Posted on 07/08/2010 5:28:49 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
We are hearing all sorts of reasons why the United States is doomed to decline.
After all, America is piling up deficits at a record rate of about $1.5 trillion a year while other countries are slashing their spending. The national debt cascades over $13 trillion and is on track to reach $20 trillion within a decade.
The current recession is heading into its third year. Unemployment still hovers at nearly 10 percent.
Much of the country thinks the war in Afghanistan is as good as lost. There are more than 80,000 American troops deployed there, along with nearly 50,000 allied soldiers — facing fewer than 10,000 Taliban insurgents.
The largest oil spill in American history has been gushing up from the Gulf for nearly 80 days, with vague promises that it could be plugged in another month or so.
Between 11 million and 20 million illegal aliens currently reside in the United States. And we cannot seem to stop another half million from crossing illegally into America each year.
Politically, the fickle electorate was furious at Wall Street for the 2008 meltdown. But it is now angrier at a government that threatens to take over more private enterprise. In 2006, voters renounced congressional Republicans; in November 2010, even angrier voters will probably be more unforgiving of the once-dominant Democrats.
George W. Bush left office with dismal poll numbers. Yet Barack Obama, who campaigned on the theme that he would serve as a reset button for the prior administration, and who enjoyed an approval rate of nearly 70 percent at inauguration, has seen his own ratings dive below 50 percent in just 18 months.
No wonder this dismal news — coupled with constant predictions of a rising, all-powerful China and the emergence of new, upcoming regional powers like Turkey, Brazil, and India — prompts nonstop gloom about inevitable American decay.
Even Obama, at times, seems to envision a multipolar world in which the United States no longer is “exceptional” in the manner of the last 70 years.
In the midst of our current malaise, we feel overwhelmed by largely short-term problems and our current inability to address them — without appreciating our long-term strengths and present bounty, or learning from past recoveries.
We are soon to revert to the Clinton income-tax rates last used in 2000, when we ran budget surpluses. If likewise we were to cut the budget, or just hold federal spending to the rate of inflation, America would soon run surpluses as it did a decade ago. For all our problems, the United States is still the largest economy in the world, its 300 million residents producing more goods and services than the more than 1 billion in either China or India.
The U.S. military defeated both Saddam Hussein and the Islamic insurgency that followed him in Iraq, while fostering consensual government. With the same determination, there is no reason why it cannot do the same in Afghanistan. Certainly neither enemy is comparable to Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, which a much poorer America helped to defeat simultaneously within four years of engagement.
Nearly 70 years ago, a far less scientifically sophisticated country developed the atomic bomb in three years. It could likewise plug a leaking oil well in three months.
If the United States chose to close its southern border — by finishing the fence, fining all employers of illegal aliens, and increasing patrols — illegal entry from the south would cease almost at once. The pool of resident illegal aliens would shrink through assimilation, intermarriage, and voluntary repatriation while Congress kept haggling over the particulars of comprehensive reform.
Our supposedly intractable problems are hardly insurmountable. Ascendant China and India have much less freedom and far greater environmental problems, political turmoil, and class disparity. Europe is not as productive as America and is shrinking in population, not growing as we are.
In the bleak 1930s, we were told that German discipline and order were the answer; during the depressing stagflation of the 1970s, Japan, Inc. was supposed to be the way of the future. Then a resurgence of American confidence and renewed faith in our exceptional system dispelled all such nonsense.
The United States still remains the most racially diverse, stable, free, productive, and militarily strong country in the world. Its current crises are largely the political and cultural creations of the most affluent and leisured generation in civilization’s history — not due to longstanding civil unrest, structural weakness, or a sudden shortage of natural resources.
America may well soon decline and become no different from any other nation. But such a depressing future would largely be our generation’s own free choice; it is not a historical inevitability.
Shake off the malaise! The world will look so much brighter in just a mere four months.
VDH ping.
Not until NOV and the Dums re gone, Then we can laugh and dance again.
