Posted on 07/04/2014 12:25:14 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
"The United States cannot afford another decline like that which has characterized the past decade and a half.... [O]nly self-delusion can keep us from admitting our decline to ourselves."
-Henry Kissinger, 1961
For all our optimism, Americans have always worried about our place in the world. It's in our DNA, and it helps drive our renewal. To borrow from the great political scientist Samuel Huntington, "[T]he United States is unlikely to decline so long as its public is periodically convinced that it is about to decline. The declinists play an indispensable role in preventing what they are predicting."
When Kissinger wrote the above words in 1961, he did have some valid concerns. At the time, the U.S. economy was struggling to grow its way out of a recession. The Soviet Union had launched the world's first artificial satellite, known as Sputnik, into orbit. The nation went into a panic, thinking we had fallen behind in technological innovation and would soon be outspent and outmatched by Moscow.
And yet the decade and a half that was the subject of Kissinger's fears -- the period from the end of World War II until John F. Kennedy's administration -- is now seen by most historians as an era of unparalleled American economic growth and power. The decade that followed was even more prosperous, ending with the United States, not the Soviet Union, making the first lunar landing. And a mere 30 years after Kissinger wrote those words, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist entirely.
Every 10 years or so, a new bout of profound pessimism has swept the nation. In his fine book, The Myth of America's Decline, the German journalist and author Josef Joffe documents these periodic waves of declinism....
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
Thank you for the optimistic article. Much needed.
Get rid of Obama and the democrat senate and a few dozen corrupt GOPe RINOS and we can start rebuilding!!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE.
“HOW LITTLE DO MY COUNTRYMEN KNOW WHAT PRECIOUS BLESSINGS THEY ARE IN POSSESSION OF AND WHICH NO OTHER PEOPLE ON EARTH ENJOY” THOMAS JEFFERSON”
“The final asset is America’s unique global leadership role. “
This article quotes Madeline Halfbright and Zbig Brezinski like gods of intellect. No doubt we have much, so did Rome. We both have invading hordes too, and an effeminate Emperor.
America today is unrecognizable from what it was like just twenty years ago. In another twenty years it will be a Third World basket case.
“Thank you for the optimistic article. Much needed.”
I’ve read thousands of articles since the 90’s that China will overtake us in (insert years less than 5) yet here’s the USA still number 1. The problem is we’re letting in useless bastards who don;t deserve to be here.
Time to rebuild and clean-up folks!
I wonder if Rome’s economists said the same?
I think the smart solution is a national divorce, so the Left can have their “best practices” demonstration project on their territory and we can go back to a constitutional republic on our side. Sound good?
National Security Advisor under Obama and his top leaker.
His opinion is therefore NOT objective.
Rome lasted far longer than we have so far and even much more if you count the Eastern Empire/Byzantium.
Henry Kissinger or are you referring to someone else?
LOL. Written by Tom Donilon.
The author!
According to Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner (Morgenson a New York Times reporter) in their bestselling book on the 2008 financial crisis, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, Donilon was a key player at Fannie Mae. The government agency at the center of the crisis. Donilon, note Morgenson and Rosner, was, in his role as “Fannie’s longtime head of government affairs and a key political operative,” a key part in the “cast of characters that helped create the mess” and continued, in the Obama-era, “to hold high positions or are holding jobs of even greater power.”
http://spectator.org/articles/59050/benghazi-what-was-tom-donilon-doing
CLEAN UP first, then rebuild. God is angry at every nation that legalizes child sacrifice. He will not forgive...
“However, the LORD did not turn from the fierceness of His great wrath with which His anger burned against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked Him. And the LORD said, “I will remove Judah also from My sight, as I have removed Israel. And I will cast off Jerusalem, this city which I have chosen, and the temple (house) of which I said, ‘My name shall be there’.”
“Surely at the command (mouth) of the LORD it came upon Judah, to remove them from His sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also for the innocent blood which he shed, for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; AND THE LORD WOULD NOT FORGIVE.” (All caps mine) 2 Kings 23: 26 & 27 and 24: 3 & 4
Don’t get Pat Caddell, the Democratic pollster, started on this creep!
Yep. Problem is, that just like Kali and New York, they’ll eventually head for the exits and try to destroy our country all over again — like VT, NH, AZ, MT, NV, ...
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