An apology to our grandchildren
An open letter by Bruce & Marilyn Perine
My Dearest Grandpeeps,
You will notice that this letter has a title, and you might wonder what your Grandfather is about to apologize for. Is it because he did not shower you with expensive gifts or take you to Disney Land? No! It is because he and his generation have betrayed you and let you down. Read the words in the Instructions for life:
If we fail to instruct our children in justice, religion, and liberty, we
will be condemning them to a world without virtue, a life in the twilight of
a civilization where the great truths have been forgotten.
That is where we failed you. We have left you with a country that is in the last stages of economic collapse and did not do everything we could to prevent it. We have left you, your children, and your children’s children with debts that can never be paid off. Debts that will be an albatross around your necks for generations. Debts, the consequences of which will be the continuing erosion of your liberty and personal freedoms. We have condemned you to a world without virtue or a strong moral code. Grandma and I will be long dead and gone while you and yours will still be suffering the results of our legacy.
From time immemorial, governments have been using crises (or creating them if there were none readily available) to manipulate events, whereby they could increase their power, always to the detriment of our freedoms
Marilyn and Bruce Perine
If that sounds harsh to you, it is, because reality is often harsh. No amount of false optimism, no amount of fancy rhetoric from politicians and from bought-and-paid-for experts can make the numbers go away. No number of lying statistics and no measure of feel-good philosophies will change the bottom line. We are up to our collective necks in debt (both public and private), and only the collapse of the economy and a complete restructuring of our monetary system will get things back to a more sensible level. It has been done before, but most often it has been done by tyrants at the expense of freedom. Hitler did it in 1933 and look at the results.
You might ask why I don’t blame your parents for this dilemma — they are much closer to the events of today and should have been keeping a closer eye on circumstances that might have had a negative effect on their children’s lives. I cannot, in good conscience, do that. They, too, have been betrayed. An April 27, 2009, article in Pravda — formally the official newspaper of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, and today the major newspaper in the Russian Republic — warned about America’s rapid descent into Marxism. Written by a Russian man, it expresses his concern over the current administration’s wrongheaded economic policies, and the fact that the American citizens don’t seem to be aware of what is going on. The Russians have caught on, even if we haven’t. Here is his quote:
“First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture rather than the classics. . . Then their faith was destroyed . . . until their churches were . . . little more than Sunday circuses. The final collapse came with the election of Barak Obama. His spending and money printing has been record setting, not just in America, but in the world.”
He closes his piece with a chilling prediction: “The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world how free he really is. The world will only snicker.”
We have left you with a country that is in the last stages of economic collapse and did not do everything we could to prevent it
My generation did nothing while our children were dumbed down. It did not happen overnight; it was a slow, cautious process. If they — those in power — saw that some of us seemed to be waking up, they would back off and wait until we dozed off again. Slowly, but surely, true scholarship was replaced with the pap they are teaching today. So your parents were conditioned to mediocrity — and you were, too. If you doubt this premise, go to the following web site: www.JohnTaylorGatto.com/underground/index.htm. There you will find a free online book titled, “The Underground History of American Education” by an award-winning teacher with thirty years of experience in the New York City public school system. See what he has to say on the subject of public education. For another free, online book, go to www.DeliberateDumbingDown.com/pages/book.htm. A small amount of effort will bring forth information that might just open your eyes.
So, if Grandpa is right, our education system is worthless, our economy is in the toilet and someone just flushed it. But how about our vaunted freedoms? I hate to break the bad news to you, but they, too, have been eroded until they are practically unrecognizable. Again, this process did not just start with Bush or Obama, or Johnson or Nixon. It has been going on since before the turn of the last century, and with each crisis or war the erosion sped up. Wars are excellent opportunities for unscrupulous men to seek to acquire more power. There is nothing like a national crisis to convince the populace that in order to enhance their physical safety, it will be necessary to remove a little of their God-given rights and freedoms. They used to tell us it would only be ‘til the end of the crisis, but we never seem to get all of those lost rights back. They don’t bother to tell us even that any more.
With the Spanish-American War they took little nibbles, and the advent of WWI saw some really big bites: prohibition, the income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, popular election of senators, etc. . . . The Great Depression scared the crap out of the citizenry, giving FDR the go-ahead for the Socialist-oriented New Deal, including Social Security, as well as a plethora of alphabet soup agencies like the NRA, CCC, WPA, REA, and on and on. Then came WWII, and we put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps and, before there even was a war, political dissenters and isolationists were being jailed in federal prisons. On and on, faster and faster, we have been trading our freedoms for security. One of our Founding Fathers said, “Any man who would trade freedom for security deserves neither.”
From time immemorial, governments have been using crises (or creating them if there were none readily available) to manipulate events, whereby they could increase their power, always to the detriment of our freedoms. It is only because our Founders had a healthy fear of a strong central government and went to such great lengths to build internal checks into our Constitution that we have survived as relatively free men and women to this day. However, the days of freedom seem to be numbered. It has been a slow process, very much like what happened in Nazi Germany, but at a much faster pace. Here is a quote from that era:
“When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. Then they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. Then they came for the trade unionists, I did not protest; I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, I did not speak out; I was not a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Constant vigilance was our only recourse and we fell asleep when we should have been awake. Do you remember what happened in Waco, Texas, in 1993? No?! Eighty-two American men, women, and children were murdered by agents of the federal government. When the government came for the Branch Davidians, I remained silent; I was not a Branch Davidian. Please accept my apology.
Time to say goodbye. Love you all and miss you lots. My prayers — and Grandma’s — are with you always.
Sincerely,
Grandpa and Grandma
