Joe Farah 9/14

[Jeff Penrod <jpenrod@sihope.com> (by way of "Edwin E. Smith" <edsmith@IntNet.net>)]

Americans get what they deserve 	
		
I love America. 

I love the spacious skies. I love the amber waves of grain, the purple
mountains' majesties and the fruited plains. But what I love most about
America is the God-breathed revolutionary spirit that led its founders to
risk everything in a desperate fight for freedom and a noble effort to
write the greatest Constitution the world has ever known. 

But something dreadful has happened to that spirit. It's gone. Oh, there's
a small remnant of people who still have it, understand it and live by it.
But, apparently, the vast majority of Americans are clueless about it. They
have no sense of history. They have no connection with their revolutionary
past. They have no idea of how blessed they are to live with the fleeting
legacy of freedom they inherited from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison and our other forefathers who staked their lives, their
fortunes and their sacred honor in a quest for liberty. 
Americans have
grown fat and lazy, content with their material blessings and ignorant of
their far more important endowment of freedom. 

It's enough to make you sick. 

Oh, sure, Americans have lots of scapegoats for their ignorance. They've
been deliberately dumbed down for 30 or more years by government schools
determined to turn them into mindless robots. They have been the victims of
media propaganda designed to deceive them and lead them astray. And for a
generation or more they have been seduced by government plans to instill in
them an ever-greater sense of dependency. 

But those are excuses. The truth is out there. It's more readily available
to Americans who choose to seek it out than any other people in history.
Americans are just too busy, blind or comfortable to bother searching for
it. Most don't even comprehend the way they are being manipulated -- or
just don't care. In other words, ultimately, they have no one to blame but
themselves. 

As an example of what I'm talking about, take the latest polls conducted
after the release of the Starr report. Most Americans say President Clinton
is doing a good job and should not resign or be impeached. A CNN/Gallup
poll released the day the report went public on the Internet placed the
president's job approval rating at 62 percent, about where it was before
the report was released. More than half, 58 percent, said Congress should
vote to censure the president for behavior that has eroded the public's
respect for his ethics and truthfulness -- a thoroughly meaningless
gesture, a slap on the wrist with no consequences, the kind of punishment
Bill Clinton awaits more eagerly than the next class of White House interns. 

Almost 60 percent of those polled said they thought Clinton was fit to be
president. By what standard? That's the trouble. Americans have no
standards -- no unchangeable yardsticks by which they measure right and
wrong, truth from fiction. 

Now, I don't put much stock in public opinion surveys. They are often
conducted by the same corporate media interests whose agenda is
inextricably tied to bigger and more intrusive government. Nevertheless,
these surveys are at least an indication that our nation is in grave
trouble. 

What do they tell us? 

We've lost our moorings -- just as surely as Bill Clinton has. America is
morally, politically, intellectually, spiritually adrift. There are no
anchors aboard. No compasses. The USS America is at the mercy of the winds
and currents, and most on board don't care. As long as the crew is serving
them fine food and entertaining them, the passengers don't give a second
thought to their fate or their ultimate destination. 

In a way, Americans are getting just what they deserve. Their choice of
leaders reflects their own inadequacies and shortcomings -- their own
cowardice. 

No wonder they look at Bill Clinton without judgment. To hold him
accountable would mean holding themselves to a standard of accountability.
They like looking up to see a leader who is every bit as dysfunctional,
soulless and lost as themselves. It's comforting, in a perverse way. 
And
psychic and material comfort is the only standard by which Americans today
measure their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness. It's not
an easy observation or admission to make, my fellow Americans. But somebody
has to say it. 	
	
A daily radio broadcast adaptation of Joseph Farah's commentaries can be
heard at http://www.ktkz.com/