Posted on 10/23/2010 11:07:36 PM PDT by Rashputin
America Is Gone By David Deming
There is a whiff of anarchy in the air this morning. As I sit here writing, a conservative victory in the midterm elections looms. But I find no reason to be optimistic. The midterm elections will solve nothing. The plain fact is that conservatives have lost the battle for America. The country that many of us were born in has ceased to exist. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Nothing can or will change until we come to terms with the grim reality of moral degeneration. And I have no hope that this can happen, save by some terrible trial.
Last week in Oklahoma City, two pedestrians were run down by cars at the same intersection within a few hours. In one incident, the driver did not bother to stop, but continued driving as if nothing had happened. It was a horrific but perfect metaphor for the self-absorbed entitlement mentality that grips the country.
Every day, the news brings a startling new incident of moral corruption. A few days ago it was reported that an eighteen-year-old geology student at Arizona State University had starred in an online pornographic film in which she performed "explicit and degrading" sex acts for a one-time payment of $2,000. The young woman explained that she needed the money to supplement her scholarship, and then inexplicably proclaimed, "I have morals!"
We are a nation of gluttons. About one-third of adults in the U.S. are obese. To qualify as "obese," the average person has to be not just overweight, but carry an extra thirty-five pounds or more. In the last thirty years, the obesity rate in America has more than doubled. It is the sheerest irony that today, the average person has the choice of a multiplicity of fresh, wholesome, and nutritious foods, all available at the lowest prices in history. But choosing and preparing the best foods takes time and effort. We would rather stuff ourselves with fast food because it's tasty and convenient. The consequences of this slothful lifestyle include hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. After ruining our health through gluttony, we then go to our physicians and demand a quick fix in the form of a pill. Pharmaceutical companies are glad to oblige. And the government must pay, because free health care is now a "right."
There is no better index for America's moral degradation than television programming. Compare today's shows with those of a generation ago. Every episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" contained a short moral lesson, and "The Twilight Zone" challenged our intellects and stretched our imaginations. But entertainment and instruction have devolved into shock and novelty. The networks are locked in a downward spiral to see who can provide the most outrageous and offensive programming. It's not their fault. They're just giving the American people what they want.
Children are not as smart as their parents. The average child today spends thirteen hours watching television for every hour he spends reading. We blame teachers and schools for failing to educate our children. But what can they do with undeveloped and undisciplined minds that expect to be entertained and rebel at the labor of thought? The decline in intellectual aptitude is so dramatic that the authors of the SAT test have had to add a hundred points to the combined math and verbal score just to make current averages equal of those of a generation ago.
We are oblivious to the fact that our society is intellectually and artistically bankrupt. Modern art is not good enough to be bad. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci took four years to paint the Mona Lisa. He left the work unfinished because he was always seeking to add "perfection to perfection." Earlier this year, x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy revealed that the way Leonardo created realistic flesh tones was by building up successive layers of pigments that were as thin as a few micrometers. A micrometer is a thousandth of a millimeter.
Compare Leonardo's work with that of the modern American artist Robert Ryman. Ryman began his career working as a security guard at a museum. The guard decided he wanted to become a painter, so he bought some white house paint and slathered it on a canvas. Art critics had orgasms. For decades, Ryman has continued to produced paintings that consist of nothing but monochrome white. The tones and textures vary, but most of Ryman's paintings consist of nothing but a plain white surface. Ryman has explained that he paints only white surfaces because he wants to "reduce visual disturbances." Imagine that the next time you're contemplating Michelangelo's "disturbances" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Our popular music is a painful cacophony of obnoxious dissonance. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. We have Snoop Dogg and Lady Gaga. Is that progress? We have advanced technology, but do we use it uplift ourselves? No, we indulge the animal side of our natures. The internet is mostly used for downloading pornography or playing video games.
In America today, everyone is entitled to everything. According to a recent report by NPR, the mentally retarded are now attending college and receiving grants. Professors are being advised (i.e., pressured) to modify their curricula to accommodate the new students. People incessantly demand entitlements and handouts. Every government intervention in the free-market system creates a fresh problem that demands another ruinous intervention with unintended consequences. Nobody is responsible for anything, and no one wants to pay the bills. And believe me, they're coming due.
In this brave new world, everyone has the right to not be offended, and no one can be held accountable for anything. The fundamental unit of human civilization, the family, has been caustically eroded by feminism. The divorce rate is fifty percent. Oklahoma is supposedly a conservative state. Last year, a state legislator introduced a bill that would require parents with minor children seeking a divorce to first undergo counseling. Not only was the bill not passed, but the legislator was derided and mocked. How dare anyone be required to undertake the work necessary to save a marriage for the sake of his or her children? Why, it might interfere with their pursuit of happiness.
