London and the Girl in the Plaid Miniskirt

I wasn’t the first to see England since John Cherry left it in 1635 as an indentured servant destined for Norfolk, Virginia.  Dad crossed the Atlantic during WWII with the 1st Infantry Division and saw it from the Queen Mary.  I saw England in the 747’s descent to Germany in the wee hours of the morning that clearly revealed the dark island, that pearl set in a silvery sea.

The trip to England from Belgium was fatiguing and there was a cold wind whipping those on the decks.  Some kids dared the sea with stunts like leaning over the railing or shoving one another - “Chicken of the Sea.”  They were cussing in German; the words are about the same in English.  Gradually the fog lifted revealing England's coast glaring white in the partial cloud cover.  The White Cliffs of Dover were magnificent standing high above the sea with flocks of gulls gliding in the wind.  Our ship neared the west docks and the passengers began preparing for disembarkation and declaration.  A hydraulic pile driver caught my attention while I had my $45 BritRail pass stamped and boarded the London bound train.

My first encounter with one of the largest cities in the world was not a pleasant one, especially during rush hour at Victoria Station.  I escaped the mob and managed to reserve a bed for the night from a tourist office hosted by a multilingual red haired girl with an extremely short miniskirt from the St. Christopher's Student Services on 27-30 Clerkenwell Close well north of the Thames.  She directed me to St. James Center two miles west of Whitechapel where Jack the Ripper once prowled and where the plague ravaged in 1655.  I read somewhere that Lenin stayed in Clerkenwell for a time; it was a traditional den of iniquity for hardened criminals, prostitutes, and radicals.  Iron poles still braced many buildings that were damaged by the Blitz. 

My first impressions of a subway, affectionately known as the “Tube”, included flashing arrays of posters, huge colored maps, and a sea of impersonal humanity.  I emerged near St. James Center, a warehouse converted to a youth hostel.  Of course there were dregs there as well as straight Americans, Japanese and Scots.  Some of the Hippies sat reverently for hours picking off parasites under the dim glow of a hanging light bulb while the sun was setting and the church bells began ringing.  Two twin heroin dealers came in and the Hippie in the cot next to me began shooting up.  Girls were theoretically restricted to the second floor although many frequented the first floor during the day.   

I managed to see the usual London attractions like the British Museum where the Tutankamem Exhibit was showing, the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels, Parliament, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, and the Commons.  There’s nothing homogeneous about London: the Indian ticket taker, the visiting French children, the pretentious aristocrats with derby hats and pin-striped suits, the common people, the plump rosy faces of the children, the unshaven demeanor of a factory worker, and the scurrying housewife with bobby socks and pram.  I had breakfast at Victoria Station and a real Indian ate my leftovers.  The frenzy, pollution, and overcrowded conditions make London almost unbearable at times.  Curses, screeches, honks, revving engines, and sirens also produce bad memories.  Large cities are all the same.  I got out my National Geographic map and began planning to head to Scotland without meeting the queen.

The World of Bus Stop Willie

I had quit my supervisor’s job at the warehouse because it had become a dead end, but there was more to it than that.  I was pushing 40 years old when I created Strategic Business Intelligence Service and the lure of actually doing something intellectually challenging modeled on the Kiplinger Letter was just too much for me.  It was a high risk Liberal Arts failure; so in order not to starve, I ended up working for the Area Transportation Authority (ATA) as a bus washer for a short time.  It was a job that was so tough that you had to take a physical for it and besides, it could have led to a union job.  All you had to do was wash one bus in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Bear in mind the fact that each bus had 34 windows.  I was always tired because I worked hard.  Others goofed off and listened to their boom boxes before lunch.

The first step was learning how to drive one of those monsters.  Since I had driven an 18 ft. truck with a stick, it was a piece of cake.  After fetching the bus from the ATA barn you parked it in a line that forms in front of the washing bays.  That is where you do the prep like clean the windows.  (Jerry Curl was especially hard to get off the windows.)  Before that, I opened the back windows so that the giant vacuums sucked all the trash out the front door.  After going through the bays, I'd fill the bus, parked on the level, with two inches of soapy water for the mop-down and finished the job only when the bus came to a jerking halt that sent the dirty tsunami cascading out the front door. That is where Bus Stop Willie comes in because he was the reason I had the job.

