Tag: The Fate of the United States

Ronald Reagan Memorial Day Speech Transcript 1982

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Here’s the transcript to Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Memorial Day speech.  Reading it is immensely saddening.  What a different world and America it was back then.

 

Mr. President, General, the distinguished guest here with us today, my fellow citizens. In America, cities and towns today flags will be placed on graves in cemeteries, public officials will speak of the sacrifice and the valor of those whose memory we honor. In 1863, when he dedicated a small cemetery in Pennsylvania, marking a terrible collision between the armies of North and South, Abraham Lincoln noted the swift obscurity of such speeches.

Well, we know now that Lincoln was wrong about that particular occasion, his remarks commemorating those who gave their last full measure of devotion were long remembered. But since that moment at Gettysburg, few other such addresses have become part of our national heritage. Not because of the inadequacy of the speakers, but because of the inadequacy of words. I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the site before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who in return loved their countrymen enough to die for them. Yet, we must try to honor them, not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions, we must strive to keep faith with them and with a vision that led them to battle and a final sacrifice.

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough. The United States and freedom for which it stands, the freedom of which they died must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply, it has a cost. It imposes a burden. And just as they, when we commemorate, were willing to sacrifice, so too must we, in a less final, less heroic, way be willing to give of ourselves. It is this beyond the controversy and the congressional debate, beyond the blizzard of budget numbers and the complexity of modern weapon systems that motivates us in our search for security and peace. War will not come again, other young men will not have to die if we will speak honestly of the dangers that confront us and remain strong enough to meet those dangers.

It’s not just strength or courage that we need, but understanding and a measure of wisdom as well. We must understand enough about our world to see the value of our alliances. We must be wise enough about ourselves to listen to our allies, to work with them, to build and strengthen the bonds between us. Our understanding must also extend to potential adversaries. We must strive to speak of them, not belligerently, but firmly and frankly. And that’s why we must never failed to note as frequently as necessary the true the wide gulf between our codes of morality. And that’s why we must never hesitate to acknowledge the irreputable difference between our view of man as master of the state and their view of man as servant of the state. Nor must we ever underestimate the seriousness of their aspirations to global expansion. The risk is the very freedom that has been so dearly won.

It is this honesty of mind that can open paths to peace, that can lead to fruitful negotiation, that can build a foundation upon which treaties between our nations can stand and last. Treaties that can someday bring about a reduction in the terrible arms of destruction. Arms that threatened us with war even more terrible than those that have taken the lives of the Americans we honor today. In the quest for peace, the United States has proposed to the Soviet Union that we reduce the threat of nuclear weapons by negotiating a stable balance at far lower levels of strategic forces.

This is a fitting occasion to announce that, START, as we call it, strategic arms reductions. The negotiations between our country and the Soviet Union will begin on the 29th of June. As for existing strategic arms agreements, we will refrain from actions which undercut them so long as the Soviet Union shows equal restraint. With goodwill and dedication on both sides, I pray that we will achieve a safer world.

Our goal is peace. We can gain that peace by strengthening our alliances, by speaking candidly of the dangers before us, by assuring potential adversaries of our seriousness, by actively pursuing every chance of honest and fruitful negotiation. It is with these goals in mind that I will depart Wednesday for Europe, and it’s all together fitting that we have this moment to reflect on the price of freedom and those who have so willingly paid it. For however important, the matters of state before us this next week, they must not disturb the solemnity of this occasion. Nor must they dilute our sense of reverence and the silent gratitude we hold for those who are buried here.

The willingness of some to give their lives so that others might live never fails to evoke in us a sense of wonder and mystery. One gets that feeling here on this hallowed ground. And I have known that same poignant feeling as I looked out across the rows of white crosses and Stars of David in Europe, in the Philippines, in the military cemeteries here in our own land. Each one marks the resting place of an American hero. And in my lifetime, the heroes of World War I, the Doughboys, the GIs of World War II, or Korea or Vietnam. They span several generations of young Americans, all different and yet all alike, like the markers of above their resting places. All alike in a truly meaningful way.

Winston Churchill’s said of those he knew in World War II, they seem to be the only young men who could laugh and fight at the same time. A great general in that war called them our secret weapon, just the best darn kids in the world. Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life. Well, they didn’t volunteer to die, they volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be. The values, which make up what we call civilization and how they must have wished in all the ugliness that war brings that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.

