// API callback
related_results_labels_thumbs({"version":"1.0","encoding":"UTF-8","feed":{"xmlns":"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom","xmlns$openSearch":"http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/","xmlns$blogger":"http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008","xmlns$georss":"http://www.georss.org/georss","xmlns$gd":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005","xmlns$thr":"http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0","id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-07-09T04:53:15.870-04:00"},"category":[{"term":"recent"},{"term":"Islam"},{"term":"Important Posts"},{"term":"Democrats"},{"term":"Satire"},{"term":"Left"},{"term":"Israel"},{"term":"Coronavirus"},{"term":"Parsha"},{"term":"Race"},{"term":"Biden"},{"term":"Terrorism"},{"term":"socialism"},{"term":"resistobama"},{"term":"politics"},{"term":"Big Tech"},{"term":"US Election"},{"term":"California"},{"term":"New York"},{"term":"Jewish"},{"term":"Black Lives Matter"},{"term":"Media Bias"},{"term":"immigration"},{"term":"future of the west"},{"term":"Investigations"},{"term":"Liberalism"},{"term":"Pro-Crime"},{"term":"America"},{"term":"Bernie Sanders"},{"term":"War on Terror"},{"term":"Anti-Semitism"},{"term":"Antisemitism"},{"term":"Racism"},{"term":"Europe"},{"term":"environmentalism"},{"term":"Crime"},{"term":"Hollywood"},{"term":"culture war"},{"term":"riots"},{"term":"corruption"},{"term":"Cuomo"},{"term":"Islamization"},{"term":"Kamala Harris"},{"term":"black nationalism"},{"term":"global warming"},{"term":"videos"},{"term":"China"},{"term":"Corporate America"},{"term":"Culture"},{"term":"Islamic terrorism"},{"term":"Jewish Matters"},{"term":"big government"},{"term":"entertainment industry"},{"term":"urban model"},{"term":"Arabs"},{"term":"New Jersey"},{"term":"Los Angeles"},{"term":"UK"},{"term":"history"},{"term":"homeless"},{"term":"investigative"},{"term":"Murphy"},{"term":"Obama"},{"term":"iran"},{"term":"Coup"},{"term":"Holocaust"},{"term":"Russia"},{"term":"illegal aliens"},{"term":"political correctness"},{"term":"sexism"},{"term":"Elizabeth Warren"},{"term":"Hillary Clinton"},{"term":"Jamal Khashoggi"},{"term":"Newsom"},{"term":"Portland"},{"term":"Tech"},{"term":"Venezuela"},{"term":"green energy"},{"term":"humor"},{"term":"radicals"},{"term":"rape culture"},{"term":"9\/11"},{"term":"Alexandria Ocasio Cortez"},{"term":"Chicago"},{"term":"De Blasio"},{"term":"International"},{"term":"Palestinians"},{"term":"San Francisco"},{"term":"Texas"},{"term":"Trump Derangement Syndrome"},{"term":"cancel culture"},{"term":"censorship"},{"term":"drugs"},{"term":"gun control"},{"term":"unions"},{"term":"Baltimore"},{"term":"Beto O'Rourke"},{"term":"Buttigieg"},{"term":"Communism"},{"term":"Cory Booker"},{"term":"Fake Hate Crimes"},{"term":"Gillibrand"},{"term":"Hamas"},{"term":"Michigan"},{"term":"Middle East"},{"term":"Minneapolis"},{"term":"Minnesota"},{"term":"Pelosi"},{"term":"Pennsylvania"},{"term":"Philosophy"},{"term":"Social Issues"},{"term":"Sweden"},{"term":"Trump"},{"term":"UN"},{"term":"Washington D.C."},{"term":"Whitmer"},{"term":"education"},{"term":"grooming gangs"},{"term":"nursing homes"},{"term":"olmert"},{"term":"slavery"},{"term":"ADL"},{"term":"Abortion"},{"term":"Austria"},{"term":"Bangladesh"},{"term":"Barry Chamish"},{"term":"Bend the Arc"},{"term":"Bill Gates"},{"term":"Blinken"},{"term":"Cincinnati"},{"term":"Colorado"},{"term":"DOJ"},{"term":"DeBlasio"},{"term":"Ethics"},{"term":"Fake News"},{"term":"Florida"},{"term":"France"},{"term":"GOP"},{"term":"Georgia"},{"term":"Granholm"},{"term":"Iraq"},{"term":"Islamophobia"},{"term":"Jewish recent"},{"term":"Kerry"},{"term":"Lincoln"},{"term":"Mali"},{"term":"Marxism"},{"term":"Massachusetts"},{"term":"Mueller"},{"term":"Muslim Brotherhood"},{"term":"Ohio"},{"term":"Omar"},{"term":"PLO"},{"term":"Personal"},{"term":"Pierre Omidyar"},{"term":"Saudi Arabia"},{"term":"Scam"},{"term":"Science"},{"term":"Soros"},{"term":"South America"},{"term":"Sports"},{"term":"Star Trek"},{"term":"Steele"},{"term":"Supreme Court"},{"term":"Tlaib"},{"term":"USSR"},{"term":"VA"},{"term":"Virginia"},{"term":"Woke"},{"term":"Yemen"},{"term":"Zero Hussein"},{"term":"aboutme"},{"term":"amona"},{"term":"cities"},{"term":"class warfare"},{"term":"foreign policy"},{"term":"gang violence"},{"term":"gender"},{"term":"israeli police brutality"},{"term":"judicial activism"},{"term":"photoshops"},{"term":"social justice"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Daniel Greenfield \/ Sultan Knish articles"},"subtitle":{"type":"html","$t":"Daniel Greenfield's articles and writings on the Sultan Knish blog"},"link":[{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/posts\/default"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/-\/America?alt=json-in-script\u0026max-results=5"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/search\/label\/America"},{"rel":"hub","href":"http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/"},{"rel":"next","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/-\/America\/-\/America?alt=json-in-script\u0026start-index=6\u0026max-results=5"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"generator":{"version":"7.00","uri":"http://www.blogger.com","$t":"Blogger"},"openSearch$totalResults":{"$t":"16"},"openSearch$startIndex":{"$t":"1"},"openSearch$itemsPerPage":{"$t":"5"},"entry":[{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-285843953193049014"},"published":{"$t":"2021-07-04T16:24:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-07-04T16:24:38.168-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"America"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Co-Dependence Day"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cp\u003EJoe Biden is celebrating July 4th by proposing a massive expansion of the IRS. How better to celebrate the colonists who chased British tax collectors out than by replacing them with Biden's tax collectors.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut every progressive person knows that Independence Day is for extremists. The dream of the new post-national nation is Co-Dependence Day in which we all live happily together in a planned economy.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-kKWR5WAGXWs\/YOIY-igAjeI\/AAAAAAAATVU\/KGcbRJKn5TklNHd_sNUZCC4Z1ZhyZJYsgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s640\/the-march-to-valley-forge-efe4d9-640.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"497\" data-original-width=\"640\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-kKWR5WAGXWs\/YOIY-igAjeI\/AAAAAAAATVU\/KGcbRJKn5TklNHd_sNUZCC4Z1ZhyZJYsgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/the-march-to-valley-forge-efe4d9-640.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe old British entity that Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and a bunch of other dead white men fought to be free of, has been recreated. The new London is in Washington D.C. whose bureaucrats throw fits if they're asked to leave the imperial city. The new social welfare empire is built on redistribution.\u003Cp\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA few centuries ago, some young white men had refused to have their property and their political autonomy redistributed to an elite thousands of miles away.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe very idea of having a revolution over such a thing seems entirely absurd to today's wokies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOr as another Englishman once again, \"Imagine there's no countries\". It's easy if you live in the EU.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAll that the Crown really wanted was for the colonists to pay their “fair share”, a share that was determined thousands of miles away. All that the colonists wanted was the rights of Englishmen that they believed they were entitled to. After a great deal of bloodshed, the colonists won the right to be Americans instead—an odd series of consonants and vowels having to do with an Italian explorer but meaning personal freedom and limited government. Now we have free things, unlimited government, and our freedom shrinks in proportion to the growth of our free things and of the government that hands them out.