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Things Fall Apart
Townhall.com ^ | October 24, 2014 | Pat Buchanan

Posted on 10/24/2014 2:32:41 PM PDT by Kaslin

When this writer was 3 years old, the Empire of Japan devastated Battleship Row of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Before I was 7, Gen. MacArthur was in an office in Tokyo overlooking the Imperial Palace, dictating to a shattered Japan.

In 1956, President Eisenhower, impressed by the autobahn he had seen in Hitler's Reich, ordered a U.S. Interstate Highway System constructed, tying America together, one of the great public works projects in all history.

Within a decade, the system was on its way to completion.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy said the United States, beaten into space by Nikita Khrushchev's Soviet Union, would put a man on the moon and return him to earth within the decade.

In July 1969, President Nixon, on the deck of the carrier Hornet, welcomed home Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins of Apollo 11.

What ever became of that America? What ever became of that can-do nation? What has happened to us?

This October saw the vaunted Center for Disease Control and Prevention fumbling over basic questions on how to protect Americans from an Ebola epidemic in three small countries of West Africa.

In September, an intruder with a knife climbed the White House fence, trotted across the North lawn, walked through the unlocked front door of the president's house, barreled over a female officer, and ran around the East Room before being tackled by a Secret Service agent going off duty. The president had just departed.

Days earlier, an armed security guard in Atlanta with a violent criminal past was allowed by Secret Service to ride an elevator with Barack Obama.

Last summer came reports that 60,000 children and young people from Central America had walked across the border into the United States, overwhelming our Border Patrol.

Last spring, we learned that sick and suffering vets were deliberately made to wait months for appointments to see VA doctors, and dozens may have died during the wait.

Earlier, the rollout of Obamacare, years in preparation, became a national joke and a metaphor for government incompetence.

Under President Bush came Katrina, where 30,000 residents of New Orleans were stranded for days behind a pool of stagnant water after a hurricane. The city and state couldn't handle it.

Yet, during five days in 1940, 350,000 British troops, besieged at Dunkirk, were rescued from across the Channel by their countrymen in boats and yachts under the guns of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe.

Such events have contributed to a collapse of confidence among Americans in the competency of their leaders and their government.

Large majorities now believe America is heading downhill, that the future will not be as good as the past, that we are going in the wrong direction. Malaise pervades the republic.

And there are larger reasons for these sentiments.

Our recent wars, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, all seem to have left them and us worse off. In fighting our new war in Iraq and Syria we have neither a credible strategy nor sufficient troops to prevail against the Islamic State.

Already, Americans are asking: Why is this our war?

Since the mid-1970s, the real wages of working Americans have stagnated as we have run uninterrupted trade deficits totaling more than $10 trillion. Under Obama the national debt has surpassed the Gross Domestic Product.

Our manufacturing base has been hollowed out with Detroit as Exhibit A. We outsource our future by borrowing from China to buy from China.

We borrow from Japan and Europe to defend Japan and Europe, though World War II has been over for 70 years.

FedEx tracks with precision millions of packages a day. But the U.S. government cannot locate and send back 12 million illegal aliens.

Thirty years after a Reagan amnesty that carried a commitment to secure our borders, Obama is preparing an executive amnesty for untold millions of illegals, as soon as the election is over. And still the borders are not secure.

If government is conceded a role in anything, it is in building roads, bridges, highways and airports, and in running public schools.

Yet our infrastructure is crumbling, U.S. children fall lower and lower in international competition, and the racial divide in academic performances has never closed, despite an investment of trillions in education over half a century. Even Joe Biden calls LaGuardia a "Third World" airport.

Many private institutions are succeeding splendidly. But our public institutions, save the military, seem to be broadly failing.

Congress is gridlocked. The president is seen as a dithering incompetent. The Supreme Court is polarized irreparably.

Our political, racial and cultural clashes, traceable to conflicts created by the revolutions of the 1960s, are daily magnified and exacerbated by cable TV, the Internet and social media.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," wrote the poet Yeats.

Clare Luce put is another way. In this world, she said, there are two kinds of people -- optimists and pessimists. "The pessimists are better informed."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
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1 posted on 10/24/2014 2:32:41 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Ike “ordered” the creation of the intestates?


