Special Bulletin 08-2011

     The events of this past week make the Oak Initiative’s Board Resolution to publish a position on Israel even more timely and imperative. We would not be too dramatic to say that a Rubicon has been crossed and that we are at a major demarcation point in our history.

     When I opened one of my news apps this past Sunday morning, these headlines jumped out at me:

     We predicted at our New Year’s Conference that 2011 would be one of the most intense and dangerous years of our lifetime, but I did not think it would qualify for this by April. One friend said that he lived in a town that had been so devastated by the economy that when a tornado recently hit, it did 6 million dollars worth of improvements!

     Certainly we are in troubled times, and though there will be respites, we must be prepared for the times or we will be consumed by them. If we are prepared for them, every crisis can be an opportunity. In spite of the seemingly overwhelming challenges we are now facing as a nation, and the prevailing sense that America is in decline, this could be our best chance to return to the sound principles that the nation was built on. We are now able to see the consequences of diverting from this wisdom, and will have possibly our greatest chance to return to the foundations that enabled America to reach such great heights.

The Dream

     Last year I shared the dream that I had of America as a log cabin. Each room was a different part of America. As I was being shown through the rooms, little fires were igniting on the floor. Those who were leading me through the cabin kept stomping them out and then acting as if they were no big deal and moving on. I was very bothered by these fires, and when one flashed up near me, I went to put it out. When I noticed that it had burned a hole through the sub-floor, I bent down to see if I could find out what was causing the fires and saw that the entire foundation was ablaze. I knew that the entire house was about to be consumed. When I attempted to grab my most valuable possession and flee, I heard a voice say, “You don’t have time for that! Get your wife and get a hose!” I then knew there was still time to put the fire out before the house would be destroyed, but I also knew we have no time to waste.

     At the time of this dream, I thought that I already knew how the foundations of our nation were being consumed, but since then, I have seen more and know that it is far worse than I knew then. We are in our greatest crisis as a nation. It really is that bad, and we do not have any time to waste. Those who are now leading us may not think there is anything that serious, that they can just respond to and stomp out all of the little fires that are springing up, but they are not looking at the cause of them and we are in grave danger as a nation.

     America is too young to die, but it will if we do not wake up to how serious the emergency is and put the root cause of the problems out. Our best and most prosperous times can yet be in our future. We do have challenges that are threatening our very existence, and they are increasing. The truth is that America is in decline, but it does not have to keep going in that direction. There is still time to draw back from the cliff that we have been hanging over for so long now and get our house back in order with a stability that will allow us to reach for even greater heights.

     That is not blind optimism but fact. The American economy is so powerful that it has proven to be able to weather just about anything thrown at it and keep chugging along to at least some degree. While we are in the worst shape we’ve been in for nearly three quarters of a century, we are still better off than most countries are when they are doing their best. Even with all of our problems, if we can change our direction we still will be positioned better than any other nation for leading the world through the 21st century.

Where Are We Going?

     “If you do not change your direction, you will end up where you’re headed.” Our projected deficit of 1.6 trillion dollars a year was based on a projected growth rate that we are falling far short of. The real deficit will be well on the north side of 2 trillion this year. The President is refusing to take the lead on making the necessary cuts to at least bring the deficit back to levels that will not ultimately collapse the system knowing that if the Republicans do it, he can blame them for the resulting pain—and there will be some—so he can probably get reelected. Could our President be so calloused that he would actually jeopardize the nation’s economy for the sake of getting reelected? There is just no other way to read his actions. A true leader with America’s best interests at heart would just do the right thing regardless of their own political consequences. However, we do not have leaders in office but politicians whose primary objective is reelection at any cost.

     The Republicans are likewise presently lacking the leadership and resolve to just do what is right regardless of the political consequences. They are hesitant to embrace what they must know has to be done because of the political consequences. The result is that this ultimate political selfishness on both sides is leading us toward the greatest economic pain since The Great Depression, with the potential to be even much worse.

     One of the things we should all learn from this is that politicians need to be made extinct as a species in America. As our Founders warned, the Republic simply cannot survive without unselfish servant leaders who keep the nation’s best interests at the forefront of every action. For nearly a century now, America has been led by politicians with a self-seeking agenda that has run the ship of state aground. We need to learn once and for all that we must not elect the kind of people who are now running our government at every level.

     Politicians with this mentality may often repeat that ours is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” but it has been a long time since this has been really true. Until we learn this, our Republic will be in crisis. That is not the normal state for us to be in. It will take possibly the greatest leadership yet to right the ship, but this is now becoming so obvious that it may be the greatest of all opportunities for such leadership to be elected.

     Even so, such a collapse as we are now threatened with has also proven historically to be one of the widest open doors for the worst kind of tyranny. This will likely be the outcome if those in leadership do not see and prepare for what is unfolding and be ready for swift, decisive action. Even though I have faith that such leadership will arise and save our ship, at best we are in the most dangerous of times, and we must be prepared for them.

When Oaks Grow

     A mature oak tree will dump as many as 40 gallons of moisture into the atmosphere every day in normal times. When a drought comes, it stops doing this and channels this moisture to its roots so that they can grow deeper to find deeper sources of water. In this way the hard, dry times only strengthen an oak tree. We too must resolve that we will use every challenge to get even stronger. We must do this individually and as a nation. We may well go through times where any recovery will seem impossible, but it will be possible and we cannot give up.

     One of the hardest challenges we have is how our own government continues to lie to us. If a corporation lied to its stockholders the way that our Federal government has been lying to the American people, its leaders would go to prison. This is right because the stockholders are people who are often investing their life savings, their retirement accounts, and their hard earned resources. If a company that cooks its books to make itself look better than it actually is can hurt a lot of people, how much more does this apply when the government starts deceiving its people about the true condition of the economy? For our government to intentionally lie to the American people must be made a crime.

