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America at the End of Empire-Is civilizational decline reversible?
Frrontpagemagazine ^ | Mar 26, 2021 | Mark Tapson

Posted on 03/26/2021 6:59:24 AM PDT by SJackson

In a recent monologue on HBO’s Real Time, host Bill Maher called Americans a “silly people” for allowing themselves to be mired in culture war struggles, such as the politically correct cancelling of children’s books, while our superpower competition China is laser-focused on political, economic, and military dominance.

“You’re not going to win the battle for the 21st century if you are a silly people. And Americans are a silly people,” Maher asserted. He then referenced the latest “cancel culture” controversy – the woke mob’s targeting of children’s author Dr. Seuss over purported racism in his books: “Do you know who doesn’t care that there’s a stereotype of a Chinese man in a Dr. Seuss book? China. All 1.4 billion of them couldn’t give a crouching tiger flying fuck because they’re not a silly people. If anything, they are as serious as a prison fight.”

Maher pointed out that China has “built 500 entire cities from scratch, moved the majority of their huge population from poverty to the middle class, and mostly cornered the market in 5G and pharmaceuticals” in two generations. Meanwhile in America, “half the country is having a never-ending woke competition deciding whether Mr. Potato Head has a dick and the other half believes we have to stop the lizard people because they’re eating babies. We are a silly people,” he continued.

“Do you think China’s doing that, letting political correctness get in the way of nurturing their best and brightest?” Maher added. “Do you think Chinese colleges are offering courses in ‘The Philosophy of Star Trek, ‘The Sociology of Seinfeld,’ and ‘Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse’? Those are real and so is China. And they are eating our lunch. And believe me, in an hour, they’ll be hungry again.”

Maher’s prescient lecture came just before the Chinese delegation ate their American counterparts for lunch at last week’s U.S.-China meeting in Alaska, telling Secretary of State Antony Blinken to his face that China does not view America as operating “from a position of strength.” With a new American President so decrepit he is shielded from the public by his handlers; with our southern border collapsing under tsunami of illegal aliens; and with Americans at each other’s throats in a not-so-Cold Civil War, China’s not wrong about that.

Unlike his fellow political propagandists on late-night TV, Maher occasionally comes down on the right side of an issue, and this is one of them. Ascendant China is hell-bent on world domination and makes no apology for it. America, meanwhile, is suffering from decades of accelerated, corrosive, Marxist subversion that has saddled us with a power-lusting leftist regime, aided and abetted by an unofficial state news media; a school system that has jettisoned rigorous education in favor of identity politics indoctrination; a woke corporate culture showering hundreds of millions of dollars on support for Critical Race training and on the communist revolutionaries of Black Lives Matter; an obscenely decadent entertainment industry (itself in thrall to Chinese influence) that peddles anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, anti-capitalism, and anti-white racism; and a politicized military establishment prioritizing “gender equity” over warrior readiness.

In short, America (and the Western world more generally), once the most prosperous and powerful civilization in history, is no longer operating “from a position of strength.” It is, in fact, bleeding out from self-inflicted wounds, and our enemies foreign and domestic smell the blood in the water. Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow Gordon Chang believes Chinese leader Xi Jinping is confident in provoking a civilizational war between East and West, because he feels “America is in terminal decline.” Indeed, the Chinese state media are already openly celebrating the Alaska confrontation as a decisive victory in that conflict.

Bill Maher’s critique doesn’t delve nearly far enough, however. Our problem is not truly silliness, although it is difficult to take seriously a nation that elevates strippers and their pornographic doggerel to the highest level of artistry. The problem is “civilizational fatigue,” the concept that at some point a grand world power – e.g. ancient Rome, 19th-century England, America under a desiccated Joe Biden – peaks and then implodes (“gradually and then suddenly,” as a Hemingway character once put it when asked how he went bankrupt). The empire succumbs to lassitude, corruption, and moral decadence, undone by its very prosperity and success. Having conquered the world, the fire in its belly that powered it to the top cools to ash. It can no longer muster the civilizational conviction and warrior spirit necessary to keep the barbarians at the gates from swarming the battlements.

In our case, the barbarians – i.e., the forces of anti-civilization – have been inside the gates for over half a century, making their Long March through the institutions. We allowed their Marxist poison and their postmodern anti-rationality to seep throughout our schools and universities, and their false but seductive narratives to be promoted in our news and entertainment programs, until they secured the culture and corrupted the political landscape as well – so successfully that we elected, twice, a President who denied American exceptionalism, explicitly declared his agenda to “fundamentally transform” the country, and inspired his followers to believe, "Yes, we can."

Meanwhile, the cultural corrosion continued, as insidious, cancerous concepts like “whiteness,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “gender fluidity” began metastasizing at light-speed throughout every institution in America, inculcated in schoolchildren as young as kindergartners.

Finally, those of us who love our heritage, our Constitution, and our country rallied behind a President who called on us to Make America Great Again. But it was too little, too late. The barbarians, who had long since infiltrated and taken control of all the cultural structures of society, launched a furious, violent resistance against the President, against his supporters, against democracy, against history, against truth itself. They seized political control and began the systematic marginalization of America’s defenders as white supremacists (regardless of color) and domestic terrorists.

And now we find ourselves where the barbarians wanted us all along: at the end of empire.

Is civilizational decline inevitable? If history is any measure, then yes. Only the kingdom of God lasts forever. The question before us now, though, is this: is America’s decline reversible?

The answer is unequivocally yes. Even in Donald Trump’s brief White House tenure we saw America gathering momentum toward greatness again after eight years of Barack Obama diminishing our leading role on the world stage. We can do it again.

