Once Upon a Time in the West…

By Pete Garcia -March 29, 20190175

by Pete Garcia

Once upon a time, there was a dream that a man could and should be free to make his own choices, and that he was the best master of his own destiny. Although the dream of personal liberty is almost a forgotten conclusion in America these days, it had been the most radical of ideas for most of human history. It was an idea which finally promised to unshackle humanity from the weighty chains of ignorance and tyranny. For more than four thousand-years, human civilization lived and died under the subjugation of one tyrannical regime after another. It would not be until the turn of the new millennium (circa 10th-century AD) that the hunger for liberty became such a driving force that it would spark the fire for movements like the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason. 21st-century Western Civilization is currently living in the twilight of that dream. We have become post-Christian, post-modern, and post-American. After 800 years of searching, exploring, discovering, debating, and inventing, mankind has begun to regress at a frightful pace.

There is the moral of all human sides; 
‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
First Freedom, and then Glory – when that fails,
Wealth, Vice, Corruption – Barbarism at last. 
-Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-1818)

II. Historical Rise of Human Liberty

In ancient times, most pagan cultures attributed their origins to a variety of fanciful mythologies. They largely believed that their reality was guided by a fuzzy combination of fate and the will of the gods. Therefore, whatever their lot in life, it was fated to be so. Whatever their despotic leader/king/queen/ruler dictated was the will of the gods. Whatever calamities befell them, they understood these to be issues well beyond their control. However, as time passed, man’s ingenuity in creating things (weapons of warfare, commerce systems, currency, politics, philosophies, etc.) created in man a fearlessness, which persuaded him to shed his ancient ways and become the master of his own destiny (see Gen. 11:1-9).

Through the progressive eras, man began to make huge strides in the arenas of economics, astronomy, mechanical technology, medicine, sciences, and general knowledge. Concurrent to all this, was a widening divide between man and God. Human reasoning began to replace the divine. Naturalism began to replace the supernatural. The Age of Reasonbrought about the rise of humanism, which promised mankind the answers to all our questions given two variables- time and science. Humanism promised humanity that whatever we could dream, we could achieve through our own ingenuity and technology. And for a while, it seemed possible. However, for all of the grand treatise and theories about human origins and greatness, humanism refused to address the two critical errors in its logic- mankind’s corrupted nature, and this fallen world.  

By the time humanity reached the early 20th-century, the generally accepted academic understanding of our genesis as a species was reduced down to nothing more than a series of random, evolutionary processes guided by an indifferent and impersonal energy force. Accordingly, should man’s existence here be purely accidental- then life itself should serve no other purpose than to survive. Because of mankind’s unwillingness to repent and turn to the one, true Creator, he increasingly became self-absorbed and blinded from the truth (Romans 1:16-31). An example of how bad information spirals quickly out of control, is how Darwinian Evolution, influenced Social Darwinism, which spawned Eugenics, which supported racism by creating racial hierarchies, and helped “scientifically” validate agencies like the Ku Klux Klan, Planned Parenthood, and the Third Reich.

By the early 20th-century, the ideological/theological void had begun producing the very worst humanity had to offer. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once stated that if you gazed into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. According to David McCandless’s account of 20th-Century Deaths, 450,000,000 deaths can be attributed solely to the increased violence of mankind. This does not even take into account the hundreds of millions deaths caused by things like abortion, man-caused famines anddiseases, and all the unaccounted for deaths and murders. What this means is that the 20th-century became the most violent century in all of human history. Therefore, if there was any truth to what Nietzsche said, then the 20th-century treated the abyss like a reflecting pond.

III. The Rise and fall of the US

The Magna Carta (1215-Runnymeade, England) was the first modern effort to free mankind from the unchecked tyranny of monarchial rule. While its original aims were limited to the landowners in medieval England, it became the first “constitution” of sorts that Europe ever had. Since Europe was still the center of world power at that time (and had been since the days of Alexander the Great), the idea of personal rights began to be transported throughout the world by way of European colonialism. Most notably, this idea took root in the British colonies of the New World, which as know, would later become the United States of America.

