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Come home, America.
Now would be the time.
Al Qaeda has been decapitated. The seven dwarves of wannabe Bin Ladens are hopeless.
The Cold War is over in Europe. As over as leisure suits.
We get most of our oil from the Western Hemisphere. No real reason to import it from the psycho-political Middle East.
Libya is not our problem. The chaos in Mexico is.
Time to come home, America.
We are a New World nation.
We started dabbling in Old World politics in McKinley’s administration with the “White Man’s Burden” and the Philippines. It was a slippery slope. 110 years of adventure with a ton of heartache.
Now is the time to realize the great promise of the New World.
The founding fathers warned us against “entangling alliances” in the Old World.
We ignored them.
And we have paid.
And paid.
And paid.
In gold and blood.
We had no business in World War One. None. No one is even sure what the war was about, almost a century later. Why send our young men into that meat grinder?
And had we never messed around in the Philippines and taken over Hawaii in a sleazy way there would have been no Pearl Harbor. Russia would have eventually defeated the Nazis without us (do the math). There may not have ever been Nazis in the first place if we had not tipped the scales of WW1 so that Germany was crushed.
It is time for America to come home.
If Europe cannot defend itself without our help, then that’s their problem. Why did they need us to straighten out Kosovo?
If Korea is hopeless without us, then Asia has to band together to subdue the nut case pariah nation of North Korea.
We are obsessed with the Middle East. As Dr. Phil would say: How’s it workin’ for you now? Israel is plenty able to kick the pooey out of anyone who messes with them. And last time someone fired scuds at them it was because our soldiers were shooting up Mesopotamia. We get the Israelis in more trouble than anything else.
These fights are not our fight.
Our natural GNP level is 20% of the global total (with 4% of the population), this has held steady for a century. We had a short percentage spike in the 1950’s while the rest of the world rebuilt after the disaster of WW2. It’s time to go back to our “natural” sphere of influence of 1/5 of the globe. Right now, we are acting like we own the whole enchilada. Imperial over-reach has killed more empires than anything else.
It is time to:
- Pull our troops out of Europe.
- Pull our troops out of Korea.
- Leave the Eastern Hemisphere, militarily. 100% withdrawal.
- Help Mexico fix Mexico.
- Establish a free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere, the New World.
- Stop worrying about trade with India and China. If they won’t play nice (which they will), then transfer those jobs to North and Latin America.
- We won’t even start with the schizophrenic nation of Pakistan, our worst ally…ever.
- Build a world-class freight railroad system from Alaska to the tip of Chile.
- Re-align the military to protect the Western Hemisphere. Seamlessly. With big oceans on both sides and no natural enemies, we are easy, and cheap, to defend.
- Develop a joint Western Hemisphere Navy (like NATO was) to which we would supply 3, not 12, carrier groups.
- Thus save trillions in military expenditures and foreign aid, all the while enhancing our security. Oh, by the way, this would balance the budget.
- Be on good terms with the Old World, but stay out of their un-solvable feuds.
- Have every student in our hemisphere learn English and Spanish in addition to his/her native tongue. No exceptions.
- Create a national volunteer service throughout the hemisphere to build the infrastructure. Mandatory two years after high school. Get our young people out from in front of screens with video games and Simpsons reruns and out doing some good.
- Eliminate drug cartels.
To resurrect a term, it is our manifest destiny to be the leading nation (with great partners) in the New World.
Come home, America.
This vision made it into the epilogue of The Blackberry Bush, my 2011 novel.
Please pass a link to this article to everyone you know. Thanks.
PS: Just was reminded by a friend that McGovern’s acceptance speech in 1972 was entitled, “Come home, America.” 8-track, flashback! Here are the closing lines:
So join with me in this campaign. Lend me your strength and your support, and together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning.
From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America
From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.
From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick — come home, America.
Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward.
Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in that homecoming, for this “is your land, this land is my land — from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters — this land was made for you and me.”
So let us close on this note: May God grant each one of us the wisdom to cherish this good land and to meet the great challenge that beckons us home.
And now is the time to meet that challenge.
Good night, and Godspeed to you all.
-George McGovern, 1972, who lost to Nixon, who resigned in disgrace shortly thereafter…
As with every Memorial Day, my thoughts wander to “God and Country.”
Does God never march with Armies?
Look at the words to Battle Hymn. Let us die to make men free.
Is God a pacifist?
How must America live to be worthy of God marching with our armies?
What are your thoughts?
Our institutions are rusting out.
Let me say from the beginning that I am an optimist for the human race and for the Creation in general. God will have his way with Creation and people are amazingly resilient and adaptable.
But I am a pessimist about the ability of our major institutions to survive this century.
The rust has gone beyond cosmetic. The core of our institutions are rusting
Sure you want to read this?
The church, the government, education, the military, and the economy are in terminal trouble.
Not that some form of church, government, education, military, and economy won’t survive. All of these functions are going to survive; but the institutions which carry these functions now may not.
CHURCH
Arguably the most resilient of all institutions (outliving languages and nations, and ALL ideologies), the Church has gone ‘sideline’ in the space of one generation.
The Church was the only major institution to survive the fall of the Roman Empire.
