When I was away in the war, my family had an experience they will never forget. My hard-working father, with our large farm where he worked all week, then worked at barbershop on Saturdays cutting hair. One of my brothers who had just learned to drive, and my mother, with the youngest brother just a lap baby (both of these brothers now are 72 and 60, both retired), went into town to pick Dad up from work on a Saturday night. Heading home,my brother driving, my mother and baby in the front seat, my tired father in the rear seat of the sedan. The car crossing the railroad track stalled with the East Coast Champion train rapidly approaching. My father yelled, “Get out of the car!”, this large man jumped out of the car and pushed it off the tracks just as the East Coast Champion flew by. Onlookers were terrified.
A few people in the small town still remembered the family who were killed at that very crossing about fifty years before. Five people were killed by the train on the tracks even though the railroad watchmen was supposed to be at the crossing with his warning lantern. This was at a time before the more sophisticated crossing bars of today's railroad crossings. At the hearing, the watchman was asked if he was at the crossing warning people with his lantern. He said, “Yes, I was waving the lantern.”. On his death bed, he admitted that the lantern was not lit, there was no light in the lantern to warn the approaching family. Now I am waving a lighted lantern as I have have done many times previously.
I was in China and India, the fastest growing populations in the world, several times. I have crossed both countries by train, and have seen their rapid industrialization. Last year, China surpassed the United States in automobile production (9.3 million cars), and now is second in the world next to Japan. I was in the city of Changchun (South of Hong Kong), where thousands of vehicles are manufactured everyday. The Chinese are serious about their industrial output. The slave workers are housed in large dormitories. Returning from China three times since its reopening in 1973 and my first trip there, I was interviewed about the Chinese production. I said then, as I say now, “China will surpass the world in it's production of everything.”. We saw the Japanese vehicles flood the American market. American dealers immediately jumped on the Japanese bandwagon and started advertising and selling Japanese cars along with the American-made cars. The Buick-Mitsubishi dealers, the Dodge-Toyota dealers, the Oldsmobile-Infiniti dealers, are now gasping for breath.
I was too much a patriot to buy a foreign-made car, I did not forget the Pacific wars involving the Japanese and Koreans as easily as some of my fellow Americans. But it has been easy to see by anyone with sight, or anyone as blind as this writer, that with automobiles as with all other industry, America is losing the competition war. The boards of directors of the American automobile manufacturers (GM, Chrysler, Ford, etc.) are just political, influence-peddling appointees rather than astute businessmen and now we can see the results of their “fiddling while Rome burned”... Or, better, playing golf with the rich and famous fellow board members, and not paying any attention to the bottom line or world economic activity, letting the unions and environmental agencies completely take over as they see their corporations lapse into bankruptcy... Now, with taxpayer bailouts, Mr. Obama and his lackeys now in control of the once great corporations, with their great advertising budgets, jingles which every school child knew (“See the USA in your Chevrolet”). I just traded in my 13th Cadillac for a Lincoln. Surely, the Ford Corporation will not embarrass the great Henry Ford by bowing to foreign takeover.
Socialistic Americans could not understand the threat of global incest wherein European car makers Mercedes, BMW, and Saab were taken over by American companies. The Swedish car maker Saab, wishes they had kept their “nuts and bolts” in Scandinavia. The same GM board of directors and management which has filtered out such well-known American stalwarts as Pontiac and Oldsmobile now includes Saab. We sob for Saab, but more importantly, we weep for Westinghouse, Western Airlines, and the many other great American Corporate names and logos that have lost out in the asinine race for corporate obscurity. How many remember the defunct Norge refrigerator? The competent Kelvinator? The pulsating Philco or Phillips? All these great companies with their dependable dealers and demanding customers were just disregarded in the global tyranny of takeovers, makeovers... Now requiring bailouts by ne'er'dowells who have the business experience to run a front yard lemonade stand or desperate yard sale.
My first trip to Europe over fifty years ago was on a TWA plane (Transworld Airlines). TWA had a magnificent history. The TWA logo was known throughout the world for value. My first flight was on a propeller-driven Eastern Airlines plane. Most of us remember wonderful flights on Braniff, Pan Am, Piedmont. Many of us remember such wonderful automobiles as Hudson, Packard, Studebaker.
With the state-controlled media, the Communist, Globalist, news editors, both in print and by air; this once great fortress of industrial might, financial power, patriotic dedication, has become just a “paper tiger”. It is very much like a child cutting out leaves pretending it is a tree. Then, turning on an electric fan to watch the leaves dance in the wind, but the leaves are not attached anymore to anything, they just blow away. We now have a country of just artificial prosperity. Most jobs are government jobs, all new jobs are government jobs, our finest young men go to war and we manage to keep 1 or 2 wars going at a time, because this is the only job they can find. The rational government, which gave me opportunity as a young person, has now become a global monster with cap and trade and other world controls and taxation. Get ready for a global currency, global regulations, and a global court system. The competent citizens of England, France, Germany, and many other nations of Europe never thought they would be under control of the European Union with their financial and other controls.
The greatest thought in science or religion is to know that we as individuals or as a nation can become what we were intended to be. In less than 300-years, this great nation blessed with climate, natural resources, and hard-working diligent people beyond compare, chosen by God for greatness has allowed greed and corruption, and the sin-nature of man has allowed internal decadent forces to do more damage than any foreign army could ever have done. As Kate Smith sang “God Bless America” , sponsored by the mostly-defunct A&P grocery chain, how could she have known that from the Atlantic to the Pacific ambiguity toward business in America would determine the American dream.
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