Posted by
RacKoons on Friday, April 03, 2009 8:00:50 PM
In my teaching years , I have loved teaching about connectional ideas with big events. The era of WWI to the end of WWII is such a time. And when one connects the dots right up to our time in 2009, historical analogies are downright eerie. My wife is from Vienna, Austria. We have traveled there and enjoyed it. But, I was reminded on much that has happened around that gorgeous city and its old empire. In 1912-13, Austria was the lead area in the Habsburg Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Old Franz Joseph was the emperor. Yeah, they really had them then. In fact, most major nations still had kings. In 1907, the USA had suffered through a recession called the Panic of 1907 with JP Morgan actually bailing out the entire nation. But, by 1913, Austria was having mortagage, real estate, housing as well as failing bank problems. Odd huh? Believe it or not, the bankers, the nobles, the corporate owners had a huge Bankruptcy Ball in Vienna with people dressed up as mortgages, failed monies, Austrian and French monies, and their restaurant was decked out as a Debtor's Prison. They ate and drank as if the world was ending. It was. Serbia was threatening the Empire as an older version of Yugoslavia. The Arch Duke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand asked the Emperor not to threaten Serbia back. As war rumors came and went, Sir Edward Gray made a statement I have used in classes and even a sermon:"The lights of Europe are going out and they shall not be lit again in our time.' Then banks, housing, and even some businesses began to crumble ; except the defense industries. The President of the USA was Wilson, a very liberal ex-gov . of NJ. He sort of had ideas that one would call Global, or One World. When WWI was over, he withdrew, at Versailles , the entire map of Europe. It began the horrors of multi-culturalism and mixed ethnic groups who hated one another. Some were E. Europeans from the collapsed A-H Empire. Some were the start of Muslim immigrant intrusions. Wilson wanted a League of Nations to run the globe. He did not believe in in our own Constitutional electoral system: wanting a British Parliamentary system. Then came the '20's and the Depression of the '30's with FDR and our first real socialist awakenings though not anything that looks like today. In , Sep[t. of 2008, we had a Panic where the economy was still strong but Bush et al plus all the Democrats fearfully began to bail out and start ultra socialism moves all in the need of saving capitalism!!!! Now, we are in a time of just 3-4 months where a real socialist with a hugely liberal socialist Congressional Democrat majority and the same things that Vienna saw in 1913 seem to be coming true. Militarily, we see ourselves still faced with militant Islamofascism not the totalitarians of the '20's and '30's . Oh, in 1913, at the time of the Bankruptcy Ball, three future revolutionaries would be living in Vienna: Stalin, Trotsky and Hitler. No one knows what they did or thought in that year. But, we sure saw afterwards. Now we have rumors of war in the Middle East. We have Belgium now with 25% of Muslim population in Brussells , the city of the IMF, the EU and even some NATO outlets. We see Sweden now complaining about too many immigrants, Muslims et al. France is now 17% Muslim. And in Britain, well London is Londonstan. Even here in the USA, Muslims are multiplying. We also have an illegal immigration problem. We are in bailouts, corporation, housing , bank failures. And the President is a Globalist, a One Worlder with very un-American and un -Constitutional ideas. Now, I do not know if history repeats itself. And yes, God is still in charge. But, God never intervened in WWI, or the Depression, or WWII and here we are here with many items looking suspiciously like the old Bankruptcy Ball in Vienna, in 1913.