"When I was young and President Eisenhower created the interstate highway system, we could simulate Daniel Boone and pile the family into a car that the postwar economy provided and, like a cowboy of old, seek our freedom on the open road."
When you were young, our 'ruling class' was already corrupt and planning the corruption of the middle class. They desired amoral barbarians for their revolution.
Today, the greater part of our people are indeed morally corrupt, meaning their most disordered and evil passions, unfettered by anything higher than 'self,' are free to explode in violence, pedophilia, lawlessness, systemic lying, screaming demands for the latest, destructive actions (ie, tearing down monuments), and so on across the entirety of our land. Look at the highest corridors of political power to America's mean streets as examples.
Additionally, the revolution took God and the hope of heaven away and replaced Him with nihilism--meaninglessness. Thus, where America had been the land of the free and brave because not mired down in fear of death, today our land is haunted by fear of the spirit of death. A people controlled by fear of death are a people unable to be either free or brave.
So a people who fear death and are addicted to sin (vices) are an inwardly undisciplined and cowardly people unable to risk their lives for others or their nation. As well as being unwilling to work, marry, raise children, or be responsible, productive citizens.
Another crucial aspect to the decline of our population and civilization resides in the 'cult of experts.' Yesterday's people were, for the most part, people of the mind, free to be creative and inventive. This freedom was the great engine of our prosperous civilization. Today, most people do not use their own minds (think for themselves) but rather rely upon a cult of experts to tell them what to think, what to eat, what is best for children, how they should live, and so on. Thus we are no longer creative, inventive people.
These are just a few of my thoughts on what is a very complex issue.
I think your jeremiad eloquently describes the legacy of The Frankfurt School.
These neo-Marxists have infested our educational system and metastasized into the whole of our culture creating the dystopia you describe. I share what I believe to be your implicit reaction that the solution must include a spiritual awakening of the kind that my ancestors experienced as pioneers in the 18th century.
On the secular side, as our neighbors spiritually, culturally and morally deteriorate and become more dangerous we seek relief from government. We want effective police protection but the children of The Frankfurt School have already succeeded in neutering many of our big city police forces. The next step is the demoralization and the corruption of those forces, partly through the corrupting influence of illicit drugs.
So as we resort to government to protect us from our neighbors, we are increasingly seeking refuge in an institution which is less and less able to provide refuge. That institution is likely to become more and more oppressive itself, witness the recent history of the FBI that is now being exposed.
Where we can invoke the government to provide legitimate police we are in effect saying, increase our taxes to pay for our protection even though the obligation of taxes is by definition as understood at the Boston tea party equivalent to the loss of liberty.
Just as a spiritual revolution is required on an individual basis, so a cultural revolution is required on an institutional basis if we are to swim out of the mess you have described.