I never met Willie, but he’s one of those illusive characters you never think twice about because he’s everywhere, leaving traces of his movements much like a lion that marks its territory.  I cleaned up after him so many times that I felt I knew him and his world as he made his rounds to downtown Kansas City on the Troost bus.  Piecing his story together was not too difficult even though he was just a phantom.

First on his busy schedule was Go-Chicken-Go.  Everyone on the East Side knows they sell good chicken, especially the fried livers and gizzards.  Willie would wash the chicken down with Wild Irish Rose or Night Train and throw the bones on the floor and stuff the empty bottles into the seats.  By this time he would have passed those major Kansas City attractions that never seem to make the guide books: the night club with the bullet holes in it, the tattoo parlor, the innocuous abortion clinic, the myriad of Troost pawn shops, and the hamburger joints with the two inch bullet proof glass by the cash register.  On his way to visit his sister in the county jail or his case worker at the state office building, Willie had time for a good nap only awakening long enough to relieve himself into the drain he had cleverly punched in the floor at the back of the bus.

I’ve had to eat a lot of humble pie in my life to survive; the job market cares little for those with a history degree. Business wants specialists.  Their world is one of things and stuff somewhere between Willie’s primitive needs and mine of idealism that always played second fiddle to hard dirty work.  His world was his briar patch.  Even with its occasional thorns it appeared to be comfortable and predictable, but it is not one I would want to enter because I’m just a different breed of cat.

The Crash of the Sea Stallion

Stepping off the bus into Camp Wilson for CAX78 was like sticking your head inside an oven.  Reservists had flown in from all over the country into 29 Palms for a live-fire desert exercise coached by the Israelis who were experts in that type of warfare.  We all thought it was a cruel joke that the big shots pulled in sending us to the most godforsaken backwater in America at the hottest time of year.  I still cannot believe that there are those on the active duty side that call it home.  Afternoons produce a surface temperature of 144 degrees.  It was so hot that road runners could be seen lining up in the shadows of telephone poles.  It’s only slightly cooler on the foot hills that are pot marked with craters and live shells.  A person could get killed around there.

Headquarters Company 24th Marines in Kansas City was sent there to coordinate the movements of three battalions of Marine reservists who were supported by an air wing that included A4’s based at El Toro.  I was an intelligence analyst in S-2.  Operations was chocked full of Vietnam veterans serving out the remainder of their contracts.  Women were entering the combat units at that time including a set of homely twins who somehow became ravishing beauties by the end of two weeks.  Our First Sergeant had to post a guard on their shower tent.  Nearly everyone volunteered for guard duty.  Feminization of the military was not without its more carnal fan base.

We were ferried up to Outpost Crampton by three Sea Stallion helicopters with single propellers unlike the more numerous and popular Chinooks that have two.  Our intelligence section was assigned to #401 - the one in the photo with me in front.  We all looked forward to getting on top of the mountains because it was only about 120 degrees up there.  Corpsmen measured the most extreme temperature anyone ever seen at 155 degrees inside an APC on the valley floor.  I was hot and tired after the steep hike from the landing zone; privates and lance corporals get stuck with a lot of humping.  Two years earlier at Camp Pendleton I had to carry a safe.  When I slumped into the corner of the shack someone almost immediately said, “Cherry, look out here.  There’s a chopper going down!”  Of course I did not believe him.  Our more energetic and imaginative Marines were always pulling practical jokes.

I reluctantly got to my feet to look out the window.  All I could see was a small smoke ring over the barren draws west of the shack.  By this time people were running down the mountain and shouting.  One of the three Sea Stallions that were still ferrying us up had crashed.  We found out later that three were killed and another three were severely injured.  When we flew over it the next day, I remember it looking like a burnt scorpion with just its tail sticking up missing the rotor that caused the crash.

 

Things like that happen all the time in the military.  Reservists get killed too.  Over the years I’ve researched the event with no avail.  My interest was rekindled when I took a closer look at the photo and discovered the helicopter's markings.  Perhaps there is a record at 29 Palms or in the local paper identifying it, but I could not help wondering how close I came and if the crashed Sea Stallion was #401.

