"The Highly Communicable Disease of Historical Blindness!"

By Ron Ewart, President

National Association of Rural Landowners

September 9, 2007

Unfortunately, many of history's turning points are the outcome of wars or natural disasters.  We call them "flash points".  But all too rapidly the lessons learned and the progresses made from those "flash points" become cloudy after awhile, then opaque and finally we become entirely blind to them.   That onset of historical blindness is a communicable disease.  After the "flash point" we go back to our lives of family, work and play, oblivious (blind) to what goes on around us.  We forget the horror, the sacrifices, the lost and fractured lives.  We forget, as the same scenarios that led up to the previous "flash point", are once again appearing on the horizon.   We turn away from the approaching storm, hoping that the last horror will not be repeated.  We talk in soft, guarded tones to others of our fears, propagating our anxiety, as would a communicable disease.  Our children pick up on our unspoken dread and spread it to other children.  As they grow to adults, they carry that unseen dread with them and pass it on to their children.

We sense something is wrong, as a blind man would sense the presence of another.  Or we feel an ill wind stirring the leaves of the trees and hope that it is not the precursor to the tornado or the hurricane.  But instead of preparing to defend ourselves against what we know is coming, we close our minds and focus on family, work and play. 

It took the Revolutionary War to win our freedom and establish a set of unique rules by which free men can live in peace with one another.  We then almost immediately abdicated our responsibility to defend and maintain that freedom.  And to whom did we abdicate our responsibility?  The government!  We said that our constitution sets limits on our government and "they" have to abide by those limits.  We trusted government to do the right thing.  We went blind to the dangers of a government that is not held accountable by "the consent of the governed".  Our blindness became communicable and soon the whole country went blind, while the government grew stronger and stronger and used our money to buy our favors.

The Civil War was a "flash point" in history.  The scars of that war still reverberate in waves across the land, as the "blindness" set in to the lessons learned and the progresses made.

The Great Depression led us ever deeper into the abyss of growing government power and on-going abuses.  We again went blind to its reasons and lifted our "beaks" like helpless birds in a nest to our government for salvation and our government gave us our salvation, but at a huge price.  The price was slavery and the loss of our pride, our dignity as a nation and our precious liberty.

The drum beat of World War II was sounded well before  America entered the conflict.  We had gone blind to the lessons of previous wars and the cost of ignoring a rising, brutal dictator with designs on ruling the world.  Our blindness led us into the bottomless quick sand of appeasement, when we knew all along we would have to confront the bully, no matter what the cost.   Today, we shrink from the bully that is radical Islam in the hopes that we will not have to face them on the battle field.  But face them we will, one day, just like we faced Hitler and Tojo in World War II.  We will not escape the ravages of a war we did not want but was forced upon us by an evil that has all but declared our annihilation.

The communicable disease of historical blindness has left us vulnerable to the worst of all enemies, government tyranny.  A government that has found a way around its constitutional limits, because our historical blindness has kept us from confronting them daily, becoming part of the process that they have usurped and holding them in check.   They own us and we let them do it.

In the book by Judge Andrew Napolitano, "The Constitution in Exile", he outlines the breakdown of our constitution by an out-of-control judiciary, that has resulted from the communicable disease of historical blindness, that has infected our once-free society.  In a portion of Judge Napolitano's last chapter, he concluded that:  "The Founders did not give us a perfect system of government, but they did give us one that they intended would keep power diffused between the states and the federal government and further diffused with the federal government itself.  And they gave us a document that recognized that our rights are "natural", that is, they come from our humanity, thus from our Creator, not from government.  Ronald Reagan reminded us many times that we have the power to begin the world anew.  I agree --- we should start with a government faithful to the Constitution, one whose mantra is freedom, not safety, one that acknowledges that the government is the servant, not the master."

In the judge's last sentence, he says:  "Do we still have a Constitution?  Dear reader, you can make that call.  I say it has been sent into exile, and we must reclaim it before it is too late."  The reason our constitution has been sent into exile is the drastic and ever-lasting consequences of the highly communicable disease of historical blindness.  If we do not regain our "sight" very soon, it will be too late.

Perhaps there is an excuse for a truly blind or deaf person to miss the signals of an approaching "flash point".  But there is no excuse at all for an individual who is in full control of his or her faculties, but who has succumbed to the highly communicable disease of historical blindness.  If you cannot "see" the approaching "flash point", you are much more than just historically blind.

© Copyright  September 10, 2007  - All Rights Reserved

Ron Ewart, President

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS

P. O. Box 1031 , Issaquah , WA   98027

425 222-4742 or 1 800 682-7848

(Fax No. 425 222-4743)

Website: www.narlo.org