The DUCK DINNER parable

The following was taken from G Edward Griffin's brilliant book The Creature from Jekyll Island. It describes perfectly how we have given up our freedom and allowed ourselves to become slaves to the elites in return for a few trinkets handed down from government.

The story is told of a New England farmer with a small pond in his pasture. Each summer, a group of wild ducks would frequent that pond but, try as he would, the farmer could never catch one. No matter how early in the morning he approached, or how carefully he constructed a blind, or what kind of duck call he tried, somehow those crafty birds sensed the danger and managed to be out of range. Of course, when fall arrived, the ducks headed South, and the farmer’s craving for a duck dinner only intensified.

Then he got an idea. Early in the spring, he started scattering corn along the edge of the pond. The ducks liked the corn and, since it was always there, they soon gave up dipping and foraging for food of their own. After a while, they became used to the farmer and began to trust him. They could see he was their benefactor and they now walked close to him with no sense of fear. Life was so easy, they forgot how to fly. But that was unimportant, because they were now so fat they couldn’t have gotten off the water even if they had tried.

Fall came, and the ducks stayed. Winter came and the pond froze. The farmer built a shelter to keep them warm. The ducks were happy because they didn’t have to fly. And the farmer was especially happy because, each week all winter long, he had a delicious duck dinner.

Freedom Bunker

People have been falling for this trick for decades; they give up their freedom for perceived giveaways from big government or corporations supposedly done for our own good but which always ends up benefiting the super-rich elites in the end.

First, they offered us old age pensions in the form of Social Security, allowing the big corporations to dump their expensive pension plans and leave their employees at the mercies of the stock markets as their retirement plans were moved into IRAs. IRAs which, by the way, are invested into the very companies owned by the elites, further increasing their theft from the American workers.

Next, we were offered Unemployment Insurance to protect us in the event that our jobs were shipped overseas for cheaper labor to help us get back up on our feet. This gave us the illusion of economic security in uncertain economic times while allowing the elites to ship more and more of our jobs overseas while we paid little attention. How would we notice that more and more of our jobs were disappearing without seeing those people thrown out on the streets? Unemployment insurance ensures that we do not notice that our manufacturing base has been systematically shipped overseas to countries that pay slave labor rates. It ensures that the effects of the economic destruction of the US are not felt fully until it is too late to do anything about it.

Then, they implemented free trade agreements to import all those cheaply made manufactured goods that used to be made in America free of tariffs. This kept us from noticing that our wages had stagnated with people being paid less for all the work they do but being able to still afford to live in the lifestyle they were accustomed to before their wages froze or began to decline. Free trade also made it easier to ship even more good paying manufacturing jobs overseas, further eroding the US employment possibilities.

In order to further keep us in the dark about our eroding economic power, a system of easy credit was devised to further the illusion that American's buying power was being maintained as the big corporations further slashed employee earnings. American's were able to continue to live in the manner in which they were accustomed while racking up huge amounts of consumer debt to the banksters, increasing the chains of bondage to the powerful elites. For a time, they were able to maintain this debt laden system by keeping interest rates artificially low but, eventually even this became too much for our failing economy to bear as our shrinking paychecks became even smaller and we were unable to keep up even the interest payments on our debts which had kept us afloat all those years.

Now, we have government offering us free healthcare in order to keep us distracted from our decreasing buying power but, even this is nothing but a big handout to the mega-corporate interests that operate the insurance and medical industries. Instead of getting the free insurance we were promised, we are now forced to buy that insurance from the corporations at ever increasing rates, making the corporations richer all the while our buying power continues on the decline.

It seems that the elites are catching on to the fact that their system of suppressing American wages while artificially uplifting our buying power through cheap imports and easy credit is coming to an end and they are working to ensure they are protected when the day of reckoning finally comes by aggressively lobbying for the elimination of the 2nd Amendment to prevent the serfs from fighting back when the whole economic system collapses around us all, reducing us from the position of free American workers to desperate souls seeking to eke out a mere sustenance existence on whatever the super-rich through their mega-corporations decide to give us in return for our labor.

We were warned time and again throughout the past century that this was happening in books like The Servile State which warned us that government and industry were working together to create a system in which the workers would become beholden to their corporate masters; in essence forced to provide their labor in return for some meager and ever decreasing level of economic security promised to them through government regulations, all of this done in the name of "protecting the workers" from those "evil capitalists".