By 1776, the colonists of the 13 colonies had had enough of the abuses and taxation without representation from King George III of England. Thus, the leaders (our Founders) of this revolution, leaned heavily upon the past to create what would become, the most important document in modern history. They borrowed from the philosophies of the Greeks, the ideals of governance from the Romans, morality and ethics from the Bible, and the Magna Carta as a model to create the Charters of Liberty. This Charter included the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. These three documents were the foundation for creating the greatest Constitutional Republic the world had ever known.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. President John Adams

The overarching theme to these documents were designed around limiting government’s power by acknowledging that man’s rights and freedoms were both inherent, and God-given. In essence, these writings became the epitome of perfection regarding human philosophy. These documents completed what was begun centuries earlier in 1215. For the next two and a half centuries, the United States became that shining city on a hill. We became a beacon that oppressed people from around the world could flee too, to escape oppression, or just seek out a better life from whatever darkened corner of the world they came from.

The American-Century

We can trace the origins of our current world order (with the US at the helm) back to the smoldering ash heaps of Europe at the end of World War II. As the Allied Troops begin their final push into Nazi Germany (circa 1944-45), the world bankers and Allied politicians were already conspiring on ways to best shape this new dawn of human history. During the war, Europe (old world money) had gone into debt to the Americans in financing numerous war fronts across the European theater. From the 1950s-2000s, that same money and wealth slowly (then quickly) began to transfer back across the Atlantic from whence it came. History notwithstanding, the US implemented several initiatives to keep her wealth and power centered in the New World. These six US-centric initiatives/events have largely shaped our entire world order for the past 74 years.Bretton Woods Agreement: developed toward the end of WWII (1944).

1. The Bretton Woods Agreement created a new international monetary system that lasted from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s.The agreement pegged the value of other nations’ currencies to the U.S. dollar, which, in turn, was pegged to the price of gold, fixed at $35 an ounce. With collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement, countries could choose other ways to set the value of their currencies, including letting market forces decide. (Source)
2. The United Nations: Having already attempted instituting a League of Nations at the conclusion of World War I and failing miserably (see Third Reich), the 20th-century globalists would make another attempt and took advantage of the crisis created by WWII to create another system of global governance. With the full backing of the United States (land, money, resources, governance) they succeeded. One of their first major accomplishments was to vote to allow the nation of Israel to be reborn. While fairly toothless at present, the UN has ironically grown into a largely anti-American and anti-Israel organization.
3. The Marshall Plan: Named after its primary driver, Sec. of State George Marshall. The Marshall Plan was designed to aid in the economic recovery of nations after WWII and to reduce the influence of Communist parties within them. (Source) Having learned this lesson the hard way after WWI (Versailles Treaty), the US was determined to not repeat this mistake by allowing the conditions to occur and potentially create another Adolph Hitler.
4. Cold War/NATO: With both the West (US, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, etc.) and the East (Russia, China) having fought and won against the Third Reich and the Japanese Imperialists, the end brought the dividing of the spoils of war. With clear and irreparable divisions on governance and economics, both the West (capitalist democracies) and the East (communists) fragile wartime alliance had ended. This created the need for Western Europe to form an alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to protect them from further Eastern encroachment. This geopolitical tension, created a “Cold War” between East and West, which lasted from the 1948-49 Berlin Blockade, to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 
   The creation of the NATO in 1949 was designed to serve as preemptive first strike against any Russian aggression or intentions. After Russia invaded and annexed parts of Georgia (2008) and later Crimea (2014) without any western military response, many have wondered what good does NATO actually serve. The role of NATO seems to be further deteriorating with the 2016 election of President Trump, whose public insistence that the EU take a more proactive role (financially and physically) in providing for their own self-defense seems to be highly offensive to the Europeans.
5. The Nuclear Arms/Space Race: Beginning with the highly secretive Manhattan Project, the world’s race toward a weapon of mass destruction finally ended with the American’s use of two atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the summer of 1945. For four brief years, the US enjoyed atomic supremacy, but this was soon to be dashed with the Soviet Union’s first successful test of their own atomic weapon in 1949. Not to be outdone, both the US and USSR began a several-decades initiative to create even more devastating weapons. Relating to this was the race to space, for which, the Russians initially succeeded. However, the US was the first (and only nation as of yet) to put a man on the moon.
6. The rebirth of Israel: From 70AD until 1948, the nation of Israel existed only in the history books. But due to the defeat of the Ottoman Turks (1918), and the Nazi Holocaust (1933-1945), there was both opportunity (the land) and support (sympathy/determination) for the Jewish people to return to their ancient homeland. Despite intense internal opposition to US President Harry Truman from within his own administration to support, the US became the first nation to recognize the newly formed state on May 14th, 1948. Since then, the Middle East has been a hotbed of both antisemitism, violence, and war in the Muslim’s repeated attempts (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, etc.) at destroying the world’s only Jewish nation.

