In 1965 singer Barry McGuire recorded “Eve of Destruction,” a protest song that made it to the top of the Billboard charts. The refrain is appropriate today:
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction.
As you might expect from the 1960s, this song was a protest against the Vietnam war, nuclear weapons, and racism; and to be honest, I don’t believe that today we’re on the eve of destruction because of any of those things.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the larger war on terror are serious and dangerous situations, but because of those men and women who fight these wars, terrorists, whether they’re fighting us in Afghanistan or Iraq or on commercial airliners, will never destroy the United States of America.
Nuclear weapons continue to exist and continue to be very dangerous, but thanks in large part to the vision and leadership Ronald Reagan, advanced nations today are able to work together and to focus most our attention on preventing these weapons from falling into the hands of rogue leaders and organizations, instead having to worry as much about each other.
Racism also continues to exist. There are still individuals who hold on to racist ideas, and there are those who try to use racism to advance their own personal agendas. However, the vast majority of Americans have long gotten past racism; they see people as people, not as black or white.
So I don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction because of any of the things that Barry McGuire sang about in 1965, but I do believe we may still be on the eve of destruction. And there’s only one nation on earth strong enough to destroy the United States, and that nation is the United States. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.
Unfortunately, as difficult as it is to believe, the destruction of our nation as we’ve know it is by design.
On October 30, 2008 candidate Barrack Obama told the country, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” He didn’t say that we were five days away from working to try to fix the problems we were facing. I could live with that; there are always problems to fix, improvements to be made, so I wouldn’t have had a problem with that, but that’s not what he said. He said that he was going to fundamentally transform the United States. Do we understand what that means?
To fundamentally transform the United States means to change the essence of what America is. It means to transform our country at its core, to remake it into something other than what it’s always been.
Our founding fathers created a system of government that allowed and encouraged the people to work, to strive, and to succeed. The result was that a country was born that became the envy of the world. People from every continent on earth left their homelands, sometimes at great danger to themselves, to have a chance to come to America and to live the American dream.
Americans have brought the world telephones and television, trains and automobiles, air travel and air conditioning. The world can thank America for jazz music and country music; rock music and motion pictures. Artificial hearts and hearing aids, defibrillators and escalators, computers and the internet are all American contributions. We’ve gone to the moon and we’ve flown the space shuttle; we’ve defeated tyrants and we’ve helped to rebuild the countries of our allies and enemies alike.
America is, as President Reagan said, a "shining city upon a hill." And Barack Obama wants to fundamentally change it!
Actually, that should come as no surprise to anyone. Leftists have long wanted to fundamentally change America, and in candidate Obama they saw their opportunity.
In 2008 there was an organization that called itself “Progressives for Obama,” and it's revealing to look at who some of the people are who were a part of that group.
There were four co-founders of “Progressives for Obama.” One was a man by the name of Bill Fletcher, Jr. Fletcher had been an organizer of the “Black Radical Congress,” an organization with ties to the Communist Party USA. When Fletcher was once asked to describe his politics, he said, “I am an unapologetic socialist. I believe that capitalism is destroying the planet.”
A second co-founder was a woman named Barbara Ehrenreich, a self-avowed socialist and atheist. Ehrenreich, who celebrated the 160th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto with an article she wrote on her blog entitled “The Communist Manifesto Hits 160,” is an honorary chairwoman of the Democratic Socialists of America.
The third co-founder was someone with whom many Americans are familiar: it’s actor Danny Glover. What some may or may not know is that Glover is an activist in several communist organizations. He’s a strong supporter of both Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez; he’s met with both men, and he’s actually a board member of Venezuela's TeleSUR news network, which was founded by Chavez.
The final co-founder of “Progressives for Obama” was a man by the name of Tom Hayden. Hayden was one of the principal organizers of the 1960’s group that called themselves “Students for a Democratic Society,” also known as SDS. That group later became the Weatherman, which was the domestic terrorist organization that Bill Ayers was involved in. Hayden was one of the infamous “Chicago Seven” who were arrested for organizing the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. During the Vietnam War, Hayden met with North Vietnamese Communists leaders, and he called returning American POWs “liars, hypocrites and pawns" when they described their abuse in Viet Cong prisons.
These are the four co-founders of “Progressives for Obama”!
It gets even more interesting when you look at some of the people who signed on to become members this group. It’s a virtual “Who’s Who” of socialists, communists, and domestic terrorists.
We can start with actress Jane Fonda who was once married to Tom Hayden. Many remember her as "Hanoi Jane."
Mark Rudd, a former leader of both SDS and the Weatherman, was a member of “Progressives for Obama.”
Carl Davidson was a member; Davidson is an American Marxist who’s been a prominent leader in various Marxist organizations. He’s a former national secretary of SDS, and he’s met with and is a supporter of Fidel Castro.
Another member of “Progressives for Obama” was Fred Klonsky, another former SDS member, the son of a top Communist Party USA member, Robert Klonsky, and the brother of Mike Klonsky, who in the 1970s was the chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).
