Dick Lamm for President!

I'm not a Democrat, or a Republican. I vote as an "Independent" because I don't much care for either party. I show my contempt for party politics in the signature block on my email:

People belong to political parties to make sure their scoundrel gets elected, instead of the other party's scoundrel.

Some people, however, understand better what's going on in this world than other's. Dick Lamm's speech last week shows that he understands the danger to the United States of the 1800's by the actions of a few small groups in the 1990's and 2000's. We need to read and understand every word, and to refer to it as often as possible:

THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA---FROM WITHIN

By Bonnie Eggle · April 24, 2005 11:52 PM

The following remarks by Richard Lamm are remarkable and hard-hitting. I was one of the many attendees at this conference and was as spellbound as the rest of the crowd. Please read and think of the 8 points....how many are already accomplished? That is a frightening thought.
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We all know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado. In that context his thoughts are particularly poignant.

Recently there was an immigration-overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of American's finest minds and leaders. A brilliant college professor named Victor Davis Hanson talked about his latest book, "Mexifornia," explaining how immigration - both legal and illegal - was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American Dream.

Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'"

"Here is how they do it," Lamm said: "Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.

"The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way: 'The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy.' Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans."

Lamm went on: "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.

"We could make the United States an 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: 'The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.'"Lamm said, "I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America reinforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities."

"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high school."

"My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology.' I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population."

"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they are not killing each other."

"A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshipped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic games. A common enemy Persia threatened their liberty. Yet all these bonds were not strong enough to over come two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions. Greece fell. "E. Pluribus Unum" -- From many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on 'pluribus' instead of the 'unum,' we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo."

"Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits ~ make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult 'diversity.' I would find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century - that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist'' or 'xenophobe' halt discussion and debate."

"Having made America a bilingual/bicultural country, having established multi-culturism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of 'Victimology,' I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra: That because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them."

In the last minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped his brow. Profound silence followed. Finally he said, "Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book."

There was no applause. A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous cloud above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today. Every discussion is being suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the foundation of our educational system and national cohesiveness. Barbaric cultures that practice female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate 'diversity.'

American jobs are vanishing into the Third World as corporations create a Third World in America - take note of California and other states - to date, ten million illegal aliens and growing fast. It is reminiscent of George Orwell's book "1984." In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building: "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength."

Governor Lamm, walked back to his seat. It dawned on everyone at the conference that our nation and the future of this great democracy is deeply in trouble and worsening fast. If we don't get this immigration monster stopped within three years, it will rage like a California wildfire and destroy everything in its path, especially The American Dream.

Hat tip, Bonnie Eggle and Michelle Malkin's Immigration Blog. Also deserving honorable mention is the Free Republic website.

Here's another view of the same problem, from a recent Walter Williams column on Town Hall. Walter Williams thought he was discussing a different problem, yet in truth, he's just approaching the REAL problem from a different direction.

The productive people who made this progress possible are often painted as villains. I'm talking about the innovators and the risk-takers, in a word -- entrepreneurs. Today's heroes are often seen as the people who attack entrepreneurs -- among them lawyers, politicians, media people, leftist organizations, college professors and others who often contribute little or nothing to human progress. My colleague, Thomas Sowell, calls the entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors the "doers" and their attackers the "talkers."

<--- --->

If we developed the practice of removing products from the market because some people are harmed by them, we might starve to death. Anaphylaxis is a sudden, severe, potentially fatal reaction that some people have to foods such as milk, wheat, soy, peanuts, fish, shellfish and eggs. Each year, food-induced anaphylaxis sends about 30,000 people to hospital emergency rooms and about 200 of them die. Since many people are harmed by these food items, should they be removed from our supermarket shelves? If not, why not? The next time we hear a talker attacking a doer, we just might ask: What have you done to further human progress?

There was a 'revolution' in the 1960's against everything old. Yet that revolution was merely playing out what has happened time and time again in the past. The participants, the people who feel the strongest in forging and pushing this 'new' approach to everything, have once again confirmed the words of Santayana:

"Those who forget the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them."

True, the past in this instance is many centuries behind us, but it's not unknown. The fallacies preached now were preached 500, 1500, and 3000 years ago, and were just as wrong then as they are now. The people with the largest blinders and the worst eyesight are our "elites": college professors, legislators, some business people, a few church "leaders", the Hollywood crowd, and the mainstream media.

It's difficult to see the "big picture" of what's happening today, because it's spread out over time, involves different groups at different times, and frequently only affects a small group of people at a given time, or given event. The problems began more than a hundred years ago, and have been contributed to by virtually every major personality of the last 100 years. It's still going strong - a runaway freight train bound for the missing bridge and a terrible crash. How severe that crash is, how it affects us as a nation and as a people, depends upon what actions many of us take to immunize ourselves from the effects of the coming catastrophe.

