-Caveat Lector- From http://www.lewrockwell.com/e-cobb/e-cobb17.html }}}>Begin The Fourth Republic Being a Look Back at One Possible Future by Ed Cobb Following is the text of the lecture delivered on September 11, 2051, at the first meeting of the year’s Introduction to American History class at the Rockwell School of History and Free Trade of Rothbard University. It was delivered by Instructor Emeritus Ed Cobb who is so old that he is allowed to teach out of nostalgia despite this lack of any serious scholarly credentials. Good morning, class. Historians divide the story of the American nation into four republics. Today this view is commonly accepted as self-evident but such was not always the case. As recently as 50 years ago most Americans thought in terms of one republic. Of course, we see that view as simplistic. Now let’s briefly review the outlines of the first three American republics and then discuss our current era, the Fourth Republic. The first American era began with the founding. That story, its ideals and aspirations and its failings are intimately familiar to each of you seated in this lecture hall today. (As an aside, let me point out that your grandparents were not taught much about our founding and what makes America what she is, which was no small part of the problem with the Third Republic.) America had created something new and there was no blueprint to follow. We see the First Republic as a time of learning. The founders made mistakes and had amazing successes, with accepting slavery for as long as they did being their most obvious error. But at the same time, the spirit of human freedom that was unleashed in America was becoming the most powerful civic force ever seen on the planet. The Second Republic was born in the War Between the States. Today it is impossible to comprehend the reverence in which Abraham Lincoln, the president who fathered the Second Republic by denying the South its clear right to secede, was once held in this country. Not long ago most Americans credited him with abolishing slavery, which we know he did in only a limited fashion and as a political expedient, and ignored his centralization of power and disregard for the Bill of Rights. You will find it hard to believe but Americans once called him "Honest Abe" without irony. Today that nickname is spoken in the same tone we use when we say "Tricky Dicky" or "Slick Willie." There is some debate regarding the true beginning of the Third Republic, the Imperial phase of the American story. Many historians argue for Franklin Roosevelt as the founder of the Empire. It is undoubtedly true that he was the most successful of the imperial presidents. He established our permanent military presence around the globe. He grew the influence of government over the day-to-day lives of Americans to proportions that were just as unimaginable before his time as they are to us today. But the honor, if it can be called honor, of founding the American Empire falls to Woodrow Wilson. Under Wilson, America sent troops to fight in a European War that had no relevance to American national interests. To this day no one really understands how or why it broke out. During that war, he limited the rights of Americans to criticize his actions in ways that would impress even "Honest Abe." Wilson also masterminded the Treaty of Versailles, the provisions of which so oppressed Germany and so depressed its economy that it led directly to the rise to power of the Nazis under Adolph Hitler. Hitler and the Nazis then became the target of FDR’s wrath. Their destruction enabled the rise of Stalin and the Soviet Empire whose defeat in the Cold War led to the rise of the Jihad of the early 21st Century. But I am getting ahead of myself. We will cover all of that in detail as the semester progresses. Another innovation of Emperor Wilson’s was The League of Nations. Luckily, America was still sufficiently sane that she refused to be dragged into membership in this early experiment in global government. But he planted the seed that eventually grew into the United Nations and we all know how badly that turned out. By the way, as I was listening to the radio in my office before class a report came over that the last UN delegate still at large was captured today and is now in custody, an auspicious omen for the start of the new semester. The Third Republic, the American Empire, ended fifty years ago today when terrorists of the Jihad massacred innocent civilians on American soil. These were difficult times for the American people. We sustained h orrible losses in savage acts of guerilla warfare in our own backyard. The people of America wanted justice. They wanted an end to terrorism. Luckily that is not all they wanted. They wanted to know why, why had it happened? That turned out to be the key. You see, through all the changes in the American government the basic character of the American people had never changed. It was in 2001 essentially as it had been in 1776 and as it is today. By their nature, Americans are generous and friendly and they love liberty. Loving their own liberty, Americans wish liberty to everyone else. At the same time they would prefer to mind their own business and let others do the same. Gradually, over the years since the founding of the First Republic, a distance had grown up between the aspirations of the American people and the actions of the American government. By the time of the final years of the imperial phase, the gap had grown so large as to be irreconcilable. It even had a name: BED, or Bipolar Empire Disease. The elites who ruled the