The one problem that she had though is that she was in a minority.

Her brother was a Marine on duty in Afghanistan. Her father had been a Marine in Vietnam and her grandfather had survived the winters and the bullets of Korea while in the Army.

Miss Smith, because of family history, was a “Conservative”.

One morning on her way to school she heard something on the radio that disturbed her very much. She decided to try an experiment with her class.

“Who would like to pretend to be a General…..” but before she could finish her sentence little Willy Simpson was running to her desk waving both arms yelling, “Me. Me”

“You didn’t let me finish. We are going to play a little geography game today and the General will be the most important General today.

He will have to make a serious decision because he will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Do you know what that means, Willy?”

“No Miss Smith.”

Willy was far from being the brightest kid in the class but she always appreciated his enthusiasm so she said, “OK Willy. You will be the General.”

She handed Willy a piece of string with a lot of knots in it.

“Willy, each one of those knots represents a thousand miles on the globe on the table over there.

Everyone who has watched TV must know where Iran is so Willy, put one end of the string in the center of Iran and hold it there. Move the string over to the Capitol of the United States, Washington, DC.

How far is it from Iran to our Capitol?”

Willy stretched out the string and said, “About six and a half knots.”

“Very good”, Miss Smith said, “That’s about six and a half thousand miles.”

“Now Willy, holding the string look at the globe and tell me what country is about two and a half knots from Iran.”

Willy looked and said, “Poland.”

“Very good Willy. Can you see the city that the string passes over?”

“Warsaw.”

“And what’s just past Poland?”

“The Baltic Sea.”

“Now General, suppose that someone in Iran wanted to shoot an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, an ICBM, at our Capitol and you wanted to shoot it down before it hit Washington would you want to shoot it down over the United States or somewhere else?”

“Probably somewhere else,” Willy answered.

“Willy, an ICBM travels very fast, about 15,000 miles per hour, and in ten minutes after it was fired it would pass over Poland. What would you do?”

General Willy answered, “I would ask the Polish people to shoot it down.”

Let’s get back to reality. If an ICBM fired from Iran fell short of it’s projected distance to Washington it would land in either New England or a bit further on, New York.

Do we have an anti-ballistic missile defense system in the US? According to the media we do not and will not until near the end of this decade.

Did we have an anti-ballistic missile system that could have been deployed in Poland?

Even a third-grader could figure that one out.

Copyright: John W. Malenda April  2010

DICTATORSHIP

There are two steps necessary for an impending dictatorship

The first is to silence opposing views. Today it can be achieved by controlling the media: television, radio and the Internet.

Any system through which those with opposing views can gauge the extent of dissention in society must be eliminated.

Revolutions are not undertaken by a single person and unless the strength of the opposition can be evaluated with respect to the strength of the government no action is taken.

The second is to disarm the people to prevent forceful opposition.

The method employed throughout the world has been the registration of weapons

. This provides the government with not only the number and types of weapons but a list of where they are located.

Enforcement of this is through very severe penalties if unregistered weapons are used or otherwise found.

After registration, there are several means of control.

The most dramatic and the least likely to be tolerated in a free society is confiscation.

A more subtle and gradual process is ownership permit fees and taxes.

These can be raised to such levels that people voluntarily give up their weapons.

            Finally there is the elimination of manufacture and the distribution of ammunition.

            I may be wrong but it appears that we are presently on that course.

             I have sent this out as an E-mail to many of my friends and quite a few disagree with me.

Thankfully we live in a free country where I can express my opinions

…and you don’t think we need a National ID Card?

Package that with a few bags of fertilizer and a can of home heating oil and terrorists do not need to smuggle in rockets or nuclear material  in suitcases at airports.

 Let’s not be so naive. Let’s not swap a little inconvenience for our lives.

Since I posted the previous article I have talked with a number of people and everyone feels that it would restrict their freedom.

The second concern is if there were such a card could someone be arrested for not carrying it?

First, it would be an identification card not a government ‘tracking device”. The US government already has such a device. It is your credit or debit card.

If the government wanted to, they would know how much money you spend with respect to your income, what you buy and where and when. They could follow your activities in great detail at present if they wanted to.

They know the make, model and year of your automobile and knowing how much gas you purchase, they can know how far you drive in a year and where you have purchased gas therefore where you have been.

When I go to vote in Connecticut, I must present my driver’s license or I don’t get to vote. It’s as simple as that. The police don’t haul me away to prison.

We carry all sorts of “cards” today already. You have your driver’s license, your Social Security Card, your medical insurance or Medicare card, your library card and so on.
If you do not present that card you are not arrested, you simply do not receive some service appropriate to that card.

Now to the consequences as a result of NOT having this card.

Saudi terrorists would have been unable to obtain drivers licenses which they were able to use to receive flight training leading to pilot certificates in the US.

They would have been unable to board those large commercial aircraft.

