My oracle described 2010 as the year Mother Nature would send a message: she has declared war on all that we mindfully and mostly unmindfully do to upset her natural balance. In Predictions for 2010, I described in detail what would be coming, where and when. I warned that immediately after the first day of the new year you would begin to see a dramatic uptick in natural disasters of climate and earth. Here is what has already happened in the first two-and-a-half months as primarily reported from earthweek.com with additional details I added from my own direct experience and what I gathered off the news wires:

JANUARY 2010–Week 1

The Great Northern Hemispheric Chill. The year 2009 goes out as the world’s tenth warmest year since modern global records began in 1880 with record cold snaps and blizzards across the central United States, across Europe and Asia. The arctic blast reached as far south as the tropics.

Tajikistan rocked by New Year’s weekend quake. A 5.3 Richter scale temblor in the Hindu Kush mountain range left at least 20,000 homeless.

The First Tsunami of 2010. On January 4 a 7.2 quake caused a deadly tsunami flooding the south facing shorelines of Rendova and Tetepare in the Solomon Islands with 500 homes damaged or washed away.

JANUARY 2010–Week 2

Monster Cyclone in the Indian Ocean. Cyclone Edzani reached Category 4 strength producing waves three stories high about 600 miles south-southwest of Diego Garcia. It is fortunate that Edzani remained far out at sea. If it has landed on the coastlines of Madagascar or southeastern African coast it would have inflicted considerable property damage and loss of life.

Northern Californian Quake (Jan. 9). An offshore jolt of 6.5 magnitude damaged hundreds of homes in and around the picturesque coastal towns of Eureka, Fortuna and Arcata, California.

The Great Haitian Earthquake (Jan 12). The worst recorded earthquake in Haiti in two centuries, a magnitude 7.0 temblor, pulverized the capital Port-au-Prince and the surrounding towns rendering a third of Haiti’s 9 million people homeless with the estimated lost of life approaching a quarter million. A number of powerful aftershocks in Haiti, along with moderate-to-sizable quakes rocked and rolled the Caribbean region in the coming weeks.

JANUARY 2010–Week 3

Haitian Aftershocks continue. The worst was a magnitude 6.1.

China’s Northeastern Coastline locked in by Ice. The Bohal Sea chilled to its widest coverage and thickness in 40 years.

Midsummer Night’s Snow Storm. In the peak of the Southern Hemisphere summer, Australian mountains in Victoria and New South Wales were dusted with snow, while…

Cyclone Magda hits Australia. Magda visited the Kimberly Coast region of Northwest Australia. It is the third major cyclone of the November-to-April Indian Ocean Cyclone season. In Predictions for 2009 I correctly forecast a powerful series of Cyclone seasons continuing.

Mexico visited by Violent Winter Storms. I cannot recall whether this happened in week three or four of January. Not long after my return from Mexico City in mid-January I saw a news photo of the very same freeway I took to the international airport under six feet of water from unprecedented January floods in the city. I personally experienced the opening cold snap hitting Mexico. It was the talk of the town. It also drizzled the night my hosts took me out to dinner, one of them shaking his head saying, “It never rains in January in Mexico City.” Actually, these meteorological phenomena though rare are not unprecedented. Below I will explain how climate change is altering our memories of what real winters used to be like from Mexico City to Minnesota to Manitoba.

JANUARY 2010–Week 4

Cyclone Olga floods Cairns, Australia.

Waves of Blizzards across North America (Dec. through Jan.) The times of each blizzard pass in my memory like a whiteout blur. I know they began in early December 2009 in North America. I recall a particularly bad week was had in Europe at the end of January.

FEBRUARY 2010–Week 1

Greatest Snowfall in Washington DC’s recorded History. Not since the American capital’s creation has so much snow fallen. The fools in the Congress cried, “Where is global warming?!” In my article dated 7 February (The Global Warming Washington Blizzard), I explained that a warmer climate atmosphere far more saturated with moisture than normal would endure record-breaking blizzards and snowfall in the initial decades of the coming climate change. Enjoy them. In ten year’s time you will be missing the snow piled and pressed against your window.

FEBRUARY 2010–Week 2

A New Island rises near Iwo Jima in the Pacific. Japanese vulcanologists predict the current explosive clouds of ash from a submarine volcano rising 300 feet above the ocean surface herald the birth of a new Iwo Jima (sulfur island).