The Post-Modern Error

It has been 243 years since 1776 and we have fallen very far from what our forefathers could have ever imagined. Not only have we become amoral (and immoral), but also exceedingly ignorant and lazy. After a century of cultural Marxism dumbing down the masses, the average person on the street today probably could not tell you what the Bill of Rights are, or where to find Washington D.C. on a map. Most people alive today seem to think that the way things are now, are the way they have always been. What is even more disturbing, is that most people think things will always be this way. This line of reasoning is a form of normalcy bias, by which people judge tomorrow by the persistent presence of the present. Most people today fail to realize that this experiment in human liberty (i.e., the United States) was only ever the exception to the rule, and not the norm. There are now multiple generations who either don’t know, or don’t care, about our exceptionalism, and thus, have begun handing over their freedoms for the promise of free handouts and security.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. President Ronald Reagan

With a growing number of Democrats and Millennials these days militantly demanding we turn to socialism to solve our current problems, we are at the tipping point for this nation’s survival. I say tipping point, because these aspiring communists only used to make up the outer fringes of society. Now, they include most universities (faculty and students), a growing number of elected officials, and even giants within the tech industry. These groups are now demanding socialism be instituted everywhere regardless of its economic and political ramifications.

This is the fruit of more than a century of socialist propaganda being forced upon us through academia, the media, politics, and pop culture. Since these socialists could not dismantle the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to their speed and liking, they have turned to corrupting the institutions. For example, since Hillary Clinton lost the last election, there is a growing call to remove the Electoral College and go to a purely popular vote to determine the next Presidential winner. Furthermore, whichever party instituted it, would virtually guarantee its own supremacy on into perpetuity. This would spell the end of the American experiment.

On the other side of the coin, is the perceived need by both Republicans and Democrats to expand the powers of intelligence and law enforcement agencies. This is due to the emerging diversity of threats (cyber, mass shootings, WMD, etc.) that face the nation. Additionally, the vast developments tech companies have made in the arenas of genetics, micro technology, artificial intelligence, unmanned autonomous systems, and surveillance has become downright Orwellian. While most of this seems innocuous to normal, law-abiding citizens today, imagine all that power in the hands of these radical socialists, should they ever gain control back of the executive branch.

In our current two party system, one political party has seemingly steered so hard left that it has become the single greatest threat to our own national existence. While the Republicans (mainstream GOP-types) think that power can be shared and that we should all play nice, the Democrats are out for blood. For them, there is no live and let live anymore, it is win by whatever means necessary and punish the losers mercilessly. Make no mistake, the Democrat party of 2019, is not the Democrat party of 1990, or 1980, or earlier. The Democrat Platform of 2020 will be centered on three things: Abortion on demand at whatever stage (even post-birth), anything anti-Israel and anti-Christian, and socialism (or socialist ideals).

Very few leaders have either the foresight or the moral backbone to stand against the growing tide of immorality. It is easy to caution against issues like out of control spending, or our ballooning national debt. Nevertheless, when you stand against immorality, you make it personal for the wicked, and you will reap the whirlwind. It is only when it concerns wickedness, will these godless Marxists ever cling to the Bill of Rights. Yet, their understanding of liberty has become perverted. They believe, for example, in abandoning the Second Amendment, but keeping the First Amendment not realizing they cannot have the First without the Second.

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN

Since the 1960s, our nation has embarked upon a descent into godless immorality with frightening rapidity. This has all but assured our nation’s demise. This is not my own subjective reasoning, but historical fact that has played out repeatedly. Things such as embracing infanticide or deviant lifestyles has never bode well for a nation. As a nation, the wicked have now begun openly targeting children in the name of abortion, gender confusion, transgender story times, unisex bathrooms, and homosexual adoptions. As was the case with Belshazzar’s party, by the time the writing is on the wall, it is already too late.

1. America’s first “handwriting on the wall” moment, was on April 19th, 1995. This was the terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Out of this, came the foundations for the Patriot Act.
2. America’s second “handwriting” moment, came on September 11, 2001. It showed the world America’s soft underbelly by hitting us where we were vulnerable. It had the subsequent effect of making transportation virtually unbearable ever since, with the massive increases in security.
3. America’s third warning came in 2007 with the subprime mortgage crises. Since 1992, the government subsidizing “affordable” housing and adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) loans to people who could not afford it. As early as 2003, this begun spiraling out of control by creating a false housing bubble. We are still suffering the repercussions of this event.
4. America’s fourth warning came in 2008-2016, with the election of Barack Hussein Obama. As President, he had done more in eight-years to destabilize our nation (morally, economically, and geopolitically), than all the previous presidents put together. It is still very likely that he and/or members of his administration will be prosecuted for high crimes and felonies in their actions against Donald Trump’s campaign and 2016 election.

