America is in decline. An empire in decline is but a blink in time away from collapse. That America is in decline is unarguable. We are no longer the world's largest economy, China has seized the lead. We are no longer the world's unchallenged superpower, we are embattled in the Middle East, insulted in the Far East, disparaged in Europe, and despised in Latin America.
As a percentage of GDP our debt, whether calculated according to traditional reckoning of about $18 trillion or whether calculated including unfunded liabilities, ranks the US with Japan, Greece and the United Kingdom as countries flirting with the point of no return. At some time in the not-too-distant future that point is reached the credit markets will force the reform that we are politically incapable of doing for ourselves.
Declining diplomatic influence is a function of declining military power which in turn is the inevitable result of a disorderly balance sheet. America's burgeoning debts are the result of runaway entitlements, especially medical costs, which are compounded by Obamacare and a functional invasion of illegal aliens. Led by Barack Obama, the Democrat party has effectively staked its future on a policy of virtually unlimited entitlements with fiscal sobriety be damned except as defined by Victor David Hanson, open-ended borrowing to pay open-ended debts attached to ticking timebomb of interest rate explosions.
When the point of no return is reached interest rates will skyrocket, the debt will become unsustainable, interest payments will not be met, the economy will crash and with it the American century, the stability around the world afforded by America as world policeman, and basic decency at home. One is unmistakably reminded of the edict from Rome to its army stationed in England to pull stakes and go home leaving England to anarchy and invasion because the Roman Empire was moving from decline to disintegration.
One can only look at the policies of the Obama administration and conclude that this is what the transformation of America looks like and was intended to look like.
