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Is Sky Falling on America?
Real Clear Politics ^ | May 24, 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson

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 ...


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: victordavishanson
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To: Clintonfatigued
"Books by liberals assure us that our "empire" is kaput."

But there are no such books in Bush's fascist Amerika. All criticism of the administration has been suppressed. (sracasm)
21 posted on 05/28/2007 10:03:09 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle ("Above all, shake your bum at Burton.")
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To: Clintonfatigued

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.


22 posted on 05/28/2007 10:08:04 PM PDT by Melas (Offending stupid people since 1963)
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To: lonestar67
"As Hanson notes, it is the mere capacity to discuss and review our imperfection that makes America relentlessly great."

Europeans believe - based on what they are told by their media elites - that America is a land incapable of self-criticism. But America and Israel are arguably the two nations in the world with the strongest traditions of self-criticism. In our literature, our cinema, our laws, our courts, our media, our music, our political debate, we surpass most countries in self-criticism and self-analysis.
23 posted on 05/28/2007 10:09:54 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle ("Above all, shake your bum at Burton.")
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To: Clintonfatigued
America is being looted like a Wal-Mart in the ghetto or a Target in the inner city.. by several races and a hundred nationalitys..

And republican voters roll their eyes and drool with their tongues hanging out.. electing obvious RINOS, sneaky RINOS, and stealth RINOs.. and the WHite RINO House lobbys for even more proto democrat insurgents coming across the border like a Donkey Rodeo.. in a stampede..

24 posted on 05/28/2007 10:16:04 PM PDT by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole....)
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To: lonestar67
Great article.

America is unstoppable.

Hanson makes the case well.

Actually, I don't think that's the case he's making.

America is very stoppable, if we stop doing the things that make us what we are. 

Don't stop questioning.  Don't assume we've got it knocked.  Don't assume that all of the conventional wisdom is really so wise.  Spit in the face of the next person who tells you that global warming is dooming the planet and we're to blame, who says George Bush planned 9/11 or who says that we must tolerate millions of invaders in our country because we "need cheap labor."

There's a better way and if government and the elites will just get out of the way someone here will find it. 

It's the power of a free people that is unstoppable.  So long as we remain free we can accomplish anything.

Just don't believe those who say we're doomed. 

Our genius is surfing chaos.

 

 

Dude, surf's up!

25 posted on 05/28/2007 10:34:03 PM PDT by Phsstpok (Often wrong, but never in doubt)
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To: Clintonfatigued
In truth, a never-stronger America is being tested as never before.

That's a stretch. During WWII and the Cold War, sure. By comparison, our current and would-be adversaries are midgets.

26 posted on 05/28/2007 10:39:16 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
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To: Steve_Seattle

That may well be true, but I’m not sure how relevant it is. I think most of our self-criticism just ends up serving the goals of the liberal left. What matters most is not our ability to analyze and critize ourselves, but our ability to do what needs to be done — to change what needs to be changed, and to preserve what must be preserved. By that standard, American politics has been largely a failure. I don’t see much hope at this time.


27 posted on 05/28/2007 11:01:58 PM PDT by California Patriot ("That's not Charley the Tuna out there. It's Jaws." -- Richard Nixon)
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To: Clintonfatigued

I read another article

BAGHDAD - The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze Monday with a four-hour meeting about Iraqi security.


28 posted on 05/28/2007 11:05:57 PM PDT by philetus (Keep doing what you always do and you'll keep getting what you always get.)
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To: California Patriot

I strongly recommend the book “Anti-Americanism” by Jean-Francois Revel. It dissects and exposes European anti-Americanism from a European point of view. Revel says this obsessive anti-Americanism is based on - as a reviewer observes - “a willful disregard of the most obvious facts.”


29 posted on 05/28/2007 11:13:01 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle ("Above all, shake your bum at Burton.")
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To: Steve_Seattle

I agree, European anti-Americanism is largely idiotic. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things badly wrong with this country, not all of them the liberals’ fault. I also think America’s best days are behind her, thanks mainly but only to the liberals, and that patriotic Americans have little to look forward to. Great nations can die, and I think that’s probably what’s happening to us.


30 posted on 05/28/2007 11:17:57 PM PDT by California Patriot ("That's not Charley the Tuna out there. It's Jaws." -- Richard Nixon)
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To: everyone

Oops, I meant “not only to the liberals.”


31 posted on 05/28/2007 11:18:45 PM PDT by California Patriot ("That's not Charley the Tuna out there. It's Jaws." -- Richard Nixon)
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To: familyop

Yeah, just find an alternative energy source, and who cares if they have nukes!


32 posted on 05/29/2007 3:08:18 AM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: Zhang Fei
That's a stretch. During WWII and the Cold War, sure. By comparison, our current and would-be adversaries are midgets.

Different playing field, though. We were able to fight WWII and Cold War on our strength of industrial growth. This is an entirely different struggle, having directly to do with our national character--which is not as strong as in the past.

33 posted on 05/29/2007 3:23:35 AM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: Pyncho

You’re exactly right about the casual attitude that develops into—or comes from—”Being rich is my birthright as an American; I don’t need to know anything or produce anything.” But the problems start before college.

How often do you see conservatives put their money into free materials for the classrooms? Walk the halls of a public school in America, and you’ll see nature posters by Greenpeace, etc. Even when they don’t have an overt political message, they prime the students for certain things that are promoted in the teacher materials.

Rather than just publishing more papers, I’d like to see conservative organizations getting out to the schools with a package of non-partisan info on the Constitution. Or economics. Or balanced science. Or...


34 posted on 05/29/2007 3:31:36 AM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: Clintonfatigued
It’s important to read the full article before making a posting.

I thought that was against the rules here. < /sarc>

35 posted on 05/29/2007 3:31:53 AM PDT by gitmo (From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.)
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To: Gondring
Rather than just publishing more papers, I’d...

Or grammar! >blush< (I'd actually meant to reword that sentence.)

36 posted on 05/29/2007 3:32:28 AM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: Pyncho

You are correct. I think the States are quicly becoming a divided society between those with public education and those with private (including homeschool) education. The latter group is distinctly better educated than the former.


37 posted on 05/29/2007 3:40:39 AM PDT by gitmo (From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.)
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To: gitmo

quicly = quickly

I saw it just as I clicked Post.


38 posted on 05/29/2007 3:41:23 AM PDT by gitmo (From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.)
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To: Gondring
"Yeah, just find an alternative energy source, and who cares if they have nukes!"

Western European appeasers who live a little less than 4,000 kilometers from Iran's western border should care, but they don't. Maybe we'll let Iran take its trashy friends out, then we'll nuke it.

S. Korea, U.S. verifying reports on test of new N.K. missile in Iran: source
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1834307/posts
(4,000 kilometer range)


39 posted on 05/29/2007 4:07:51 AM PDT by familyop
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To: lonestar67; jan in Colorado
As Hanson notes, it is the mere capacity to discuss and review our imperfection that makes America relentlessly great.

This is one of the reasons I am so much against blocking out opposing views. If we hold our convictions with strength, then why would we be afraid of an opposing view; if we lack conviction, why do we hold those views?

40 posted on 05/29/2007 4:43:51 AM PDT by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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