“‘You know, you never beat us on the battlefield,” I told my North Vietnamese counterpart during negotiations in Hanoi a week before the fall of Saigon. He pondered that remark a moment and then replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.’”
— Gen. Frederick Weyand, interview in Vietnam Magazine, 1988
The United States and its allies fought a decadeslong cold — and sometimes hot — war against communism with its totalitarian consequences and came out victorious against the Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan brought down the evil empire and the West celebrated its newfound “peace dividend” by gorging on the fruits of capitalism. In short, we became soft. Our younger generations have no knowledge of the struggle, taking freedom and the democratic government for granted.
Unfortunately, we are now losing the long war.
Ironically, the U.S. in now falling in line behind Russia in its form of government, embracing a new soft totalitarianism cloaked in the words of democracy. It is a world where the “rule of law” only exists for the masses, a world where the elite are free to rule by decree and the rules apply only to the little people, those without power, money or connections.
The Marxist left has cleverly pushed this new regime on the West. They first infiltrated the education system and brainwashed a new generation on Marxist principles, demonizing freedom and capitalism along the way. They used tenure to prevent any accountability in what they taught our children and — poof — just add water and a little discontent to an entitled class and you have a whole generation of Bernie bros, screaming for more free stuff and railing against the free market.
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Witness the comments of a fortunate actor in the very successful musical “Hamilton,” being staged in the financial capital of the world, “Why celebrate the Fourth of July and freedom. Freedom from what?”
That is the mindset of the millennial generation in one sentence.
In addition to taking over the education system, the cultural Marxists have expanded the ranks of public-sector employees. Combine this with tens of millions of Americans living on entitlements, and the result is one-half of the population dependent on government in one form or the other. Any sense of personal responsibility and self-reliance has been lost.
This type of person is only too eager to hand over his freedom to unelected bureaucrats in the hope of getting more free stuff from the system.
The circus of the Hillary Clinton investigation by our completely politicized Department of Justice is the coup de grace to our old, honored governmental system. It is nothing short of the tactics used by Vladimir Putin in Russia, where government officials, rather than following the law, read the presidential tea leaves to understand how to decide judicial questions. They make the law up as they go along.
If that doesn’t work, well, there is always a presidential decree. If you are a friend of Mr. Putin, you are above the law. Just as if you are a friend of President Obama or the Clintons, the laws don’t necessarily apply to you. The other two branches of the American federal government have abdicated their responsibility to maintain checks and balances against the executive branch. We have lost the war against Marxism and dictatorship through our failure to maintain the tenets of a free society.
We no longer have a democracy. The party occupying the White House will do its utmost to rig the upcoming election, to maintain its grip on the levers of power. A Trump presidency is an existential threat to the new, soft totalitarianism that the left cannot let come to pass.
Russia wants to monitor the November elections. Perhaps, we should let them.
• L. Todd Wood is a former special operations helicopter pilot and Wall Street debt trader, and has contributed to Fox Business, The Moscow Times, National Review, the New York Post and many other publications. He can be reached through his website, LToddWood.com.
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