I Discover the North Sea

My travel plan was to make it circular trip beginning in Germany and ending there, but I wanted to get to England first to adapt to backpacking.  The English could speak English - or at least try their version of it.  I couldn't understand German.  Their trains were powered by electricity and the rails always make a swooshing sound.  I’d never seen anything like them in America.  Who lost the war anyway? My ticket read: Frankfurt (Main) to Oostende via Kőln-Aachen-Brussels 2nd class, $1.75.  I wonder what it is today.  In fact the whole trip only cost $750 with about $575 for round trip air fare and that was for five weeks.  I’ll never do that again for two reasons:  it was cheaper to travel in those days and I’ve lost all illusions about riding in coach and backpacking.  For once I’d like to see what’s it’s like to be cramp-free.  I also have grown fond of knowing where my next meal is coming from and knowing where I’m going to sleep.  Thank you, McDonald’s.

Thousands of Baby Boomers were on the road in 1972.  I was just one of them, but I enjoyed talking to others who could speak English and tell me about their lives and trips.  An old man from Detroit and German by birth and his wife were in the same compartment with me.  Seems like all he could say was, “Yes sir,  this is my old stomping grounds.”  I liked him immediately because he had the guts to travel in his old age.  I also met a pony-tailed Hippie from Syracuse University who was less interesting, but had travel smarts that potentially could come in handy when we finished our trip down the Rhine to Oostende, Belgium arriving at 9:30 P.M. 

Walking the cobble stones of a strange deserted town after dark looking for a place to stay is not my idea of having fun.  To the Hippie, it was no big deal and I appreciated his confidence.  He casually suggested that we sleep in the cemetery.  That was the last place I wanted to be.  Or maybe I should say, will be.  Besides, I didn’t trust him. After he left, a Belgian whistled me off the streets.  He was the owner of ‘T Haantje (little cock) nieuwpoortsteenweg 5.  It was a café and art gallery that also rented rooms.  It was the first time among too many times that someone saved me from the cemetery.

Europe is a wonderful place to visit and even mysterious in its darkest hours before the dawn.  I got up at o-dark-thirty to make the Dover ferry that was anchored near the yacht of the king and queen of Belgium.  There should have been nothing to it; cross over to Dover and catch a train to London.  In a very short time after we had pulled out, I began to notice that we were not alone as the ship followed the buoys that marked the sea lane.  There were hundreds of what looked like row boats with telephone booths on them bobbing up and down on the greenest and coldest water I’ve ever seen.  It looked like wall-to-wall Christmas tree lots lit up by hundreds of lanterns with their strands of light bulbs and filled with fishermen pulling their nets to haul in North Sea cod and herring.  Those fishermen closest to our hull paid no attention to our churning wake, clanging bells, and fog horn. I could never have foreseen such an unanticipated and unforgettable sight at so early an hour.

Building Your Personal Book Library

My history professor once told us to start our libraries immediately.  By the time I had chosen my major I was interested enough to take him up on his advice and begin my collection in 1970 mostly with Modern Library reprints.  Only now in my retirement have I decided to start giving them away after finishing Journal of the Silent Majority.  I’ve read most of them at least three times including Edward Gibbon and I tend to butcher them with notes, multicolored highlighting, and Elmer’s glue repairs.  I’m keeping the most important ones like Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Carlyle’s The French Revolution, Fire in the Streets by Milton Viorst, The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, and Nihilists by Ronald Hingley because it discloses the ancestors of our glorified 1960s radicals.  These are just a few cited among my 751 footnotes.  It’s also good insurance to have all of the books on hand during the editing process.

History never made much sense until I began collecting a variety of books and began eliminating the bad ones, especially text books that had no passion or logic to them – mostly bullets and beans.  They never told the story of what the ordinary man saw on the streets.  Butchering history was not limited to textbooks.  I began to notice how some stories like Malcolm X changed.  As time passed and radical become normal, Malcolm’s crazy assertions were doctored by politically correct new authors.  Much of that occurred after 1960 when a new breed of cat apparently controlled the destiny of the American literary world.  I believe that seismic shift came when John Kennedy came to power and enabled the Left, especially the Media, to monopolize perception.  A watershed used book that I purchased for 50 cents was Tragic Era by Claude Bowers.  It made sense of America’s Reconstruction, the post-Civil War occupation of the South by the North. Most history books avoid that era because it holds too many uncomfortable truths about us as a nation.  It wasn’t just the different point of view, but the various contemporary sources cited and what they revealed that ignited my interest and further exposed the bias of modern American history books.  I personally witnessed a second occupation of the South and Bowers described in detail what I was seeing 100 years after the fact!

