The Forced March to Mediocrity

By Howard W. Houchen —— Bio and Archives November 5, 2009

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Whether it be by accident or design, such policy, formulated with reckless indifference to the preservation of constitutional liberty and our free enterprise economy, coupled with rapid centralization of power in the hands of a few, is leading us toward a communist state with as dreadful certainty as though the leaders of the Kremlin themselves were charting our course.” General Douglas McArthur, 1952 Today, the United States of America, a nation that once prospered beyond imagination, and stood as the final barrier between liberty loving societies and tyrannical regimes on a global scale, is in the Twilight Zone. What was up is down, what was unjust is just, what once was recognized as tyranny is now called freedom and what was once the domain of the citizenry is now the realm of a ruling regime that chooses to force all of us to accept and participate in the national March to Mediocrity. WE, the people, are being enslaved as a result of our own machinations. Under OUR watch was created a blind and deaf behemoth we now recognize as a central-planning collectivist federal government. Blind, because it claims it fails to see how its policies are destroying the American character and is shredding the intent of OUR founders…The Republic. Deaf, because it claims to not hear the high-decibel majority voice…crying out for the continuation and protection of individual Freedom. What have WE created? The perverted, and yes, un-American, pieces of legislation oozing their way through the halls of Congress over the past few years have taken advantage of our “lack of duty” to govern ourselves. We now find ourselves in a predicament that we have been warned of countless times, over decades, generations, and centuries…no longer are Americans a self-governed citizenry, we are virtually dictated to by that which we are supposed to control. Now that we are captives of an entity of our own creation, we are expected to behave as such…to follow the directives of the Blind-Deaf Behemoth without examination of OUR founding intent and purpose. We are being directed to forego beliefs in American Exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian founding principles. We are directed to place the philosophical teachings and historical results of free-market capitalism onto the rubbish pile of history’s failures. We are directed to accept the notion that the American Dream will now entail an attempt at forced equality based on forced redistribution of property and other resources rather than ingenuity, hard-work, and personal responsibility. We are directed to accept the fact that every single man, woman, and child citizen of this proud and great one-time Republic is responsible for over US$38,000.00 of national indebtedness…a figure that grows with each passing second. We are directed to believe OUR founding principles no longer serve a purpose in today’s globalized political and economic environment. Our newly emboldened “Creation” seeks to take us back to the not-so-distant past and lays claim, Nay, directs us to accept a system that history has already weighed and measured and found to be lacking relative to economic sustainment, much less expansion, and protection of individual freedoms and U.S. Constitutional adherence. OUR Blind-Deaf Behemoth desires the brand of global social utopianism as outlined by Cabet, Marx, Engels, and others and takes steps daily to ensure that America becomes just another state…among many…nothing special. Not the liberty standard by which all others were to be judged, not the stronghold of free enterprise, not the world-wide leader in producing and advancing technological and medical innovations…just another state…among many. Another state allowing OUR destiny, OUR once sovereign decisions, shaped and guided by non-citizens and non-American entities. Regardless of the stamina and the strength of the machinery behind this Forced March to Mediocrity, it will fail. It will fail because of, as Alexis de Tocqueville so aptly described, American Exceptionalism. Americans are not “better”…we are inarguably “different”. Our American uniqueness of character, as molded by our political beginnings and subsequent struggles to uphold that heritage, birthed a political culture that does not call for, nor allow, mediocrity. We are repeatedly reminded of the design OUR “Creation” has in its sights for the “Changed” America, a future similar to the current systems of governance found in Europe. How the political culture and societal beliefs of America differs with the political culture and societal beliefs of Europe provides insight into why this Forced March to Mediocrity will ultimately fail. Sociologist Max Weber told us, almost a century ago, that along with modernization there will be a concurrent increase in secularization…history reveals he was mostly right about Europe but mostly wrong about the United States of America. Three-fourths of all Americans feel proud of their country. That is true of only one-third of all Frenchmen, one-third of all Italians, one-third of all Germans, and one-third of all Japanese. Over half of all Americans think that individual freedom is more important than having a government safety net, but that is only true of one-third of all Europeans. Two-thirds of all Americans think success in life is the result of their own efforts, but only one-third of Europeans agree. They think success in their life is the result of forces over which they have no control. Half of all Americans think belief in God is essential to morality; this is true of only one-third of all Europeans. Half of all Americans think that economic competition is good for the country yet only one-third of all Frenchmen and Spaniards hold this belief. Sixty percent of Americans believe our children should be taught the value of hard work but only twenty percent of Germans hold this same belief. Sooner or later, and judging from last night’s post-election polling and focus groups it will be sooner rather than later, the great citizens of the this great country will recognize and soundly reject the central-planning collectivist designs OUR “Creation” has in store for us and simply refuse to participate, using our God-given Right of free will, in this attempted Forced March to Mediocrity. Blindly following rather than leading and accepting less than what is conceivably achievable is not in our nature. We are Americans! The information contained in this paragraph was derived from multiple sources. Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes of the Pew Research Group published, “America Against the World: How We are Different and Why We are Disliked” as part of their “Pew Global Attitudes Project”. You may also visit Columbia International Affairs Online at HYPERLINK "http://www.ciaonet.org/pbei/aei/oti/aei059/aei059.pdf" [url=http://www.ciaonet.org/pbei/aei/oti/aei059/aei059.pdf]http://www.ciaonet.org/pbei/aei/oti/aei059/aei059.pdf[/url] and view “American Exceptionalism” by James Q. Wilson.