I do not know if there will be a fifth warning to our nation.

We have undeservedly earned a respite of sorts (if that is what you can call it) with the election of Donald J. Trump. Nevertheless, I believe Trump’s election has more to do with setting up Israel for a post-American world more than anything else. Because President Trump is willing to do what no other president would regarding Israel. Yet, he is only one man. He cannot save America from all that ails her. Our nation has become so deeply divided and corrupt that introducing wickedness into law always seems to sail through the halls of congress with leaps and bounds. However, if you attempt to repeal said evil, this always seems to become an impossibility of the greatest order. How can one man fight that?

For two and a half years, the Democrats, the media, the deep state, and the nihilistic leftists of academia, pop culture, Silicon Valley, etc. have waged a relentless collusion/ obstruction witch-hunt against President Trump, his family, and anyone ever associated with him. While several former members of Trump’s campaign suffered legal ramifications for their own issues, these were completely unrelated to the campaign, the Russians, or anything else connected to Trump. The witch-hunt itself has turned into a giant nothing burger, but the war waged against Trump’s presidency has created considerable mistrust in the presidential election process. It has also done irreparable damage to the Department of Justice and the FBI/CIA. On a positive note, it finally exposed who the true masters of the news media really is finally.

IV. The Rise of the New Order

They should note instead that in the aftermath of major wars, the world is rarely put back together quite the same. When Rome entered the Punic Wars, it was an agrarian republic; it finished as an imperial Mediterranean power. Waterloo reordered Europe for a century, and the defeat of Germany and Japan ushered in the 50-year long protocols of the Cold War, in which enemies became friends and friends then enemies. Who could sort out the shifting Sparta-Athens-Thebes relationships following the Peloponnesian War? It is not just that winners dictate and losers comply, but that even among allies, war and its aftermath often tear away the thin scabs of unity and expose long-festering wounds of real cultural, political, historical, and geographical difference. So it is with this present war against the terrorists and their sponsors, which when it is finally over will leave our world a very different place.  Victor Davis Hanson

If we were to go back and read the eyewitness testimonies of those who lived to see their world destroyed, they have said there was almost an inescapable sense of dread just prior to it happening. In fact, many have said they were haunted by the things they were witnessing (deterioration of an ethical culture, vast indebtedness, insecure borders, increased lawlessness, etc.) in the days, weeks, and months leading up to their demise. With that said, and understanding the calamities and challenges of the past two-hundred years, it is neither lip service nor hyperbole to say we are now living in last stages of the United States.

With the end of the American dream, comes the inevitable rise of some new form of global government to fill the vacuum. That outcome is as assured, as is the rising of the sun in the east. What has prevented this new global order from rising up thus far has been the world’s only superpower…a constitutional Republic. A Republic whose very existence prevents itself from subordinating herself to any other political entity. Some might counter with the idea that the US has more laws than any other nation on the planet. To which I add that we were never designed to be this way. We could answer President John Adam’s aforementioned statement, with that by a quote from the Roman historian Tacitus, when he said, the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.The United States’ Charters of Freedom were all constructed with the sole purpose of limiting government overreach, and to give power to the people; something an increasingly ignorant and decadent culture has been willing to exploit and piecemeal away for a little peace and security.

In Isaiah 46:9-10, the prophet Isaiah records that God declares the end from the beginning…and it is not that God is making us collapse, but that He can see the future and already knew from the foundation of the world, the who, what, when, where, why this last kingdom (the Beast) would come about. Several centuries after Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet Daniel was the first to be given a detailed outline of the future Gentile powers. He received this prophecy in the most unusual of ways, by having to interpret it from a gentile king’s dream (King Nebuchadnezzar).

You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. Daniel 2:31-33

Daniel continues with the interpretation of the dream…

This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king. You, O king, area king of kings…you are this head of gold. But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. Dan. 2:36-43

From the days of Alexander the Great (circa 300BC) until 2019, world power (economic, military, and political) has largely remained centered in the West. Historically we know the Babylonians (under Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson) was conquered by the Medo-Persians. The Greeks conquered the Persians. The Romans conquered the Greeks. The Roman Empire split in two after four-hundred years of Empire-rule. From Rome (the Western leg) geopolitical power moved from Rome to the north through the succeeding European barbarian hordes. However, the barbarians were only able to conquer the Romans, because they were already in a state of widespread decline (morally, economically, and militarily) and had become vulnerable on too many fronts. Sound familiar?

