AMERICAN SILHOUETTE

Reflecting upon what lies ahead for America in 2009, I’m tempted to think of Al Jolson, and his famous quote, "You ain’t seen nothin’ yet."  But I’d rather think of Madame Pompadour.

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquess de Pompadour (1721-1764), was the royal mistress of King Louis XV of France (1710-1774).  Despised by the nobility as a commoner (who made endless fun of her name, which means "fish" in French), she nonetheless swept the most prominent men in France off their feet with her beauty, charm, wit, and intelligence – including Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778), and by the time she was 23, the king himself.

Louis gave her an estate that came with a title of nobility (marquess is a female marquis, below a duke but above a count or earl in royal rank).  She ended up owning a mansion in Paris so magnificent that today it is the Élysée Palace, the French White House.  She also ended up running Louis’ government.

So much so that when Frederick II of Prussia (1712-1786) intemperately called the Empress of Russia (Czarina Elizaveta Petrovna, 1709-1762), Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (1717-1780), and Madame Pompadour "the three first whores of Europe," she engineered a war:  an alliance of France, Austria, and Russia against Prussia.

Whereupon Frederick formed an alliance with England, and proceeded to demonstrate the political and military genius that resulted in history calling him Frederick the Great. 

The Seven Years War (1756-1763 – known in Colonial America as the French and Indian War) was a colossal disaster for France.  It was expelled from India, lost all of French America (an enormous area comprising eastern Canada, the Great Lakes, and the entire Ohio and Mississippi River valleys), and its navy wiped out, giving England the command of the seas.

Plus the war bankrupted France.  So Pompadour did what all governments do with a fiscal crisis:  raise taxes, and punitively.  In 1759, she had Etienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), known for his writings on England’s financial system, appointed controller-general of finance. 

For eight months he ravaged France with such rapacious taxation that everyone from nobles to wealthy merchants to peasants bitterly complained that they reduced to mere shadows of their former selves.  By the time Pompadour was forced to fire him, an inexpensive art form had caught on, a shadow of one’s profile cut out from black paper.  They were called silhouettes.

France never recovered from her loss of empire and wealth, yet her rulers continued to lavish money upon themselves while the people were ground into further penury – until the latter exploded with the French Revolution and the former led to the guillotine.

So now comes a question as we step into the unknown of 2009:  will Barack Hussein Obama be the American Silhouette?

Let that question hang in the air for a moment while we confront another question:

When in modern American history has any vast increase of government power, such as the New Deal or the Great Society, ever been reversed?

Government always grows and never shrinks.  Not even Ronald Reagan was able to actually make government smaller – he was only able to slow its growth down a bit. 

The 1996 Republican Party Platform contained a plank vowing to eliminate – not reduce but actually abolish – the entire Department of Education of the federal government.  Yet we all know that when the GOP controlled both the House and the Senate, plus the White House, from 2001 through 2006, it was not eliminated.  Government grew as always and didn’t shrink an iota.

Now the party dedicated to political power for its own sake, to expanding government power over our lives, is in full control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.  This means a big-government tipping point, shifting "from a market-based economy to a political one in which the government picks winners and losers and extends its reach and power in unprecedented ways."

Yet, frankly and sadly, it is not President Zero and the Fascist Democrats in Congress that worry me.  It is the mass insanity of the American people, the mass insanity of Zero Worship, the mass insanity of believing that we can dig ourselves out of the abysmal economic hole we are in by digging it deeper with trillions of dollars of government boondoggle spending and debt.

Historian Will Durant observed that:  "It may be true that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country."

I am on the verge of completing a second reading of Durant’s epochal 11-volume The Story of Civilization.  Of its two million words, the most sobering are:

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within."

America has not destroyed itself yet – but it’s on the path.  Next Tuesday, January 20, will not be a wake – but it is a cause for mourning, not celebration.

This week, the last of the Bush 43 Presidency, has seen much reflection on the past eight years.  President Bush gave a moving farewell address to the nation last night (1/15), naming as his proudest achievement that he kept America safe after 9/11:

"There is legitimate debate about many of [my] decisions, but there can be little debate about the results.  America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil."

For this we should indeed be grateful – and we should realize that these results will not continue during the Zero Presidency.  As his security appointments indicate (detailed by here by Dick Morris), he has no serious intention of defending America.  It is a virtual certainty that we are going to suffer terrorist attacks and massively.

The damage these attacks from without, however, will not be as grave as those from within – from vast hordes demanding a vast array of handouts and bailouts from a government all too eager to trade them for political support and power.

It’s hard not to keep out of one’s mind the prophetic warning of Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic Subterranean Homesick Blues:

Look out kid
You’re gonna get hit
By users, cheaters
Six-time losers
Hangin’ ‘round the theatres
Girl by the whirlpool
Lookin’ for a new fool
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters

And the song’s most famous line, that should be kept in mind during next Tuesday:

You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

So – to return to our question regarding the American Silhouette.  That person is not Zero, but the collective persona of those who elected him.  These millions of Americans in the grip of the crazed personality cult of Zeromania are turning America into a silhouette, a shadow, of itself.

How long will it take for America to step out of the shadows, for Americans to wake up from their Zeromania trance, to stop digging the hole of government dependency deeper and accept responsibility for their own lives?  By November 2010 with a born-again evangelically pro-capitalist Republican Party?  By 2012 with a President Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal?  Or ever?

No, it will not be never – and with just enough disillusionment, Americans might wakeup months, not years, from now.  Manias are fragile things, unstable and capable of dissolving quickly.

Thus it is our job, as rational conservatives, to prepare ourselves for the time when America reawakens, for us to be standing in the sunlight of freedom, ready to welcome those who step out of their own silhouette and into the light of a free day.

We can’t get caught in our own silhouette of pessimism and gloom.  To The Point has to remain an oasis of optimism for America – and so it shall.  The disaster befalling our country starting next Tuesday – the Beginning of a New Error, as one wag puts it – shall pass.  We shall never lose faith that the sun will shine upon America again.