I was fortunate enough to obtain many books from the discarded piles that Mid-Continent North Library in Independence sells for a pittance.   It was Harry Truman’s library although it probably went by a different name when he used it as a young man.  I also spent many hours downstairs researching the old periodicals like Look and Life Magazine that are off limits today because people started stealing them.  After the ban, I started going to the dark aisles and recesses of UMKC.  If I won the lottery I probably would give the university library enough money for higher wattage bulbs.  History is foreboding enough without having an ambience of the crypt.

Brandeis University alumnae in Kansas City used to have tent sales of used books, records, magazines, and maps at the old Bannister Mall.  Those tents were huge and it was a success for many years, but finally disappeared.  I really missed it because it was exciting.  The Blue Ridge Mall did the same thing only in miniature with lesser variety.  Used book tent sales have become obsolete.  Maybe it’s because the newer generations don’t read books– just chirp, gurgle, and twitter.  Used book stores for the most part followed the same fate.  Independence Square used to have a couple of mom-and-pop stores.  One was owned by a lady whose plump and affectionate cat, Pricilla, inspected every customer.  On the same block there was another store badly lit and disorganized but owned by a lady who was a used book pack rat.  Brookside, south of the Country Club Plaza, had one of the first used book stores with exotic coffee and treats.  It too disappeared.  Low profit margins and electronic competition killed them.

Auctions are questionable places to find books.  Unfortunately, auctions reflect the interests of the owner whose estate is being sold.  History and biography books are few and far between because most people do not read serious books.  What you sometimes see are boxes of awful pulp fiction with Western or Romance themes.  For me science fiction is also a tragic waste of time.  Anybody can make that stuff up.  Truth is stranger than fiction.  The point is to keep looking.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the success of Amazon and how it has helped collectors of books.  Low prices and consistently good delivery are what keeps me going back.  The only drawback is not being able to physically browse to find that special one.  Others besides Amazon sell eBooks that have become fashionable.  They are OK so long as their electronic content is never modified - a tempting prospect for some who want to tweak history.  Although physical books aren’t the only sources authors should cite, I find them to be like an old shoe or a pair of old jeans – dependable and comfortable.

The Media’s Fascination with Criminals

Am I the only one who has noticed lately the rash of TV shows that chronicle criminal activity to the extreme?  I wrote a few of them down: Gang Wars: Oakland I, Prison Wives, Behind Bars, Lockup Boston, and San Quentin: Inside the Big House.  If you don’t notice them now, don’t be fooled.  They’ve backed off a bit since Christmas is just around the corner.

People love do-it-yourself shows so they must like Moonshiners.  It’s always interesting to see how the old timers made their liquor - even more so if the show is highlighted by someone with no teeth spitting his brew into a roaring fire. I believe television executives also see a two-for-one bargain in this particular story; generate sympathy for the lawbreaker and create disdain for his law abiding kin.  Moonshiners and a host of programs over the years reinforce the unfortunate stereotype of hill people as being lazy and backward.  Hollywood loves to do that if they can find a minority that won’t or can’t fight back.  One step beyond Hee Haw and the Beverly Hillbillies appears to be an acceptance and even an admiration of vice.

Perhaps the media class regards pot as being benign as they do moonshine; after all, that’s how Joe Kennedy got his start and how marijuana became their gateway drug.  Pot heads should enjoy Marijuana Outlaws and Marijuana USA because they show how to overcome adversity (breaking the law) and profiting from the experience.  Pot becomes just another commodity. We saw recently post-election celebrations of pot heads lighting up in hallucinatory bliss.  Television is also awash with stories of cocaine, crystal meth, and heroin trafficking by Mexican cartels using all kinds of smuggling schemes including tunnels, submarines, and even catapults to fling their dope across the border. 