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo the denizens of public housing watching the fireworks burn briefly in the sky,\u0026nbsp; who get a free ride on everything from food to housing by taking away everyone else's freedom and future, the fireworks are just one more free thing in the sea of free things that they swim in.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo the Democrat voters of the welfare state, this is Fireworks Day. Every country has its fireworks days and this is the day that this one chooses to light up the night sky. The day means nothing to them because though they are surrounded by free things, they aren’t free. The difference between freedom and free things has been progressively erased so that many think that the American Revolution was fought because the British were racists or weren’t providing free transgender surgery to the colonies.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIf only they knew about the NHS, they would vote to undo the American Revolution in a flash.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere is a big difference between a free country and a country of free things. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both. A free country isn’t obsessed with free riders, only a country of free things obsesses with making everyone pay their fair share for the benefit of the people who want the free things. Rugged individualism has given way to stifling crowds, co-dependent on each other, lined shoulder to shoulder, clutching at each other’s wallets, crying, “Take from him and give to me.\"\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWe are a nation overflowing with the right to things paid for with other people’s money.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe fireworks that shoot up in a wonderland of blue and red, silver and gold, are a faint echo of the real thing, the gunpowder that blasted back and forth between the lines of government troops, their Hessian mercenaries and the rebel colonists who chose to ride free, rather than bend their necks to the plans of an expanding empire. The faint smell of gunpowder and the dark shapes of the barges only mime the war that was fought here. A play of light and shadow whose meaning reaches fewer and fewer people each year.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe expected speeches will celebrate some notion of independence, but did so many men risk their lives just to end up with a system that made the one they escaped seem positively libertarian by comparison? If they had known that they were going to end up with some version of the NHS, along with death panels, in a co-dependent system where everyone is looted for the greater good of the looters—they might have stayed home on their farms, sadly watching the fighting from a distance.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJFK’s famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” was always a hollow lie. Half the country is expected to ask what their country can do for them, while the other half is expected to ask what they can do for their country. This simmering civil war is often pegged as a class war, but it isn’t about class. There are billionaires and paupers on both sides, and the divide cuts across the Middle Class, dividing those who derive their income from private business from those who receive it from government and government-subsidized employment.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Fourth of July is Independence Day, but every other day is Co-Dependence Day, the days we celebrate our integration, our volunteerism and our compliance with a vast system which makes everyone dependent on the government and which makes the government dependent on everyone who still works for someone other than the government.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;Empires function by draining every drop from their possessions to cover their costs. The British Crown tried to drain America to pay down its debt, resulting in growing protests from the population and eventually a revolution. Now the Empire of Co-Dependency is draining its independent subjects for the benefit of its dependent subjects and the dependency infrastructure that employs its numberless bureaucrats who govern it all.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA new crisis is always here to justify higher taxes and bigger government.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe American Revolution was not a struggle for another nation, one of many, but for a free nation. It was not split off to accommodate the national strivings of an ethnic group or their historical destiny. Its guiding idea, like its national holiday, was independence, but independence means very little unless it reaches the individual.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA nation where everyone is part of one great co-dependent community, a centrally planned marketplace that can only be balanced if everyone is forced to buy what they are told to buy, is not a free nation. It will not even be independent for long. The logic of co-dependence is to expand that dependency beyond the borders and make the region and then every part the world dependent on one another to balance out the numbers.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECo-dependence required an end to states rights. It will eventually require an end to the rights of nations.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELike all pyramid schemes, the burden of dependency is passed on to greater and greater systems until its weight is more than that of the entire world. That burden of co-dependency is like a rock rolling downhill; it gathers more and more mass to itself, increasing its momentum, until it crashes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe system attempts to stay ahead of the inevitable crash by making sure that every productive person pays his “fair share”. It hunts for individuals and nations who still aren’t rolling downhill, tips them over and pushes them off the mountain. All in the name of the greater good.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;The new Crown is not a person, it is an idea. The throne at whose foot a formerly free people kneel is the golden seat of the welfare state. While the fireworks light up the sky, a counterrevolution undid the revolution. There is a new king and his face is on every magazine cover in the land. His bounty is a jagged bear trap that turns everyone into a ward of the state at their own expense.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs the last wave of fireworks die out, the shooting stars sinking to earth and vanishing into the darkness, the light of Independence Day fades and the crowds slowly trudge away from the brief spectacle, past the lines of police barricades, through narrow streets, past government buildings, back to their co-dependent lives in a co-dependent nation where the will of the people and the rights of the individual matter less than the latest proposal to solve the problems of their independence by making the country a more dependent place.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA few hundred years ago in these streets, men and women celebrated the end of tyranny, and in its darkest hour, lines of grim men marched along the waterfront up to the highest point on the island to mount a final defense. Sometimes the older buildings still wear their shadows on their brick walls and by the golden light of the fireworks you can almost see them, shadows moving in the darkness, their footsteps taking them north, a faint song on their lips, muskets in their hands, their lives lost and gained in defense of their freedom.\u003C\/p\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/285843953193049014\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/07\/co-dependence-day.html#comment-form","title":"4 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/285843953193049014"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/285843953193049014"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/07\/co-dependence-day.html","title":"Co-Dependence Day"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-kKWR5WAGXWs\/YOIY-igAjeI\/AAAAAAAATVU\/KGcbRJKn5TklNHd_sNUZCC4Z1ZhyZJYsgCNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/the-march-to-valley-forge-efe4d9-640.