American Empire (politicians, establishment media, military-industrial complex) were enamored of their imperial power and privilege. They stood at one pole. Most of them were no longer t ruly American in the way that the average person on the street was American. The real people stood at the opposite pole. America was faced with the choice of going one way or the other: Republic or Empire. The BED gap is personified in the last emperor, William J. Clinton, the "American Caligula." Clinton never held an actual job. He lived his entire life on the money of taxpaying Americans in homes they provided for him. He was a serial abuser of women who somehow, unbelievably, managed to get away with it by saying he had a right to a private life. Clinton was responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people in Serbia, Iraq, Sudan and other places that, even after worldwide peace was established, he was forced to live out his days in a bunker deep in the Ozark Mountains. For extra credit, research why that bunker was called Casa Grande. The fact that William J. Clinton was elected to the imperial presidency twice is perhaps the most telling proof of the sickness of empire and of the vast distance that had developed between the best that lives in the American people and what their leadership had become, what the Empire had become. The founding father of our current era, the Fourth Republic, President George W. Bush presents an interesting case. He was routinely ridiculed by the princes of the media elite. It is hard for us to imagine this treatment today knowing what he accomplished but it is true. They feared him because they knew that he was not one of them. He saw through them and knew that the Empire had no clothes. Unlike Clinton, Bush had worked in business and understood how markets work and how wealth is created. And unlike Clinton’s failed, hand picked successor, a man named Albert Gore, he had lived among real people outside the Imperial City. And he had actually finished graduate school. This Gore fellow is an interesting footnote. Few even recognize the name Gore today except as the first name of one of the nation’s greatest writers. In early September of 2001 there were reports that he was planning a political comeback and then no more was ever hard of him. He joined Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa as historic oddities who simply vanished. We will study the years long War on Terrorism and Bush’s masterful management of the worldwide coalition that prosecuted that war and virtually eliminated that threat while minimizing the loss of innocent human life. We will concentrate on the answer to the question of why the initial attack had happened and on America’s response to that answer. This will bring us into some of the most interesting and challenging days in our history. Among them will be The Return when, having subdued global terrorism, President Bush ended our worldwide military presence – and effectively ended the Empire - by bringing all U.S. troops back within our own borders. His speech citing George Washington’s warning against foreign alliances is an American classic. Then we will look at the start of today’s era of global free trade when he ended all American trade sanctions and offered to drop all trade barriers with any nation that would do the same. And when we look at the difficult days of the Great Departure, when all illegal aliens were returned to their homelands and the Great Wall of the Southwest was built, we will see Bush at his best, firm in his resolve to save the American Republic. There are many more topics, students. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Howard Lutnick of Cantor Fitzgerald for his work during the first 25 years of this century in bringing attention to the natural peacemaking qualities of business and wealth creation. It is largely because of him that we all recognize free trade as the source of today’s global cooperation and tranquility. Then there was Jesse Jackson’s winning of the Prize for Economics, acknowledging his personal success in getting rich by helping poor people. We will review the Hollywood Boycott, when average American people decided they were mad as hell and weren’t going to buy the depraved products of the entertainment elite any longer, thus putting an end to the wealth and power of the most decadent people in the world. And finally, the end of all federal taxation in 2010 by Bush’s successor followed by his dismantling of 85% of the Imperial Bureaucracy. By these two acts President J.C. Watts freed the true genius of the American people for creating and exporting liberty and wealth and earned his place in the pantheon of our greatest presidents. It all seems inevitable now but, in truth, it was not. Had the decisions made by George W. Bush between 2001 and 2009 gone a different way any number of alternative American futures might have emerged. More Empire abroad and a police state at home until it all collapsed as Rome had collapsed. A full-scale global shooting war with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons depopulating and poisoning a planet that returned to the Stone Age. Instead, the world lives in peace and prosperity today because of President Bush’s decisions. Welcome to 2051, America. September 21, 2001 Ed Cobb [send him mail] is a printer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He is a northerner by birth, a southerner by choice, and a Catholic by the grace of God. Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com End<{{{ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