I haven’t made a study of these television shows and I can’t review them all, but a socially redeeming quality seems to be missing.  Where’s the FCC?  Libertarians may be shocked, but most Americans believe in rules and not in “If it feels good, do it.”  As “progressive” as Communists were, Stalin imprisoned thieves and Mao disposed of the drug trade the hard way.

Popularizing or defending the actions of the worst elements is a losing proposition. I think what we are seeing is a softening up process that goes beyond ratings. There seems to be a genuine feeling of sympathy for these people. At least Cops always ended with the assertion that crime doesn’t pay.

Suicide at the Netherlands Hotel

In the late 1950s the Westport area, where I grew up in Kansas City, had its quaint attractions.  At 39th and Main we ran as kids in and out of all of them including Eddie Jacobson’s National Shirt Shop, the Beacon Café, the Roi-Tan cigar shop on the NE corner, and a newsstand owned by an ex-GI and his blond French wife.  We could barely understand a word she said.  Across the street was old Joe the cobbler whose bald head couldn’t conceal a hole that made him somewhat of a celebrity among the local children.  Of course, everyone knew that next to him was the neighborhood model shop stocked with the most gruesome of war machines:  the Hellcat, Hustler, Tiger tank, destroyers, and carriers.  Journal of the Silent Majority has more details about what Westport looked like during that time of innocence.

Most Baby Boomers never appreciated the bubble that was their childhood – at least the early period before 1960 until some harbinger broke that bubble and flung them into a new era.  I’ll make the guess that with me that harbinger came one day when we heard about a suicide at the Netherlands Hotel a stone’s throw from 39th and Main.

 

After school, a friend and I from Rollins Elementary sneaked into the parking lot behind the hotel to examine the scene.  We had always played there anyway, but never got caught or chased away.  As I looked up to the top-most floor that was the 10th I could see a screen pried loose from the small bathroom window.  Directly below on the concrete was the remaining purple splatter marks.  Officials didn’t make much of an effort in those days to clean up the mess.  I do not recall who he was or why he did it, but I’m sure he had his reasons.

What had happened was a graphic anomaly that parents had difficulty explaining to their children ranking up there with the Birds-and-the-Bees.    At least the violence was something that he had done to himself.  That was about to change.  Murder and mayhem in Westport and indeed the nation changed us all beginning in 1960 when utopians rearranged America by casting away hundreds of years of custom, convention, and law to accelerate social change by force and the rule of the bayonet.  For every foot civil rights gained, a yard was lost to the worst elements in the black population who profited from an all too familiar provocation-crisis-reward scenario that broke down law and order and bestowed upon extremists and terrorists an electronic sainthood.  Gangs, prostitutes, pushers, murderers, con artists, rapists, child molesters, and thieves who had been contained, migrated and thrived in decent areas like Westport.  I saw it all and the politically controlled history books still dare not print the truth.

What we as children saw in that suicide at the Netherlands Hotel was merely prelude, but we could never have guessed that or in the course of events, that it was rather benign.  I remember with fondness the fairytale world we lived in even with some of its darker exceptions, but we all knew what happened once Humpty Dumpty was broken.

Germany: First Contact

Robbing destiny has always been a constant theme with me and I knew that robbing time cheated destiny in the manner of someone rebelling from his station in life in order to buy an experience that those in his class shouldn’t desire or understand.  I suppose my relatives always thought it was just a quirk in me, but discovery is a powerful motivator.  In my travels I have often marveled, as I walked down the lanes, thoroughfares, or back roads of Europe, how money was the only thing that made the journey possible.  I remember the extremes of wealth and poverty and wonder why the rich have so much money when there is so much good to spend it on. 

My journey in 1972 to Europe began May 22nd as the Lufthansa 747 touched down near the pine forests that lie on the outskirts of Frankfurt, West Germany.  They reminded me of the tall pines from my summers in Muskegon, Michigan.  There was an immediate physical exhilaration from the impact of clean fresh air and low humidity.  I had the misfortune to being sandwiched the entire trip between two fat bodies in that awful middle section of coach.  After each meal the lady to my left would steal the silverware – real silver, but I digress.  When I got to Frankfurt, I knew enough to get my traveler's checks cashed into German Marks at the train station in the center of town.  I was impressed by the scaffolds and the construction.  They were getting ready for the 1972 Olympics, but you could still see large WWII shell holes on many of the older buildings. 