I could go on, but you get the idea; these are just some of the people who were supporting Barack Obama in his campaign for the Presidency. And we should have been asking ourselves “What did they did not know about Barack Obama that so many Americans apparently did not know?”
Really, though, we didn’t even have to speculate what the Leftists knew about Obama; they basically came right out and told us; we just didn’t listen.
In 2008, a Communism Party USA spokesman Sam Delgado
said , “I believe now we can achieve Communism in America within my lifetime….” You see, that remains a goal of the Communist Party USA.
An editorial that is no longer available online, but that appeared in 2008 on the Communist Party USA website, celebrated what was termed a “broad multiclass, multiracial movement …converging around Obama’s ‘Hope, change and unity’ campaign…” The editorial stated that Obama’s election would “shift the ground for successful struggles going forward.”
Another 2008 Communist Party USA website article
expressed the same sentiment , saying that the 2008 elections would be their “most critical form of struggle” and would be where they had “the best shot of finally breaking the back” of what they called the “ultra right.” They said that after the election they would "continue to build a united movement” that could eventually “challenge the system overall.”
Leftists saw in Barack Obama, not necessarily a communist himself, but a person whose socialist ideas and whose desire to fundamentally transform the United States of America would give them an opportunity to have someone in the White House who would take them closer than ever to realizing their long-held goal of establishing a communist form of government in the United States.
America had been warned, but Barack Obama was elected anyway. However, because he was elected President of the United States and not dictator of the United States, he couldn’t fundamentally transform the country by himself. He couldn’t just dictate policy; he had to have help.
Fortunately for him, unfortunately for us, Congress was already full of leaders nearly as radical as Barack Obama himself; Congressional leaders who were more than willing to try to push Obama’s radical agenda through Congress and to his desk for signing; Congressional leaders who themselves had long wanted to fundamentally transform America, but who needed someone at the top to lead the movement; Congressional leaders like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. They would form the body, and Barack Obama the head, of the radical transformational monster.
All that was left was to find the legs that would move the monster forward. Those legs were found in members of Congress who were maybe not quite as radical as the head and the body, but who, when push came to shove and they had to make a decision as to who they worked for, the radical monster or the American people, they chose the monster.
I’m talking about people like Brad Ellsworth and Joe Donnelly, the so-called “blue dog” democrats. They look nice, talk like conservatives, and then vote however Pelosi and Obama want them to 80% of the time. They’re the legs that move the radical transformational monster forward, and in less than two weeks, we have the opportunity to cut the legs out from under that monster!
Just what kind of “blue dogs” are Joe Donnelly and Brad Ellsworth? One good source of information is a website called Project Vote Smart. Among the masses of information available at Project Vote Smart are interest group ratings of elected officials. You simply look at the interest groups that represent your viewpoints, and you can see what percentage of the time a given official has supported the interests of that particular group.
So I took a look at how Brad Ellsworth and Joe Donnelly are rated by some of the groups that many mainstream Americans are interested in. For example, one interest group is called the American Conservative Union. This group describes itself by expressing its “commitment to a market economy, the doctrine of original intent of the framers of the Constitution, traditional moral values, and a strong national defense."
Those are things we all could live with; however, in 2009 Joe Donnelly supported the interests of the American Conservative Union only 24% of the time, and Brad Ellsworth only 32%. By comparison, Congressman Mike Pence had a 100% rating from the American Conservative Union.
Another group of interest to many mainstream Americans is the National Taxpayers Union. This group’s stated purpose is to “work every day for lower taxes and smaller government at all levels." Brad Ellsworth and Joe Donnelly must not agree with those principles. In 2009, Ellsworth had only a 25% rating by the National Taxpayers Union, and Joe Donnelly only 21%. Again, by comparison, Mike Pence’s rating was 92%.
One more group that is significant in terms of our blue dogs’ ratings is Citizens Against Government Waste. I don’t need to tell anyone what this group stands for; the name says it all. The 2008 report, which is the latest report this group has issued, indicates that Brad Ellsworth supported the interests of Citizens Against Government Waste only 8% of the time and Joe Donnelly only 13% of the time. Mike Pence’s rating was 98%.
Why am I stating Mike Pence’s ratings? Well, there are two reasons. One is show what a true conservative looks like lined up next to a couple of blue dogs, and the second is to demonstrate the kind of conservative that I believe Jackie Walorski is and the kind of voting record I believe we’ll see from her when we put her in office and send Joe Donnelly back home!
We can’t trust Joe Donnelly. He’s running a campaign ad claiming that Jackie Walorski wants to institute a national 23% sales tax. But Donnelly’s ad is deceitful because it never mentions the fact that this tax would be part of the Fair Tax plan that would eliminate all federal income tax.
Joe Donnelly is running an ad claiming that Jackie Walorski wants to eliminate the Pell Grant program that helps thousands of Hoosier families pay for college. But the source Donnelly uses for that claim is a questionnaire that Jackie filled out, and that questionnaire doesn’t even mention Pell Grants!