Dick Lamm has much of it right: there is a concerted, coordinated effort being made to destroy this nation from within. There are many reasons why, but the biggest one is that one group thinks it should govern the rest of us, because it's ideas are superior to the anything else, and also just because they want to. Much of it was created by people who accepted the tenets of Marxism, and still believe the failure of the Soviet state was a fluke, not preordained by its internal contradictions. Most Marxists refuse to accept that Marxism even has any internal contradictions. Most of the people who think their ideas are better than anyone else's believe they're brilliant, that their ideas are new and unique, and will solve all the world's problems if the rest of the "stoopid sheeple" would only get out of the way and let them take over.

What you end up with is the idiocy dragging down Harvard's President, James Summers, and the ranting of "faux-everything" Ward Churchill. Nor are these isolated incidents - these are just the ones that are getting attention.

The threats to society Governor Lamm spoke about are real, and they are doing significant harm to our nation every day. These are some of the visible battlefields of the new revolution - a quiet, under-the-radar revolution that we're not supposed to notice until the war is won and we're presented with a fait accompli. There are other battlefields, too. Here are just a few:

There's an all-out assault on courtesy. Courtesy has been described as "the lubricant that allows a society to function without us killing one another". Yet today courtesy is under unrelenting attack. The attack is part of the "feminist" movement. It's a major part of "children's television" programming. It's the main target of "Political Correctness". The attack on courtesy is part of the agenda in our children's schools: rather than being taught in schools today, it's being treated as being "condescending" and "undignified".

There's an all-out assault on diversity of thought. We're all supposed to think only one way, and anyone who refuses to go with the crowd is treated as being to stupid to "get it". A part of the assault on diversity of thought is the attack on religion. The Marxists understood that religion was a source of power they couldn't control, so it had to be stamped out. The entire communist program was in reality an attempt to destroy or subjugate every source of power other than the communist party.

Notice what happens whenever a communist group assumes power: first comes massive inflation (watch for it in Venezuela in the coming months) to destroy "old" wealth and savings. Then comes total control of the information system. Then comes nationalization of all the engines of commerce - banking, transportation, resources, utilities, marketing, manufacturing, and production. Finally, the farms are "collectivized", and all private property is forbidden. These things are absorbed into the government, because each provides some degree of power. There can be no source of power other than the government in a totalitarian state. The state doesn't have to crush the source of power - it's much easier and cleaner to just "absorb" it into the government itself, and eliminate those whose thoughts aren't sufficiently "pure" to continue in their current role.

There's a power grab going on both within and among non-government organizations, and within the education establishment. Walter Williams' identification of "Doers" and "Takers" is apt. There is one segment of society that is creative, innovative, inquisitive, and constantly striving for more. There's another segment of society that constantly attacks, constantly belittles and bemoans the "exploiters", the "spoilers" for their "greed". In truth, the "takers" hate the "doers" - they know that nothing they do will have much of an impact on the world as a whole, while the more creative side of society will often reap huge rewards both of recognition as well as financial rewards. The "takers" are frequently takers in more than name only. Rather than strive to create wealth or recognition with their own abilities, they understand that it's much easier to just take it from those that do create. Whether it's in the form of graft thinly disguised as charity "for the needy", the constant whine for "grants" for "study", or the grab for power through force, the 'takers' are frequently found in politics - at the local level, at the state level, at the national level, and even in the politics of "non-profit charitable institutions" or "institutions of higher learning". When the State is weak enough, they simply take over the state. If one person steals from another, it's theft, but if the government does it, it's "taxation", or some other supposedly legitimate reason.

Finally, there's a battle taking place within and among religious organizations. There are those that wish to weaken these groups, and eventually to destroy them. There are those among the "leadership" of some groups that aid and abet the destroyers, in the blind adherence to "diversity" and "liberalization". Yet God said "Do not be deceived". Jesus spoke of "false prophets", and "by their fruits will you know them". There are people, both within and outside religious groups who want to force a separation of religion from other aspects of life, from politics to shopping at the grocery store, to what we watch on television. Such a separation is impossible, if God is indeed a part of our lives: "Thou shall have no other gods before Me." If we believe in the Judeo-Christian God Yahweh, it is impossible for us to separate His presence from any part of our daily lives, and we're clearly admonished against doing so.

Regardless of the issue of the moment, the main purpose is the accumulation of power by one group at the expense of another. "Political Correctness" is an instrument of war being used against those of us who believe in diversity of thought, speech, and beliefs. Unlimited, unassimilated immigration is an attack on our economic stability, our productivity, and our standard of living. The entire "feminist" movement is an attack on masculinity and the idea of masculine protection of the major reproductive member of our human species. The battle in our school system is the battle for the minds of our children - a battle many of us are losing. The battle in the political arena, from the brouhaha over the appointment of "originalist" versus "living" judges, is a battle over power - the power to shape the government without the consent of the people. The entire abortion argument is a multi-pronged attack on femininity, reproduction, religion, and society. Over it all is the corrosive battle against courtesy and common decency by our Hollywood "elite".

We, the common, everyday, nonpolitical, God-fearing, courteous, and reliable makers and doers of society have two choices: either surrender, or stand up to the enemy and conquer them. Our enemies, unfortunately, are also our neighbors, our family members, and in many instances, even our friends. Yet we cannot afford to lose this fight. That loss would end 220 years of the best government mankind has ever devised, and destroy the hopes and aspirations of ourselves, our children, and our posterity.