State of mind, or a committed drumbeat campaign to demoralize us and make us believe in the inevitability? A lot of the dismal crap is manufactured to get Americans to believe that the “can do” attitude has died. After a while perception becomes reality and that’s what the dark forces are counting on.
Oh sure, all this chaos and undermining of our economy and our national security is all simply a state of our mind?
We can deem the disaster in the Gulf ‘all cleaned up’.
All in in November, It truly may be now or never.
The choice was made in Nov 2008.
The destruction is well under way and I don't think we're going to return to "business as usual" by electing some better people next time.
Thank you for the encouragement, Victor. It comes at a very good time.
The problem is that there is now a LARGE portion of the population that WANTS American decline. Either because they have been feed Marxist crap for the last 40 years via the “education” system, or because they think they will profit (money and/or power) from it.
I agree we still have the ability to climb out of the hole we are in but it will be a long, hard climb and the ability to turn things around won’t last forever. Somewhere there is a tipping point, a point of no return.
The first step to recovery is to stop the racists, the democrats and the other socialists, moochers and America haters in Washington and the Federal bureaucracy from digging the hole deeper every day.
They are rapidly heading down to the point of no return.
The question is - will they reach that point before the bulk of American voters wake up and try to throw their sorry arses out?
Correct, and they have made their choices. The culture, mindset, work ethic and responsibility that were key to our successes of a nation no longer exist among the majority. If you want to see the future of the country, take a walk down main street or switch on reality tv. That will tell you what you need to know.
To reduce us all to penury, to make ALL Americans feel and know, first-hand, the life most indolent and squalid losers in the US do, will buy time for “O” to consolidate whatever ‘reforms’ his administration can force feed the country.
Believe me, uniting ALL America behind the idea of prosperity and progress is NOT on “O’s” agenda.
The rot reaches back much farther than 2008, and the rot is deep. The Republicans, who a short 15 years ago were mouthing an intention to return education and Medicare back to the states, or the people, are now gaining popularity on the OPPOSITE. VDH is dead right that we are a country rich in resources and potential. And he is dead right that exploiting that potential is in large part a function of "state of mind." The people need to drop the government down about 50 pegs, and assume command and control of the country once again.
our generation's own free choice; it is not a historical inevitabilityIt's every generation's free choice, but I think demise is, at some point, a historical inevitability. From Democracy to Dictatorship is as real as it gets.
No—you’re wrong and the error is here:
“the next generations has NO chance to doing better than the previous ones”
Do you realize what can happen with enough Steve Kings and Michelle Bachmanns in congress, Jan Brewers as governors and Sarah Palin or Lt. Col. Alan West in the White House?
Do you realize the power of tax cuts, and the explosion of prosperity that will result when the markets are set free?
Optimism or pessimism for the future might just be related to the age of the observer.
The elderly reflect on their *best days* with experience and history as evidence; while the young anticipate that *things will get better* by avoiding the mistakes of the past.
Being in the elderly category - I’m terrified.
Some people have the vocabulary to
sum up things in a way you can understand them.
This quote was translated into English
from an article appearing in the
Czech Republic as published in the
Prager Zeitung of 28 April 2010.
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama
but a citizenry capable of
entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.
It will be far easier to
limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency
than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment
to a depraved electorate willing to have
such a man for their president."
"The problem is much deeper
and far more serious than Mr. Obama,
who is a mere symptom of what ails America .
Blaming the prince of the fools
should not blind anyone to the
vast confederacy of fools
that made him their prince."
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama,
who is, after all, merely a fool.
It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools
such as those who made
him their president."
At the top of the agenda for the cultural marxists—kill the American spirit. Kill the notion that we can get out of this mess.
You guys are suckers for the cultural marxist agenda. Not me.
Look at the prosperity from the Bush tax cuts—at that time the free markets were only operating on less than 50% capacity.
Just think about it a little.
Maybe reconsider whether he's 'wrong' or not. His point is (channeling John Belushi), "It's Not Over Until We Say It Is". Yes, we could become the "third world $hithole" but ONLY if we give in to the 'malaise'. VDH is saying that it is NOT an inevitability and indeed it is not. America has risen above even greater challenges before and can do so again.
