Daniel Holdings – Oct 21, 2013
The year was 1992 and third-party presidential candidate, businessman Ross Perot stood toe to toe with George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton in a live television debate. The senior Bush was the sitting president at the time and Bill Clinton was an upstart former governor of Arkansas.
A hot topic in the discussion was the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA. Perot’s business sense told him that there was something very wrong with Globalists pushing for open markets and he expressed his concern with the following statement:
“To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young — let’s assume you’ve been in business for a long time and you’ve got a mature work force — pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care — that’s the most expensive single element in making a car — have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don’t care about anything but making money, THERE WILL BE A GIANT SUCKING SOUND GOING SOUTH.”
Later, Perot would be maligned and marginalized, thus coming in a distant third in an election that would unseat the elder Bush, making him a one term president, and launch William Jefferson Clinton into the highest office in the land. Ross Perot may be ancient history – But this article isn’t about politics.
What we must address is that “Giant Sucking Sound” in our country’s moral base that began in the 1990’s. Something happened to America in the 90’s. As a consequence, our country changed almost overnight.
Perot happened to be absolutely right about the, then future, now present decimation of the American Manufacturing sector. However, to say that NAFTA, or even a changing economy, is what transformed the United States into its current state would be foolishly simplistic.
Yet, our country no longer produces… anything! We’ve gone from a manufacturing based economy in the 1990’s, to a service and entertainment based economy in less than twenty-five years. At the same time, we have leveraged, borrowed, and likewise became history’s largest “debtor nation”!
While this distinct economic change was occurring, our country was wrought with social change, spiritual change and more importantly, a change in our own self-perception about what it meant to be American.
As a military vet who served during the Cold War of the 1980’s, I can remember that there was still a sense of “For God and Country”. We understood that the idea of America was larger than ourselves and although we hoped for good times, our comfort didn’t necessarily take precedence over the welfare of our nation.
However, as the prosperity bubble began to run its course, as evidenced by the stock market of the 90’s and 2000’s, the desire for wealth, comfort and a shifting self-absorbed focus began to take root in our populace.
The second precipitous change in our America was the birthing of an insatiable Political Correctness (PC) mindset during the Clinton era.
In its simplest terms, PC’s mantra is, “You can’t say what’s on your mind if your opinion criticizes another individual’s lifestyle choices or ideas.” Thus, free speech, and I dare say the First Amendment, were the early victims of Political Correctness.
In retrospect, there is a truth that has become exceedingly clear to this author. The selfishness and lust born through the successes of that decade and the successful mental reprogramming of society with heavy emphasis on Political Correctness… HAS BEEN A SETUP!
To be clear, it has not necessarily been a Setup by some master conspiratorial plan of the Elites in power that has convinced the American people to accept a weakened Constitution and military, which will inevitably make America ripe for ruin and takeover. However, it’s certainly not a big leap to see how such a case could be made.
Rather, we Americans have set up ourselves with our docile acceptance of Political Correctness and the notion that failure to accept someone else’s ideas, voices and lifestyles is mean-spirited and consequently, unacceptable.
This is not an exaggeration.
In today’s society, any view outside of mainstream pop-culture is deemed harmful. This metastasizing thought-cancer is now widespread as we see the disease of PC invading every limb of our society.
Just this week, FoxNews did a piece on a soldier from Camp Shelby in Mississippi. While the soldier, a Christian, was attending a mandatory Army briefing, he noted that the well-known, conservative, Christian organization “The American Family Association” was classified as a “hate” group on par with the KKK, Neo-Nazi, Black Panthers and Nation of Islam. And this isn’t the first attack on Christendom with the favored sociological weapon of PC.
Indeed, there seems to be an accelerated push to dismantle the tenants of the Christian faith in our society by claiming they are racist, homophobic or just plain mean. The society of the 21st Century would assert that being a God-fearing, Bible-believing Christian is just not PC.
By the way, the reason that The American Family Association was deemed a hate group was for their Bible based belief AGAINST Gay-marriage!
In addition, it’s not a stretch to say that PC is at the core of reasons for our country’s significant downturn on every level.
In a world with serious problems, we are being bombarded with ridiculous issues surrounding PC that act as a distraction to the larger issues that can, and will, take our country down if we do not address them.
Additionally, the obvious initial observations of Political Correctness’ attack against the Constitution can be reduced to: 1) The First Amendment – Free speech; 2) The Second Amendment – the right to bear arms; and 3) The Fourth Amendment on illegal search and seizure – Because we are told that “if you’re not doing anything illegal, what are you trying to hide?”
When such a PC mindset is overlaid atop an inbred sense of self-worth and self-centeredness, a toxic sociological chemical compound is formed. This compound is used as a Weapon of Mass Social-Destruction against any dissenting views about where our country is going.
This new moray for America’s 21st century soul has become: Everyone do what is right in your own eyes.
Without moral absolutes and a willingness to turn back to those things that made our nation great, “For God and Country”, there is a growing Giant Sucking Sound that even Mr. Perot could not have envisioned – It is the sound of our once great nation going right down the proverbial drain.
Is it too late for us to turn back our country from this self-destructive demise? That is too large of a question for this author. However, one piece of advice?
Pray to the God that made the United States what it was and ask Him to forgive our arrogance and pride. Ask Him to turn our hearts back to Him.
While He may not heed the prayers for our nation, such a repentant heart may well keep us as individuals from being sucked down that noisy drain.
God help us!
Sorry if that doesn’t sound PC enough for you.