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."
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