Warnings From the Past
With all the evils flourishing here and in the world, it’s tempting for those who follow current events to think these are all relatively new challenges. How often have you heard the assertion “I never thought I’d see this,” which suggests thinking in terms of one’s own lifetime? The more appropriate statement might be “We were warned about this.” As a case in point, an interesting quote appeared on Fox News online that should help us realize we were likely warned long ago about many of the specific evils of today. The quote was by Booker T. Washington, black American educator, author, and presidential advisor – and was written well over 100 years ago:
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
When I saw this, my thoughts went immediately to the 70s-80s “rainbow” coalition of business shakedown artists, and then to today’s traveling chorus of race baiters who magically appear at racially charged events. I thought also of Black Lives Matter, which exists to provoke mayhem and finance mansions for its Marxist-trained founders – as well as to their mission to implant systemic racism claims in public school curricula by introducing such travesties as white privilege dogma, Critical Race Theory, and Project 1619. There’s also the obvious fact that leftists never let minorities forget how “bad off” they are. Booker T. Washington’s warning was a voice from many years ago that presaged one of today’s most pervasive cultural problems.
There have been many other specific warnings from the past that we as a nation have long ignored, including several from another Washington – George. In his 1796 farewell address, he warned of several developments that would threaten freedom in the new American republic. Most importantly, he said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…[And] both reason and experience forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.” Clearly, by 2026, we as a nation have mostly excluded religious principles, which is why our national morality has moved toward depravity.
Washington’s farewell address also made this point: “Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the diffusion of knowledge…it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” In other words, the country’s freedom will be imperiled if the voters are not well-informed. Today, we have too many voters who are not only uninformed, but also misinformed – now by the media, and, with public education as it is now, many more misinformed voters to come.
Another warning in the farewell address was that: “It is important…in a free country [that] those entrusted with its administration…confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.” Now, however, we have courts that legislate from the bench, presidents who legislate from the Oval Office (now almost at will), and a feckless Congress that many say is controlled by the bureaucratic Deep State.
Washington also warned of the dangers of national debt, foreign entanglements, and hyper-partisanship. Regarding hyper-partisanship, he said: “All obstructions to the execution of the laws…with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities…serve to…put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community.” Are today’s progressives and democratic socialists a “small but artful and enterprising minority” that’s gradually imposing its radical agenda on America?
Other voices from the past were equally prescient. For example, Frederic Bastiat – economist, writer, and member of the French National Assembly – said this in 1850 in a pamphlet entitled The Law: “Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes [police who are armed] at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim – when he defends himself – as a criminal.” Is that the case here today? Just ask Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who brandished guns on the porch of their home in St. Louis when a mob of BLM demonstrators moved into their front yard, and who were then subjected to continuous harassment by a Soros-backed DA.
Or think of the leftist attacks that young Kyle Rittenhouse endured before, thankfully, he was acquitted. And how about our many Soros-funded prosecutors who are releasing violent criminals to go out and commit more crimes? Or the store owners in donkey-controlled cities who fear protecting their property lest they be charged with assault or other gun-related crimes?
Consider also the Canadian truckers a few years ago who were peacefully exercising their then “current freedom” to protest an absurd vaccine mandate and were treated as criminals, some having been arrested. The phrase “current freedom” is appropriate, because under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it’s the government that grants those rights, meaning the government can also take them away – unlike under our Constitution, which establishes our freedoms as God-given (natural) rights and makes the government responsible for protecting them. Big difference!
While we’re on Bastiat, he also said this: “Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone…The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it” (quoted in There’s No Free Lunch, by David L. Bahnsen).
His point there, of course, is that government wealth redistribution encourages too many people to stop pulling the wagon of state and climb on as riders. When the wagon ultimately has to stop, everyone will be on his own. Presently, as a nation, we are approaching that tipping point – with rising taxes (overt and hidden) and heavy debt to pay for a growing number of riders. The taxes confiscate producers’ wealth now, and the debt will confiscate future wealth. (The US debt now exceeds the $39 trillion mark.)
Another reliably prescient voice from the past is Thomas Jefferson, who said the following in a letter to Richard Henry Lee (former president of the Continental Congress):
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: (1) Those who fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes [and] (2) Those who identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as most honest and safe…In every country, these two parties exist; and…where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.”
While this division has existed since Biblical times, we now see the two factions openly “declaring themselves” – here and elsewhere. The higher classes Jefferson referred to, we now call “the elite” (with more than a tinge of sarcasm), and the other side we call populist. We have read that fewer people are thinking in terms of Democrat vs. Republican, because they feel the two parties have become two wings of the same bird.
On a similar note, another voice from the past – Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen from 1950s TV – made this observation: “The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.”
It is more of a tragedy today, because the loudest voices are in fact those of the left – in the halls of government, in most of the media, and on the streets at every event that can be exploited as racism or other oppression – while on the other side there’s a lot of silence, muffled protest, “compromise,” etc. There are relatively few public voices today speaking up loudly, clearly, and forcefully against the evils taking place.
Satan’s wolves may be at our doorstep – but remember, this is as good as it will ever get for these power-hungry evildoers, because their ultimate due is burning forever in the hell fires. All of which brings us to Jesus, our most important Voice from the past, who gave us many general warnings through Scripture 2000 years ago – actually, everything we need to apply to today’s specific circumstances. Here’s one from Matthew 24:9-13: “…you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” [emphasis added].
That’s more than prophesy – it‘s Gospel truth. After all, Jesus has already declared the end from the beginning. So true believers will be watchful and ready, because there are signs that some troubles Jesus mentioned in this and in other end-times warnings may now be happening. Forewarned is forearmed.
Norbert J. Kuk