Have they learned? Will they learn?

Thomas Sowell’s latest column, ‘Are Republicans Due?‘ is, as usual for Dr. Sowell, well written and thought provoking.

When a baseball player has come to bat after failing to get a hit twenty times in a row, some fans say he is “due” for a hit. But statisticians say he is no more likely to get a hit in this at bat than at any other time. In other words, there is no such thing as being “due.”

I urge you to read it. It is a somber warning that on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts, our nation faces threats which could very well be the end of us as a nation, “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

One of the dangerous disadvantages of the American point of view, is that we tend to assume America is eternal. We’ve never had a foreign conquest, never a violent overthrow of government, never even had an interruption of the more-or-less orderly electoral process. And we assume deep down that this is somehow historically normal.

Our European cousins in this respect at least, know better. (About their own nations, oddly enough many Europeans I know tend to assume America will always be here.) In particular, citizens of smaller nations in Europe are acutely aware that a hiccup of history could wipe their nation out – forever.

Who now remembers the Lusitanians? Who remembers the original Prussians were a Slavic people, wiped out by the Teutons who took their name?

Well, America seems to be waking up. Many people are worried, about our debt, about mad fanatics getting nuclear weapons, about everything Sowell talks about.

Some are pinning their hopes on a Republican “surge” in the 2010 and 2012 elections. That may be our only hope, third parties have a long history of not working in this country. Or worse, splitting the opposition and giving the election to a party that otherwise wouldn’t have won.

But, this could also be the time of the Truce of the Bear.

Here’s the comment I left under Sowell’s article:

The last time Republicans gained control of congress, to put it bluntly – they betrayed us.

They put their snouts into the trough as enthusiastically as any leftie.

That said, there’s still a difference between bad, and less bad.

The fact is, once political power is gained it takes a rare individual willing to give it up, much less a party. And it is generally political suicide to even attempt to repeal entitlements the public has gotten comfortable with.

I fear the problem is systemic, and not easily amenable to “throwing the rascals out” and installing the “good guys.”

Perhaps if enough people realize the consequences of our present course could be fatal to our country, there might be enough sustained pressure on our politicians to keep them reasonably honest.

And perhaps not.

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