“TEOTWAKI”. The acronym stands for “The End Of The World As We Know It”.

What, exactly, does that mean?

People have been “prepping” for what seems like forever. Every new millennium seems to bring out the “the end is nigh” signs. Every year with more than one earthquake, volcano, tsunami or rash of dead pigeons seems to do the same.

There has been a lot of press in the last year or so about the “Mayan Calendar”. Purportedly, an ancient Mayan stone calendar predicts the “end”. That took off so fast it made L. Ron Hubbard’s head spin. Many experts in Mayan culture have stepped up to dispel the fears of the masses. It either “doesn’t mean the end of the World” or it just means “the end of an age”; very much like the Kali-Yuga World Cycles, or the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius”. (My own “take” on it is that the old stonecutter went home one night after a hard day of carving and dropped dead. Or he just plain ran out of room on the rock.) We have observatories staffed by hordes of volunteers scanning the skies for stray asteroids. Each one dreading finding, (yet secretly hoping to name), “The One”. The “Planet Killer” taking aim at the middle of the Atlantic. Replete with “the force of a million Hiroshima bombs”.

I think, however, that “the end is nigh”, as a statement, might just be true. But the mechanism of our demise may be a LOT closer to home. As Lincoln put it…”We shall die by suicide”. It would seem that we, as a nation, are standing on a stool, with the rope strung around the beam. “Stool? What stool?”. I can hear you, I’m not deaf. The stool that supports us is fabricated of parchment. If you look closely, you’ll see writing on it. On the first leg it says “In Congress, July 4th, 1776”. The leg is The Declaration of Independence. Written to assert our intentions to the world. Directly to King George, yes, but through him to the world. On the second leg you’ll see that it says “We the people”. The Constitution. Framed by our forefathers to actually create this nation. To take the clay of the land and the iron of it’s people and fabricate a union of people and places never dreamed of in a million dreams. The third leg says “Congress of The United States, begun and held at the City of New York”…if you guessed that this leg is The Bill Of Rights, you’d be correct. The document that followed the Constitution…a mechanism designed to protect what our forebears had wrought. These three parchments, the “Charters of Freedom”, as they’re known, have been the model for other nations more so than even the Magna Carta. When asked what kind of government the new constitution would give us, Benjamin Franklin said: “A REPUBLIC, if you can keep it”. And “keep it”, we did. For a long time.

“But wait..the rope? WHAT about the rope?” you ask. The rope is one we plaited ourselves. Supple. Soft. Strong. It is the rope woven of many strands. Each like the silk of the spider! Wrought from all of the ideals anathema to those set forth in “those stale old musty documents”. Each one a fiber. Each fiber twisted by skilled hands to form a thread. Each thread meticulously laid with others, over time, to form a cord. The cords of Communism. Socialism. Terrorism and Globalism.

While those skilled hands were working, many people stood and watched as their fingers danced among the shiny stuff. Few among us dared to say that it was too long. Too thick, too stout. Few among us were willing to suffer the ridicule, the defamation and the damnation of our fellow Americans…the ones enrapt by the skill of the rope makers, when asked to “try it on” so many times. First, when it was thin and short. More and more often as it grew longer and thicker. A simple loop, at first. Nothing menacing, there!

But now it’s a knot of thirteen turns. Shall we put our heads in? Shall we kick the stool of parchment away?

We may not need to. The A.C.L.U, the U.N, the “mainstream media”, the unions, the anti-gun lobby, as well as myriad others of their ilk; including, unwittingly sometimes, the rank-and-file Democrat on the street are circled ’round us, with matches…