     Our government leaders now think that it is all right to lie to the American people because we are too stupid or ignorant to be able to understand the complexities of all that is going on, and our true condition may hurt the faith needed for our economic health. True faith is built on truth, not perception, and whether we can understand what is happening or not is not the issue—in America the people are the Sovereign and we have the right to know the truth.

     How do we know when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving. Politicians will say anything to get elected or to get reelected. We cannot put up with this foolishness any more. A republic cannot survive without honest, servant leaders. Our republic was designed from its foundation to be led by such, and our Founders warned us that allowing the kind of people who are now leading us to gain positions of power would be our doom. Their prophecy is being fulfilled. Before the doom is complete we must change this, and it can be changed.

     Anyone who can read the signs knows that presently the U.S. economy is in much worse shape than they have been telling us. Just take a couple of basic but very important factors: jobs and housing. The Administration has been touting that they created two million new jobs, but the overall numbers of jobs in America reveal that two and a half million jobs have disappeared since January 2009. Someone is either lying, or their math is so bad they need to be sent back to the third grade, and not be put in charge of the world’s biggest economy.

     If you look at the overall numbers regarding employment in America, it also turns out that one-half million of the jobs they claim were created were temps. Why is this? Probably the biggest reason is that every business in America is trying desperately to get under the number of employees where Obamacare is attached to them like an anchor. Obamacare is the scariest and most ill-conceived legislation in our history. We are now approaching nearly 2,000 exemptions from Obamacare that have been applied for and given out by the Administration. These exemptions include virtually every union and, as it turns out, every Democratic Party supporter who owns a business large enough to be impacted by this. Even the most naïve can see that if it is so great, why is everyone trying to opt out of it? If implemented, Obamacare would kill small business in America, which is the primary economic engine in America. Some are actually wondering why no one seems to want to hire, but are rather turning to temps to fill needed positions in order to keep under the radar for Obamacare.

     Construction and real estate are very close to flat lining. Real estate prices have dropped more in the last three years than they dropped during The Great Depression. Jobs and housing are two of the most important of all economic signs, and these are both far worse off than we are being told by our government. We are still shedding jobs, not adding them. The housing market has still not hit bottom, and it cannot begin a true recovery until it hits bottom. No one wants to buy in a descending market, and the artificial stimulus the government has thrown at this market has kept it from hitting bottom. This is just another case of government mismanagement and incompetence that is hurting us when they really may be trying to help, but they don’t know how!

     Anyone who shops for anything knows that inflation is much higher than we are being told. In virtually every area of the economy, we are being lied to, and these lies are already hurting a lot of people, and they threaten to hurt all people a lot. Again, it should be an even more serious crime for our government officials to lie to us than it is to lie to them.

     Our economy is on life support and only breathing now because of artificial help. In an emergency this is sometimes needed, but the goal should be to get the patient off of the respirator as quickly as possible, breathing on their own. The nearly two trillion dollars of stimulus has not actually accomplished one thing. Used the way it should have to truly stimulate the economy, by giving incentives to those who are the ones who fuel the economy, we could have been in much better shape than we were in 2008 before the crash. Instead, we need to prepare for increasingly bad news about the economy and the now inevitable meltdown.

     There are ways that we can prepare to weather this meltdown, which we will be addressing in future Bulletins and on our website. It is now time to make preparations because we have crossed a line from possible, to probable, to inevitable. The 2010 Congress had an opportunity to dig their heels in and demand the necessary changes, and they caved. They are not likely to do one bit better on the debt ceiling. They came in saying they would not kick the can down the road, and the first chance they had, they kicked the can down the road. How can we believe that they are going to do anything any differently unless we are afflicted with Einstein’s definition of insanity?

     The good news is that all we have been through is the result of our government doing what the Founding Fathers warned repeatedly could not be done without jeopardizing the Republic, and the consequences have been just what they predicted. How could that be good news? They also gave us the way to get back on track. In America, the people are the sovereign, and we let this happen. Virtually every crisis we’re now facing is the result of having departed from the solid foundations the nation was built on, and the answer to every crisis is to return to those foundations. These foundations are easy to understand.

     More and more Americans are now understanding what is happening. The American people are not nearly as ignorant as our politicians have supposed, and more and more are getting a firm grip on the problems and the solutions. There is a turning, an awakening beginning to happen. It is still coming in fits and starts, but it is gaining traction. To date, much of the media does not understand why none of the Republican candidates for President have yet gotten traction, but it is because the citizens are starting to grasp that maybe the kind of leadership we now need is not going to be found among all those who are jostling for position and crying, “It’s me! It’s me! I’m the one!” Maybe the citizens are starting to understand that those who would do this will not be the kind of leaders that a republic requires, especially not in the kind of emergency we are now in.

     We may protest that the system of electing our leaders is now so set it’s the only way it can be done. If we want a true revolution in the kind of leadership we have, we will have to revise the way we pick them too. We cannot keep going along with a broken system. We have to demand change, and demand it now.

     As we are told in Hebrews 12, everything that can be shaken will be shaken so that only that which cannot be shaken will remain. We are now experiencing this. The right foundations cannot be shaken, and soon they will be easy to recognize because they will be the only ones left standing. Now is the time for us to get our own houses firmly established on the only foundation that will stand, obedience to the greatest wisdom the world has ever known which is revealed in the Scriptures. This is the wisdom our nation was founded on and only by returning to it can we survive this present crisis. By returning to the only wisdom that will ultimately survive these times, we can not only survive but prosper and rise to even greater heights. In a collapsing world, the one standing on solid ground has all of the advantages.

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