A Hippie told me that it was best to stay in the Haus der Jugend (Youth Hostel) many blocks away and that I needed to get a tram to get there.  The only thing on my mind was getting a bed so that I could shake off my jet lag and get to England where I could more easily adjust to backpacking.  The tram I caught was rocking from Hippies singing the “Age of Aquarius.” 

About dusk, the kids at the hostel had hidden a Mideast illegal alien, a Syrian.  They offered him their beds, but he refused and slept on the floor under one of the bunks.  He asked me in broken English about America and what would be the best city to immigrate to.  I told him Denver was my choice because of its cleanliness and scenery.  Much later I had second thoughts about this innocuous transient because I learned that the terrorists who killed the Israeli athletes in Munich at the Olympics were Syrians. 

Next morning I awoke to the sounds of clanking dishes from the kitchen, gurgling water from the fountains outside, and quacking ducks.  It was standard procedure for those who paid less for their beds to do some work like sweeping the floors or doing dishes.  The hostel was like a commune with kids from all over the world. I got dressed and rolled up my K-Mart felt-lined sleeping bag that I always slept in.  Even with a backpack, I could really walk in those days.

On my way to the train station I managed to get sidelined enough to see Goethehaus which has been dismantled during the war for obvious reasons.  Being in the house of the father of Romanticism impressed me little although I believe I’m a Romantic by nature.  Goethe was relatively prosperous having servants and a quaint home for that time.  Everything harked of warmth, friendliness, and comfort.  Out back was a small well-kept courtyard with massive brick fences adorned by broken glass cemented to the tops.  A longing for the infinite and possessing a sad fatalism apparently carried with Germans a just and savage contempt for intruders.

The Cat Lady and the Lemon Tree

Several years before my Navy retirement, I was sent out to San Diego with the Seabees to work at the naval base.  With the increased numbers of reservists, the active duty side had the manpower to augment community outreach programs.  They are regarded as an important feather-in-the-cap for the Navy.  We were sent up to National City to rehab the house and demolish the dilapidated garage of an elderly Japanese widow whose husband had been in the Navy.

Our Equipment Operators and Builders bore the brunt of most of the heavy construction - something they actually enjoy.  The rest of us did the simple things like paint the house and rake the yard.  Of course, such an operation had its other characters no less important.  Our Navy public relations officer and his entourage of big shots monopolized the television cameras.  We all thought, “Where did these guys come from?” At the end of the day a Mexican driver backed his old truck up to the garage to carry the rubbish away.  There was nothing unusual about that except his final destination was not the land fill, but Tijuana to build houses.  Talk about cultural shock.

Since my rate was Storekeeper First Class, I was in the group assigned to clean and rake the yard. Before long I noticed a couple of unusual things.  First, there were all these strange flat stones scattered about the back yard. I thought it was like those Japanese gardens you hear about.   Second, I noticed there was a small tree with lemons growing on it.  I did not mention it, but there was also a strange smell where the stones were.  It turned out not to be a Japanese garden.  Under each of the stones she had laid to rest one of her many cats. The yard was almost wall-to-wall with stone markers.  I guess it was her feline version of Arlington Cemetery. 

Our assignment in National City took only a couple of days.  Its cast and crew declared victory and moved on. I guess it was routine for them.  Most of us from the Midwest thought California was a nice place to visit, but we wouldn’t want to live there.  As for me, I still remember the Cat Lady, but I’ve never seen anything like that lemon tree.

Fiscal Cliff Triggered French Revolution

All you hear on the news today is Fiscal Cliff this and Fiscal Cliff that.  If a humble warehouse worker predicted today’s events 28 years ago in a guest column, why does the Media ignore the same history that the humble worker based his column on?  Perhaps Democrats and Republicans dare not cite precedent because it might lead the public to the realization of just how serious the deficit problem has become perhaps to the point of revolution.  I wrote, “When the next group is ‘taxed,’ their perception of business and government is likely to change, and in a manner not done quietly.” The ruling class appears to be whistling past the graveyard. 

