Posted on 02/09/2013 5:08:55 AM PST by Kaslin
1) Starting in the sixties there was an explosion of children born out-of-wedlock and kids who don't grow up in two parent families fare more poorly percentage wise on just about any and every scale imaginable including substance abuse, teenage pregnancies, suicide rates, criminality and homelessness.
2) Many people are becoming so childlike in their dependence on the government that they can't save for their own retirement, escape from an oncoming hurricane, or even purchase their own birth control without the government handling it for them.
3) Our legal system encourages frivolous lawsuits, is punitively expensive and because of the political inclinations of the judges, can often be almost random.
4) Leeching off more productive people has become much more acceptable. To many people, taking welfare, food stamps, free lunches and anything else they can get the government to force someone else to pay for isn't shameful; it's deserved, presumably because they're doing everyone else in the country such a wonderful favor just by existing.
5) The mainstream media has become so partisan for the Democratic Party that it's not significantly different from a state-run media. Every news story and scandal is reported differently based solely on which party is involved. "Scandals" that would destroy the careers of Republicans are largely ignored and treated as irrelevant when Democrats are involved.
6) Americans have lost confidence in our institutions. Most Americans don't trust our politicians, our criminal justice system, big business, our schools, our media or our churches.
7) As choices have proliferated because of the Internet, TV, and our affluent culture, Americans have become more alien to each other and share less and less cultural experiences. Today, two Americans may live in the same small community without ever talking, watching the same TV shows, listening to the same radio programs, or getting news from the same sources.
8) Our movies, music, and TV shows are provided by people who are almost universally hostile to conservatism, Christianity, and traditional American values.
9) We have stopped breaking up monopolies in this country and that has allowed mega-corporations to have an outsized and unhealthy level of influence on our political process. That's how corporations that make more money every sixty seconds than the average person does in a lifetime can rake in hundreds of millions each year in subsidies and be given access to billions of dollars’ worth of your money when they make dumb decisions that put their companies’ futures at risk.
10) Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values and yet Christianity in this country is slowly retreating from Biblical principles, the Public Square, and American life in general.
11) Women becoming educated, moving into the work force and becoming much more independent has been a positive development. However, the downside of it is that it has led to later marriages, a soaring divorce rate, more out-of-wedlock birth, and much more conflict, discontent, and fights over children between the sexes. Marriage and relationships are an order of magnitude more complicated for Americans today than they were sixty years ago.
12) Gerrymandering, increasing partisanship, and a lack of term limits have allowed politics to become a lifetime job for a majority of members of Congress. The average congressman cannot be defeated by a member of the opposing party and only has to worry about making special interest groups on his own side angry enough to back a primary challenger against him. For most members of Congress, once they're elected once, they never have to worry about the voters in their own district again.
13) The differences between the Republican and Democratic Party has become so great that there is very little common ground anymore. Not only do both parties propose very different solutions to America's problems, but both sides also see the other side's solutions as taking the country in exactly the wrong direction.
14) Over the past few decades both parties, but particularly the Democrats, have given up on the idea that the government should have any sort of limits on what it spends, should be required to afford new spending, or should even try to pay back the money it already owes.
15) Schools have moved away from teaching reading, writing, history, morality, and patriotism for the benefit of the students to pushing self-esteem and liberal indoctrination for the benefit of the teachers’ unions and salaries of professors.
16) Our entire society is based on a Constitution that is being systematically ignored, distorted, and treated as optional by the populace, our politicians, and even the judges who are sworn to enforce it.
17) Our federal government has grown so far beyond the boundaries that were originally intended for it by the Founding Fathers that it intrudes and interferes into almost every facet of American life. Since the government is always slower, stupider, and less efficient than the private sector it feeds off to grow, this leads to an inevitable decline.
18) The Democratic Party's entire electoral strategy is based around giving people money and goods that they didn't earn and ginning up hatred between different groups of Americans.
19) As the standard of living in America has increased and globalism has made having manual labor done in foreign countries more economical, highly paid, low skill level jobs have mostly either been replaced by technology or have moved offshore to nations with cheaper labor. This means that a large number of men who could have once held "good" jobs that could have provided a living for them and a family now are barely able to take care of themselves and they also have poor future prospects in an economy that now favors highly educated, heavily skilled workers.
20) Race and ideology-based tribalism is becoming the norm. Different racial and political groups often have completely different standards, moral codes, and types of behavior depending on whether the person they're dealing with is a member of their own "tribe."
I don’t think that is anything new. I come from a small town that had only 3000 people when I grew up there. I probably only knew 100, if that many
And arguably, the 19th amendment as well.
I think we can all agree that we have the best government money can buy.
(NO LIBS. This Means Liberals and (L)libertarians! Same Thing. NO LIBS!!)
You just made me snicker.
Just 20? Number is definitely the correct number one problem.
LBJ, sorry as he was and detrimental as his Great Society was, did not directly destroy the American family. He did not even destroy the black family, he simply made it easier to do things for which they had the perpensity for a maternal lead culture and male irresponsibility and It Takes A Village mentality. The “other” kids saw the Great Society kids getting away with everything in school and life and emulated, thus independent and self sufficient America in general began slipping away.
Agreed! Otherwise he’s made a pretty good list. Alas.
I was thinking more of a sense of alienation that may exist rather than whether or not you actually knew the people. Our sense of the world and what is normal may be different.
I’ve noticed that people today can’t even be bothered to be polite or friendly even in situations where it is professionally wise to keep as many lines out there and open. There’s a sort of ‘leave me the hell alone’ quality to most people in passing.
"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." --Will Rogers
Totally agree with your post.
Our inner city schools are deficient, but their “raw material” is 80% bastard children.
Another example: in a decent suburb here in Indiana (where my daughter is the teacher) the 3rd grade class has only 42% with intact family (birth mother and father both living in the home).
All are true but #1 stands out to be the seed of the problems.
All are true but #1 stands out to be the seed of the problems.
When I was growing up, it became easier to show good manners than to endure corrections when I was rude or careless. In time it became automatic behavior.
I don't think that training is practiced much anymore.
Such mannerly behavior has been absent from New York for a hundred years and has crept like a metathesised cancer to the rest of the country.
I first saw this cartoon on my Facebook page posted by a former student, although the “government” side was labeled “the rich.” I went off on a rant about how stupid the picture was... after all, the guy with the bucket of fish is rich, actually. And I pointed out that the picture was typical Marxist crap about the rich getting wealthy off the labor of the poor.
However...
Your version makes perfect sense. The government produces nothing and can only get what it gets by taking it from the productive. If you’re the person who improved this picture, you get an A for the day. When I get home I’ll post on my own FB page, much to the annoyance of some, pleasure to others. :)
nope not mine
It ain’t so much how the trough gets empty as how it gets filled.
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