Taiwan Quake. A sharp submarine temblor of 6.4 magnitude off the east coast of Taiwan caused landslides and injured dozens.

Mexican Quake. A 5.7 magnitude quake jolted the Oaxaca Pacific coastline of southern Mexico. It was felt as far north as Mexico City. When I was in Mexico City in mid-January doing a press conference for the release of History Channel’s The Nostradamus Effect in the Central and South American television markets, I was asked if Mexico City would suffer an earthquake soon. I answered, “yes.” I hope this Oaxaca temblor was it, though I think worse is coming later this year, in the summer months.

FEBRUARY 2010–Week 3

Caribbean Region Keeps Shaking after Haiti. In the month following the Haitian temblor there were at least two quakes of 6 magnitude or just below in the Caribbean region that were not aftershocks from Haiti. Earthweek reported, “Some of the strongest activity in nearly four years at Montserrat Island’s Soufriere Hills volcano sent ash soaring high above the Caribbean as clouds of super-heated gas and debris cascaded down the mountain’s slopes.”

Antarctic Rain Patterns Shifting South. Scientists pinpoint change in rain currents that will deepen Australia’s crippling droughts for the foreseeable future.

Tropical Cyclone Gelane. Brought strong winds and heavy rains to Mauritius and Reunion Islands in what is becoming one of the more active Indian Ocean Cyclone Seasons in recent memory.

FEBRUARY 2010–Week 4

Aftershocks in Haiti and moderate Quakes hit central China.

Blizzards continue to Visit North America, as the Canadian Permafrost Melts. Earthweek reports, “The permafrost around Canada’s James Bay is retreating northward as the frozen ground responds to a warming climate, Canadian researchers say.”

MARCH 2010–Week 1

8.8 Chilean Quake and Tsunami Catastrophe. The Chilean coast 200 miles southwest of Santiago rocked with one of the largest quakes ever recorded, actually showing the earth’s rotation by a few thousand milliseconds and altering the Earth’s axis by three inches. The temblor sent a Tsunami across the Pacific Ocean with little damage. However, a tsunami inundated and shattered towns all along the Chilean coast around Concepcíon sending houses and fishing vessels 2.5 miles inland in places. There are over a 1,000 dead and missing.

6.4 Quake rocks Taiwan. Earthweek reports: “A sharp quake and four subsequent aftershocks jolted much of Taiwan on Thursday morning, with the strongest causing at least 12 injuries. Fires broke out after the initial 6.4 magnitude jolt, including a smoky blaze at a textile factory in the southern city of Tainan.”

Volcano Erupts in Costa Rica. “Residents in communities surrounding Costa Rica’s Irazú volcano briefly panicked as the mountain produced a series of 9 tremors over a 30-minute period.” (Earthweek)

Vast Ice Berg Collision in Antarctica. “A collision between a massive iceberg and the mouth of an Antarctic glacier broke away another huge chunk of ice the size of a small country.” (Earthweek)

As We Freeze in Earth’s North, the Southern Earth heats up. Earthweek reports: “Global warming continues unabated south of the equator despite a bitter Northern Hemisphere winter that has provided a jolting reminder of what winters of yesteryear were once like, according to climate scientists.”

What Earthweek says is true. We look upon these cold blizzard events in the US or January rains in Mexico City as something new when indeed they are new to many of us just coming into adulthood, and those graying baby boomers old enough to remember but are encouraged by our short-term thinking societies to forget. One-and-a-half generations have been born since global weather patterns in the late 1970s began their aggregate climb in temperatures producing more moderate and warmer winters. I predict a new upsurge of climate change will come in 2010. The last significant jump and speed-up of climate change happened in 1998 when global warming began its current string of record-breaking years of higher temperatures. We have forgotten what winters in the Northern Hemisphere from your back yard to Mexico City once were like. Decades of warmer winters have made us forget. It is also convenient to forget; otherwise, you would have to change and stop playing the part of the overwhelmed citizen your overlords wish you to play.

MARCH 2010–Week 2 (up to 12 March)

Major Chilean Aftershock. A significant 6.9 temblor hit Chile the day its new president took office. The epicenter was Rancagua, 90 miles southwest of Santiago.

