Our Best Days Behind US?
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Many feel that America’s best days are behind us, that our country peaked sometime in the late 20th century and has begun to decline. Maybe most Americans feel that way, I don’t know. Some point to disintegration of family. Others cite economic decline - that we don’t produce much anymore as manufacturing is outsourced. The old Yankee saying that we could “Make the thing, or make the thing that makes the thing,” doesn’t apply anymore. Still others point to welfare dependency and the rise of our big-government nanny state. While liberals still claim children go hungry in the US, the real problem is childhood obesity. The “poor” in America are too fat. Many lament that Americans have become not only fat, but dumb and lazy as well. It used to be so that Americans were too proud to accept hand-outs from government, but now they’re encouraged. Our US Department of Agriculture even recruits people in Mexico to come to the United States and apply for Food Stamps immediately upon arrival!
Others cite parallels to Gibbon’s “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” repeating in the country which used to see itself as “the city on a hill.” According to Wikipedia’s description of Gibbon’s thesis, that empire declined because: “Romans had become ‘effeminate,’ unwilling to live a tougher ‘manly’ lifestyle.” It also cited Gibbon’s belief that Christianity’s ascendency after Emperor Constantine weakened the empire because: “Christianity created a belief that a better life existed after death, which fostered an indifference to the present among Roman citizens, thus sapping their desire to sacrifice for the Empire. [Gibbon] also believed [Christianity’s] comparative pacifism tended to hamper the traditional Roman martial spirit.”
While Gibbon cited the rise of Christianity as hurting Rome, still other Americans cite Christianity’s decline causing our decline. If America is indeed declining, then who is ascending to fill the global power vacuum? China? Radical Islam? God help us, but those would be the two leading candidates.
What’s life like in China? Well, it’s still communist. While it’s relaxing its historic demonization of capitalism, it’s maintaining, even increasing its big-government, dissension-hating oppression. For more than a generation, women have been allowed only one child. Get pregnant a second time and government will compel you to kill your child in utero, even if the pregnancy were concealed until eight months along. Criticize the government there and you disappear to a forced, re-education camp for indoctrination in political correctness. There, you might lose a kidney or even a heart to the black market in human organs - especially if you’re a match with a ranking Chinese Communist Party official who needs one.
The rest is here.
Gibbon was a notorious hater of Christianity, so if you are going to blame it for the fall of Rome, shouldn't you also credit it for the rise and world-spanning extent of the British Empire, or the Pax Americana? What scares me isn't the welfare state, as we can see how it is unsustainable. When something can't go on, it won't go on. What scares me is what's happening in Europe, where the populace is revolting in Greece (the "anti-government mobs" are composed of government workers) and is voting for continued socialism in France. That can only end one way. We could still escape true collapse here, but our voters would have to understand their current level of benefits is unsustainable, and in Europe they're voting to keep the bennies coming, even with the thread holding the sword over their heads fraying more and more. Much will depend on the outcome Nov. 6 -- and whether the GOP, if it wins, has the courage to stand up to the wagon riders. For sure the Democrats don't. Our fate is, as always, in our own hands.
We could still escape true collapse here, but our voters would have to understand their current level of benefits is unsustainable, and in Europe they're voting to keep the bennies coming, even with the thread holding the sword over their heads fraying more and more.
That's the danger, isn't it, that the electorate will choose to choke off economic growth in pursuit of disappearing benefits to be paid by a fictitious class of millionaires?
Economike says:
"That's the danger, isn't it, that the electorate will choose to choke off economic growth in pursuit of disappearing benefits to be paid by a fictitious class of millionaires?"
Very concisely put. Romney and every conservative candidate for Congress and Senate should be pounding this. Even if we taxed the 1% at 100%, it would only generate enough to run government a few months. It's a lie and it should be exposed over and over from now to November. The problem is big government spending and big entitlements, which will collapse completely and all at once if present trends continue.
It might seem like political suicide to suggest that entitlements be cut by 2% a year for the next five years, say, to avoid bankruptcy, but I'm not sure it is. This kind of approach is the only way to save entitlements in any form. Most people feel something bad is going to happen and to put it out there explicitly would be a boost at the polls.
Most people feel something bad is going to happen and to put it out there explicitly would be a boost at the polls.
Tom -
If we're not at this point yet, we're close.
Just for one example, I wish that some of Paul Ryan's grasp of the issues and his ability to communicate them would rub off on Mitt Romney.
tommclaughlin Thu, 08/02/2012 - 4:09pm #4: "Even if we taxed the 1% at 100%, it would only generate enough to run government a few months. It's a lie and it should be exposed over and over from now to November. The problem is big government spending and big entitlements, which will collapse completely and all at once if present trends continue."
Looting the productive, no matter how they are divvied up as a "class", is unethical and self-destructive for everyone, which is more fundamental than observing that no benefit would result from draining the current upper 1% beyond the government gasping out a few more weeks of financing. What if the government would benefit the majority by killing off a targeted minority? Would that make it acceptable? That is the implication left open by those who restrict themselves to the bean-counting argument.