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"4"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6792509647216090333"},"published":{"$t":"2021-06-28T23:03:00.000-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-06-28T23:03:00.088-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"America"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Obama"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Obama and the Broken Nation He Made Come Of Age"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"Barack Obama turns 60 over the summer. The AARP cover with Barry posing next to a basketball and a shelf of bestselling non-fiction books he hasn’t read can’t be too far away.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/--7lUFPdjObk\/YNqNWmMPFoI\/AAAAAAAATUw\/5dhQRZfbfncJ1Wua0tehO_EO2cT0rWqLACNcBGAsYHQ\/s706\/image_2021-06-28_200249.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"454\" data-original-width=\"706\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/--7lUFPdjObk\/YNqNWmMPFoI\/AAAAAAAATUw\/5dhQRZfbfncJ1Wua0tehO_EO2cT0rWqLACNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-06-28_200249.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EOnce the symbol of youthful hipness, the former boss of Hope and Change now lectures “young people” on what they should be doing. His legacy is being carried forward by 78-year-old Biden and the 81-year-old Pelosi. That’s above the average age of 80 of the House Dem leadership.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe average age of the Biden cabinet is two years older than President Trump’s cabinet.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe gerontocratic technocracy uses AOC as its younger foil, but she’s been a stalking horse for Bernie Sanders who will hit the big 80 in the fall. The big donors behind the American Left are even older with George Soros due to hit 90 the same month Obama gets to 60. The even bigger reservoirs of cash flowing into the leftist machine are coming from the foundations of men who were born in the 19th century like Henry Ford, John D. MacArthur, and John D. Rockefeller.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s about right for a 19th century ideology whose followers keep trying to make it look young.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EYouthful leftism is anarchic. It’s CHAZ, BLM, and Antifa. It’s open air heroin markets, smashed store windows, and political assassinations. Turning that anarchy into collectivism requires hysterical propaganda and rallies that appear anarchic, but are actually tightly controlled, ideas that seem edgy, but are actually the work of men who were born during the age of the steam.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIf you think Bernie’s old, Karl Marx celebrated his 203rd birthday in May.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EObama’s policies have aged as badly as Marx, Biden, or their front man. But instead of moderating as they grow older, they only grow more radical. Obama equivocated on gay marriage, while Biden entirely erases the existence of women by calling them “birthing people”. Obama covertly weaponized the government against conservatives, while Biden is doing it openly. Everything from election rigging through H.R.1 to indoctrinating every government employee with critical race theory is happening more openly and blatantly under Biden.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EYouthful leftist revolutions break the system while leftist gerentocrats impose the tyranny.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMaking tyranny look like freedom requires hefty doses of chaos and outrage that make it appear that the system is being broken when it’s actually being built up. Or as George Orwell wrote in 1984, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” The revolution is the thing it’s revolting against.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe end of history keeps arriving only to vanish like a mirage when the youth reach for it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,\" Obama told his followers. Two years later, he privately snapped, \"What does he think I'm supposed to do? Put on my f------ Aquaman gear and swim down there myself with a wrench?\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThirteen years have passed and if the planet has begun to heal, Democrats won’t admit it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe moment of epochal change can never be allowed to arrive because it would interrupt the permanent crisis. Salvation is always here and also always out of reach. But there’s always a new generation available to be fooled again because they know the past doesn’t matter.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHistory is radically revised every generation not just for what it teaches, but for what it doesn’t.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA revisionist history work like the 1619 Project doesn’t just impose a radical new racist history, it displaces the past. Another revisionist history will come along to displace the 1619 Project because manufacturing history churn is vital to destroying any continuity with the past. All the academic lenses being swapped one for the other like a mad ophthalmologist leaves a new generation with a lot of theories, but no clue that they’re being indoctrinated into a lost cause.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Left has no new ideas. Like Hollywood, it makes old ideas seem new by rebooting them, by making them appear hip and trendy, and by destroying a meaningful connection with the past. And that way audiences don’t realize they’re just seeing the same movie remade over again. What might be creative bankruptcy in a movie theater is a more seriously sisyphean problem described by Churchill as, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut how does a new generation learn from a past that isn’t allowed to exist on its own terms?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDemonizing the past is a convenient way of obscuring it. The only thing students are taught about the past is that it was a horrible time, its people backward, its customs savage, its learning wicked, its institutions racist, and its ideas horrifying. In postmodern history, the past exists only as a cautionary tale gleaned for historical struggles that fit into the new narrative.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHistory is an incomplete present whose revolutions were never fully fulfilled. It’s a revolutionary story of a world ruled by villains until they were overthrown by the forces of good. And this revolution against history must continue until all of the past is negated by the present.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe destruction of statues and burning of books forces ‘presentism’ for the past to conform to the dogmas of the moment. The biggest problem with the past isn’t that it’s politically incorrect, but that it’s repeating itself. The Black Lives Matter movement transparently harkens back to the 70s. So do most of the radical social impulses in which the Left cloaks its real power agenda.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe revolutionary chaos is doomed to fail again, but each oscillation breaks the country more.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe social activism is window dressing. A proper Marxist regime has little use for militant minorities, feminism, gay rights, police defunding, transgender bathrooms, pipeline protests, abortion, or any of the other issues the radicals have been using to waste our time. If you doubt that, go look at how many of any of the above you can find in China, Cuba, or North Korea.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Russian Futurists vowed to throw the art and literature of the past overboard from the “steamship of modernity”. But the Bolsheviks were not looking for disruptive art and when the revolution arrived, modern art was tossed overboard and the former revolutionaries settled down to producing socialist realism and recreating the art of the past for the Soviet Union.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter a brief permissive period, the Soviet Union criminalized homosexuality and insisted on traditional marriages and roles for women. Those feminists who resisted were soon shown their place with one of the more notorious free love figures being forcibly married off by Lenin.