In the absence of Pax Romana, the European barbarian (Goths, Ostrogoth’s, Visigoths, Vandals, Angles, Danes, Saxons, Franks, Britons, etc.) largely began to settle down and build new civilizations over the formerly held Roman territory. Within a few hundred years of Rome’s collapse (circa 430AD), Europe became the prize to either conquer (i.e., Huns, Mongols, Moslems, etc.) or to trade with (Silk Road, Mediterranean, Middle East). Nevertheless, from the 800 – 1945AD, world power was largely concentrated in Europe through the rise and fall of the European nation-states.

The post-modern/ Christian era of the late 20th-century, gave way to the reintroduction of pagan religions and eastern mysticism. The 21st-century has now become a hybridized version of the worst of both the ancient ways and the age of human secularism. This hybridization is further aided by a dangerous and unprecedented technology race, which has promised everything from genetic engineering, unlimited knowledge, artificial intelligence, and even immortality. Many hope in the rise of the new gods, where technology and the supernatural are combined to infuse humanity with that one, final evolutionary push toward immortality. These technological advancements, along with humanity’s departure from moral and ethical reasoning, wholly threatens to upend the current world order.

In our present state, two great powers, the nationalist and globalist, are tearing the current world order apart. Aside from my aforementioned notion that divine justice is coming back to the shores of the United States, Daniel’s interpretation of the multi-metallic statue does not seem to support our independent existence in our current form. The ten-toes of iron and clay appear to be the next phase of great, gentile powers. We know these are ten kings/kingdoms, because it is later validated by the vision given to John on the island of Patmos some 600 years after Daniel. Instead of toes, these ten kings/kingdoms appear as crowns on the Beast’s horns (Rev. 13:1-4, 17:9-14). They will rule briefly with The Beast (the Antichrist) for the last week of years. While it is unclear exactly how all this will unfold between the Rapture of the Church, the gap in time, the opening of the Seal Judgments, and the confirmation of the covenant (Dan. 9:27), we can know a few things with relative certainty.

• The United States (or anything resembling the US) is not in picture at all
• The last Gentile power on planet earth, will be the Beast (Rev. 13:1-2)
• The Beast appears to be a regional power (or confederacy) at first, and then becomes the global power through the aid of technology and the supernatural demonic forces (Rev. 17:12-13)
• The entire world is given over to the Beast (Rev. 13:7)
• The Kings of the East will challenge the Beast’s power toward the end of the seven years (Rev. 16:12)
• The Beast will attempt to make one last attempt at crushing the nation of Israel (the people) (Rev. 12:13-17)

In Closing

I love my country, and I do not like being the purveyor of doom and gloom. She has been a beacon for more than three centuries, offering sanctuary to all those who sought to flee oppression. Her land once bristled with opportunity, but now, we have become a shadow of her former glory.

I am not a prophet, nor do I claim to know the how and when all of this is supposed to transpire- I just know that it will. The USS America has struck the iceberg of God’s divine justice and we are listing more noticeably to one side. We are currently over $22T in debt. We have half the nation bent on suiciding itself with socialism. Crime is becoming more pervasive and violent. People have become increasingly cynical and nihilistic. Corruption is appearing in every institution from the CIA to the Boy Scouts. The immoral majority has become a tsunami-like force that threatens (literally) to destroy anyone who stands in their way. The geopolitical threats around the world are metastasizing in size, number, and severity. The deep state Trump is currently battling is ready and willing to go to open war with the sitting president in order to keep their power in the dark. Things are not boding well for us as a nation.

Once upon a time in the west, there was a beautiful dream, an American dream, where a man could finally be free to choose his own destiny. A dream where a person could go from rags to riches, with nothing more than an idea and the will to see it through. America, with its spacious skies and its amber waves of grain. With purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plains. God’s hand of protection had long been over this once, humble nation, but as she prospered, she forgot where those blessings came from.

Generation after generation rose up defiantly shaking their fists at the Giver of life. They rejected Jesus, the Son, and turned Him into nothing more than a curse word casually thrown around at parties as if He were no more real than Santa Claus. The once most blessed nation on the planet, is finally buckling under the weight of her own duress. She turned her back on Him and now those abundant protections and blessings have disappeared. There was a dream once upon a time, but as soon as it came into its own, it was gone, and something else, too terrible and dreadful to look upon, is quickly coming to take her place.

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. President Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964