Posted on 09/15/2012 6:55:33 AM PDT by radioone
So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that’s too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast. Make it Cleveland, or Des Moines.
The president is surrounded by delirious fanbois and fangurls screaming “We love you,” too drunk on his celebrity to understand this is the first photo-op in the aftermath of a national humiliation. No, no, a filmmaker would say; too crass, too blunt. Make them sober, middle-aged midwesterners, shocked at first, but then quiet and respectful.
The president is too lazy and cocksure to have learned any prepared remarks or mastered the appropriate tone, notwithstanding that a government that spends more money than any government in the history of the planet has ever spent can surely provide him with both a speechwriting team and a quiet corner on his private wide-bodied jet to consider what might be fitting for the occasion.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I do not accept the “dying superpower” connotation here. It is an unled superpower because its leadership is non-existent or, believing the worst that our pResident is an America-hating Muslim hell-bent on devolving our status, working feverishly to undermine it.
Romney should simply read this at the next press conference.
[ I do not accept the “dying superpower” connotation here ]
I do. We elected Obama as our President and are leaning towards doing so again. Definitely “a dying superpower.”
We're not in good shape here. Socialists have been “educating” our children for a couple of generations, half the population is dependent upon government money and the popular cultural theme for our young adults is the ghetto gangsta style.
Oh, and government has locked up our domestic energy resources, created numerous encumbrances for business and spent us into oblivion.
Contrast the above with 1957. Progress?
“...gain as much ground as possible...”
That is the bottom line! They know they can’t wait till Romney is in office. October is going to be a long month. n/s
>> I do not accept the “dying superpower” connotation here.
I sure as hell do.
“Heart failure” is the condition from which we suffer. And if we don’t get that marxist blue-lipped son of a Kenyan monkey the hell out of the white house, like any heart failure patient we’ll die of the disease. We may STILL expire from it even if Romney wins, but at least we have a fighting chance.
We need this kind of response
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftTeIVFqZ-g&feature=player_embedded
I laughed at the end where everyone is silent
Optimistic About America’s Future?
Don’t Be.
In his giant New York Times bestseller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark Steyn predicted collapse for the rest of the Western World. Now, he adds, America has caught up with Europe on the great rush to self-destruction.
It’s not just our looming financial collapse; it’s not just a culture that seems on a fast track to perdition, full of hapless, indulgent, childish people who think government has the answer for every problem; it’s not just America’s potential eclipse as a world power because of the drunken sailor policymaking in Washington—no, it’s all this and more that spells one word for America: Armageddon.
What will a world without American leadership look like? It won’t be pretty—not for you and not for your children. America’s decline won’t be gradual, like an aging Europe sipping espresso at a café until extinction (and the odd Greek or Islamist riot). No, America’s decline will be a wrenching affair marked by violence and possibly secession.
With his trademark wit, Steyn delivers the depressing news with raw and unblinking honesty—but also with the touch of vaudeville stand-up and soft shoe that makes him the most entertaining, yet profound, columnist on the planet. And as an immigrant with nowhere else to go, he offers his own prescription for winning America back from the feckless and arrogant liberal establishment that has done its level best to suffocate the world’s last best hope in a miasma of debt, decay, and debility. You will not read a more important—or more alarming, or even funnier—book all year than After America.
The shell of a superpower with a feckless leader at the helm, while inside the shell, boom-box-trousers-on-the-ground scrabbling in the streets as if all that mattered was how to score... we are a dead and dying society with vultures overhead waiting to celebrate our final offing...
>> I laughed at the end where everyone is silent
heh, yeah, me too. Wish we had even ONE pol with that kind of straightforward guts. (Dick Cheney is somewhat close.)
Oh yeah, and Rumsfeld wasn’t bad that way either. :-)
MY big concern is for the young generation that really doesn't give a hoot about elections and who our leaders are. They have been weaned onto video games and surfboards!
Steyn hits another one out of the park. Splendid article that captures the essence and meaning of what happened in Libya.
What? No volunteers? Any so-called journalist who would ask such a question is a dickless wonder anyway...
I see no reason to believe the American civilization is in decline, but am concerned about the current American state.
I've been reading “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and we may have entered a phase similar to that of the Roman Empire circa 0-200 A.D. It's a difficult read (written over 200 years ago in the scholarly lingo of the day) but it does describe some parallels. Religion and its stabalizing moral influence was dying out (even “religious” people just went through the motions), increasing centralization of power as the last vestiges of the Republic die out, corruption and marginalization of the Senate by the Dictators to the point the Senate could no longer function, and the loss of national identity as the coveted title of Roman citizen was bestowed large numbers of people who had little or no loyalty to the state. By 400 A.D., the massive and sprawling Roman Empire couldn't even muster a tepid response to a invasion from the north. The floodgates opened and the end came quickly (in historical terms).
With the compressed time lines of the modern world, we may be stepping through these phases quickly. Assuming a similar development, our next phases would include individual governors declaring sovereignty over their territories, outlying territories attempting to declare union with foreign powers, and a formerly fiercely loyal military corrupted by a growing sense of entitlement (encouraged by politicians vying for their support) beginning to wrestle with the civilian authority for power and control.
Based on this and other historical examples, Jefferson and others may have been right that republics may at best be temporary things that must periodically be refreshed and renewed from the ground up or they devolve into tyranny.
srbfl
I agree there is significant decline and a troubling penchant of a significant portion of this country to be more concerned with entitlements than responsibility.
What perhaps troubles me more is one or two of the reponses to my post, however. They reek with a pessimism that doesn’t seem to have any bounds. Makes me wonder what would have happened Lexington and Concord had the participants been so filled with it.
Steyn bump.
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