We celebrate homosexuality and then wonder why sexually transmitted diseases are exploding. According to the CDC, men-who-have-sex-with-men make up only two percent of the population but account for 53 percent of all new HIV infections and 64 percent of all new syphilis cases.
I'm beginning to acquire an appreciation for Paul's doctrine of Original Sin. The nation that began with freedom of religion has progressed to freedom from religion, freedom from moral constraint, and freedom from responsibility. Just as Plato described in the Republic, the "horses and asses" are "marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen," and the ultimate result can be only that "tyranny will spring from democracy."
Elections matter only in the short term. Every long-term social index I am aware of is negative. The plain fact is that the American people are too morally degenerate to be capable of effective self-government. The Roman satirist Juvenal understood. "The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things -- bread and games!" I can find no reason to be optimistic. It is only our blind vanity that lets us pretend that the United States can endure forever. Rome fell, and so will America. For all intents and purposes, it is already over.
David Deming is an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma and the author of Science and Technology in World History: The Ancient World and Classical Civilization.
True as that may be until there is a huge public outcry..and action...meaning perhaps stop feeding the beast. What other avenue can the people take? Do the American people on a whole care enough to take the hits that would surely come in order to straighten this mess out? Ten years ago I would have said yes...today with the attitudes and mindset of the people...well, that is questionable. We are where we are at because we let this go on so very long...everybody wants their share of the pie and this at every level from the street to the Whitehouse.
A God believing Christian nation would not have tolerated 50 million children murdered.
We are mostly a nation that pays lip service to God but indulge only ourselves in the way we live our lives.
Agreed. But the Chi-coms are cleaning our clocks right now.
“The nation that began with freedom of religion has progressed to freedom from religion”.
Well, we had to make SOME progress!
Silver lining type of thing. ;-)
Getting free of superstition is a step in the right direction, buts it not enough to counter the rest of his too accurate lament.
Accepting the “Islam” disease in place of “Christian” is just stupid.
Okay, I’m done responding to the authors insult to all atheist now.
Until recent decades, our national ideals were “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. All of these presume that human life is sacred. Amazingly however, our elites have succeeded in pushing “reproductive rights”, freedom from responsibility, and death panels. Quite the opposite from a reverence for life or human dignity.
I think it teeters in the balance. Like Jonah’s mission to Nineveh, this will be a near run thing, which ever way it goes.
The issue remains in doubt.
I want to believe that the blood and prayers of god-fearing men and women offered up for this country for 235+ years will count for something...but..I am concerned even for this Nov 2.
Hearts and minds. It worked for Japan and Germany after we defeated them.
And I don't want Obama to succeed in his plans. He's busy trying to turn America into Indonesia.
What do you propose, whipping ourselves in self-flaggelation as the article seems to propose or something more constructive?
With all due respect, you sound like you’ve been neutered (I assume you’re a man?).
“Waa, Waa, we’re doomed...there’s no hope...it’s all over!”
Dude, you’re entitled to your opinion, but thank God that some of the women in our party have more balls than little boys like you!
Good grief it is beyond embarrassing watching the men in our party act like such pansies!
I have a suggestion for you: watch videos of: Palin, Bachman, Cheney (Liz), Malkin, O’Donnell, Angle etc. and take notes. Maybe these women can show you how to act like a man.
It happens drip by drip. It doesn't happen all at once. Did I vote for FDR? LBJ? Nixon? Carter? I did not. I wasn't old enough to vote. Most of the damage was already done before I even was old enough to vote.
You're right that everyone wants pie. Down at the local level, they blame state and federal aid cuts for their woes. What sense did it make to base your budget on outside aid? But they did it, and voters went for it, because, after all, pie just tastes better when it's free.
My own view is that our entire system of government is beyond repair. Our Constitution is fatally flawed. And our people are utterly incapable of understanding or doing anything to make it better.
The top one. I would put “America’s future” to it instead of America, but it is fine as is.
The other is too awkward to read, IMO.
Yup. A hairy one, at that. Lucky for me, my manhood doesn't depend on moony optimism in the political realm.
“Waa, Waa, we’re doomed...there’s no hope...it’s all over!”
I didn't cry about it. It doesn't bother me at all.
Dude, you’re entitled to your opinion, but thank God that some of the women in our party have more balls than little boys like you!
The women in "the party" have an interest in serving up optimism. I don't. Their jobs may depend on it, but mine doesn't. I'm not in politics.
I have a suggestion for you: watch videos of: Palin, Bachman, Cheney (Liz), Malkin, O’Donnell, Angle etc. and take notes. Maybe these women can show you how to act like a man.
Again, political job-holders and job-seekers are under constraints that I am not. Same goes for columnists. They must offer opinions that go down easy with their constituents. I, on the other hand, can say what I really think.