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe dictatorship had eclipsed the revolution and the past was quickly rewritten all over again.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs Obama approaches his sixtieth birthday, the age at which Khrushchev struggled for control of the USSR and Mao launched his Great Leap Forward, two events that would require a good deal of historical editing, our American past is already being rewritten. Only those who are at least in their thirties will remember that there wasn’t a racial crisis before Barack Obama.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd there hadn’t been such a crisis for a generation before he took power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur racial crisis is not a legacy of 1619, but of 2008. Obama’s victory was not a revolution against a crisis, but the revolution that created the crisis. To a new generation, the racial crisis is a permanent feature of life. They have always lived under the crisis and expect to always live under it. That is why critical race theory and white privilege rants have become so pervasive.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWithout a generation coming of age in a world shaped by the toxic idea that all white people are evil and all minorities are victims, no one outside academic circles would have willingly accepted them. And if that generation seems all too easy to radicalize into supporting the most insane policies, that’s because it grew up in a world defined by the hysteria of manufactured crises.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe world as they know it is doomed by melting ice caps, the rich getting richer, and the genocide of black people at the hands of the police. Every radical program is backed by a sense of urgent crisis which is killing people and destroying the future. They can’t imagine a present without the crisis and don’t remember ever living in a world not defined by crisis.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs Obama gets closer to his AARP cover, a generation lives in the world that he made.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike Obama, his radical political movement speaks endlessly about the past, but has no actual past. Its past is always being reinvented and retold through new narratives, but with no facts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Obama revolution has come and gone. We have skipped past it to the Soviet Union of Chernenko and Andropov, of gerontocrats building the tyranny with the beams of revolution. The decline is everywhere as the theories fail, the factories close, and the stores stand empty.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe youth are being rallied to cheer for the revolutionary tyranny of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer who are promising a new era in history no one believes in anymore. Since the election their cause is no longer free college, it’s federalizing elections through H.R.1.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EFederalizing elections, eliminating the filibuster, and packing the Supreme Court are compelling issues in Washington D.C., but the regime plotting new coups has little to say to the ordinary people facing high prices for gas and bread. Land, Bread, and Peace has given way to a race for total power over the country as the revolution of Hope, Crisis and Change comes of age.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThere’s no change without crisis, and without hope, there’s only hate.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/6792509647216090333\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/06\/obama-and-broken-nation-he-made-come-of.html#comment-form","title":"7 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6792509647216090333"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6792509647216090333"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/06\/obama-and-broken-nation-he-made-come-of.html","title":"Obama and the Broken Nation He Made Come Of Age"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/--7lUFPdjObk\/YNqNWmMPFoI\/AAAAAAAATUw\/5dhQRZfbfncJ1Wua0tehO_EO2cT0rWqLACNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-06-28_200249.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"7"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-5449508535824947045"},"published":{"$t":"2021-06-22T16:43:00.001-04:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2021-06-22T16:43:17.366-04:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"America"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"recent"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"The Small Secessions of the New Civil War"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"That a battle over Atlanta would play nearly as pivotal a role in the country’s second civil war as it did in the first might have surprised few historians. What might have surprised them is that the battle would involve civic meetings rather than bullets. There are plenty of bullets in Buckhead, a part of Atlanta coping with runaway crime under the pro-crime rule of Mayor Keisha Bottoms, and those bullets have inspired local residents to secede and form their own police force.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-fqeKlziURH4\/YNJLW4_u1II\/AAAAAAAATUU\/F3QvwsHZ9Q07aMJ0qxwVXOog8j2sk4_eACNcBGAsYHQ\/s653\/image_2021-06-22_134306.png\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"453\" data-original-width=\"653\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-fqeKlziURH4\/YNJLW4_u1II\/AAAAAAAATUU\/F3QvwsHZ9Q07aMJ0qxwVXOog8j2sk4_eACNcBGAsYHQ\/s320\/image_2021-06-22_134306.png\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EBuckhead is not the first part of Atlanta to try and secede. Sandy Springs had already successfully seceded from Atlanta and a number of cities in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have tried to break away to form Milton County. These efforts to escape the blight and corruption of Atlanta aren’t new, but Buckhead’s fight to escape Atlanta’s pro-crime government has captured the imagination of millions of Americans from one coast of the country to the other.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe cold civil war is being shaped not by national, but local secessions like the one in Buckhead as neighborhoods try to secede from cities, cities from counties, and counties from states in a powerful struggle by conservative and centrist communities to define their own way of life.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMost Americans might associate Roswell with UFOs, but a proposed bill by Senator Cliff Pirtle of Roswell would have allowed it and other counties located near Texas to secede with the possible intention of joining the Lone Star State. In Oregon, 7 counties voted to secede and join Idaho, Weld County is considering seceding from Colorado to join Wyoming, and western Minnesota has seen proposals for its counties to leave and unite with South Dakota.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESecession talk isn’t new. Northern Californians have kept the dream of a breakaway state named Jefferson alive for generations. The Democrat machine illegally suppressed a ballot measure that proposed to split California in three. The secession proposals that succeed are more modest and limited in scope. Breaking up states may be a moonshot, seceding from states might be an uphill battle, but the rate of local secessions is growing rapidly.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe most popular form of secession is also the smallest and involves school districts.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAn average of 5 school districts secede every year. And while such secessions may get less publicity than plans to split up entire states, they’re commonplace and effective. They also represent the same trend of communities escaping the social and political wreckage of urban rule. Even as Democrats go to war against the suburbs, the suburbs are fighting back.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe political geography of the new civil war is a tug of war between Democrats seeking to concentrate authority in as few places as possible and an opposition seeking independence.