An old vision with warnings

 It seems like Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech although given (written?) in 1944 by an American Samuel Barret Pettengill U. S. Congressman 1886-1974 and appropriate here:
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In 1944, Democratic U.S. Congressman Samuel Pettengill warned America that socialists would endeavor to have the U.S. spend itself into bankruptcy, with a view to making citizens totally dependent on a centralized government.

Pettengill detailed TEN POINTS of the socialist manifesto that would destroy free government. Almost 50 years later it is disturbing to reflect on Pettengill’s 10 points.

1) People must be made to feel their utter helplessness and their inability to solve their own problems. While in this state of mind, there is held up before them a benign and all-wise leader to whom they MUST look to the cure for all their ills.

2) The principle of local self-government must be WIPED OUT, so that this leader or group in control can have all the political power readily at hand.

3) Constitutional guarantees must be swept aside. This accomplished in part by RIDICULING them as outmoded and an obstruction to progress.
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4) Public faith in the legal profession and respect for the courts must be undermined. The law making body must be intimidated and from time to time rebuked, so as to prevent the development of public confidence in it.

5) Economically, the people must be ground down by high taxes, which under one pretext or another they are called upon to pay. Thus they are brought to a common level and all income above a meager living is taken from them. In this manner, economic independence is kept to a minimum.

6) A great public debt must be built so the citizens can never escape its burden, making government the virtual receiver for the entire nation.
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7) A general distrust of private business and industry must be kept alive so the public may not begin to rely on its own resources.
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8) Government bureaus are set up to control practically every phase of the citizen’s lives.

9) The education of the youth of the nation is taken under CONTROL so that all may be indoctrinated at an early age with a spirit of submission to the system.
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10) To supplement and fortify all the foregoing, there is kept up a steady stream of GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA designed to extol all who bow the knee and to vilify those who dare raise a voice of dissent.

Samuel Barret Pettengill U. S. Congressman 1886-1974 Reprinted from an article in Ken Hamblin ‘Talks with America’ News letter Feb. 19. 1996
P.O.. Box 562 Castle Rock, CO 80104

Is this happening today?  Has it always been the same through history?