Lights out on Venezuela’s Lightning Light Show! Ever since the beginning of European colonization over five centuries of one of Earth’s most amazing lighting shows where the Catatumbo River empties into Lake Maracaibo have been recorded. For an average of 160 nights a year as many as 20,000 strikes hit the area each night. This year’s unusually strong El Nino (the ninth strongest ever recorded) may be the cause for an unprecedented blackout lasting two months and counting.

Rare Tropical Cyclone appears off the Coast of Brazil. The forming storm called “Invest 90Q” is only the seventh subtropical or tropical cyclone to form in the South Atlantic basin in recorded history.

Madagascar Flooded by Cyclone Hubert. Torrential rains and landslides that destroyed hundreds of homes, displaced 32,000 and killed at least 36 people inundated the deforested coastal mountains of the island nation.

Icelandic Volcano lying dormant since 1823 is about to Blow. Earthweek reports: “The Icelandic Meteorological Office said that the shaking felt in communities near Eyjafjallajökull glacier was due to magma flowing at full speed into the volcano… In 1994 and 1999 a series of tremors was detected in the area — believed to have been caused by magma intrusion deep inside the volcano. The Civil Protection Department was maintaining an alert for the mountain due to the unrest.”

***

Stuck in the Ides of March’s Nor’easter Storm

Earthweek ends its reports every Friday. The Ides of March, the midpoint of the month, passed yesterday. At the time of this writing four days following last Friday, the Atlantic Northeastern states are witnessing one of the most significant Nor’easter storms since 2006 with some areas already buried in the last few weeks of snowfall now melting and drowned in three days straight of 3 to 5 inches of rainfall. Flood watches are still in effect along the coastlines from storm surges and inland too from swollen rivers bursting from their banks flooding thousands of homes and businesses across New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Long Island and Maine. Hurricane force winds visited JFK airport and days of sustained 50 mph winds across New England knocked out the power to half a million homes over the weekend.

Perhaps the most ominous message my oracle has given in Predictions for 2010 is indeed bearing down on us. Mother Nature is rebelling against our abuse. There is developing a highly accurate seer synchronicity in my almanac of annual weather forecasts. I will therefore continue giving monthly reports matching events with prophecy.

John Hogue

(16 March 2010)

History Channel's press launch of The Nostradamus Effect in the Latin American television market. Eighteen journalists attended the conference held in Hotel W, Chapultepec, Mexico City on 13 January 2010. You can see me (far right) answering their questions for about 90 minutes. My publicist, Rosemary Ravinal, is to my right.

MEXICO CITY—DAY 1
The Arrival and Grasshopper Hill
(12 Jan. 2010)

Friends,
Yesterday (24 January 2010) saw History Channel’s highly popular 12-episode series “The Nostradamus Effect” released across Mexico and Latin America in Portuguese and Spanish to a television market of 100 million people. The opening episode dealt with purported prophecies of doom from Leonardo Da Vinci. Next week (31 January) in one of four episodes in which I appear prominently the series will cover Nostradamus’ Third Antichrist prophecies. (For further information, see ¿El Tercer Anticristo?)

In early December, a few days after releasing my 16th book (and sixth eBook) Predictions for 2010, I received an invitation from History Channel to represent the series in their publicity campaign for Latin America. I felt honored being only one chosen from the series’ assembly of good prophetic scholars (and the unavoidable inclusion of a few popular and charismatic quacks spouting 2012 hysteria) to speak for the series in a press conference held in Mexico City. I was told History execs admired my balanced approach to controversial prophetic subjects.

For the record, I’m sure some of you would disagree with their assessment and think me a pontificator. At least I will do you all a favor and supply what I wish my colleagues and competitors on these Nostradamus/prophecy shows would qualify. None of us can really call ourselves the unquestioned messengers of long dead prophets who, if raised from the dead, Nostradamus and all, might pick their own bones of contention and throw them at our heads for what we “declare” was meant in their prophecies.

Your own intelligence, I hope, spares us the need to proffer redundant reminders that we scholars are offering our opinion — even when it seems many of my colleagues believe otherwise and think their utterances are gospel. Just know that when anyone asks me what Nostradamus said my answer is the same I gave to 18 journalists from across Mexico and Latin America in the conference pictured above.

What does Nostradamus say?

He says nothing for a very long time.

He’s been dead for nearly 450 years. I’m the one making statements here and they should be measured for their efficacy or fault upon the merits or merda of my intuition and scholarship by the test of time.