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile Democrats and their media complain about the electoral college and the composition of the Senate, the nation and its states are largely ruled by a handful of metropolitan areas. The wealth that buys and sells elections nationwide mostly flows out of New York and California, and, more specifically, out of New York City and Silicon Valley. Geographic regions of less than 1,000 square miles in total rule a nation of 3.8 million square miles with an economic fist.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe meltdown of the urban areas drove suburbanization. And the spreading blight of urban areas into suburban communities due to the concentration of statewide political power in the cities has led to a secondary exodus from suburban bedroom communities to other states.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECalifornia not only went blue, but it ‘blued’ Colorado, Wyoming, and a range of other states. The final casualty of California’s blue wave may even end up being Texas. New York has had a similar effect, not only regionally, but even to the south, driving an exodus to Atlanta. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe tide of blue state invasions has the potential to transform the state of states and the nation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENeighborhoods and school districts seceding from failed urban centers are trying to halt the problem at its source. Rural counties, especially in western states, are pushing back against larger demographic invasions that have transformed smaller states into miniature Californias. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPolls show that most people prefer to live in communities with people that share their values. As politics becomes more tribal, the number of neighborhoods with an even share of lawn signs for both parties is decreasing. In a political system that forces cake makers to bake cakes,  indoctrinates elementary school students with radical views on race and sexuality, and cancels anyone who doesn’t go along, coexistence with a radical leftist system is no longer an option.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESecession is. The new civil war is being fought locally. It’s not a regional movement, but a communal one. What brings together rural areas and suburban communities is a desire to control their own way of life and escape the destructive centralization of urban regimes.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe new civil war isn’t being fought between the North and the South, but between the cities and the rest of the country. It’s an economic and social war whose objective is independence.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat’s why the smallest scale secessions have paradoxically been the most successful.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhether it’s the Buckhead movement or the Texas Senate passing a bill allowing Lake Austin residents to secede from Austin only to see it die in the House, the secessions are gathering strength. But so is the Left's battle to stop them through lies, racism smears, and judicial fiat.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJust because the public votes to create a separate school district or a city doesn't mean that it won't be blocked by Democrat activist judges who decide to override the will of the people.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe attempt by Gardendale to secede from the failed Jefferson County Public School system in Alabama was illegally blocked by federal judges. The Left is struggling to block the creation of the city of St. George in Louisiana with equally illegal lawsuits. But the pace of secession proposals is only growing as more communities struggle to escape abusive governments.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd as Democrats seek to illegally rig elections across the country with H.R.1, to transform the government city of Washington D.C. into a state, and to exercise total control over every local decision through its massive urban bureaucracy, the rate of secessions is only increasing.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESome only seek to restore control over local schools and police forces to communities, while others strive to reconfigure the borders of states to enable rural representation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThough the term ‘secession’ and the idea of dividing a land summons to mind civil war, the more apt analogy may be the original secession of the United States from British rule.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,\" Thomas Jefferson wrote in the  Declaration of Independence.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica’s revolutionaries wanted self-government on their own terms. Their modern descendants are breaking away from New York and San Francisco, from Big Tech and Wall Street, the way that their ancestors sought to escape from London and its mercantile interests. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe fundamental issue at stake in the secessions is whether communities will be governed centrally or locally. Democrats and their media have worked to cloud the issue with false accusations of racism, but it’s not only white neighborhoods that are talking secession. A generation ago, black Boston residents proposed to create the breakaway city of Mandela. That movement has recently come in for a reexamination. It’s time to reexamine all of them.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe new generation of secessionism is driven by the unbearable pressure imposed on communities by the expansive ideological programs of radical leftist technocrats which leave little room for either individuality or human needs. Rather than learning from the profound failures of urban areas during the pandemic, all they learned is a need for greater control.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ESecession is the natural human response to the control freak madness of cities which control entire states. Communities are confronting radical power grabs by taking back the power.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe cold civil war is being fought in civic meetings. The battles are local and the battle maps cover streets rather than continents, but it is a conflict driven by the impetus of revolutions and civil wars in which one people, as Jefferson wrote, seeks to part ways with another, not to rule over them, but to be free of their thievery, their abuses, and their tyrannical rule.\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EDaniel Greenfield\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003EFront Page Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ci\u003EClick\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/sultanknish.blogspot.com\/2005\/03\/blogging-hara.html\" target=\"_blank\"\u003Ehere to subscribe\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;to my articles.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThank you for reading.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/5449508535824947045\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/06\/the-small-secessions-of-new-civil-war.html#comment-form","title":"6 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/5449508535824947045"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/5449508535824947045"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2021\/06\/the-small-secessions-of-new-civil-war.html","title":"The Small Secessions of the New Civil War"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-fqeKlziURH4\/YNJLW4_u1II\/AAAAAAAATUU\/F3QvwsHZ9Q07aMJ0qxwVXOog8j2sk4_eACNcBGAsYHQ\/s72-c\/image_2021-06-22_134306.png","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"6"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-6202815259396708930"},"published":{"$t":"2010-03-08T23:30:00.002-05:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2010-03-09T14:49:56.510-05:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"America"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"America's Lost Frontier"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"What has gone wrong with America? It's a question that many people are asking, but one approach is to look at what the present day America has lost. Its frontier. The frontier once defined America. It was the frontier that allowed English colonists to experiment with liberty. The march Westward, from the frontier settlements braving Indian raids to the Oregon trail, the Gold Rush and the Wild West, created a constant frontier for the country to rediscover what it means to be an American. The frontier kept America vital and as the frontier began to be lost, so did the spirit of America itself.