Posted on 05/15/2012 5:00:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
There's a reason gun sales are through the roof, gold advertisements are everywhere, products like survival seeds have started to creep into the edges of our consciousness, and Doomsday Preppers now runs on National Geographic. It's the same reason people have started asking about ways to hedge their money against inflation and which countries they can flee to if America falls apart. A decade ago, the idea that America could economically collapse because of a default on its debt seemed ludicrous, but we now know it's entirely possible that the country could turn into Greece within a decade or two. Many Americans don't see it because the country still superficially appears to be prosperous, but those that pay attention realize that we're only maintaining our high standard of living with borrowed money. The problem is that soon, there won't be enough money in the world to keep Americans living in the style to which we've become accustomed. By 2020, it will take "19 percent of the rest of the world’s GDP" just to finance our debt and we're likely to still be going further into the red at a rapid pace even then. It's easy to point the finger at Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for doing so much to weaken our country, but the problems we have don't begin or end there. They've been a long while in the making.
1) A Moral Slide: We have fetishized diversity, tolerance, compassion, and niceness so much that those traits practically make up the core of a left-wing pseudo-religion because they're among the very few areas where we've morally surpassed previous generations of Americans. However, it's worth asking how you think modern Americans compare to previous generations on traits like charity, chastity, duty, Godliness, honesty, honor, industriousness, respect for authority, work ethic, and self-reliance. Most people would agree that modern Americans don't even come close to measuring up.
A large part of the blame for that travesty rests on the shoulders of the Christian church. Most churches in this country have become complacent and are all too content to preach to the aging choir rather than adopt modern methods of communication. Where are the Twitter and Facebook pages? Where are the best clips from sermons on YouTube? They exist, but they're few and far between. Many churches have also become so cowed that they're not willing to stick up for the Biblical principles out of fear that someone might be offended. The truth is that if your pastor isn't fairly regularly saying things that would probably offend the ACLU, Lady Gaga, Bill Maher, and Barney Frank, then you should probably find another church. It's not about being political; it's about standing up for what you believe in. When even most pastors seem to lack the courage to speak out, it's no surprise that the number of Americans who consider religion to be "not very important" has quadrupled in the last 50 years.
Back in 1779 Samuel Adams wrote,
"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
What you're seeing today in America is Samuel Adams' prophetic words coming to life.
2) No Genuine Threat Like The Soviet Union: While Ronald Reagan's defeat of the Soviet Union freed hundreds of millions of people and neutralized a terrible threat to America and the world, it did have one rather significant negative effect: It made Americans very complacent. For example, during the Cold War, it seems almost unimaginable that America would have discontinued its manned space program or would have gotten so deep in hock to the Red Chinese that they could easily use it as an economic weapon against us.
Now we're in the simultaneously wonderful and terrible position of having no real rival. The EU is going down the tubes faster than we are, China's social unrest, corruption, centralized government, and hundreds of millions of citizens living in village huts are likely to keep it from being a true Super Power in our lifetimes, and Al-Qaeda hasn't mounted a major attack in the United States since 2001. Again, this is all good news, but it's also good news to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth and to be handed everything you want on a silver platter. The problem comes when times inevitably get tough, people and nations that haven't been challenged aren't ready to handle it.
3) A Government That Is Far Too Large: The Founding Fathers were small government fanatics who didn't have an income tax and were deeply suspicious of government power. That proves their wisdom because as government grows larger and more powerful, the people grow smaller, weaker, and more dependent. Additionally, in order to take on its vast powers, the government has chosen to ignore the Constitution. Making an honest attempt to adhere to the 10th Amendment which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," would probably invalidate half of the activities of the federal government. If you wonder why the government does so many things poorly, it's because the Founding Fathers never intended or designed it to do much of what it does today.
Furthermore, as Milton Friedman has said, "There is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program." This means it’s very easy to make government bigger, but much more difficult to make it smaller. That means taxes tend to go up, regulations pile on top of each other, agencies tend to expand, and the government's ability to interfere with the market and your life tends to consistently increase. This is why you’re more likely to see the next Empire State Building or Hoover Dam in countries like China or Dubai than here. It’s because they can get the project half done in the same amount of time it takes a corporation here to prove in court that no rare Dung Beetles will be harmed by their billion dollar venture.