Every step taken by government to protect the everyday worker from the "evil capitalists" has, in effect, served to strengthen the hand of the rich elites while weakening the hand of those workers these measures were designed to protect. The economic security won through the welfare state has served to distract the people from the fact that our economy has been slowly but surely concentrated into the hands of a very few while we were not looking.

The endgame is happening now, all around us, in a world where it may well be too late to turn the tables and win back our economic freedom.

I really like that parable and I especially like your post.

Very nicely written and explained, also.

As each generation passes, more and more skills are lost.
People are becoming more lazy and complacent, unable to feed themselves.
Now, people are so dependant on the system, they think life would end without it.
When in fact, we humans have thrived for millenia without "their" system.

It is most definitely setup to make the rich richer.
That is why they have to hide behind their schemes.







Excellent thread!

reply to post by FortAnthem


Over the years I have read many posts. This is actually my second account Subjective Truth was the first and this is far and away the best statement I have seen.


You are sadly 100% correct. I wish I had more to give then just a star and flag . Thank you OP I hope this makes front page.



The progressive mindset has taken over and we are the duck.

reply to post by SubTruth


This whole thing is beyond left vs right; it shows how both sides work together to advance the interests of the elites while keeping up the facade of opposition.

The lefties create all those social safety nets to give the workers the feeling of financial security. They are popular with the workers and have been come to be known as "entitlements". Each one of these safety nets have been used by big business as an excuse to take more and more away from the workers.

It is debatable whether these programs were created to destroy the middle class and economic security or whether they were just exploited by big business to erode employee pay to the point it is at today. It is entirely possible that the safety net system was created by men of good faith, just looking to give a hand up to the workers but, at some point, government and business began working together to advance the social safety net system in order to increase the power of business.

With each advance in the social safety net system, that was one less thing that employees would look to their employers for. The system moved responsibility for the workers from business to big government, allowing business to keep a larger share of their profits while taking more away from their workers.

They keep up the facade of opposition to make the workers long for more from their government until it has reached the point that the American people look to the government to solve all their problems. Big business only exists to make a profit for its stockholders anymore. Gone are the days when it was expected that business would also work for the benefit of society. That notion is silly by today's standards; looking after society is solely the job of big government by today's way of thinking.

The problem is; all these safety nets are but shadows of what had been previously provided by the corporations. Social Security benefits are but a pittance compared to what the old pension system could provide. Big government can only provide one size fits all solutions to all problems and, with worker's wages on the decline, tax revenues from the diminishing middle class can hardly cover all that the government is asked to do.

Originally posted by FortAnthem
reply to post by SubTruth

 

This whole thing is beyond left vs right; it shows how both sides work together to advance the interests of the elites while keeping up the facade of opposition.

The lefties create all those social safety nets to give the workers the feeling of financial security. They are popular with the workers and have been come to be known as "entitlements". Each one of these safety nets have been used by big business as an excuse to take more and more away from the workers.

It is debatable whether these programs were created to destroy the middle class and economic security or whether they were just exploited by big business to erode employee pay to the point it is at today. It is entirely possible that the safety net system was created by men of good faith, just looking to give a hand up to the workers but, at some point, government and business began working together to advance the social safety net system in order to increase the power of business.

With each advance in the social safety net system, that was one less thing that employees would look to their employers for. The system moved responsibility for the workers from business to big government, allowing business to keep a larger share of their profits while taking more away from their workers.

They keep up the facade of opposition to make the workers long for more from their government until it has reached the point that the American people look to the government to solve all their problems. Big business only exists to make a profit for its stockholders anymore. Gone are the days when it was expected that business would also work for the benefit of society. That notion is silly by today's standards; looking after society is solely the job of big government by today's way of thinking.

The problem is; all these safety nets are but shadows of what had been previously provided by the corporations. Social Security benefits are but a pittance compared to what the old pension system could provide. Big government can only provide one size fits all solutions to all problems and, with worker's wages on the decline, tax revenues from the diminishing middle class can hardly cover all that the government is asked to do.

I really like the way you think and write. I agree with everything you said and you are right this in not a left vs. right issue. Truth be told at the leaders level they could care less about political crap. It is all theater to keep us pitted against each other. It is a never ending battle of my guy is right and your guy is wrong.




Instead of looking at the man giving the message we need to make the message front and center.