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/S5W4M96dBlI\/AAAAAAAADWk\/vFswYb6MuJI\/s1600-h\/12am59.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"211\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/S5W4M96dBlI\/AAAAAAAADWk\/vFswYb6MuJI\/s320\/12am59.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EA civilization has two fundamental forces that define its nature. The Centralizing force and the Expansionistic force. The Centralizing force contracts the civilization inward into large and densely packed cities under a centralized government that is always growing larger and more complex. The Expansionistic force by contrast pushes outward into new frontiers that expand the size of the civilization and its sense of self.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Centralizing force marks the maturity and decline of the civilization. The Expansionistic force represents its youthful vitality and energy. A civilization that can transition from the Centralizing to the Expansionistic has another shot at life. A civilization that has no more frontiers will begin to fossilize into a great centralized mass that becomes unwieldy, decadent and eventually falls.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhere the Centralizing phase is marked by rigid government control, taboo breaking and cultural sophistication, the Expansionistic phase is marked by little government control, strong taboos and an emphasis on religion over culture. The Expansionistic phase mixes together cultures, but in the Centralizing phase, the existing culture is slowly replaced through migration from colonies and less developed parts of the world, drawn to the sophistication and wealth on display there.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis does not only apply to America, it applies equally well to Europe, and to global cultures dating back thousands of years. From the fall of Rome and several Greek city states to the decline and fall of Israel in the Second Temple period, to several Chinese dynasties and even to some degree modern day Japan. A nation without frontiers, only foreign colonies, is a nation without a future. As excess wealth concentrates in a handful of urban centers, decadence and corruption become endemic. The mores and values of the culture begin to implode. Sophistication begins to center on taboo breaking. Taxes increase, the size of government grows to unwieldy levels and foreigners increasingly push out the natives. By the time the actual collapse takes place, the society has already been a shell of itself for centuries.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe important thing to understand is that these two forces help balance out a civilization. The Expansionistic force creates a check on the Centralizing force. If the Centralizing force attempts to impose too much centralization, the frontier rebels against it. That for example is how America was born. Because the Expansionistic force is to some degree a push against the Centralizing force, the energy from these counter-opposing forces keeps a civilization active and vital.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Centralized civilization needs the frontier, because without that it instead begins to push at cultural frontiers, breaking taboos and destroying its own value system. The youth who might otherwise seek their fortune in wilder and untamed lands, instead become a disruptive social force at home. The frontier might make men and women out of them, but the static homeland and its increasingly centralized authoritarianism instead redirects their freedom seeking into political and social radicalism. Because free cultural energy will always be harnessed, a problem to which the frontier provides a solution.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWithout the frontier, there is no check to the Centralizing force which begins the process of contracting the society in on itself. Government becomes both outsized and corrupt. Domestic turmoil increases as government expands. The traditions that created respect for the political and social institutions are wiped away by the cultural turmoil, which increases the probability of coups and violent takeovers. This process feeds on itself until all semblance of civility and law have been lost, submerged beneath the competing aims of struggling factions.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/S5W4SWVxHLI\/AAAAAAAADWs\/E9rmhzDpH2c\/s1600-h\/Tall%20Ships%20in%20Mersey.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"223\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/S5W4SWVxHLI\/AAAAAAAADWs\/E9rmhzDpH2c\/s320\/Tall%20Ships%20in%20Mersey.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EIt is also natural, for the Centralizing force to often resent and seek to quash the Expansionistic force. The cultural differences lead the former to label the latter as ignorant backward prudes who are secretly scheming against the government, while the latter view the former as decadent authoritarians taxing them to fund their own corruption. In America, the usual label for this is Blue States vs Red States. In Israel, it's Haifa and Tel Aviv vs the Settlements. In historical Israel that same conflict inspired the story of Chanukah. In historical America, the Revolution.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn present day America, the gradual loss of the frontier, ended any real check on the Centralizing force. But it is incidentally telling that recent populist Republican Presidents like Roland Reagan and George W. Bush attempted to associate themselves with the cowboy culture and the frontier. And Sarah Palin, currently embodying the political spirit of Red State resistance comes from Alaska, the closest thing America still has to a frontier.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis goes all the way back to the start of the Republican party with Abraham Lincoln, billed as the quintessential frontier candidate, who ironically proved to be a centralizing figure instead. But as the Republican party has increasingly become the voice of opposition to the Centralizing force, at least on paper, its candidates and base of support have tended away from the centers of centralization. For the last 50 years, with the exception of the accidental Presidency of Gerald Ford, Republican Presidents have been West Coasters. And every Republican President in the last 78 years was either born or elected from California or Texas.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDuring that same period, with the exceptions of Bill Clinton and the accidental presidencies of Harry Truman and LBJ, Democratic Presidents have tended to be associated with centralized urban elites. Barack Obama is not the exception to the rule. He picks up on a pattern set by FDR and JFK. Both FDR and JFK attempted to use government centralization as a metaphor for the frontier. JFK did it literally with \"The New Frontier\". Of course there was no actual new frontier. What JFK meant was that government solutions were the New Frontier of mankind. This same rhetoric was exploited by Obama in his own run, with the addition of marketing his own rise to power as an act of taboo breaking that was appealing to a younger audience.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Centralizing force is rooted in urban environments because it finds its own natural logic there. 