Funny—you just contradicted yourself.
If you’re going by history, you know the American spirit, backed by the free markets and most importantly God’s grace,
always wins in the end.
Hanson is right.
And we should know that the left is desperate to kill our spirit.
Take heed, all you trolls and useful idiots.
I agree with Victor, however, my confidence on the end of our current thugocracy will be determined by the Congressional elections this November. It would be best for us to elect hard core conservatives and miss the majority by 3-5 votes then to win the majority with a bunch of McCain lite pubics. There are majorities and then there are majorities looking over their shoulders. The latter may be to our advantange. Hell, in that situation we may act as lazarus and raise the dead with so-called “Blue Dog Democrats”. That term is just as funny as “Moderate Republican”. It just means they had to lie to get to Washington. What they actually believe in is their ivy league elitism.
Just more proof I’m senile;) LOL!!
Sounding like my parents who used “the good old days” and “you kids don’t know how lucky you are”. Ah the contradictions.
Hope does spring eternal;)
He’s wrong. There’s no getting out of this debt with the population of Americans we have today. There’s no getting out of the slide into paganism and islam.
They are fat, lazy, stupid, and immoral. They prefer slavery to government to freedom from its oppression. They prefer pagan barbarianism to the civilization of Christianity.
We are headed into post-Christian USA, just like Europe is in its post-Christian period.
America decided. America chose this. It happened over decades, so it is bigger than Ears and his homies. VDH is correct on that point.
Americans decided that they would rather grow government and make it their god than pretty much any alternative. That goes for lots of “conservatives” as well.
I pursue optimism wherever possible, but........I liken this to whistling past the graveyard. Unless and until you find a way to fix the fundamental problem of unaccountable governence you’ll get nowhere fast. The truth be told the problems are an outgrowth of a broken political class whose primary aim is to enrich itself at the populace’s expense while toadying to the global elites who craft what passes for public policy. The U.S. is near subject to what amounts to foriegn governance. At this point, I see no real solution to that problem. As a “Nation State” the U.S. is passing into the ash bin of history. The elections have become meaningless because the two parties are joined at the top and their policies are dictated to them by foriegn interests. I think that largely explains why so many so-called “Republicans” started out to run in 2008 only to drop out after learning two things; first they learned that they would be the loser because the “fix” was in and it was the Dem’s turn; and, two, they were told that if through some fluke they did win, they would have to take action according to a predetermined script. This explains for example, why Bush appeared to do much the same types of things to bail out the banks/economy that Obama has continued to do but on a larger scale.
Put another way, if you step back and think about your life and life choices over the last 50 years you see a pattern emerge. For example; soon you won’t be able to buy the traditional incandescent light bulb; you may prefer it but it will no longer be available; you have no choice over who you sell your house too and conversely, you no longer have any choice over who your neighbors are. Where I live it’s no longer possible to buy single pain windows for your house; I can’t buy gasoline without ethanol in it; I can’t buy the old style water heater, etc. These were decisions made for me; not decisions I made for myself. Yesterday we learned that through the artifice of the EPA, the gov’t is going to begin the process of drastically reducing refining capacity in the U.S.; this morning I learn that Obama will be giving a speach about new economic opportunities at a federally funded “new” automobile battery plant that will produce state of the art batteries for electric cars; now of course we’re being told that there’s going to be electric cars in our future and we’ll have no choice except to buy them because by way of EPA action, gasoline will be $5.00 to $7.00 a gallon by 2015.
Thus, you begin to understand that our futures are truly no longer in our hands and that the U.S. gov’t is being directed by forces beyond our control. The elections, etc. are simply window dressing designed to provide the hapless populace with the appearance of choice. The whole thing is an elaborate lie.
Being in my early thirties, I'm anticipating bad days ahead.
Prepare. Humans seem to desire to be slaves. Being a slave to Christ is ultimately freeing. Being a slave to government, uh, not so much.
Probably. But try nullification first.