But it will take a courageous commitment from every American patriot on every level: personal, local, national, even international. We must recognize that the flame of American exceptionalism is in danger of being snuffed out, that our God-given rights are being threatened; and once gone, we will have no leverage with which to throw off the totalitarianism that will fill the void.

If Americans (and the rest of the West) hope to restore our former glory, we must begin by ceasing to be, as Bill Maher labeled us, a nation of silly people. We must be as serious as our enemies. We must reignite the fierce, uncompromising, give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death passion for independence that drove our Founding Fathers and George Washington’s ragtag army to persevere against an occupying power. We must ruthlessly reject the evil ideologies that have subverted us, and begin re-instilling our Judeo-Christian values, our love of country, our devotion to Constitutional rights, and our zeal for liberty in the next generation.

This will be an uphill battle. We will face violent leftist resistance, even more than we witnessed in 2020. But 74 million Trump voters make a formidable army. Can we make America great again? Yes, we can.

* * *


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
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1 posted on 03/26/2021 6:59:24 AM PDT by SJackson
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To: SJackson

At this point I don’t see it being reversable.


2 posted on 03/26/2021 6:59:55 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: SJackson

It’s not just America - it’s the whole world gone nuts.

I for one will stand and fight


3 posted on 03/26/2021 7:01:12 AM PDT by Skywise
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To: SJackson

Demography is destiny, chaps.


4 posted on 03/26/2021 7:01:52 AM PDT by riri (Hope is not a strategy at this point- Sam Andrews)
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To: Skywise

Die on your feet or live on your knees. I choose the former. The world won’t look the same when I die. I’m convinced of it.


5 posted on 03/26/2021 7:03:28 AM PDT by rarestia (Repeal the 17th Amendment and ratify Article the First to give the power back to the people!)
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To: SJackson

“Bill Maher called Americans a “silly people” for allowing themselves to be mired in culture war struggles”

It’s rich how Bill Maher and Sarah Silverman are now whining about what they worked so hard to create. Without “silly people,” who would watch Bill Maher? Or Trevor Noah, or John Oliver, or Seth Meyers, or Jimmy Kimmel, or ... My God, they are all exactly the same.


6 posted on 03/26/2021 7:04:19 AM PDT by cdcdawg (Biden is a potato)
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To: dfwgator

Me neither. We are in for the full fall to the rocks below. Some of us would like to see it speed up so the Phoenix can sooner rise from the ashes.

Only thing is, I believe this fall will be of biblical proportions and will probably be the “final battle”. Fact is, the collective wisdom gained in the history of the entire human race has been destroyed in the last fifty or sixty years. There has never been a time like this, and it is global.


7 posted on 03/26/2021 7:04:38 AM PDT by cuban leaf (We killed our economy and damaged our culture. In 2021 we will pine for the salad days of 2020.)
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To: SJackson

Biden fiddles while the Republic burns. A utopic New World Order is the goal, while dystopia will be the outcome.


8 posted on 03/26/2021 7:04:53 AM PDT by Huskrrrr (Pronouns? I need no stinkin pronouns!)
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To: dfwgator

“At this point I don’t see it being reversible.(SP Corrected)

Then you are part of the problem! We don’t let them win. If we go down, we go down swinging!


9 posted on 03/26/2021 7:05:18 AM PDT by Shane (When Injustice Becomes Law, RESISTANCE Becomes DUTY.----T.Jefferson )
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To: dfwgator

Buck up. Of course it’s reversible, unless enough people convince THEMSELVES it’s not.


10 posted on 03/26/2021 7:05:34 AM PDT by SaxxonWoods (The Republican Party is dead. Long live the MAGA Party.)
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To: riri
Demography is destiny

Most whites refuse to even acknowledge the possibility.

Camp of the Saints.

11 posted on 03/26/2021 7:07:24 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
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To: SJackson

past peak civilization?


12 posted on 03/26/2021 7:07:26 AM PDT by PGalt (past peak civilization?)
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To: SJackson

This could make the “Black Death” look like a rash.


13 posted on 03/26/2021 7:09:05 AM PDT by Don Corleone (leave the gun, take the canolis)
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To: cdcdawg

Yeah...Maher and his ilk cater to the “silly”..they think they are above it all...puke.


14 posted on 03/26/2021 7:09:07 AM PDT by goodnesswins (The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution." -- Saul Alinksy)
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To: SaxxonWoods

It’s going to literally take staring into the abyss before people wake up.


15 posted on 03/26/2021 7:10:32 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: SJackson

Civilization

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships—thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement.

The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.

Ayn Rand


16 posted on 03/26/2021 7:10:46 AM PDT by PGalt (past peak civilization?)
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To: Altura Ct.

Oh, I gotta read that.


17 posted on 03/26/2021 7:10:46 AM PDT by riri (Hope is not a strategy at this point- Sam Andrews)
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To: riri

Demography is destiny, chaps.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BOTH parties have been importing a replacement population for 30 years to turn the USA into North Mexico.


18 posted on 03/26/2021 7:12:47 AM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizens Are Born Here of Citizen Parents)(Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: SJackson

Existential threats to our civilization: eugenicists, islamicists, marxists/maoists and their enablers - like-minded and no-minded...


19 posted on 03/26/2021 7:13:13 AM PDT by PGalt (past peak civilization?)
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To: SJackson

No. Not with the incredible shrinking intellect and wisdom of the average American.


20 posted on 03/26/2021 7:13:54 AM PDT by alstewartfan ("The evening sighs and the steely Russian skies go on forever." Roads to Moscow by Al Stewart)
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