As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor, shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation. And let us also pledge to do our utmost to carry out what must have been their wish, that no other generation of young men will ever have to share their experiences and repeat their sacrifice.

Earlier today, with the music that we have heard and that of our national anthem, I can’t claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don’t know of any other but ends with a question and a challenge as our does. Does that flag still wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave? That is what we must live up to.  Thank you.

What Have They Wrought?

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Since the early 1970’s I have been a witness to the devolution of the United States of America.  By all measurable objective standards, the cultural, intellectual, moral, financial and psychological well-being of this once great nation has declined.

Unsurprisingly there are some aspects of life that have shown innovation.  We have computers and cellular phones.  And that’s about it.

This process has proceeded in waves.  The first big wave was in the 1960’s and ‘70’s.  During this period the youth culture rebelled against all the moral and social norms and introduced such wonders of modern progress as widescale drug addiction, mass produced pornography and drug resistant STD’s.  It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius or something.

As the 1970’s waned the counterculture became passe and the hippies became yuppies and went to work on Wall Street to catch up on the decade they spent stoned.  But the contingent of hippies that were too lazy to work for a living stayed on campus and became the next generation of academia.  And there they stayed to inculcate the following generations in such useful pursuits as post-modern analysis, deconstructionism, various waves of feminism, liberation theory, queer theory, Africana studies, Non-Western Cultural studies and whatever other nonsense they could make up on the fly.

And now the seeds that those cretins planted in the minds of our children have sprouted and we now have the woke generation.  And they have inherited the earth.  They are the target audience for all the tendrils of the on-line community.  Their sensibilities determine what YouTube and Facebook and Twitter will allow to be said and heard.  And it is this sensibility that has driven the changes that we have seen in the last fifteen years.

Over the course of the last sixty years or so we’ve seen the world get steadily crazier.  Illegal aliens have sanctuary cities and states where federal laws aren’t obeyed and where these people are given government assistance of various kinds and even allowed to have a driver’s license and allowed to vote.  Generations of families live on welfare payments and never work.  Anti-constitutional programs like affirmative action and laws for things like hate speech exist in defiance of the basic rights of Americans under the Constitution.  Whole groups of people have been proclaimed “protected classes” and provided with administrative regulations and laws that ensure that they are advantaged over everyone else.  These are the things we’ve grown used to over the decades.  They’re outrageous but they have become the baseline that we expect.

But let’s look at what has happened in the last few years:

  • Marriage has been redefined to include two men or two women. This includes the right for these people to adopt and raise children.
  • Men can declare themselves women and women can declare themselves men (transgender). And anyone who denies these declarations will be punished, sometimes criminally, for these beliefs.  Even failing to refer to these people by their preferred “pronouns” is grounds for arrest in some jurisdictions.
  • Children as young as toddlers can be coached by teachers to say that they are transgender and this alone will be enough for a court to mandate that the child be started on drug regimens and surgery to transition this child into the other “gender.”
  • Because George Floyd, a violent black career criminal, died while under arrest, the police across the country are no longer allowed to arrest black criminals for almost any reason. As an example, the Manhattan district attorney has declared that no crime less serious than murder or violent assault will be prosecuted.  Theft, simple assault, carjacking, sexual battery and almost anything else you can think of will be ignored by the prosecutors and the perpetrators will be released back onto the streets.  Shoplifting at a ruinous level is bankrupting all types of retail stores in cities.
  • During the George Floyd “protests,” local, state and federal law enforcement allowed mobs of violent rioters to loot stores, assault and even kill innocent people and burn down property with complete immunity.
  • Local, state and federal governments have propagandized the populations in a mantra that declares that “Black lives matter” (BLM). This maxim has been clarified to mean that it is incorrect to assume that all lives matter.  And basically, since we see that black lives are being lost on the street every day to black criminals, what BLM means is that black criminal behavior against non-black people is fully protected.
  • The normalization of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in not only colleges but even K-12 history and social studies programs.
  • The universal adoption of equity, diversity and inclusion principles in corporate and government organizing structures and practices. This is the abandonment of equal protection guarantees under the Constitution.
  • Election fraud by Democrats is protected behavior.
  • Government authority in “emergencies” like COVID is unlimited in both scope and duration even when it contradicts constitutional rights.
  • Government surveillance of US citizens is as a practical matter unchecked.
  • Social media and e-commerce companies can and will exclude anyone who does not comply with “woke” requirements around speech and behavior even if these events occur off of their platforms. This extends to virtual exclusion from banking and other necessary accommodations of modern life.

