Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands, Pacific Ocean. What is your vision of a coral atoll paradise? A lagoon of crystal clear turquoise water, a beach of pure white sand edged by coconut palms, their fronds rustling in the gentle trade winds?
Friendly, welcoming islanders skillfully sailing their outrigger canoes beyond the reef to capture a bounty of fish which they happily share with you? An underwater aquarium that's a snorkler's or scubadiver's dream? A thatch hut, a hammock, a perfectly made mai tai or piña colada with which to enjoy a perfect sunset in the glistening ocean?
There are such places on this planet. If you are searching for one of them, don't come here to Majuro. This place was a paradise once just as described above. Now it is a dump. Literally. This is one of Majuro's more pristine beaches:
The Marshallese people have lived and thrived here for 2,000 years. They invented a kind of outrigger canoe called a proa that could sail far faster and tack far more quickly than the ships of Western explorers such as British captain John Charles Marshall in 1788, for whom the islands are named.
Falling under the nominal possession of Germany in the late 1800s, the islands were seized by Japan after World War I and garrisoned by Japanese soldiers. Falling to the US military during World War II (1944), the islands became part of the US Trust Territory of the Pacific.
From 1946 to 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear bomb tests on Enewetok and Bikini atolls, including the "Castle Bravo" test on Bikini, the first dry-fuel H-bomb explosion with a yield of over 15 megatons (more than 1,000 times the size of Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima).
(And yes, the "bikini" swimsuit -designed by a French auto engineer, believe it or not, named Louis Réard in 1946 - was named after Bikini Atoll made famous by the weapons tests.)
The US Trust Territory was subsequently divided into: The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, which you learned about last week in Runway Able; The Republic of Palau (1981); The Federated States of Micronesia (the Caroline Islands, 1979); and the Marshalls (1979). The latter three are independent countries, albeit with a "Compact of Free Association" with the US, in which they get US taxpayer assistance in exchange for US authority over their international defense.
While Palau and the Carolines are making a go of it via trade and tourism, the Marshallese decided to become welfare recipients. It started with the millions of restitution dollars to the islanders on Bikini, Enewetok, and nearby atolls exposed to radiation fallout from the nuke tests. It's perpetuated by the millions the Pentagon pays for its missile testing site on Kwajalein atoll.
So hardly anyone works, except at a government make-work job. You see folks sitting around everywhere doing nothing. There are no tourists as there are no nice hotels. There was one, the Marshall Islands Resort:
In fact, don't go anywhere on Majuro at night, for packs of feral dogs run everywhere and will attack you.
Majuro has a reputation among scubadivers as having some of the most spectacular dive sites in the Pacific. Too bad, because there's no dive shop, no one to rent gear or get air from, no one to take you to the sites. All the dive operators have quit.
The most famous dive operation of all, that on Bikini, has had to fold. To dive the “Nuclear Fleet of Bikini” is the dream of the elite scuba community worldwide. During the nuke tests, several WWII battle ships, including the great aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, were placed in the lagoon to see the effect of the blasts upon them.
They lie on the lagoon floor now, and Bikini Divers was doing a great business with a solid professional operation taking divers to see them. Skin Diver Magazine proclaimed Bikini as one of the top five dive sites in the world. The demand is great - "we could take a dive group there every week of the year," I was told - but Bikini Divers has ceased operations. Why? Because the local government-run airline, Air Marshall Islands, is so fantastically mismanaged it cannot provide reliable service from Majuro to Bikini.
Why, then, doesn't someone start up a private airline for the 1,200 mile round trip? Because the RMI (Republic of the Marshall Islands) government won't permit it. It won't permit anything it cannot control, that the ruling elite doesn't get to run and make money off of.
"So these ruling folks would rather have people live in poverty and welfare rather than be prosperous?" I asked an American married to a Marshallese woman who's lived here for years.
He looked at me with surprise, as if I had asked a really dumb rhetorical question.
"Of course. This government is totally corrupt. The people running it only care about retaining their power. They look upon more people becoming more prosperous as a threat, as it means more people with money whom they cannot control. But... how is that unusual? Isn't that just how it is in the United States now?"