10,000 people living in 1 mile need much more extensive government and can enjoy far fewer freedoms, than 100 people living in 1 mile. Population density breeds centralization. In turns centralization provides a network of services that increases population density. These services require a constant growth in personnel, which helps promote migration and population density. This is an example of how the Centralizing force acts to increase its own concentration, much as a black hole sucks matter inside it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn the heavy urban environments where the Centralizing forces are based, interdependency seems perfectly natural. By contrast the Expansionistic force promotes independence and individualism, attitudes more typical of the frontier.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/S5W4XYYUx3I\/AAAAAAAADW0\/aJ6m4hfxpm8\/s1600-h\/52A1F834-FD5E-0493-FBBDE8D6A42F2DDE_1.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/S5W4XYYUx3I\/AAAAAAAADW0\/aJ6m4hfxpm8\/s1600\/52A1F834-FD5E-0493-FBBDE8D6A42F2DDE_1.jpg\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn a healthy civilization, the Centralizing force gives the Expansionistic force something to push against... and the Expansionistic force gives the Centralizing force new frontiers to manage and the imagination fuel to dream bigger dreams, instead of wallowing in its own cultural decadence. This Push and Pull process helped make America great, but the loss of a frontier has made the Centralizing force dominant in American government and culture.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd so the Centralizing force is creating a massive pile of government that cannot even afford to fund itself. The free cultural energy is being used to smash taboos, eliminating traditional values, while radicalizing politics. The pitched battle of Red States and Blue States is still weighed in many ways toward the Red States, because Americans are still more Main Street than Broadway, but given enough cultural influence and immigration that will change. As it has already changed dramatically over the last century.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAmerica needs a new frontier. Not Kennedy's New Frontier of social justice, but a frontier where the Expansionistic force can redefine America again. Such frontiers are possible, some require technology, others imagination. But like most living things, America must grow or die. And while the Centralizing force offers a congealing cancerous growth in the middle, it is the Expansionistic force that America needs to revitalize itself once again."},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/6202815259396708930\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2010\/03\/americas-lost-frontier.html#comment-form","title":"17 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6202815259396708930"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/6202815259396708930"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2010\/03\/americas-lost-frontier.html","title":"America's Lost Frontier"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/S5W4M96dBlI\/AAAAAAAADWk\/vFswYb6MuJI\/s72-c\/12am59.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"17"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11368628.post-5727359003104062160"},"published":{"$t":"2009-11-22T22:37:00.000-05:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2009-11-22T22:37:00.289-05:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"America"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Europe"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"immigration"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Toward a Sustainable Immigration Policy"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"While the rising threat of terrorism, violence and honor killings produced by Muslim immigration tends to be in the news lately, the problems produced by immigration are not limited solely to Islam. The problem of Muslim immigration was created by a larger trend in First World immigration policies that favors bringing in cheap labor for short term commercial and political gain. Such immigration policies however are seriously damaging to the nations that utilize them and cannot be sustained. So what we must do is look for a sustainable immigration policy.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYLElUl-I\/AAAAAAAAC4M\/A0QEIMOieug\/s1600\/immigration_protest.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"231\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYLElUl-I\/AAAAAAAAC4M\/A0QEIMOieug\/s320\/immigration_protest.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EThe first principle we need to begin with is that immigration should be in a nation's interest. While this seems self-evident, it is a principle that has gone by the wayside. For a clear example of what that leads to, consider Obama's move to \u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.judicialwatch.org\/blog\/2009\/nov\/obama-repeals-aids-immigration-ban\"\u003Eallow people infected\u003C\/a\u003E with AIDS to freely enter the United States. Clearly the entry of people with a deadly communicable disease for which there is no cure into the United States is not in our interest. It is actually quite dangerous to us and offers us no benefits whatsoever to outweigh the risks. There are numerous examples in our immigration policy are less graphic but ultimately just as destructive.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBeginning with the principle that immigration must be in the nation's interest, we now need a standard for measuring whether a particular form of immigration is in our interest or not.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe ideal form of immigration is one that benefits both the host country and the immigrants themselves. Immigration that benefits only the host country is slavery. Immigration that benefits only the immigrants is parasitism. The ideal is a mutual exchange of benefits between the immigrants and their new country. And we can begin by measuring that exchange through simple statistics by breaking down the impact of a particular immigration population in simple dollar terms.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis can be done simply by taking a particular population of immigrants and balancing their contributions in the form of taxes against the social expenditures they create through social services, crime, terrorism and public assistance. Through this method any immigrant population can be broken down into a dollar amount, which can then be contrasted and compared with other immigrant populations, as well as with the native population, to arrive at a chart that shows on the financial level which immigrants offer more benefits versus losses. Such figures should be assessed for first, second and if possible, third generation immigrants, to study the extent to which absorption improves those numbers or worsens them. Further in depth studies would look at regional differences which could allow for a greater fine tuning of immigrant acceptance from urban vs rural areas, to educated professionals vs industrial workers, for religious vs secular and so on and so forth, making it possible to produce questionnaires that would allow a country to reap the maximum possible benefit from immigrants, with the minimum possible loss.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYW2cpJ6I\/AAAAAAAAC4Q\/MXmny-Gr9rM\/s1600\/Immigration2-feature.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"234\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYW2cpJ6I\/AAAAAAAAC4Q\/MXmny-Gr9rM\/s320\/Immigration2-feature.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003EOnce this is done, it becomes possible to specifically assess the consequences for local and national economies of giving preference to one immigrant population over another. If we can break down the cost of say bringing in 2000 immigrants from Ireland vs 2000 immigrants from Belize, or 2000 immigrants from Venezuela vs 2000 immigrants from China-- we will be much closer to forming a rational immigration policy. And by presenting statistics in literal dollar amounts, a compelling interest based argument can be made for reforming immigration by making it sustainable.