Looking at the scope and severity of these latest changes and how they violate the spirit and the substance of all the important norms of our society previous to these last few years I have to say that we have now reached a point where if there isn’t a substantive reaction that not only halts but reverses all these changes then I’ll have to conclude that the United States is a lost cause.

Any nation that negates all of its principles and even despises the identity of its majority population is no longer a nation.  It is a slaughterhouse of its own people comparable to what Stalin and Pol Pot unleashed on the Russian and Cambodian people respectively.  Only in America it is done subtly.  Instead of the gulag and the death camp, it is cancel culture.  We don’t murder you.  We indoctrinate you to murder your own descendants through cancellation.  No families, no children no future.  You hate your ancestors because they were racists and misogynists and polluters of the earth.  As penance you agree to forego family, careers and any future.

We’ll be able to see very easily if this will turn around.  If any state successfully reverses all of these things despite the attacks by the federal government, then that would be a sign of hope.  If some geographic area inside the United States becomes a haven for normal Americans to live their lives the way their parents and grandparents did then that would be a sign of hope.  If not then we’re done.  And those of us who care might as well start looking for a new place to live.

How Many Possible Paths-Forward Are There?

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Science fiction writer L. Sprague de Camp has been quoted as having said “It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.”  He was right.  Seeing into the future is a fool’s errand.  But it is also what we have to do every day of our lives.  And the farther into the future you can see the more successful you will be.

Here at Orion’s Cold Fire, prognostication is a scientific endeavor utilizing all the latest technology and the most powerful data crunching systems to make our forecasts the envy of Nostradamus.  Sure.

We live on the knife’s edge.  Everything we’ve seen in the last few years shows us that the fate of the United States and indeed the world is balanced on a teetering point and the smallest breath of wind has the capacity to save us, at least temporarily, or tumble us into the abyss.  Sucks to be us.

Lately I have been trying to figure out what are the most likely directions the future may take.  Let me number them here.

  • The clearest and in fact, the most likely future is the complete victory of progressivism. Under this scenario, political control of the Unites States and also the rest of Western civilization shifts irreversibly to the Left.  All the tenets of progressivism, feminism, LGBTQ orthodoxy, anti-white quota legislation and socialist economics prevail.  Free speech, gun rights and freedom of religion are abolished.  An all-powerful, all pervasive state control settles over the lives of the citizenry.  Basically slavery.  I think this has a very good likelihood of occurring.  And the method will be a gradual tightening of all the policies that will lead to this endpoint.  It won’t be necessary to legislate any of these things abruptly.  Gradual is better.  How’s that for grim?
  • Another possibility I can think of is a branch off of the first scenario. The progressives win a big election.  They start initiating their agenda and someone does something.  Let’s call it a revolt.  Some kind of resistance that incorporates individuals taking action that becomes a rallying point for local or state government action.  This grows into a larger movement and this requires a response by the Federal government.  To make this a distinct case from scenario 1, we have to assume that it isn’t suppressed and leads to a split in the country.  At least two distinct geographic entities would occupy what is now the United States.  For this scenario let us pick the case that a successful path forward is arranged and both (or more) daughter states move forward along independent paths with more or less cooperation between them.
  • The third possibility and the least likely scenario is that the progressives lose. Somehow President Trump successfully manages to turn the American project back into the direction of freedom and sanity and reasonable men follow him in reversing the outrages of the last half century and putting us back on the path of freedom and healthy social relations.  This is my idea of the happy ending.
  • The fourth scenario is a full-scale civil war of the type seen in Yugoslavia. If this occurs, I assume the likeliest outcome is a divided country with an eventual armistice and population shifts to allow people to choose between two very polarized and hostile camps.  This would be an extreme version of Option 2.
  • In option 5 our enemies around the world see our weakness and division and nuke us into oblivion. This is also a slightly less likely scenario but far from improbable.

I’m sure there are several other cases that I’ve neglected.  If you have your own idea for a different version feel free to leave it in the attached poll or comments.

 

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