You can imagine the width of my smile in response. "Yes, that's exactly how it is in the US now - and at every government level, city, county, state, not just federal."
That is exactly how Death of Common Sense author Philip K. Howard describes the entire US political system from local to national: drowning in rules and regulations, anyone of which if you break or don't file the right form you can be imprisoned or heavily fined.
The "sludge heap of programs and entitlements swarming with special interests," that Howard says our system has become, is "suffocating the American spirit."
Now consider this suffocation is not by accident but on purpose. Pat Buchanan rails that America has become a Food Stamp Nation, with over 41 million Americans who can't feed themselves on their own and need $56 billion of taxpayer money to do so.
What Phil and Pat don't say is that all of this is by design, just as it is here in the Marshalls. The ruling elite here and in the US are dedicated to perpetuating their power - to which increasingly widespread freedom and prosperity is a threat.
Further - this has been going on for decades. It's just been accelerated by Zero and the Pelosicrats. Which is why our focus on and revulsion of Zero has become a red herring. Zero is a side-show now.
Dinesh D'Souza has just come out with his latest book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage . Dinesh makes a compelling case that Zero is "a man driven by the anti-colonial ideology of his father and the first American president to actually seek to reduce America's strength, influence, and standard of living."
I think Dinesh is right, no doubt about it. But so what? For he never asks the real question: that is, what are the roots of Nancy Pelosi's, Harry Reid's, and the Democrat Party's rage against America? Indeed, neither Pelosi nor Reid are even listed in Dinesh's Index.
The anti-American hatred of our current president would have gotten nowhere if it had been opposed by patriotic Democrats in Congress. What Zero did is act as an enabler, a catalyst, that brought into full flower the rage against freedom and prosperity latent among Democrats - that's what makes them Democrats. They want power, that's why they are in government in the first place. They want power over others, and the power to enrich themselves via corruption and crony capitalism.
This is why Zero is increasingly not the issue any more. Even Time magazine is admitting that the whole political elite, from most major journalists to Dem and Pub congressional leaders to Dem businessfolk and donors, have concluded that Zero is "in over (his) head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless."
The issue, the critical, mortally vital issue for our country is not Zero - it is the dismantlement of government power over all of our lives. It is instituting that Age of Responsibility, with Americans once again assuming control over and responsibility for their own lives that George W. Bush advocated but never tried to achieve.
This starts with the recognition by Republicans soon to be elected to a majority in Congress, Governorships, and State Legislatures that such dismantlement and return to responsibility is what they were elected to achieve.
Don't want a Food Stamp Nation? Then eliminate the entire federal food stamp program. Don't want to drown in laws and rules? Thensunset all federal agency rules and regulations in the Federal Register as unconstitutional unless passed by a legislative act of Congress. Want more jobs and prosperity? Then eliminate unemployment benefits, corporate and capital gains taxes, public worker unions, Sarbox, all depreciation schedules, and all business subsidies (such as for ethanol production).
That's just for starters. Putting an end to the fascism our country is drowning in means putting an end to it all the way down to the municipal level. But that will be a lot easier by getting Federalie Fascism out of the way. That's Job Number One for the Pubs after November 2nd.
Here in the Marshall Islands, November 2nd will just be another day. The corruption and welfare poverty will continue. Nothing will change. And nothing will change fundamentally for America on November 2nd unless the Pubs are determined to create America as Paradise Regained.
Paradise Lost really is the future that the Dems want for America. You can see what that future looks like here. The Marshallese are good people. They are infectiously friendly and hospitable. They once had a highly skilled culture rife with innovation, initiative, and a firm work ethic - and all are gone today, destroyed by the narcotic of government welfare and corruption.
Thus they accept their poverty. They have turned Majuro into a garbage dump with litter and trash everywhere. Think this is paradisical?
And instead of working to build a nice home, the preferred housing of Marshallese is a rusty beat-to-crap doublewide. This is what Paradise Lost looks like.
Let's all start November 2nd working to destroy the Democrat Dream of Paradise Lost in America. We want Paradise Regained instead.
Dr. Jack Wheeler
See More Articles At Dr. Jack Wheeler's Website
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