Irrelevant and ignored are the two adjectives that come to mind when I think of the 21st Century church.
Virtually no explicit Christian leaders, for the first time in 2 millennia, are first-team varsity culture shapers on our planet. We don’t even have an Oprah, let alone a Churchill.
Today’s 15-30 year-olds are ignoring the Church in unprecidented droves.
Most denominational organizations are ripped apart by political issues and are reaching terminal blood loss levels. Christianity is fragmented like never before.
GOVERNMENT
I live in California.
California, more or less first to try out everything, became ungovernable a few years ago. The USA is not far behind.
Our current form of ‘democracy’ is based on British parliamentary and American constitutional decision making. Also on the idea of the sovereign “nation state.”
More Americans seem to believe in the sacred inerrancy of our constitution than believe in the veracity of the Bible. But its days are numbered because the institution it calls forth is no longer able to solve problems. It can’t do its job.
The truth is, the folks in Sacramento and Washington DC are no longer at the helm of our culture. They are not calling the shots.
The models they follow are based on pre-industrial and pre-information-age interaction. They are more and more unable to solve the challenges we all face together.
The European Union is facing increasing opposition from client states and their citizens. It is a faux-empire with no mass appeal or loyalty (from the citizenry). It lacks patriotism.
The Romans were unable to adapt to changing situations. Patriotism and effort is not enough.
Sometimes you just have to think differently.
EDUCATION
We all know that there are great educators out there.
Most of us were influenced by outstanding teachers.
But there is a nagging consensus that the way we do school and university is not working as it should.
We have been unable, in the USA, to figure out how to include all of the major lifestyle ideologies in our official education process. Abraham Kuyper of Holland was the last one to pull this off (about 100 years ago). So we settle for lowest-common-denominator secular humanism as our official education vibe.
And pencils and classrooms? In the 21st century? Our current elementary education model doesn’t even assume the presence of electricity. It would work almost as well with a pot belly stove and a chalkboard.
MILITARY
We are unable to create safety for productive citizens. Our USA military was designed to beat the Germans (tanks) and the Japanese (aircraft carriers).
The military of other countries is more or less totally impotent and unable to project power anywhere. Europe couldn’t even take care of Kosovo without our help.
The real threats are politically and psychologically (sometimes both) fringe people. Especially when they congregate and organize.
Call it extremism or whatever.
They want to blow up airplanes (from their underwear) over Detroit.
They form camps to train angry young men to hate and kill.
They are notoriously flexible and hard to locate. The most powerful military on Earth can’t find Bin Laden.
They generally hate Israel, America, or the UK–not necessarily in that order.
They, as strongmen, take over failed states and provide “stability” and pride for their followers.
As a result, harmless grandmas have to take off their shoes at airport security, getting their water bottles confiscated, and honest people have governments limiting how much money they can move around. I have an 827 credit rating and the bank has to put holds on my checks because of the “Patriot Act.”
New “nuclear powers” are added every few years. An obsolete form of national security, but it continues to spread. Who will be the first to pull the trigger? Pakistan? North Korea?
We, and other nations, spend bazillions on ‘military’ but most of it is still focused on a WW2 that is not going to return. Or on a Cold War that is just plain over.
And Bin Laden and North Korea continue to do whatever they want.
ECONOMY
The economy has been fragile for quite some time. “Recovery” seems to be an elusive thing. It may not arrive; at least in the sense of returning to the way things are.
People may well prosper in the future. I believe they will. But the Reagan and Clinton prosperity patterns are not coming back. We are moving forward into something new.
The big time bomb is China. They have huge problems. 300 million Chinese (the entire population of the USA) are seasonal itinerant migrant workers. Their environmental issues are like gathering national mudslides. Their core industries are rusting out, and only 8-10 percent annual GNP growth “keeps the doctor away.” The day that expansion slips below that level…
The effect of this on the global economy will be staggering.
Money, also, is making no sense. What is it anyway? We are constantly measuring something that is an abstraction at best. Money is a very old school way of value storage; kind of a reel-to-reel tape in an iPod financial era. Money is simply not keeping up–obviously.
And our global banking system can’t exist without huge infusions which the governments paying them can’t afford to make.
CONCLUSIONS
Archaeology shows us that institutions calcify and end up in layers of ‘digs.’
We may be facing revolutionary changes in our institutions. Many of us alive today may see these institutions (peacefully or otherwise) make way for new forms of completing the same tasks.
Even our cities may not survive.
Cities (bigger and bigger) have to get their food from farther and farther away.
They have to ‘trade’ something in return for being fed. Cities cannot feed themselves.
It used to be that cities, by concentrating people, could create innovation that they could sell to people who would feed them.
With technological and communication breakthroughs, people can live in Northern Alberta and create innovation in conversation with the whole world via technology. We don’t have to live in cities anymore.
De-urbanization (along with other things) killed the Roman Empire. Rome could no longer add value to the rural areas who were feeding the great city. People moved to the countryside and reorganized as local fiefdoms.
The 21st Century is going to be the most revolutionary since the 6th century.
Are you ready for it?
What are you doing to position yourself to prevail?
David Housholder Essays 