Why should anyone tolerate his own demise for the benefit of the collective? Why should any rational person with any degree of wealth endorse the principle that he should? Who on that principle is next after the first "1%"? If they can do it to the "1%" they can and will on that principle do it to anyone of any degree of achievement at any level. Where does does the politics of human sacrifice end once that principle is accepted? What is the end result of a culture based on a cannibalistic consumption of the most successful in order to drag everyone down to a lowest common denominator?
But we are already seeing that process and where it leads because they aren't arguing to try to justify the premise as something new, and not agitating to impose it for the first time, only agitating to impose an already accepted false premise of sacrifice yet again in yet another way against a targeted minority group in a fit of demagogic envy and resentment.
Obama already made it clear in his first presidential campaign (in the famous O'Reilly interview) that it doesn't matter to him if raising tax rates is counterproductive for government to take in more money as long as it pulls people down in the name of "fairness" (and it didn't start with Obama). Such is the self-destruction and hatred for the rights of the individual demanded and imposed by the "ethics" of collectivist egalitarianism.
I agree of course. It's not the government's money. it's our money.
Pointing out that there wouldn't be enough beans if the rich were taxed at 100% would expose the liberal lie that the poor are poor because the rich are rich, that the pie is fixed. If they have more it's because you have less. That's the big lie they live on. Expose it and the rest of their house of cards falls in on itself.
........"Pointing out that there wouldn't be enough beans if the rich were taxed at 100% would expose the liberal lie that the poor are poor because the rich are rich, that the pie is fixed. If they have more it's because you have less. That's the big lie they live on. Expose it and the rest of their house of cards falls in on itself".......
The "logic" of this argument is very compelling, in fact we have been in the process of modifying how we, as a family, live and do things, for several years now, with one eye to the future, expecting this doomsday scenario to come true eventually when the checks stop coming!
But the problem with trying to use "logic" as an argument on people who do not have the kind of brain that understands "logical thinking" is a fools mission as I do not know of any liberal that anybody anwhere has ever been sucessful in using a "logical" argument with! They are "right" as they just know that they are "right" and of course they are so much "smarter" than those of us who can fix toilets! In fact they routinely refer to conservatives as "stupid and uneducated" in their arguments and you can see this in the media seven days a week, it is the norm for them.
We were living in Jackson, NH during the 1st Obama campaign (and reading Tom in the Conway Sun!) and became quite discouraged by what we saw. Jackson is a very "monied" town but overwhelmingly liberal with Obama bumper stickers on every SUV in the valley. We had to go to the transfer station and talk with the guys there, as they were the only conservatives in town. So we got out of there and came back to our Maine roots, in order to perpare for a very uncertain future! I wish I could go back to Jackson for a moment and ask some of them how that worked out.
It has been pretty easy for us to see, for several years now, that we are on a downward slide, one that can only end in economic collapse and great civil unrest as those who are riding in the wagon, find out that there will be no one to "help them" any more, one of these days. It was funny to watch a little taste of this play out....back in the Mt Washington Valley a few years back.
We had terrible amounts of snow in 07-08 and lots of roofs collapsed and other things happened. Once in a while we would have a power outage, ,something that we were used to coping with in Maine. But in the Valley most folks lived in condos with electric heat. When the power went down, and the toilets stopped flushing, and the lights and phones didn't work for a while........a strange sense of panic set in for many people. We would watch that and marvel about what would happen if "government" went into financial collapse.
There is, among other things, a vast "underclass" (for lack of a better name for it) of American citizens who have no sense of personal responsibility, no idea that they should take care of themselves, or any idea how to do same. This "institutional slovenliness" is at least 3 generations of people deep in some families and it is the product of the modern welfare system that the political class has used to buy votes for at least the last 40 yrs. We have millions of people who do not have any idea how to take care of themselves, any idea they should do so, and no sense of personal responsibility, or any sense of respect for others,.........to hold them in check if this suspected disaster unfolds, as many expect it will. Many of these people will likely turn into "prerdators" in order to attempt to survive.....if government drops the ball!
I have raised this argument here before and many have pooh poohed my fears but I think they are very real. We, and some other people, have definitely factored this possibility into how we do things and how we might do them in the event of such a disaster. We believe it is better to "prepare for the worst, and hope for the best", something that lots and lots of folks seem unable to do.
Just like in the late 1920's, many people can only think of how much money they can have, and how much material wealth they can accumulate with that money. Not only are millions of Americans unwilling to prepare for such a possibility as Tom has painted in the article, but most of those many millions cannot even bring themselves to contemplate even the possibililty of such a scenario!
How can anyone think that any "logical argument" is ever going to work on those folks!
WC
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Thanks for a thoughtful essay, Mr. McLaughlin.
I agree that American decline is a popular theme, although there's not much agreement on the cause and nature of decline. It isn't self-evident.
Pessimism arises from a nostalgic and idealized view of the past, compared to which the present must be worse.
And it's easy to be pessimistic these days. The good news is that the welfare state is effectively bankrupt. The bad news is that no one knows what sort of polity will replace the welfare state.