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.
They know you boil frogs slowly.
They don’t have to declare victory. That might be what you’d do.
They’ve subtley changed the culture form the Protestant work ethic that built America to the current entitlement culture that is so rotten.
They’ve won. The people chose it.
We have overt oppression. You have no property rights in America any more. You are a slave to the government.
Most Americans don’t care either because they are stupid, fat, lazy and immoral.
The Federal Reserve is a government-protected monopoly (but I’m redundant there) that is practicing marxist monetary policy.
Why would we not be better off with freedom in money than a central planning committee deciding how much money the economy needs and at what times interest rates should go up and down? Are they really able to understand the billions of variables in a massive economy now when the Soviet central planners couldn’t then.
Will your answer be “technology’s improved” to the point where we can know the hundreds of economic actions of the hundreds of millions of economic agents in the US each day?
The Federal Reserve is the lifeblood of the beast. The federal government could not do things like Obamacare if the Federal reserve did not exist.
This is not something that just occurred in the past year or so.
Haruumpppffff! Wow, your pessimism is oozing like a certain well in the Gulf. I guess I shouldn't blame you being from Michigan and all.
Beautiful downtown Detroit, MI.
This is the only thing that really matters.
So what would you have us do?
Your argument, reduced to its most simple form, is to tell us to just give up. It’s more than a casual request. It’s almost like you’re demanding that we surrender.
In fact, that would be totally against their interest. Much better to declare being faithful to the constitution. The actions need not correspond with the words, because most of the people are unaware of the actions.
-- The people chose it. --
More or less. I don't think it was an informed acquiescence, and to the extent it was informed, a majority of voters decide based on money for themselves from the public treasury.
-- Most Americans don't care either because they are stupid, fat, lazy and immoral. --
I think they care about their own comfort and sense of accomplishment (or entitlement, as the case may be), but a majority is likely indifferent to the socio-political details. Just as happy under a king as a president, as long as they can do more or less what they are doing now.
Accept reality for one. Then go figure out what you can do.
The only real path to peace is submission to Christ. There is no lasting political solution. It is often stated that democracy is a stepping stone to oligarchy. I'm not certain a republic is much different. It isn't when man abandons God to the extent America has.
I think the best course of action would be to spread the gospel as far and wide as possible. No one ever said America would have to be around for the end.
Remember, the Roman Senate was in session up till the day barbarians literally knocked the walls down. So this government paying lip service to the constitution means nothing.
“In fact, that would be totally against their interest. Much better to declare being faithful to the constitution. The actions need not correspond with the words, because most of the people are unaware of the actions.”
Sure, in your sort of game-theory style of doing things. But life is much more than a math game. And the power struggle is not limited to that among men.
They can base their entire regime on a lie if they choose. But their mistake, and Machievelli’s mistake, is to pretend there is no ultimate moral order which forbids this kind of false representation.
“The only real path to peace is submission to Christ.”
Not much argument from me on that.
But submission to the Obama regime is very different from submission to Jesus Christ our risen Saviour.
I don’t submit to Obama or to Soros, and nothing you say will convince me to.
Libertarianism ≠ Conservatism
Ron Paul will never be anything but a nuisance, because he is basically an Isolationist.
FWIW, that's not my personal style, it's just an informed opinion about "how to subvert the constitution without alerting the citizens." Rule 1: Don't alert the citizens.
-- They can base their entire regime on a lie if they choose. But their mistake, and Machievelli's mistake, is to pretend there is no ultimate moral order which forbids this kind of false representation. --
Maybe the scales will come the people's eyes. I certainly hope so. Yours seem to be well open, and you seem to be properly in tune with the order of mankind as intended by the Creator. I've read the book, there is war, bad stuff happens, and eventually destruction by fire. We each account for ourselves, as individuals.
And that's a darn good way to approach life on earth - in service to God, giving Caesar his due.
You're wrong, but I really don't care to tell you why.
Maybe you should start with a dictionary.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with the constitutionality of laws that ban certain substances or certain tools?
Totally irrelevant.
Fifty years ago I came to the conclusion that the only difference between the U. S. and other evil governments, is that they let us citizens, share in more of the wealth. Now they are well on their way of distributing what was formerly ours to the rest of the world.
Russia was a common joke when they held elections with only one name on the ballot, but it isn't any different when you have two people of the same mind on the ballot.
Reagan was an anomaly, and they won't make that mistake again. I have felt since the last campaign was on its final days, that this would be the last election that our vote really mattered, now I even doubt whether it did last time.
I’m not telling you to submit to Obama or Soros. I’m trying to tell you what the state of affairs is in the US today. We are not a free people living in a free country.
We are defacto slaves as they control the fruits of our labor.
That’s the reality of things on the ground.
We work to pay tribute to the imperial tyrannical federal government.
I’m not saying you should like it. I’m saying you should accept the fact that that is the reality.
A good place to start spreading the Gospel would be with our children. A Christian's *most* urgent and important mission field is his own children. His next most important mission field is the children of his congregation.
If we send children into government schools that **are** the very essence of socialist scheme ( and **always** have been), if we send children into government schools that are now utterly godless ( and at their very best offered up a generic and lukewarm Protestantism), then what we will get is a nation of godless socialists!
If children attend Catholic schools we get Catholics
If children attend Baptist schools we get Baptists.
If children attend godless, socialist, government schools we get secular socialists. ( Is a “duh” needed here?)
Solution: We, as conservatives, must work tirelessly to shut down the government schools. We must get as many children as possible into private Christian schools that thoroughly weave the **specific** Judeo Christian values of the child's family and our nation's principles into every minute of the child's day.
However...It is very discouraging when conservatives insist that their child's godless and socialist-model government school is somehow different. Or...Because their daughter or son was offered a quarter of a million dollars in scholarships that somehow our nation's kids, generally, won't be harmed.
Please do. That was the kindest thing I could say about a libertarian.
They are no different than to fake opponents, because they ultimately lead the way to perversion. Check out Barry Goldwater's final days. Then get back to me and tell how that would help a Country founded buy Religious, Moral people, that recognized that our constitution required a religious, moral population, to survive.
We do not have that population today, and most Libertarians I know are Deists at best, atheists at worst.
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