The World Trade Towers would still be standing. Those lives would not have been lost. The US would not have gone into Afganistan. The US would not be fighting a war in Iraq.
Billions of dollars would be instead taking care of problems at home. Thousands of American servicemen would be alive today and more thousands would not be crippled.

A National Identity Card would have prevented all this.

What lies in store for us without this card?

It’s your decision.

I have heard discussions that it will take away our privacy and our freedom. That it is the final step toward 666, the Mark of the Beast.

Consider where we are today. You must use your Social Security Number every time you are involved in some major financial transaction. Your Social Security Number is required for Medicare.

Try to cash a check without showing your Driver’s License Number.

Every member of the Armed Forces has a Number.

Our Passports have their number also that you must use on forms entering or leaving the country.

We already have a number for almost everything now, why not a uniform identification system that proves our entitlement to benefits, our privilege to drive, to make financial transactions and our right to vote.

It is logical to have one identification number rather than a half dozen.

That card would prove that we are United States Citizens and not someone who had crossed our borders illegally for whatever purpose that they might hope to achieve.

Why not?

I have to paraphrase the incident because I wasn’t paying enough attention at the time to record the actual words. We tend not to take notice until we realize that something of interest is taking place.

Anyway, the interviewer was stopping people on the street and asking them if they were for or against repeal of the 1975 (or some date) Bill of Income Adjustment.
He stated that most were for the repeal. What’s interesting is that there was no such bill!

Where I am going with this is that if one were to take a poll as to what the most important task for the new president would be, it would be a very different answer depending on where the poll was taken.
In Arizona, it might be border security. In Detroit it would be jobs. In New England it might be the economy. In San Francisco it might be the legalization of marijuana.
If the pollster takes his poll regarding war at a college he will find a much greater percentage of people against war. Why? These young people would be the ones required to carry the rifle.

How the question is asked also alters the answer.
Certainly the restrictive nature of the question, whether a “yes or no” answer is expected, when there is no clear answer possible to the question.
For instance, “Sir, do you still kick your dog when you get home from work every day?”

Everyone wants to be associated with a winner and unfortunately the polls can create winners.
We are seeing this effect at the present time with funding for some of the Presidential candidates drying up.
If polls are taken in specific regions that favor one candidate over another, people will shift their allegiance to the perceived winner.
This has been going on since primitive cultures formed and will continue forever.

For years my skeptical nature has caused me to ask, “Who’s telling you what and why?”

Beware how the pollster asks his questions and where he asks them for they can significantly influence the outcome of an election.

The pawns pay the price.

Ignoring the entire point of the book I have noticed that throughout history, wars have depleted the treasuries of the countries involved. If one country had more disposable gold than another, it usually won.

When both treasuries became empty a truce usually ended the fighting.
Often a country would attempt to borrow money from another country without success which caused the conflict to end. It was an interesting case of international politics and financing.

The world is a different place today. Perhaps the real reason that the Soviet Union collapsed was not because of Ronald Reagan but because it ran out of money.

This I don’t know with any certainty but it is probable.

Being a Korean War veteran I took the following oath:

“I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR THAT I WILL SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC…SO HELP ME GOD.”

I still feel that way. I want my readers to be absolutely sure of my views regarding our military-past and present.

I am in favor of whatever it takes to preserve the United States and our way of life but I wonder who we will go to when we run out of money.

Not only are we dealing with the cost of the war itself but we are shipping our money by the bucketfuls to people who don’t have our best interests at heart and who may be stockpiling it to finance their war against us.

What if?

“Good fences make good neighbors”Robert Frost

Throughout history fences had been successfully used to indicate the limits of one’s control. Without a distinct marker of some sort, a range of uncertainty exists as to what a person or a country can do at the edges of their controlled property. This uncertainty usually leads to disputes which can lead to violence. In the past if the border dispute was between countries it led to war.

Fences and borders are so specific in their placement that in most areas of the US a plus or minus foot variation can lead the Planning and Zoning Commission to order the removal of an existing building.

In short, boundaries are important and fences are visual indicators of those boundaries.

We put up fences to indicate to the deer that they cannot eat from our apple trees and we make the fences sturdy enough to prevent the deer from crossing that boundary. The converse is true to keep our cow or horse or dog from running loose on our neighbor’s property.

Fences are necessary to keep things in…and to keep things out.

Saudi Arabia is presently starting a $5 billion project to build a wall that is the most sophisticated wall ever built. The purpose is to keep out illegal immigrants and potential terrorists.

Isn’t that interesting?

Consider some past walls:

Hadrian’s Wall was about 80 miles long and was built in 122ad by the Romans across England to keep the Picts from raiding the southern territory. It was built to provide economic stability and was made of stone and turf as high as 16 to 20 feet and manned by as many as 9000 troops.