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe next step is to go beyond simple dollar amounts and to look at a nation's overall statistics, its\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.halfsigma.com\/2008\/05\/gdp-per-capita-or-total-gdp.html\"\u003E total and per capita GDP\u003C\/a\u003E, literacy rate, teenage pregnancies, domestic abuse, crime rates, and so on, and look to see which immigrant populations raise our statistics, and which lower them. The ideal form of immigration increases our statistics, or at least maintains them in place, but does not lower them. Again this needs to be studied across multiple generations to see the impact that absorption has on these numbers. An immigrant population that lowers these numbers not only in the first generation, but in the second and the third as well, is as unsustainable as a smokestack spewing poison into the air. \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThen there is the cultural question. Population migrations are nothing new in human history. Most countries are made up of a mix of peoples blending together over time through migrating populations. But while some such migrations are generally positive, others are generally negative. Whether a population migration is even feasible depends on how much room there is. 19th century America was able to absorb large numbers of immigrants in ways that 21st century America cannot because it lacks the same amount of open space. With the 20th century's suburbanization, that enabled the immigration and population movements of the 20th century reaching their limit in America, immigration creates crammed urban centers. And without \"room to grow\", immigration can destabilize and displace the existing native population. This creates an atmosphere charged with violence that easily lead to rioting and social conflict. A situation only worsened by groups with high birth rates moving to cities that are already bursting at the seams.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA sustainable immigration policy balances out immigration from population groups with high birth rates, by reducing their numbers in favor of immigration from population groups with lower birth rates-- in order to create a balance between them. Thus if immigrants from Country X have an average birth rate of 5 children and immigrants from Country Y have an average birth rate of 3 children, bringing in 2000 immigrants from Country and Country X is not parity. Instead it favors Country X in the second generation, when its immigrants might number 5000, while the immigrants from Country Y will only number 3000. The quotas for particular immigration populations would have to be set based on their projected numbers in the second generation, rather than the first generation.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYoOeA2MI\/AAAAAAAAC4U\/gg-GTi7ISyg\/s1600\/tsunami.JPG\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"212\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYoOeA2MI\/AAAAAAAAC4U\/gg-GTi7ISyg\/s320\/tsunami.JPG\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis brings us to the question of immigration quality over quantity. Big business and many politicians who depend on immigrant votes want immigration quantity, which translates into cheap labor and voting blocs for their political machines. However on a national level what is needed is not immigration quantity, but immigration quality.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECheap labor is extremely seductive, which is why even pro-business conservatives are reluctant to cut back\u0026nbsp; immigration to sustainable levels. Only when there is an economic downturn, do they jump on the immigration bandwagon. Businesses argue that they need cheap labor to maintain their domestic industries, and while this is a compelling argument for many, the fact of the matter is that cheap labor jobs wind up being more expensive than outsourcing, because immigration quantity carries a higher cost for the ordinary taxpayer, than the company simply packing up shop and taking a few native jobs abroad. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EVirtually every major social problem in the First World today can be traced to the desire for cheap labor. From gang rapes in California to Islamism in London, from suicide bombings in Israel to drug dealing in Sydney, from riots in Paris to honor killings in Sweden, the common element in these social problems is that they are caused by people who were brought in because they were once considered cheap labor. But cheap labor quickly turns out not to be so cheap after all.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe same big companies that complain about high taxes and socialism, seem to have no understanding whatsoever that when you import hundreds of thousands of immigrants, legal or illegal, they will have to pay the price for them sooner or later. Capitalism may rely on cheap labor, but cheap labor inevitably leads to socialism, because importing a population incapable of caring for itself, will require the government to step in sooner or later.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile we believe in free enterprise, that means responsible free enterprise. A factory that pours toxic waste into a river is not behaving responsibly and is not serving the public good. Similarly an industry that uses cheap immigration to cut costs while dumping ten times those same costs on the taxpayer, a cost that they themselves will ultimately have to make up down the road, is not behaving responsibly. The allegiance of American business must be to America, just as English businesses must be to England and so on and so forth. A loyal business does not act against the national interest, but seeks to work within a sustainable immigration policy for the larger national benefit, a benefit that will also accrue to it as well.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYuzReZxI\/AAAAAAAAC4Y\/Fuqen2vXdvw\/s1600\/d3706eu0.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"242\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYuzReZxI\/AAAAAAAAC4Y\/Fuqen2vXdvw\/s320\/d3706eu0.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EImmigration quality focuses on maintaining sustainable immigration, while immigration quantity provides mass without sustainability. Few First World countries can really afford immigration quantity anymore, yet virtually all of them continue to emphasize quantity over quality, thereby creating a cycle in which low quality immigration produces social problems that require government intervention, thereby raising taxes and requiring more cheap labor to try and fill the birth rate shortfall created by trying to impose a growing government burden on a shrinking number of workers. Eventually the entire socialist Ponzi Scheme collapses into either major reforms or a dark age, but by then much of the damage has already been done.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhile immigration remains an important resource, it must be the product of a rational policy. And a rational immigration policy can only be a sustainable immigration policy. Real immigration reform is not immigration permissiveness, but sustainability that balances immigration against domestic growth, seeks to maximize the beneficial quality of immigration, rather than cheap labor quantity, and works to maintain the quality of life and the culture of its citizens, rather than disrupting it and displacing them. Sustainable immigration is the only answer to out of control immigration pollution."},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/feeds\/5727359003104062160\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2009\/11\/toward-sustainable-immigration-policy.html#comment-form","title":"10 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/5727359003104062160"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/11368628\/posts\/default\/5727359003104062160"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/www.danielgreenfield.org\/2009\/11\/toward-sustainable-immigration-policy.html","title":"Toward a Sustainable Immigration Policy"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Daniel Greenfield"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/13575285186581875356"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"20","height":"32","src":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ywx0Wkms-cU\/Vm75eobzYVI\/AAAAAAAAPg0\/kAlR7rDxOIc\/s113\/picture%2Bnewspapery%2Bsmall.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_mveHL3n_4ME\/SwnYLElUl-I\/AAAAAAAAC4M\/A0QEIMOieug\/s72-c\/immigration_protest.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"10"}}]}});