4) Culture Of Dependency: Our ancestors crossed the ocean to gain economic independence and the right to worship as they pleased. Then, they took on the Super Power of their day, the British, to achieve independence. Afterwards, they fought their way across the continent, taking on the Brits, the Spanish, Canadians, Mexicans, and Indians for the right to explore, colonize, and civilize the continent. How do you think the Occupy Crowd measures up to the settlers who blazed the Oregon Trail? If our welfare and food stamp queens had ended up in California panning for gold, how do you think they would have fared?
Of course, those settlers and prospectors had no other choice but to work hard because they didn't have the option of turning an exorbitant social safety net into a hammock. The more the government does, the less reason there is for a man to take care of himself. When the government takes on the role of the father with welfare and food stamps, pays workers for being unemployed, pays for retirements, pays for people's medical care, and pays for charity, a significant percentage of people see no need to continue to do these things for themselves. The more Americans turn into dependent sheep that need big daddy government to take care of them, the worse off the country is, but the better off it makes the politicians. That's too bad because when a politician has a choice between doing what's right for America and making it more likely that he's going to keep his cushy job, very seldom will love of country win out.
5) The Deterioration Of Marriage: In 1950, 78% of households were occupied by married couples. Today, that number has slipped all the way down to 48%. As you can imagine, attitudes have changed quite a bit over the years as well. For example, "more than 80 percent of married women with young children were not working outside the home in 1963" and they were quite content with the situation. According to Charles Murray,
"(In 1962), Gallup interviewed 1,813 women ages 21-60. ‘In general, who do you think is happier,’ the Gallup interviewer asked, ‘the girl who is married and has a family to raise, or the unmarried career girl?’ Ninety-six percent of the wives said the married girl with a family was happier. Ninety-three percent said they did not, in retrospect, wish they had pursued a career instead of getting married."
All of this would be irrelevant if single mothers, grandmothers, or Heather's two mommies could do a comparable job to a nuclear family when it comes to raising children. Unfortunately, the statistics say that they can't. In fact, a large percentage of the problems we have with crime, drugs, and poverty can be traced directly back to children being raised outside of the traditional family structure.
“By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy-two percent of juvenile murderers and 60 percent of rapists come from single-mother homes. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced. A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that after controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.
...Various studies have come up with slightly different numbers, but all the figures are grim. According to the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, children from single-parent families account for 63 percent of all youth suicides, 70 percent of all teenage pregnancies, 71 percent of all adolescent chemical/substance abuse, 80 percent of all prison inmates, and 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children.
A study cited in the Village Voice produced similar numbers. It found that children brought up in single-mother homes ‘are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.’”
This country is not doomed to continue to slide down the back side of the mountain, but unless we start to seriously address our weaknesses, future generations will grow up in a place where their grandparents will have to tell them what it was like when America was a great nation to call home.
1 - Obama
2 - Pelosi
3 - Reid
4 - Biden
5 - Czars
You got it
I am starting to believe that communists are a bunch of weaklings who are basing their ideology in racism but who make everyone believe they are the sole non racist group out there.
Thus they divided and dared tribes against each other and promoted a sort of passive aggressive surrenderist self hate to the other races. It’s not an upward competition to the best race, but a PC competition to the worst and weakest, with the sucker who does not take to it being the winner.
KAZ, another excellent article. Thank you.
Unions (especially public employee unions)
Liberals (socialists in disguise which destroy everything they touch everywhere)
Rabid Secularists determined to drive all religion from American (especially Christianity)
The “right” to vote. Voting should be a privilege that has to be earned. The lazy masses should never have been given the ability to vote themselves the treasury.
White/Western guilt that prevents us from doing what needs to be done and saying what needs to be said.
The Geneva Convention which prevents us from actually winning wars in a timely cost efficient manner with minimum loss of life on OUR side, while maximizing the death and destruction on their side.
bidding on public contracts which dramatically increases the cost and time it takes to complete anything the government tries to do over what the private sector would pay for the exact same (possible better) result.
open meeting laws which stifle governments ability to react in a timely manner at all levels and results in endless costly studies with little real action.