It was replaced by another, built for the same purpose, the Antonine Wall, about half the length at the border of present day Scotland.

The Great Wall of China, approximately 4000 miles long and said to have been guarded by over a million troops, was built to keep out the Mongols who were raiding China from the north.

The Maginot Line, built in the 1930’s along the French-German border, was less of a wall than a series of forts and obstacles and proved rather useless in a modern war which employs planes and tanks.

The Berlin Wall was started in 1961 to keep westerners and their influence out of East Germany and to keep the East Germans from leaving.

It is sort of the inverse of what is happening between the US and Mexico today. The citizens of East Germany saw the economic advantages available to them in the west but their government would not permit them to leave.

The Roman Empire generally used rivers as boundaries or often inhospitable land features like deserts. One of the major reasons that the Roman Empire collapsed was that it had extended itself too far and along with internal conflict between people competing for power it could no longer control its borders.

What is the reason that people cross borders?

  Probably for the same reason that squirrels cross roads. People emigrate because of discontent, or hunger or to avoid being persecuted (or prosecuted). When people are hungry, poor or live in fear where they are, they move on. This can be simply moving to another patch of woods in a primitive society if it is available or leaving your homeland entirely as happens today. There have been small migrations since the beginning of time as it applied to birds, animals or humans.

The colonization of the western hemisphere saw larger mass migrations by people hoping to significantly improve their lives. These migrations are always prompted by stories returning of the potential for wealth or for freedom of choice of cultural standards or religious beliefs.

Today our southern border is porous. The influx of new people is creating incredible economic stress in our Southwest. People are coming across in hopes of a better life and people are coming across to expand their crime and drug networks. How does one sort out intentions?

The only way is to close the border and attempt to sort out intentions by legalized entry. It’s easier to keep the bear out of the kitchen before he gets in than to get him out after.

Unfortunately we didn’t close the door quickly enough and the bear is in the kitchen and hungry. Now we have to feed him.

Again, fences are necessary to keep things in…and to keep things out.

When I was a kid in junior high school I stocked shelves in a small neighborhood grocery store. The owner, Harry Levine, was a quiet, honest and wise man. I remember him telling me about his coming to America.

WWII had ended that summer and the Russians were occupying Eastern Europe as a reward for their participation in the war.

He said, “This will be very interesting.” He continued, “When I was a young man in Russia many of my friends were excited about the coming revolution. They said, “Comes the Revolution we will be dancing in the streets.”

Harry said that he then said, “Comes the Revolution we will be sleeping in the streets!”

That’s when he decided to come to the United States.

His assessment was not that far off according to Ayn Rand in her book, “We the Living”. Revolution can only occur when there is a large enough group of people who have been squeezed almost to the point of starvation, the point at which they feel that they have nothing to lose.

We are all aware that societies stratify into a small wealthy class, a large middle class of workers who produce the bulk of the goods and services and the poor.

A small group of very poor people can do little to influence historic events. As long as there is a large middle class who are reasonably satisfied with the conditions of their lives, everything runs smoothly.

However, things are not going smoothly at the moment. The bottom tier of the middle class in the US has been sliding into the ranks of the poor.

Unlike most countries in past history, the United States is unique in that there is a system in place that supports the poorest of the poor through social programs. As long as these people are fed, housed and have their medical problems taken care of they will never revolt because they have too much to lose.

It is the middle class, those who have worked hard to raise their living standards and accumulate assets to guarantee their future comfort, who are the most discontented today. They are seeing their home values drop, their savings go into their heating oil tanks and automobile gas tanks and food prices climb.

It is their security that is most deeply affected.

As the middle class is pushed into the poverty strata, they will require social benefits themselves which will add to the demand on available money.

This leads to one of two choices: reduce benefits or increase taxes. Either choice leads to further discontent but raising taxes drives more people into the ranks of the poor which compounds the problem.

There were 36.5 million people in the US below the poverty level in 2006. With rising fuel costs, which also raises the cost of raising and transporting food, the poorest people will suffer the most whether you consider those below the poverty level or those in the lower middle class. Food, heating and utilities take a greater percentage of income for those who can least afford it.

Those under 18 also fare the worst because if they are considered to be in the work force at that age they are probably high school drop-outs with little hope to rise above the poverty level. They have the least working experience so receive the lowest wages.

Discontented younger people are rioting in France as I write this. France experienced serious riots by young people in 2005 also.

Revolution can bring on far greater hardship than exists under present conditions of discontent in most countries. Again I make reference to Ayn Rand’s book, “We the Living”. There are always opportunists willing to step in for personal gain when there is upheaval. Consider the looting that took place during the Watts riots of 1965, Detroit in 1967 and after Hurricane Katrina. These are relatively small localized areas.  Extend that chaos to an entire country and one can see it is far better to avoid the conditions that lead to riots and revolution than try to live with them after they occur.