What Y2K has Taught Me
.. or, The Three Things I Learned from Y2K
By Jeff Head
Many are indicating that the Y2K "scare" itself was the largest non-event of the millenium. Many sensational stories from
experts, individuals and government agencies predicted all types of dire consequences during the time period beginning as
early as September 9, 1999 (9999 - End of File), to the fiscal roll over of the government, to the actual 12 AM 1/1/2000
roll-over, to the Greenwich rollover, to the first business day of the new year. Well all of those dates have now passed
and thankfully, none of the dire predictions have come about to date.
Having now lived through those dates, I thought I would comment on three things I have observed and learned as a result:
1) Million of Americans can still be reached by a message and caused to prepare for the worst. While some may feel that
many were taken advantage of by scheisters, and no doubt many were ... nonetheless, overall preparedness is a good thing.
Firearm sales, long term food commodity sales, individual preparedness and the items associated with it were WAY up in the
last part of the year. This represents millions of Americans who are in a better position to fend for themselves and be
independent in times of crisis ... independent of an increasingly over burdensome and "parent-wanna-be" government ... and
a tyrannical parent at that.
2) The private sector in particular, but also many local, state and federal government agencies, when presented with this
potential massive problem, found the will and the resources to address and correct that problem. Billions were spent on
Y2K remediation. To whatever degree one may agree that there was a problem to begin with (and I am one who believes that
while the problem itself was not of the EOTWAWKT variety, nonetheless if left unaddressed it would have caused
disruption), the remediation efforts clearly helped stave off whatever impact may have otherwise resulted. This too is a
good thing. It means that there is still significant will left amongst our people, and a willingness to do what it takes
to address such ills. I believe much worse ills lay just over the horizon for free people everywhere, particularly in
America, and the knowledge that such a will exists is heartening.
3) As good as numbers one and two are, there is an overshadowing ill associated with Y2K ... and that is one of apathy and
complacency. For as many people as there are who recognized the potential problem and either prepared for it, or worked to
forestall it, there are yet more who are completely complacant and caught up in our generation's false sense of security.
They feel that virtually no ill can assail us. As a result, one of the most likely outcome of Y2K is for an increased
sense of complacency in our nation. This in the face of mounting assaults on the liberties enumerated in the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States.
The real threat of Y2K in terms of what I call EOLAWKT (End of Liberty as we knew it), is that powerful institutions,
agencies and individuals who care not a whit for our unalienable rights, and who are hell bent on the institution a
socio-fascist World Governance, would use any
real or manufactured event as a pretext to move to severely limit liberties in furtherance of their own goals and
objectives. Did number one above forestall such events in this case? Perhaps, but what is more likely is that the hope
on the part of these enemies was to cause an increase in the complacent conditions described in number three all along.
I pray we will all be active in being vigilant in our own spheres of influence regarding our liberties, and insure that
complacency and apathy decrease in the land, as opposed to having them increase. Remember compatriots,
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
Good men and women of high moral character and standard are necessary for the continuance and success of the Constitutional
Republic and the enjoyment of the enumerated liberties our founders passed on to us. They understood this. This is very
aptly portrayed by these quotes by John Adams and Samuel Adams:
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a
net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any
other." John Adams
"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole
force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they
will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are
diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." Samuel Adams
"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners
are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its
virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and
trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." Samuel Adams
Such are the virtues and qualities we must seek. The enemies of liberty, as has been so clearly demonstrated over the last several
years in places like Ruby Ridge,
Waco,
Oklahoma City, in the
Clinton Administration and in
so many other places, represent
the antithesis of what our founders worked so hard to establish. At some point, when those enemies of liberty feel their
time is ripe and when all virtual hope of resistance has been either legislated away, or, more aptly, purged from the mind
of this people through revisionist schooling and through years of complacency, sitting on top of imagined wealth that many
have translated into fictitious security ... it is then that the tyrants will be revealed, the gloves will come fully off,
and the age old direct, physical and bloody attempt at complete mastery over the hearts, wills, minds and physical persons
of others will be taken up on this soil.
It is against such times that we must fight and prepare. And finally, God forbid, if and when it breaks out amongst us, we
must prepare and pray such that enough of the items described in numbers one and two above are abroad in the land, along
with our faith in that same God in Heaven who preserved our founders, that we come off victorious and go forward from those
events a much humbled and more liberty loving people.
I have faith that such will be the case. Remember, one thing we have going for us in this struggle ... our liberties come
from God ... from no other source. As such, they are
communicable to all of God's children, anytime, anywhere.
In Liberty,
Jeff Head
Emmett, Idaho
January 2000
jeffhead@bigplanet.com
Give me Liberty or Give me Death
http://www.myplanet.net/jeffhead/dadmisc/