I flew into Mexico City for the first time a fortnight ago. Being a native Southern Californian (born in Hollywood, CA in 1955) I’ve deep down felt that I was not only an American by birth but also a citizen in spirit of Mexico. California was theirs before it was unilaterally seized in the American empire fever of the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. It was good to fly into Mexico City overnight and be in the vibe and heart of Mexico in the wee morning hours of 12 January. That morning, looking beyond the wall-sized window of my magnificent 17th floor suite in swank Hotel W, mind and heart tried to imagine the Mexico of earlier times hidden beyond the veil of overpopulation, congestion and pall of smog that reduced visibility to a mere few miles. There would be no perchance to imagine views of a sprawling plateau of the Aztecs at a airy thin altitude of 7,300 ft. (2,240 meters) surrounded by mountains and picturesque volcanoes, such as 17,800 foot (5,426 m.) Popocatepetl. My lungs and throat, already constricted by an oncoming head cold now seized, sucked hard and sighed thin, smoggy air in disappointment.

At breakfast I met my American, History Channel publicist for the event, Rosemary Ravinal (A&E Ole Networks) from Miami and our Mexican hosts Daniel Garcia and Esteban Beulo of Beuló PR & Communications for breakfast and a round of Hotel W huevos rancheros. In my case, the “W” stands for Wow! I finished the huevos and could tell my hosts that now this Gringo from El Norte can say he’s had REAL Mexican food and not that oversized, over-cheesy-entombed, love-handle bun-busting, lard dripping Godzilla sized dollops we call “Mexican” food in the United States. Real Mexican food his handed to you in modest palm-full servings with a sprinkling of cheese that even this Vegan who eats eggs can enjoy. American Mexican food going for the big and loud flavors misses the subtleties in texture and tastes inherent in authentic Mexican fare.

Rosemary, Daniel and Esteban in our first actual meeting beyond the electronic remoteness of fax, email, phone and blackberry, planned the schedule of events for this day and the news conference for the next. They showed me the special room for the conference, which at the time was bare and uninteresting. Boy! Was I in for a surprise the next morning of the conference when Daniel and Esteban’s PR team performed their magic! On the first day, Rosemary devised a plan to mix tourism with work and through the magic of her blackberry. We hired a car to tour the city. I did my first interview (to Sao Paulo, Brazil) standing on a street in the old federal district of Coyoacán. The title comes from the Nahuatl Coyohuacan meaning, “place where they have coyotes.” The first Spanish conquerors of the Aztec empire built the earliest part of the colonial Mexico City there. Nostradamus was still a teenage student of Avignon University when Hernán Cortés and his lieutenants built their sprawling mansions where coyotes once forlicked nearly five centuries ago.

Beauty is where you look for it in the third largest and certainly the highest in altitude megalopolis in the world with 22 million people crammed and coughing under fowl fumes and ramshackle storefronts and crumbling apartments obscured behind a blight of huge billboards.

An abstract Aztec rendering of a grasshopper (a Chapol).

Mexico City has my sympathies. I am the son of another generally ugly sprawling metropolis, Los Angeles. There is beauty there if you know where to find it. Coyoacán is Mexico City at its most beautiful and oldest colonial charm. Yet, I get ahead of myself. Before Rosemary and I wound through crowded streets to get there, Juan, our chaffeur and tour guide took us to see the rock outcropping known in the Aztec Nahautl language as “Grasshopper Hill” (from the Nahautl Chapul-grasshopper, tepec-hill). Juan, a knowledgeable and grand old gentleman, said the Aztecs had a love for eating roasted grasshoppers. Soon the Chapul disappeared down Nahautl exulting mouths and in their place on the hill, they constructed a large temple in their honor.

After the Spanish came the temple monument was pulled down and its foundation used to raise Chapultepec Castle, the site of one of the last battles of the Mexican-American War. When we approached it, the very spot where our car got stuck before a red light in traffic happened to be the point where the American Nathaniel Currier had composed his tinted lithograph (c. 1847) of the then Mexican Military Academy with flagpole running up the US flag after American forces had charged up into the castle. There they clashed with six teenage Mexican cadets making their last stand in the tower. They are known in Mexico as Los Niños Héroes (the child heroes). The last boy warrior took down the Mexican flag, wrapped it around his body and jumped from the tower so the Americans running up the stairway tumbling over the bodies of his companions couldn’t capture it. It is said the American commander, Winfield Scott, saluted the flag wrapped corpse as he rode past to occupy Mexico City.

