Posted on 05/28/2007 7:26:28 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The suicide-murders and roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan sicken Americans. Soon-to-be nuclear Iran seems loonier than nuclear North Korea. American debt keeps piling up in China and Japan. And we think of angry Venezuela, the Middle East and Russia every time we fill up -- if we can afford to fill up.
Then listen to Al Gore on global warming. Or hear Jimmy Carter on the current president. The common denominator is American "decline."
Books by liberals assure us that our "empire" is kaput. Brace for the inevitable fate of Rome. Conservatives are just as glum. For them, we are also Romans -- but the more decadent variety, eaten away from the inside.
In response, many bored Americans turn instead to the la-la land of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Yet American Cassandras are old stuff. Grim Charles Lindberg in the late 1930s lectured a Depression-era America that Hitler's new order in Germany could only be appeased, never opposed.
After World War II, it wasn't long before the Soviet Union ended our short-lived status as sole nuclear superpower. And when Eastern Europe and China were lost to communism, it was proof, for many, that democratic capitalism was passé. "We will bury you," Nikita Khrushchev promised us.
After the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991, America proclaimed itself at the "end of history" -- meaning that the spread of our style of democratic capitalism was now inevitable. Now a mere 16 years later, some are just as sure we approach our own end.
But our rivals are weaker and America is far stronger than many think.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
It’s important to read the full article before making a posting.
VDH rocks.
BTTT
Great article.
America is unstoppable.
Hanson makes the case well.
Excellent article.
Take out the liberal media and all will be fine.
Very true.
The United States is not perfect, and it has problems and shortcomings. But it’s neither the oppressive enemy of ordinary people that the left claims nor the decadent place that a few on the right charge.
ManBearPig is still on the loose.
Sounds like the talking points of the DBM.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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As Hanson notes, it is the mere capacity to discuss and review our imperfection that makes America relentlessly great.
All sham dogmas ultimately close in on themselves and their subjects because they cannot tolerate dissent.
WE have had more obituaries written about the US then there are books at the Library of Congress.
Excellent article!
great article
Hanson is a real historian, not like brinkley, who wrote the puff-piece book on kerry, or the famously self-promoting leftist historian (now deceased) who plagarized all the WW2 stuff and became a rich pop historian.
America is indeed a blessed nation, and it indeed has recuperative powers. But there are significant defects new to the postwar era and post-Berlin Wall era. First and foremost, our educational system is not really as meritocratic today as it had been for decades earlier. Moreover, it is not as readily a conduit of vertical social mobility, from the working class into the middle class. Rather, our high schools and lower schools are cess-pools of cliques or pecking orders which teachers blithely tolerate and encourage rather than confront in the slightest. Moreover, most schools are organized dating societies that happen, oh by the way, to teaching something once in a while. They are not educational institutions in which, to be sure, dating also happens to occur. And don’t even get me started about Dep’ts of Education in major universities: they are below Plato’s cave.
Overall I see an increasing, already enormous division between two major groups of young people - and not by race, ethicity, religion or necessarily income (but income is more vital). This is the division between the very, very well educated, those familiar and conversant with books and ideas even if they are not interested in becoming academics or scholars; and the vast majority of young people who could care less about books and ideas. Everyhing in our popular culture is reinforcing their casualness and ignorance, and it is rife in 2d and 3d tier colleges. It is so manifestly in evidence that no one can deny it or simply disregard what I’m saying. I don’t see this turning around anytime soon, and to me this is a central structural and culture defect running through the American educational system, occupational order and stratification system.
Revoke citizenship of liberals(they hate this place anyway) and deport them along with all the illegals and all will be shipshape.Oh yeah, throw out the bunch of rinos as well.They are worse than libs.
Hanson is definitely a good historian. Unfortunately, he’s often not a very good commentator on current affairs. He’s too confident of the West’s strengths and doesn’t take its weaknesses seriously enough.
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