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I did not create this YouTube video, but I am immensely grateful to those who did. The message is piercingly clear and perfectly articulated. This is nothing short of a magnum opus. It's that good! This YouTube video was produced and published by FreeMarketAmerica and released April 20, 2012. The production was inspired by legendary ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey's essay, If I Were the Devil. Paul Harvey shared his essay in his column and in his radio broadcasts beginning as early as 1964.
Below is a transcript of the monologue, If I Wanted America to Fail, included here for those who prefer to read it and search specific points expressed in the video. Ironically, it covers more truth in four and a half minutes than you could learn in an entire college course, and it does so in a manner that drives the point home to the core of your soul, if you still have one.
Following the transcript is a YouTube video of the classic speech by Paul Harvey titled, If I Were the Devil (Warning for a Nation), which aired April 3, 1965. It is also a magnum opus of foresight. It is even more applicable today than when it aired nearly half a century ago.
"If I wanted America to fail, to follow, not lead, to suffer, not prosper, to despair, not dream, I'd start with energy. I'd cut off America's supply of cheap, abundant energy. I couldn't take it by force, so I'd make Americans feel guilty about using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses and powers their economy. I'd make cheap energy expensive so that expensive energy would seem cheap. I would empower unelected bureaucrats to all but outlaw America's most abundant sources of energy. After banning its use in America, I'd make it illegal for American companies to ship it overseas.
If I wanted America to fail, I'd use their schools to teach one generation of Americans that their factories and their cars will cause a new ice age. And I'd muster a straight face, so I could teach the next generation that they're causing global warming. When it's cold out, I'd call it climate change, instead. I'd imply that Americas cities and factories could run on wind power and wishes. I'd teach children how to ignore the hypocrisy of condemning logging, mining, and farming, while having roofs over their heads, heat in their homes, and food on their tables. I would never teach children that the free market is the only force in human history to uplift the poor, establish the middle class, and create lasting prosperity. Instead, I'd demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.
If I wanted America to fail, I would create countless new regulations and seldom cancel old ones. They would be be so complicated that only bureaucrats, lawyers, and lobbyists could understand them. That way, small businesses with big ideas wouldn't stand a chance. And I would never have to worry about another Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, or Steve Jobs. I would ridicule as flat Earthers those who urge them to lower energy costs by increasing supply. And when the evangelists of common sense try to remind people about the laws of supply and demand, I'd enlist the sympathetic media to drown them out.
If I wanted America to fail, I would empower unaccountable bureaucracies seated in a distant capital to bully Americans out of their dreams and their property rights. I'd send federal agents to raid guitar factories for using the wrong kind of wood. I'd force homeowners to tear down their own homes built on their own land. I'd make it almost impossible for farmers to farm, miners to mine, loggers to log, and builders to build. Because I don't believe in free markets, I'd invent false ones. I'd devise fictitious products, like carbon credits, and trade them in imaginary markets. I'd convince people that this would create jobs and be good for the economy.
If I wanted America to fail, for every concern I'd invent a crisis, and for every crisis, I'd invent the cause. Like shutting down entire industries and killing tens of thousands of jobs in the name of saving spotted owls. And when everyone learned the stunning irony that the animals were victims of their larger cousins and not people, it would already be decades too late.
If I wanted America to fail, I'd make it easier to stop commerce than to start it, easier to kill jobs than create them, more fashionable to resent success than to seek it. When industries seek to create jobs, I'd file law suits to stop them, and then I'd make tax payer pay for my lawyers.
If I wanted America to fail, I would transform the environmental agenda from a document of conservation to an economic suicide pact. I would concede entire industries to our economic rivals by imposing regulations that cost trillions. I would celebrate those who preach environmental austerity in public while indulging a lavish lifestyle in private. I'd convince Americans that Europe has it right and that America has it wrong.
If I wanted America to fail, I would prey on the goodness and the decency of ordinary Americans. I would only need to convince them that all of this is for the greater good.
If I wanted America to fail, I, I suppose I wouldn't change a thing."
In my own words, if I wanted America to fail, I would vote for Barack Hussein Obama or Barry Soetoro or Harrison J. Bounel, or whatever his name is.
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