Chapultepec Castle.

Later, Chapultepec Castle became the palace residence of Mexican presidents and foreign usurpers, such as Archduke Maximilian of Austria and his fetching wife Princess Charlotte/Carlotta (played famously going mad by Betty Davis in the movies). The Mexican people overthrew these puppets of French Napoleon III and his Mexican monarchists allies in 1867. Chapultepec’s new tenant then became President Benito Juárez, the Abraham Lincon of Mexico. The turreted castle much redesigned by Maximilian radiates old world charm above the basalt brick foundation and parapets dipping down into an oasis of forested parkland — the realm of big eared squirrels, cockerels and parrots whose calls remind me of the parks of Pune, India, where I spent many years with my meditation teacher, Osho. Pune and Mexico City happen to be at nearly the same subtropical latitude.

Next stop after grasshopper hill, some coyote magic to be had where the coyotes once roamed. In part two of this three-part series, I’ll write about my pilgrimage to the house of one of the best coyote spirits of them all.

Viva la Vida! Frida.

John Hogue

(25 January 2010)

PS–Have you seen the Nostradamus Effect? If Spanish and Portuguese is your mother tongue, check out the television overview of each episode in Spanish I have placed at this link: El Efecto Nostradamus.

Check out Las prophecías del 2010 in English.

USGS Shake Map: Haiti Region. The worst seismic devastation is west of Port-au-Prince (star).

I am back from a very successful press conference and publicity tour in Mexico City for History Channel’s release of El Effecto Nostradamus (The Nostradamus Effect) in the Latin American market of 100 million viewers.

I have many observations to share about my Mexico trip, but first prescient business before prescient pleasure. Many of you are asking if Nostradamus made any forecasts about Haiti and the earthquake. Haiti by name has never been mentioned; however, as Nostradamus views the future with the eyes and bias of a Frenchman, one must ever follow more verbally nebulous French connections to the future. Haiti, along with Quebec (Canada), is one of two significant centers in the America’s of French colonial culture and roots to Nostradamus’ homeland. There should therefore be a connection.

The term America is definitely mentioned in Nostradamus in plays on France’s most west-pointing nose of landmass aiming at the New World, as it was popularly thought of in Nostradamus’ day. America hides behind the name Amorica. At other times Nostradamus calls it a little closer, like the anagram Hister cuts a letter away from Hitler in his Antichrist prophecies, he calls America Americh. There’s no Haiti anywhere in the prophecies even though there is an indirect reference to a celebrated Haitian as one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s “foreign” female lovers.

In Century 4 Quatrain 54 he says:

Du nom qui onques ne fut au Roy Gaulois,
Iamais ne fut vn fouldre si craintif:
Tremblant l’Italie, l’Espaigne & les Anglois,
De femme estrangiers grandement attentif.

Of a name never held by a Gallic King,
Never was so fearful a thunderbolt.
Italy, Spain and the English tremble.
He will be greatly attentive to foreign women.

Josephine Beauharnais.

There would be romantic trysts with a Polish countess (Walenska) and an Italian prima donna (Grassini) but Napoleonic squeeze number one was the French woman born on the Island of Martinique, in the same region as Haiti, named Josephine Beauharnais. She became lover, wife and finally Empress of France. That’s as vaguely close as we get going down obvious linguistic trails to Haiti and last week’s tragedy being framed in the magic mirror of Nostradamus.

There are other roads made of word links we might take. We must understand an important point lost to many a Nostradamus scholar in foreign lands who have the national conceit to presume Nostradamus understood their languages and wrote most of his prophecies solely for their country. For example, I came across half dozen Japanese Nostradamian books over the years that force over a third of his prophecies to explain important past and future events on that distant Nipponese island chain.

One thing is clear in cloudy Nostradamus’ prophecies. He mentions more geographic locations than any prophet in history, over 600. Nevertheless, the locations thin out the farther we stray away from where they were written, in Salon-en-Provence in South France. Lots of references to Provence, Northern Italy, and France. Less for Germany, England, Spain and the rest of Europe. Then comes the Middle East and North Africa. A little of Russia too. After that, the geographic pickings are slim indeed. Very, very few for Asia, Africa, or the Western Hemisphere. These cover the general continent and its peoples more than a specific locale,

Today we’ll look at one of them: Hesperia, Land of the West, or land of the rising western star.