I submitted the article when corporate America had been terminating its workforce by the millions including me. “Higher levels of middle class next to feel deficit’s bite” Kansas City Star, 25 November 1984 7J.   It’s funny how unemployment focuses the mind.  I explained what happened in France by 1789.  Generally, France ran out of money after her involvement in a foreign war, the American Revolution.  In order to “appease” the deficit the King called for a meeting of the “Estates-General” or France’s three classes who hadn’t met since 1614.  Since the King and the Nobles were broke and the Clergy was off limits, only the Bourgeoisie (business) was left to tax. Those that had the power didn’t have the money and those that had the money didn’t have any power.  The Bourgeoisie (Third Estate), mostly farmers, but spearheaded by the French Media, overthrew the king, aristocracy, and Church with the help of Parisian workers.

By the early 1980s in the United States corporations had been paying billions in taxes for the utopian socialist experiments of the Great Society.  Spending by the government eclipsed revenue and inflation became a crisis.  Unchecked spending also became a major pretext to remove the Democrats from office, shut down the economy to break the back of inflation, and to throw millions out of work.  Fighting inflation became the mantra for business to recoup revenue by theoretically making operations efficient.  What actually took place during Republican rule was America’s bourgeoisie shifted the burden of taxation from themselves to individuals.  I wrote, “Since 1981, under a politically receptive climate, the main responsibility of paying taxes has shifted from corporations to individuals.”

Additionally, corporations shipped jobs overseas by the millions where taxation was minimal or non-existent and even started looting the wages and benefits of the employees that were left.  I wrote, “The idea of taxes being paid only by money is a provincial one.  The first deficit installment paid by the 1981-82 private sector workers was one made in jobs and tears.  It assumed the form of a ‘fire bell in the night’ to the middle class, and those above now stand to feel the next ripple effect.”  I even predicted the next workers to be taxed.  “The last and least vulnerable strata of workers to be “taxed” probably will be union and government workers whose financial protection was determined by political strength.”  Then I predicted the taxation of the next class.  “Professionals, stung by the creeping erosion of their economic base, will again reel from new taxation schemes when they are solicited by government as the next group able to pay deficit taxes.”  That is where we are today – on the precipice or Fiscal Cliff of who will pay?  If you do not believe me, check out Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution.

The Silent and Real Vanguard of American Society

If someone comes out against homosexuality, he is demonized as a “Homophobe” or worse, even though the Bible in Leviticus 20:13 calls it an abomination.  Intolerance by the Left does not allow those opposing “fashionable correctness” to escape the drag net.  They mockingly label Christians as being out of touch and old fashioned. 

I believe those who have faith and values are the real vanguard of society like they always have been. Besides being the most educated generation, Baby Boomers and the Silent Majority also have long memories. We recall evil: the Social Revolutionaries of the SDS personified by Tom Hayden; the Anarchist YIPPIES at their best at the Chicago 8 Trial where Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman made a fool of Judge Hoffman; and finally the bomb throwing Weathermen ideologically guided by Jim Mellon. We remember the reign of the black radicals: H. Rap Brown, Soul on Ice Eldridge Cleaver, and Black Panther Huey Newton and their clarion call for violence and a utopian dream world like Soul City. That era was billed as an Age of Aquarius – love and harmony abounding.  Then there were the celebrity status killers of the era like Charles Manson that altered the justice system for the worse escaping the death penalty that society uses to defend itself.  Our sentiments are based on revolutionary events that we cannot forget.  Our detractors seem to remember the era as a psychedelic blur.

Youngsters today who are influenced by Pavlov’s dream machine do not realize that witches, warlocks, and militant atheists manifested themselves in the likes of Albert Pike, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and John Dewey.  They all strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage and were heard no more as did Karl Marx, Frederich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao who murdered tens of millions in artificial famines in the Volga and Dnieper river basins, and in China.  Even the august testimony of Alexander Solzhenitsyn concerning atheist atrocities against Russia's stubborn spiritual forces failed to reach Americans who are electronically enslaved by the Left. 

Those who attack religious belief will always be with us; so it’s alright if the hipsters make fun of us.  That’s what they do, but we’re more hip than they think.  It is they who are out of touch, hopelessly parochial, and who lack critical thought because history proves their gains have always been temporary.  The biggest irony of them all is that they are a kept lot.  The Silent Majority endures the blows of the worst elements and preserves their rights – at least temporarily.