The left remind me of a criminal who accuses the victim of the crime he has done
I’m glad to see the writer actually points to we the people as being at least partially to blame. As a society we’ve become incredibly gluttonous.
Its like no one was ever taught the meaning of the word “NO”.
I think of my great grandmother and her resistance to getting a microwave. She just didn’t see the point. As she said, “If I’m going to die in the 6 or 7 minutes it takes to fry an egg, saving 3 or 4 minutes won’t really matter.”
Thanks
If we didn’t have the wholesale moral decline in America,
your 5 wouldn’t be an issue.
“the idea that America could economically collapse because of a default on its debt seemed ludicrous, “
Sorry to say this, but there really is something terribly wrong with the folks over at Townhall lately, either it is being staffed by a bunch of very young children or very STUPID people. Anyone that ever managed to pass 3rd grade math has known that we were destined for a Monetary Collapse, Precisely because of the Federal Reserve System way of Creating Money out of debt. All PONZI Schemes FAIL once the people realize the scam. All Money is LOANED into Existence with interest, now the money is created by this new debt, but what about the Interest?? It is not CREATED and must be paid back by the BLOOD AND SWEAT OF LABOR. Thereby rendering us forever ENSLAVED in DEBT to THE BANKERS and the GOVERNMENT, for The DEBT CAN NEVER BE REPAYED IN FULL, let alone ever be PAID DOWN. That would be an Instant Depression, for NO CURRENCY would Exist were we to pay off our debt. ALL MONEY IS BORROWED INTO EXISTENCE.
Amen to that! I used to scoff at those who would restrict voting to property owners, but anymore I certainly believe voting should be restricted to those who have "skin in the game" IE: taxpayers, not parasites.
11 Reasons Why America Is in Declince
1) “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2) “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
3) “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4) “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
5) “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
6) “You shall not murder.
7) “You shall not commit adultery.
8) “You shall not steal.
9) “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10) “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
11) Love your neighbor as yourself.
Communists took charge in Russia once they removed the Romanoff monarchy.
They imposed their system on a people who were largely backward, impoverished and illiterate serfs. The process had to leap-frog whole phases of social and cultural development, because literate populations in urban centers were not representative of the entire country.
In the US and in other developed nations, for Communism to succeed, they had/have first to convince a literate and largely affluent (by global standards/minorities included) population that they were/are shamefully and systematically exploited and cheated by a Capitalist establishment. Prosperous and thriving populations had/have to be forever ’re-educated’ to think of themselves as underserved and deliberately deprived.
“O’s” primary mission (and it’s the primary mission of ALL Liberals for decades) has been/is to carry on this ‘re-education’ and to reiterate this lie ad infinitum.
In increasingly prosperous and stable societies and in order to continue their ‘re-education’, new and I think cruder, lies must be invented… even if (as in America) Liberals have to re visit and resuscitate issues like racial inequity, which was well on the way to resolution….
All lies and all more obvious and ugly all the time.
When Jesus was asked “what is the greated commandment”, He replie “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind” (ie, a summary of the first 4 commandments),
and the second is like the first (your “11”), love your neighbor as yourself (a summary of the last 6).
Every one of the faults which conservatives find with government, including overspending, huge debt, harmful and overblown bureaucracy, and on and on, are all traceable to the 5 reasons listed here.
When Jesus was asked “what is the greated commandment”, He replie “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind” (ie, a summary of the first 4 commandments),
and the second is like the first (your “11”), love your neighbor as yourself (a summary of the last 6).
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Thanks for the clarification. Now if we would obey the greatest commandment, God would pour out blessings from heaven that we cannot contain. 2 Chronicles 7:14
Indeed. “God Bless America” was true while we were a Christian nation, instead of a godless progressive nation.
Indeed, in general, if race was not an issue, communists would still try to paint this guy blue and this other guy red, and then they would play the perceptions. It’s the antithesis to synthesis perception game. It’s completely insane, with some inkling of method pride, but overall completely ridiculous mean of attaining power, wanting to both roll the wheel and be the wheel at the same time.
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