The variant uses of Hesperia by Nostradamus can apply well to events involving the United States. In (Century-Volume) 4 Q(uatrain) 99, the distant Westerners of the Americas are part of the Western alliance of World War II. The prophecy initially describes the overwhelming defeat of France “by thunderbolts” (aka Blitzkrieg) tactics of Adolf Hitler in 1940. By inserting the “Hesperians” into the mix, the word becomes a hint of near future success coming out of French defeat for the Western Alliance to come. The Hesperians come up again in his famous prophecy naming the Second World War Battle of Tobruk (1 Q28.) The Hesperian link continues in 10 Q94. A fleet of Westerners invaded South France. The prophecy mentions many details of that amphibious landing, Operation Anvil that did take place along the Provencal coastlines in August 1944. America factors in again in 4 Q50 as the symbolic Libra with her scales (i.e. Justice/Democracy) foretold to become a dominant power of the Western world.

The word-clues Hesperie or Esperie, or Hesperiques, point Nostradamus’ laurel branch to prophecy’s boiling cauldron summoning images of those Westerners cloaked in metaphors honoring Ancient Greek myth. Hesperos is the Evening Star in the West. The Hesperides were the daughters of Atlas and Hesperus/Hesperis, and they lived in the extreme West, at the world’s edge hard by Night. Is not the mention of the evening star an allusion to stars in the US flag?

It is clear to me that Hesperia refers more to the great nation across the wide Atlantic, beneath the western evening star, that today sends thousands of troops, its generous donations of money, medicine and care to the people of Haiti, if not a forecasting clue to Haiti itself.

We will have to follow the detective trail down other word and phrase routes in Nostradamus. Haiti comes from Ayiti, the Taino Caribbean-American Indian word in Arawakan for “mountainous land.” In the next blog about Nostradamus and Haiti, we track all references in his prophecies to mountainous lands. Perhaps a presage about the Haitian quake will emerge.

John Hogue

(19 January 2010)

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Predictions for 2010

Nostradamus Predictions, the Antichrist

Friends,
Busy times! I spent most of the OO (uh! Oh!) decade with body mostly sedentary and oracle light traveling the temporal-fantastic of the future. The new and terrible-teenage twenty-teens decade has begun. A decade of adolescent human evolution is before us and this time I’m on the road again. I have no sooner launched Predictions for 2010 when calls to travel came in. I do expect this new decade will see me making many journeys around the world to see, to seer and directly share my insights into prophecies about tomorrow flying into many regions of the world in this last chance decade before the prophetic “shift” its the fan in what I’ve called “The Roaring Twenty-Twenties.”

First stop: Mexico City. I’m going to be away starting early tomorrow and won’t be blogging back until around the 15th of January after doing several days of press interviews for the release of History Channel’s new series “The Nostradamus Effect” across the 100 million and muliplying Latin American Television market this month. The poster above is the invitation History Channel sent out to the press corps of Latin America. It is a nice shot of my old “furry-owl” look. As I grow older I look more like Johannes Brahms every decade. (And “not” that “other guy” from the 16th century who has tried so hard to look like “John Hogue.”) Chuckle…

All seriousness aside. Since many of you will be suffering Hogue blog deprivation for most of next week, I have this article, written back in November and sitting in my stock of blogs that is pertinent to rumors of a rising Tea Party tide of Third Party movements. What with Sarah Palin going rogue and joining the Tea Party soon — indeed I foresee this former member of Alaskan secession parties is planning to take the Tea Party Movement clear out of the Republican Party — I thought it would be nice to talk this week about the prophetic significance of the first Rogue pioneer, Texas Congressman Ron Paul. The third pary rebellion against the duopoly of Donkeycrats and DumboRepublicans is coming. If they were the flint, Ron Paul was the first spark.

Back to the Future with Ron Paul

Obi-Ron Paul-nobi.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul is both ahead of his time and behind his time. He is the kind of candidate who will run and most likely become the president of the United States 100 years from now, when the voting public will, in a way, more resemble the times of the founding fathers when they wrote the US Constitution Congressman Paul promotes and defends. It could be argued, and certainly would be argued by members of the Libertarian Party, that our founding fathers never intended the United States federal government to be so powerful and ponderously invasive in the lives of private citizens.