Amen - the spirit of America cannot be killed while We the People are alive.
Thanks for the critique. I was troubled and couldn’t sleep Friday night after seeing the video of Obama’s rallies. How can we cut through the darkness that enables people to support and cheer for wicked god-hating murderers, thieves and liars?
Probably you have one viable way to go - elections are unlikely to be enough. I don’t think you will take it. But I’m not there, and it’s not my place to tell you to go to a bloody civil war. However, just observing, I think it’s inevitable.
Proving the guy wrong will require “us” to restore our republic, take back control of our government, and totally cut the 90% of government funding that is causing our destruction.
I gave these women as high profile examples of what courage looks like! It was also women who started the Tea Party. Don't try and make this just about politics! Dude, you are pathetic. Anybody can give up and claim defeat; it's real men and women who fight till the end. Thank God our children on not solely dependent on sad sacks like you to ensure their future.
You better get back downstairs to your basement room at Mom's house.
I agree our Constitution is fatally flawed, but our Declaration of Independence, our more fundamental law, is not.
“You’re right that everyone wants pie. Down at the local level, they blame state and federal aid cuts for their woes. What sense did it make to base your budget on outside aid? But they did it, and voters went for it, because, after all, pie just tastes better when it’s free.”
*****
You say verybody wants free pie because it tastes better? Sorry, but I and millions of other Americans find that the pie tastes MUCH better when we’ve worked hard to earn it, rather than just waiting around for someone to hand it to us for free. I agree that there are WAY too many people in this country on food stamps and welfare, but in no way do I agree that the problem can’t be solved.
America has persevered through a bloody Revolution, Civil War, a Great Depression, and two World Wars... and guess what? We re-emerged from each challenge as stronger nation than ever before.
Fortunately, there are a growing number of us who, UNLIKE YOURSELF, are willing to fight to reverse our current collision course toward socialism and self-destruction. So if you want to spend the rest of your days “fine with the long, slow, slog towards oblivion”, as you previously posted, and “living out your days in peace”, then suit yourself and continue to wallow passively in your apocalyptic state... The rest of us will continue to take up the good fight in your absence.
You’re welcome.
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“My own view is that our entire system of government is beyond repair. Our Constitution is fatally flawed. And our people are utterly incapable of understanding or doing anything to make it better.”
*****
You couldn’t be more wrong about that, my fatalistic friend. Our Constitution is a BRILLIANTLY conceived document that is the envy of the free and oppressed world. It is when our corrupted elected officials try to CIRCUMVENT the Constitution that gets us into trouble. As for people being “utterly incapable of understanding or doing anything to make it better”, why don’t you just speak for yourself and leave out the growing number of us who are working tirelessly on the front lines to preserve the greatness of the United States of America?
Honestly, you sound nothing like a conservative, nor like someone who loves this country, so why should anyone pay any further attention to your highly useless brand of pessimism?
Your naivete is refreshing.
Sadly Huck is right though.
“A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them. Much of it is irreversible. That is true because habits of dependence are much easier to form than to break. Once the government, on ground of public policy, has assumed the responsibility to provide people with buying power when they are in want of it, or when they are unable to provide themselves with enough of it, according to a minimum proclaimed by government, it will never be the same again.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/929392/posts
The mass-man, he says, confronting the phenomenon of the State, “sees it, admires it, knows that there it is. . . . Furthermore, the mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own.
Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem, presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. . . . When the mass suffers any ill-fortune, or simply feels some strong appetite, its great temptation is that permanent sure possibility of obtaining everything, without effort, struggle, doubt, or risk, merely by touching a button and setting the mighty machine in motion.”
The unquestioning, determined, even truculent maintenance of the attitude which Professor Ortega y Gasset so admirably describes, is obviously the life and strength of the State; and obviously too, it is now so inveterate and so widespread - one may freely call it universal - that no direct effort could overcome its inveteracy or modify it, and least of all hope to enlighten it.
This attitude can only be sapped and mined by uncountable generations of experience, in a course marked by recurrent calamity of a most appalling character. When once the predominance of this attitude in any given civilization has become inveterate, as so plainly it has become in the civilization of America, all that can be done is to leave it to work its own way out to its appointed end. The philosophic historian may content himself with pointing out and clearly elucidating its consequences, as Professor Ortega y Gasset has done, aware that after this there is no more that one can do.
“The result of this tendency,” he says, “will be fatal. Spontaneous social action will be broken up over and over again by State intervention; no new seed will be able to fructify. Society will have to live for the State, man for the governmental machine. And as after all it is only a machine, whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it, the State, after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more gruesome than the death of a living organism. Such was the lamentable fate of ancient civilization.”
CHAPTER 5
Our Enemy, The State
by Albert J. Nock - 1935
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