Impeachment?
I respectfully disagree with the honorable doctor. We have moved most of our manufacturing capabilities offshore these days. In the 40s Pennsylvania itself made more steel than any country in the world. Then our national debt did not crush our children and grandchildren - if we ever can pay it off. The burden of state, local, and Federal government regulations now are much higher. Try to get the permits to do something - say drill for natural gas.
Yes America can be great again. We have the talent and the resources. However we need the freedom to be able to do so.
FREEDOM!!!!
They want more than anything to kill our Constitution. Killing the American spirit and morals goes along with this plan.
But think about it. They have all the political power and are trying everything, but our Constitution still stands.
If they had been victorious, Obama could come out today, make a speech about how his victory over our constitution. But he can’t. He has to keep pretending.
Look at how Kagan has to act like she’s Scalia in order to get confirmed.
If they had won, they could come out in the open and proclaim victory. But in the end, they still answer to us and to our Constitution. Most of all, to the Good Lord. That goes for Obama, Soros, Putin, and all their useful idiots. And for all trolls on this website.
My point was that "democracy" can be used as the engine to undermine our republic. See Direct Communist Democracy: Towards a pragmatic post-Marxist communist teaching.
Any number of individuals may have a sense of revulsion to the collective, centralized and planned social structure - but when "the majority rules," well, the majority rules! I think the agenda sucks, I think it's bad for the human spirit, and it leads to social decline. But I'm just one dude.
-- Look at the prosperity from the Bush tax cuts--at that time the free markets were only operating on less than 50% capacity. --
Bush was as big a collectivist as Clinton. His daddy was the first president to utter the words "new world order" to the public, as in such an arrangement is a good thing. When the republicans tout federal government as a proper site for education and medical insurance functions, and other republicans cheer "HOORAY! for our guys, they are winning!" I mentally note that they are winning by bribing the voters with public funds.
I've thought about it. More than a little. I don't like what I'm seeing and hearing. Can we get out of this mess? Sure - we have the resources, the people, health, good weather, etc. As a country we are blessed beyond what we deserve. I'm going to repeat what I said though, democracy to dictatorship is as real as it gets.
And, if the “Republican’ts” live up to their spineless reputations, not a whole lot will get done as is usually the case when they are in charge.
The momentum MUST not be squandered this time. Although, after years and years of let down after let down, there is not much hope for anything to change from several of us here as well.
Wish I had the positive attitude of VDH. But I don’t, and I don’t think November will be anywhere near the blow-out we need and some are touting.
My belief is that the majority of Americans are not interested, nor are they paying attention. The ones sounding the alarm are my age and older, and we’ll be dying off. And academia has been hugely successful at suppressing critical thought. The socialists can now take their places in the next era.
I’m ashamed to have left this mess to my children. Their generation isn’t equipped to deal with reality we’ve shielded them from. A government bureaucracy anxious to manage their lives for them after we’re gone will do very well.
The constitution is dead.
They don’t follow it.
People around here don’t even want to follow it.
For instance, take a look at all the drug warriors around here. At least with alcohol, they passed a constitutional amendment. Now, they just pass unconstitutional laws because it’s the “moral” thing to do.
For your Chicago nannies, banning guns is the “moral” thing to do “for the children”.
For the drug warriors around here banning certain substances is the “moral” thing to do “for the children”.
Neither group cares about following the constitution.
They just want what they want and they like it when its done to the “bad people”.
I’m sure you’ll be saying “our constitution stands” and “I’m a free man” when obama puts you on a train to go work off the debt in a a Chinese mine.
As one who has studied and continues to study the law, the words of the constitution obtain force of law via judicial interpretation. The constitution as implemented is not what one would think by reading the constitution. Just to pick one point, the commerce clause. This has been elevated into pretty much carte blanche for the federal government to act, in many many areas (including immigration!, regulation of the right to keep and bear arms, "drug prohibition" without a constitutional amendment, and so on). Does the constitution still stand? Sure. Is it being applied as the founders envisioned, or as it SHOULD be applied, in order to obtain the best that society has to offer? I mean, the constitution stands with Obama in power, just as much as it did with Washington (George) in power.