Donnelly claims that Jackie Walorski wants to privatize Social Security just like George W. Bush did, and that if her plan had been in place two years ago, we could have lost nearly 40 percent of our retirement savings by now. However, the fact of the matter is that neither Jackie Walorski, George W. Bush, nor anyone else that I’m aware of has ever proposed privatizing all social security funds, but only giving individuals the option of privately investing a very small percentage of their money.
We can’t trust Joe Donnelly the candidate. His campaign ads are full of half-truths, misinformation, and outright deceit.
We can’t trust Joe Donnelly the Representative either. On health care, he told us that he would never vote for a bill that didn’t meet his standards for assuring that no federal funds are used for abortion-related services. Well, I appreciated that.
The problem is that he then turned around and voted for the bill saying that an executive order issued by President Obama would ensure that federal funds would not be used for abortion. However, we all know that an executive order is not a law; it’s barely worth the paper it’s written on. We all know that an executive order can easily be reversed, and Joe Donnelly knows that too.
He clearly wanted to vote in favor of this legislation, and apparently he felt that this executive order gave him cover to do so. So Joe Donnelly made the decision to side with Obama and Pelosi, in spite of the fact that an overwhelming percentage of his District 2 constituents opposed the bill.
Now he has the audacity to run a campaign ad saying that he doesn’t work for Obama and Pelosi, he works for the people. Well, that’s fine because if he works for the people, then the people have the right and the power to fire him and to hire in his place someone who won’t just talk about working for the people but who will actually do it, and that person is Jackie Walorski!
The radical transformational monster of Obama, Pelosi, and Donnelly has been hard at work destroying our economy. According to the 2010 Index of Dependence on Government
released by the Heritage Foundation , over 64 million Americans depended on government housing, food, or health care assistance last year. That’s 21% of our total population, and this dependence on government is growing. We see it all around us.
In August, some 30,000 people stood in line for hours, in the hot Atlanta sun, just to receive an application so they could apply to get on a waiting list for a Section 8 housing voucher. We have nearly 10 million people receiving unemployment insurance; over 50 million people on Medicaid, and over 40 million Americans receiving food stamps.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of House whom Joe Donnelly helped to elect to that position, had an interesting comment earlier this month regarding unemployment insurance and food stamps. Newt Gingrich had issued a memo to Republican candidates suggesting that during the final four weeks of the campaign, they should contrast the Democrat and Republican Parties as the Party of Food Stamps vs. the of Party of Paychecks. Pelosi responded by saying that, "It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance.”
Now remember, this lady is second in line to be President of the United States. So if you need another reason to replace Joe Donnelly in Indiana’s second Congressional district, here it is: Jackie Walorski will never vote for Nancy Pelosi to be speaker of the house; that I can guarantee!
So we have more Americans than ever on government assistance. Now add in the fact that almost 50% of the population pays no federal income tax, including those who receive most of the assistance. It seems like a recipe for destruction, but don’t worry; the radical transformational monster has a plan: Barack Obama will increase taxes on the 50% who actually pay them; Nancy Pelosi will get the most bang for the tax buck by handing out more food stamps, and Joe Donnelly will vote for whatever those two want him to vote for and then claim that he works for us!
If that sounds like a good plan, then do nothing, but if that plan sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, then for the next week, make the phone calls, send the e-mails, send the text messages, set out the yard signs, and make sure that Jackie Walorski replaces Joe Donnelly as the Congressional representative from Indiana’s 2nd district!
Are we on the eve of destruction? It probably depends on exactly what we mean by destruction. Do I think there’ll be a United States of America five years from now? Yes, I do. I believe there will be a United States of America five years from now, 10 years from now, 25 years from now, and 50 years from now.
What I’m not at all sure of is what that country will look like. I’m not at all sure that it’ll look anything like the country I grew up in. I’m not at all sure that it will continue to be the land of freedom and opportunity, the land that millions from around the world have flocked to for generations.
In that respect, we may well be on the eve of destruction, but it is absolutely not too late. We’ve been there before. From the very founding of this country, Americans have looked destruction in the eye - and have conquered it.
In December 1776, the Continental Army under General George Washington had suffered a series of devastating defeats at the hands of the British. On Christmas Day, Washington’s troops were camped along the western bank of the Delaware River, cold, tired, poorly clothed, and on the very edge of destruction. Nine miles away, on the other side of the Delaware, Hessian troops fighting for the British were comfortable and confident in the town of Trenton, New Jersey.
But that night, General Washington led his army across the icy river and through the bitter cold and sleet to Trenton, where the next morning they mounted a surprise attack. When the battle ended, the Americans had attained a great victory, giving them new life, new energy, and new confidence; leading to further victories and, eventually, to independence.
Just days before Washington led his troops across the Delaware, Thomas Paine had written, “These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
It’s time for another American Revolution, not with muskets and gun powder but with text messages and e-mails, telephone calls and word of mouth. We must energize and mobilize and let those in power know that we put ‘em there and we can take ‘em out. They work for us - in the United States of America, the greatest country on the face of the planet.
