherhood's eyes.

But think about the implications of what we see every day, but fail to recognize. A burgeoning regime in Egypt, under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, is threatening the Israeli ambassador's life. They have openly declared themselves to be not only in league with terrorists, but among the terrorists of Hamas, and therefore they have proclaimed themselves terrorists. Mohamed ElBaradei, a possible Brotherhood candidate for Egyptian leadership, has stated that he would go to war with Israel if it attacks Gaza. This means that any of Israel's numerous and necessary retaliatory strikes upon Gaza could result in war with Egypt, their historic enemy whose strength Israel has bolstered in efforts to achieve the longstanding peace that the Brotherhood would so readily break.

Their is a direct link between the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Nazi Germany. And if you listen to their current spiritual leader, he praises Hitler for carrying out his punishment against the Jews. So why did America encourage the recent Egyptian revolution when it was clear at the time that the Muslim Brotherhood would become the dominant political force in Egypt? And why is America and the West sending Egypt money? What will this lead to?

And I love this article where the Libyan rebel military commander who was a member of a terrorist group that sent fighters into Iraq and Afghanistan is trying to explain how he is not going to support terrorism against the West:

TRIPOLI, Libya - The rebels' Tripoli military commander, a former leader of an Islamic militant group that sent fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan, insisted Friday that the new Libya will shun extremism and won't become a breeding ground for terrorism.

What is happening in the Middle East is that America and the West is supporting its enemies through several different channels: by sending billions of dollars a year to the Middle East for oil that in turns goes towards funding terrorist and radical Mosques that breed terrorist, giving moral and financial support to a revolution that leads to an anti-Western political regime, and actually fighting a war for our enemies. It just doesn't make sense to me.