Glittering Generalities

GLITTERING GENERALITIES
by Sarah Riggs Ibanez

It is with abject negligence that great numbers of American citizens remain apathetic toward the current and unyielding trajectory away from the sacred laws of our land and into the open embrace of socialism. To those of us who realize the clandestine nature of what is before us, it is like wanting to shake those women lined up in pastel, hand-made prairie dresses and scream in their faces that they’ve been brainwashed. Unlike the Jessup women who have been severed from any exposure to the free exchange of ideas, the distinct opposite is true of our liberal friends who have complete and total access to all forms of information (at least for the time being) but who choose to ignore with perfunctory execution any information that does not reconcile with their preconceptions.

A preconception, of course, is an idea formed in advance—in this case, in advance of adulthood which happens to coincide with the right to vote. The recent textbook debate in Texas had everything to do with who would have influential control over forming the opinions of the American youth–the Right or the Left. For most of the twentieth century, let it be known, the Left seized control overwhelmingly. During that time, textbooks failed to grant due recognition to our founding fathers, completely disregarded the contributions made by African Americans as well as women, and most important; degraded the significance of our Judeo-Christian principles. In effect, we have undergone a “revisionist” period and the fight is on to win back the hearts and minds of our youth as well as the generations of people who were so insidiously indoctrinated.

It is precisely because of widespread indoctrination that large numbers of Americans simply do not grasp the totality of what is taking place on our watch as voters and citizens and how it is even possible that they have little regard for our exceptional history and the revolutionary documents that launched our country into glory–The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. Did you know that an alarming number of public high school students can’t even identify the Declaration of Independence? (A little scary isn’t it, since the answer lies in its very title?) Do you think they even know what the Constitution is? Probably not, but it’s fantastic for them that the current President of the United States lets them off the hook by so cavalierly explaining that he believes the document to be fundamentally flawed. (We’ll get to that later.)

Following such a stellar influx of historical information, our youth is sent to colleges to be further indoctrinated by former “hippies from the sixties” professors who more than likely “identify the year 1969 as the year of Woodstock rather than the year we landed on the moon.” (Beck) During these precious years of uncertainty, a college student can easily find acceptance and individuality under the warm left wing of a groovy, freethinking professor who, in the end, has a greater influence and capacity to sculpt an everlasting impression upon our sons and daughters than we as parents ever did. Triple that with the corroborating media and anti-American Hollywood fabrications and you’ve got blissful ignorance bound tightly by a false perception of tolerance and altruism.

This sector of the people are unwittingly held rapt in a blight of “group think” that at this scope and scale can only be attributed to a powerful machine dedicated to this precise outcome. Academia, the media, and Hollywood collectively and individually, are the institutions responsible for leveling a campaign so powerful as to actually compel citizens to submit themselves to increased governmental control and the ramifications thereof—the likes of which we have observed throughout history and believed only existed in countries like China and The Soviet Union. How can this be happening in the United States of America?

The answer is that this menacing campaign was not launched by the current administration; it didn’t begin just within the past decade; and it didn’t begin even within your lifetime. This nation, though young, has been under siege by socialism and communism since just after the turn of the century (1900). Propaganda and the road to socialism began back in the days of Woodrow Wilson, but became brazen during the forties and into the sixties. One only needs to Google the “1963 Communist Goals” (Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35) to find that just about every goal stated then has shockingly been achieved to date. (Pay particular attention to goals number fifteen through twenty-one.)

Evidence that the Constitution remained intact and revered throughout the 1800’s and specifically during the Civil War rests in the original writings of Abraham Lincoln in his response to Henry L. Pierce: “All honor to Jefferson–to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” Lincoln took no exception to the fact the Constitution was, at that time, almost three quarters of a century old. He neither deemed it antiquated nor inapplicable. To the contrary, it is clear he was crediting the Constitution with the words so necessary to uphold and justify his war, which as we all know, offered the byproduct of ending slavery.

Lincoln’s interpretation should be contrasted with the current movement toward marginalizing the document as has been done by our current president when he stated this: “I think it’s an imperfect document and I think it is a document that reflects, ah, some deep flaws, ah, in, ah, American culture—the colonial culture at that time”. He further stated that “the framers had a blind spot” and referred to it as a “fundamental flaw.”

What would the magnanimous gentleman revered for his honesty and credited for ending slavery while preserving the Union have to make of such a languorous interpretation? Why are the American people not shocked and outraged that the current President of the United States has failed to uphold his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”? Is it possible that the people themselves do not even know what the Constitution is in the first place? More than likely, that is the exact problem since it is clear that our schools have purposefully failed to instill such knowledge.

This, my friends, is the difference between the Tea Party and all the rest. Where the rest have remained satiated with whatever knowledge they gained in high school and college, (which we’ve established, is biased) the intrinsically patriotic have thirsted for greater knowledge of our history. They have searched for the meaning behind George Washington’s courage, Thomas Jefferson’s writings and James Madison’s intentions. Patriotic people, you see, want to know the truth and want to discover what caused this, the greatest nation ever conceived, to fall into a perpetual state of decline. We want our country back. We submit to the general public that the Constitution is not a living document. It is not a flawed document. It is the Law Of Our Land. It is the item, that when combined with the Declaration of Independence sets us apart from the rest of the world and makes us exceptional. We believe in American Exceptionalism.

Just as the president has marginalized the very document he swore to uphold, the media, academia and Hollywood is marginalizing people who call themselves Constitutionialists portraying them as white, ill-educated hillbillies. They have drilled into the minds of the general public the idea that people of right wing thinking are Bible thumping simpletons. Propaganda works. It always has and it always will. For those of you who do not remember the seven propaganda techniques from tenth grade civics, brush up and do it soon. “Redneck” is what is referred to as a “glittering generality.”

Glittering generalities are emotionally charged “words that appeal to the emotions of a person and cause people to form an association with principles and beliefs that are highly valued. Most of these words manage to get people to support the ideals without having any concrete foundation or information to base it on. There is no logical explanation that people look for when being influenced and inspired by these emotionally charged words”. (Defined by Buzzle.com)

If you find yourself contending that the Tea Party is nothing but a bunch of rednecks, rest assured you have instantaneously identified yourself as a victim of propaganda. You’ve been brainwashed. Pick whatever shade pastel you’d like…and start sewing. And while you’re busy stitching together the pieces of your prairie dress, the rest of us will continue to work tirelessly toward rebuilding and reestablishing the “City On The Hill.” We’ll do everything we can to become re-educated about the details of American history, more knowledgeable of our Founding Fathers’ sacrifices, and enlightened by the laws of our land. Know this: that on the day you realize the emperor has no clothes and you look down to see that you’re draped in lavender gingham; we’ll take you back. We want our country back.
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Sarah Ibanez is a NH resident and tea party activist.