The Top 40

Transcript here:
http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-soviets-beat-us-after-all.html

Yeah people warned about this decades ago, and were attacked for it, for being paranoid McCarthyites. The Soviets were the winners from the McCarthy era. His stupid, hamfisted approach to fighting communism so discredited the very concept of doing so that people were repulsed by mentioning it.

But the roots of this idiocy long pre-date McCarthy. The Depression era was when most of the remaining free market, limited government proponents were driven into the wilderness. At the end of World War II, the conventional wisdom was that our masterful central planning had been decisive in defeating the Axis, as opposed to the basic strength of the American economy and resource poorness of our enemies, and since then, the Progressive Vision has generally prevailed, with only a brief digression in the Reagan era. The Soviets may have done what they could to aid and abet that degeneration, but their chief contribution was merely to serve as a contrasting example -- "We're not socialists!" the American Left could always say, "We're not nearly as extreme as those Soviets. Not that there aren't some things we could learn from them..."

Khrushchev hasn't buried us yet, but we sure as hell have one foot in the grave.

Don't blame McCarthy. Blame the weak-tea politicians, journalists, and citizens-in-name-only that, AFTER the fact, claimed they too wanted to fight Communism, but the fight had become too shrill and you can't have 100% certainty, and not everything about Communism is bad.... In short the vast majority of Americans will not tolerate effort unless that effort is always pleasant, nobody objects to making the effort, and the effort doesn't last too long.

There are terrorists organizations sympathetic to the bastards that caused Sept 11 operating inside the US today. Our FBI, on council from propaganda arms of these terrorists organizations, has removed from its internal training documents real discussion of the ideology and motivations of the groups that caused Sept 11 and the terrorists groups operating inside the USA. Large numbers of Americans will always decide to minimize the threat. Besides we could spend that money on free phones for gang members and subsidize health insurance for $100k/yr Congressional staffers.

But don't worry Winston Churchill said God protects children, drunks, and America so we can all just monitor every TV reality show and things will turn out just fine. Besides, if things were really going bad somebody would come rescue us. Say what you will about gutless and corrupt politicians they will tell us when there is a real problem. Hey, anyone know what's all that smoke in lower Manhattan? I hope it doesn't cause a traffic jam.