2 posted on 10/24/2014 2:33:52 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: Kaslin

I don’t know. Obama thinks of playing golf and within an hour he’s out there, swinging away.

You can’t beat that response time!


3 posted on 10/24/2014 2:34:13 PM PDT by samtheman
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To: Kaslin

Is it just me, or does he look like he just smoked a Tommy Chong-sized doobie?


4 posted on 10/24/2014 2:34:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: Kaslin

Not sure what you are talking about. The new Freedom Tower is almost completed. /s


5 posted on 10/24/2014 2:35:32 PM PDT by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts 2013 is 1933 REBORN)
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To: Kaslin

The entire US Congress, EXEMPT and treasonous,
and the entire MSM, together (working for Obola)
could not find the the Tyrant’s BC
or his applications as a foreign student.

No wonder they are hated
(and Issa laughed about it even today).


6 posted on 10/24/2014 2:35:45 PM PDT by Diogenesis (The EXEMPT Congress is complicit in the absence of impeachment)
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To: Kaslin

I’ve always wondered why, when Rome was afire and Nero was diddling or fiddling or whatever, why didn’t someone stop it from happening? Guess I’m learning how it happens...


7 posted on 10/24/2014 2:38:53 PM PDT by Resettozero
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To: Kaslin
What ever became of that America? What ever became of that can-do nation? What has happened to us? Common Core math?
8 posted on 10/24/2014 2:44:35 PM PDT by Jim from C-Town (The government is rarely benevolent, often malevolent and never benign!)
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To: BenLurkin

“Ike “ordered” the creation of the intestates?”

Well, sorta. Actually, he proposed legislation that created the interstate highway system. It was justified as a defense project.

Here’s a good link

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/homepage.cfm


9 posted on 10/24/2014 2:45:50 PM PDT by DugwayDuke
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To: Kaslin

Joe McCarthy was right. Communists infiltrated and took over.


10 posted on 10/24/2014 2:48:50 PM PDT by aomagrat (Gun owners who vote for democrats are too stupid to own guns.)
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To: Resettozero

Nero was overthrown and committed suicide. Within a year Rome had competent emperors again.


11 posted on 10/24/2014 2:56:32 PM PDT by Argus
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To: BenLurkin

“Ike “ordered” the creation of the intestates?”

I remember reading that the ‘interstates’ was an idea first suggested during WWII and that Ike was merely furthering the idea.


12 posted on 10/24/2014 2:56:53 PM PDT by spel_grammer_an_punct_polise (Why does every totalitarian political hack think that he knows how to run my life better than I do?)
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To: spel_grammer_an_punct_polise

probably originally meant to allow the movement of large amounts of troops and materiel during war.


13 posted on 10/24/2014 2:57:39 PM PDT by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans)
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To: Kaslin
I'd have thought the relevant lines from Yeats's "The Second Coming" would have been
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

14 posted on 10/24/2014 3:01:26 PM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: Argus
Nero was overthrown and committed suicide. Within a year Rome had competent emperors again.

I know. Isn't it good to be assured that things will always get back on track so quickly after disasters like this one that's unfolding here!
15 posted on 10/24/2014 3:08:41 PM PDT by Resettozero
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To: Kaslin

Obama is preparing an executive amnesty for untold millions of illegals, as soon as the election is over. And still the borders are not secure.

If he does it, it isn’t gonna’ work out well for him come hell or high water one way or the other.


16 posted on 10/24/2014 3:14:44 PM PDT by TalBlack (Evil doesn't have a day job.)
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To: Resettozero

Of course there was a four-way civil war in between first, but still...


17 posted on 10/24/2014 3:36:23 PM PDT by Argus
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To: Argus
Of course there was a four-way civil war in between first, but still...

Oh, I knew all that and more...before I'd had my first cup of coffee this morning. I know lots of other stuff too.
18 posted on 10/24/2014 4:05:24 PM PDT by Resettozero
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To: Kaslin

Somebody-get-me-a-bucket-to-hide-in Buchanan.

Such faith and tenacity. Fight or flight - he chooses flight every time.


19 posted on 10/24/2014 4:19:52 PM PDT by If You Want It Fixed - Fix It
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Is it just me, or does he look like he just smoked a Tommy Chong-sized doobie?


20 posted on 10/24/2014 4:32:09 PM PDT by Rodamala
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