Before you read the excerpts below please realize that, no, I'm not trashing the Incas, nor am I praising Pizarro and the Spanish conquistadors. I am not promoting whip-cracking missionaries. I'm simply sharing historical facts, the details of which are hauntingly familiar. My hope is that the lessons of history might jolt us modern-day citizens of the United States out of our current stupor in order to awaken us to the realization that socialism in not some far-off fantastical threat. It is here. It is real. We as a nation and as individuals have been influenced and dramatically changed by socialism's workings, to our peril.
A little background before we begin. Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador, had two things going for him in his goal of conquering the Incas. First, a civil war between two brothers and their followers was underway during the time he set out to fulfill Spain's royal decree to conquer Peru in 1532. Second, socialism had, for 200 years, sapped the entire Incan culture of its ability to organize an adaptable means of defending itself. Pizarro set out, with 200 men, to force 12 million people, scattered over Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and northern parts of Chile and Argentina, to capitulate to Spain's military authority.
The Inca civilization had made outstanding achievements. Cuzco, the capital city and heart of the empire, rivaled any major city in Europe at the time, and this with only bronze age technology. It had excellent roads, suspension bridges, fortresses, temples, palaces, aqueducts, and more. This prize deemed Pizarro's ridiculously remote undertaking worth the challenge.
Now, let's get to the point of this post. The following excerpts - which recently jumped off the pages at me - are from the book,
The Naked Socialist, by Paul B. Skousen, emphasis mine.
"The Inca system of socialism weakened the people terribly. It took away their drive to achieve and initiate anything from their own creativity. They became indifferent, apathetic, and stopped thinking for themselves. They lost the connective tissue and the emotional bond in their family circles. They apparently didn't care about elderly parents who were no longer able to care for themselves. They didn't care about the suffering by those closest to them. They didn't care about the Inca state. They had become accustomed to being told by someone what to do, when to do it, and when to do it over if things didn't measure up.
"It is little wonder then why a small group of 200 Spaniards could come among them and dispatch the Inca leadership and take over with relative ease. The Spaniards used faction against faction to gain complete control, and waged battles and wars. But in the end, the final tally showed that the Inca's thousands always lost against Pizarro's hundreds."
Now, fast forward more than one hundred years.
"It is interesting to note that more than a century after the Inca empire fell, Jesuit Priests in Paraguay attempted to salvage the local culture from extinction under the spread of European settlements.
"The priests tried to force large groups of people into socialistic society at remotely scattered missions. From the start, the missionaries were frustrated with the native's doleful lack of initiative - a problem they tried to resolve with the whip. Unknown to the priests, the native workers had a long-nurtured proclivity to simply take orders, to do as they were told, or to do nothing if they were not told. This was not a change in biological human nature, it was the outcome of the all-powerful Inca ruler meeting all their needs without demanding personal responsibility.
"The Jesuits attributed the Paraguayan's despondency to the lingering impact of the Inca's socialistic control. They called it the 'Inca Affect.'"
The Inca Affect is alive and well and living in the United States of America. (It lives all over the globe, but that's another post.) The parallels are astonishing.
"They lost the connective tissue and the emotional bond in their family circles." I don't think I need to list the various aspects that constitute the breakdown of the American family, for this disintegration and its causes are all too apparent.
"The Spaniards used faction against faction to gain complete control, and waged battles and wars." Current factions in our country include abortion, immigration, religion, and race. The list goes on and on.
"This was not a change in biological human nature, it was the outcome of the all-powerful Inca ruler meeting all their needs without demanding personal responsibility." Welfare. Public schools. Entitlement programs.
And now, forced universal health care for which we gripe and grouch and suffer but can't seem to find a productive way to battle takes center stage. Why can't we find a way to resist? Could it be that our government uses the same tactics as ancient conquerors? Fear? What keeps us in line? The threat of penalties, the threat of withholding tax refunds, the fear of exorbitant medical costs rendering us bankrupt and homeless, and ultimately, the actual fear of death.
In the duping of America we've become anesthetized. We are vulnerable due to our addiction to the easy life and to fear. Personal responsibility is seen as a quaint notion. We take the path of least resistance for there are no longer noble fires in our bellies; they were extinguished by fear which has since morphed into ignorance, laziness, selfishness, and even violence. We'll put up with our government shoving its hand further and further into our pockets just so long as we can keep some semblance of that status quo. Don't upset the status quo, people might be hurt.
We
are being hurt!
Observe the slow dying of a once thriving liberty, handed over to socialists who do not care about you.
"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." ~~ Edmond Burke, 18th century Irish statesman