Ron Paul ran as a Republican for president in 2008. For a time his passionate supporters cyber networked and collected more money than any other Libertarian in Republican disguise but Paul could not galvanize the Republican base. He and his supporters were muzzled during one of the two traditionally weeklong political advertisements better known as a national political party convention for presidential candidates. Obama got his advertisement held by Democrats a few weeks earlier in Denver, Colorado. In Paul’s case, the Republican National Convention convened in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was meant to pitch the GOProduct — Arizona Senator John McCain. Paul was officially and legally by party rules, still running against McCain and had a right to demonstrate his opposition and state his case, but freedom of speech and a dissenting voice was apparently not part of the Republican Convention rules. Paste on that political happy face of party unity at all costs or truth. Paul’s followers were frisked for placards and buttons at the auditorium doors before allowed in.

After the snub, some followers wanted him to run as an independent, but as I predicted, all attempts to draft him to lead the rebellion of young, fanatical Ron Saint Paul true believers and disgruntled independent voters went bust.

Paul must have known what his zealots would not face. The lurid light shone upon him in a presidential election campaign would soon expose his true Libertarian virtues to national scrutiny and a heretic running alone from the GOP elephant herd would lose like any other marginalized third party candidate sent to the back of the political bus by a Dem.-GOP duopoly controlling the media and money.

Despite all its many merits, his Libertarian philosophy has too much of a little something everyone can chose if politically left, center or right, but not enough unifying ideas to find common ground and attract a majority of voters. For instance, those leaning towards the red meat-right spectrum support Paul’s small government and fiscal independent stance. Blue weed smoked lefties hate his anti-socialist-social program stances but love a fiscal conservative who supports the individual right to do just about anything, such as smoking pot a lot if he or she so chooses. Paul would make marijuana legal, bless his heart.

A Libertarian candidate for president has never swayed a majority of the American voting public and never will. Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign was significant though because it heralded what in a several presidential cycles will mark the decline and fall of the current two-party Republican-Democrat duopoly in America.

Neither party will exist 36 years from 2008. Something new will arise, but it will not be Libertarian. It will be a three party system with a new party of the right and the left moderated by a moderate party from the middle.

Ron Paul, the Libertarian, by his own action, shows that he does not think the country is ready for a Libertarian in the White House, otherwise why wear the mask of a Republican and rely on its financial resources and connections to be heard? His campaign was a small nudge towards a new political era a century hence.

He believes self-responsibility should govern the individual American more than have responsibility legislated by a generally bungling bureaucracy. This is a purist vision presented at the wrong time in history. We are at the beginning of a new political prophetic cycle. Americans have rejected Neo-Conservatism and elected a neo-Franklin D. Roosevelt — Barack Obama — into the White House. Smaller government, personal responsibility, companies and banks cleaning up their act by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy? That is not in touch with the times, Congressman Paul. Social engineering and big government bailouts of industry and the banking system are making a comeback.

Ron Paul is right, from a prophetic perspective. In a century or so, the current Mobocracy will go through a dalliance with socialism, then painfully collapse into an era of emergency rule (i.e. the new name for fascism). Then, by the end of the 21st century perhaps at last humanity will be mature enough to sustain a real democracy of responsible and engaged citizens who uphold equally a citizen’s individual freedom in balance with the golden rule of doing unto others in community what you would have the community of individuals do unto you.

Eventually, Ron Paul’s core values of Libertarianism will hold and not the current Libertine-Aryanism we see today. The current model believes freedom is something synonymous with licentiousness; in other words freedom is expressed in vox populi popular political baby talk that goes something like this: “I’m free to do what I like, any time I like and I don’t care what you think about it or how it impacts you. I have a right to be free, period. Now come here and clean my diaper.”

When America was born, people living in a new frontier had a better sense of balance between personal responsibility and community with their neighbors. Individual freedom “and” communal responsibility were equal in value then. The process of growing from a small backwater country of thirteen loosely-united states of 3 million into the uber-federal, 50-state superpower of 300 million has strayed us away from those core values. Thus, our current state of democratic awareness generally makes Ron Paul’s noble Libertarian concept equally a past oriented anachronism and something anticipating the future. The vision of a “President Ron Paul” is something waiting for us in “past-future” tense.

John Hogue

(10 January 2010)

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