-- Look at how Kagan has to act like she's Scalia in order to get confirmed. --
That's evidence that the government is a charade. She acts, she gets confirmed. Wonderful. Not.
-- But in the end, they still answer to us and to our Constitution. --
They are enabled by being elected by simple majorities, and too many of the voters are on the receiving end of "give and take." As for "answering to the constitution," the bastards are effectively rewriting it, keeping the words (of course), but rejecting the substance because it stands between them and control.
-- Most of all, to the Good Lord. --
Amen to that. I teach my kids what I call responsible personal independence. Honesty, hard work, and humility won't make you king on earth, and you'll face some tough choices that incline you to do wrong in order to obtain temporal wealth.
Too many people here need to "hold the malaise" and recall the far greater struggles our forefathers endured, that we may very well have to endure as well.
"...with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
Totally agree, the constitution is dead. There are 4,543 words in the document, it is 6 pages long, you can read it in 15 minutes.
Think about it. Think about the tax code, new laws being passed every day, the document is meaningless, we have tons of loss and taxes that violate it even today, Obama is literally shredding it, but other past presidents, even republicans have too. We like to think it is the law of the land, but it doesn’t matter “law wise” jack sqaut. Wait until Kagan is on the court and they review the Arizona immigration law, you’ll see the constitution means nothing.
Every state at this point would be better off withdrawing from the union. Disban the entire army I don’t care, some country want’s a piece of us, I say come get some.
I agree. Politicians are taught, in schools, that a function of elections is to give populations a sense of being in control, let they become restive. Despots have elections. Elections are not a measure of freedom.
Party politics is one outward indicator of a sham system. The US, via State Department, exports two party politics to other countries. It's a generic system that permits two ostensibly agreeable groups (bipartisan) to have a "pretend conflict," so the voters can pick which of two directions they prefer. Short term and superficial differences result, but the general progress of government control over the people (perpetuation of a "control" class over a "controlled" class) is highly likely.
Returning to "business as usual" by going back to the RINO globalist form of wealth redistribution would only be a minor improvement over what we had. As a matter of fact, those types are responsible for the electorate choosing marxism in 2008.
Electing conservative Republicans (for the first time in forever) to lead the country would result in a massive shift toward prosperity and sanity. Real cuts in the size of government, real cuts in spending, real cuts in taxes, and real conservative, pro-American policies actually implemented, will put the USA back in its place as the beacon of freedom and prosperity.
The 10 stages of Societal Decline takes an average of 200 years to complete. Most experts agree that we are between the 8th and 9th stages. (Apathy-8, Dependency-9)
The final stage is Tyranny-10. Once any nation becomes thoroughly entwined in the Apathy and Dependency stages, there is very little that can be done to stop it.
VDH is being creatively disingenuous here, the budget deficit in the USA is well over 3 Trillion a year if sane accounting standards were applied, the current debt of the country is over $128Trillion, to surpass 135Trillion before the next Presidential election.
And VDH knows this, he’s written about it in the past.
He also mysteriously falls back in to the default position that the US oligarchy and the average servant class in the United States aggregate into some type “we” at this point in time. There is no longer a United States in aggregate, there will never be a closed border because the oligarchy increased their concentration of wealth the longer the border stays open.
Why does VDH believe that the total economic output of this country implies our strength? Under 5% of the counties in this country produce over 50% of the exports. Again, there is no longer a aggregate “United States standing together”, the country has been permanently divided between producers and leeches.
VDH needs to lay off the flagwaving pablum and get serious about defending what for many years have been considered his personal conservative principles, this original article is a fine example of the sad sack showing of conservative thought in the top tier media outlets in this country.
VDH, pick it up!
We will know one way or another in a few short months. If the GOP reclaims either House of Congress, 0bama becomes a lame duck and potentially an impeached one. I think there is a 'bloodless' third choice. We'll see.
p.s. did you see 0bama has even lost Streisand??!!!
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