I would like to preface my thoughts on whether America is finished as we know it by reitirating my conviction that Americans are the most resiliant people on earth and that freedom and free markets are in our DNA unlike all other peoples of the world. Having said that, evolution applies to all living things - even Americans. People can, and do, evolve from self reliant creatures to something akin to a zoo animal waiting for his next meal. Just look at Greece. So, personally I will refrain from cockiness and admit that even we are in danger of evolving into something other than we are used to.
History is not kind to the self destructive nature of human beings.
Every great empire has its heyday before it inevitably decays and self destructs. The parallels between the reasons for the decay of great empires is oft times eerily similar - perhaps none more so than those of the great Roman Empire and the United States of America.
First, what do these two great constitutional republics that existed nearly two millenia apart have to do with each other one might wonder. If you will remember from your high school history classes, Rome had a constitution that essentially later served as a rough guideline for the constitutional republic that our founding fathers conceived. Roman constitution created a similar seperation of powers between its governmental branches as did ours. Rather than creating a government that was primarily a democracy (as was ancient Athens), an aristocracy (as was ancient Sparta), or a monarchy (as was Rome before and, in many respects, after the Republic), the Roman constitution mixed these three elements, thus creating three separate branches of government.
And thus was born the greatest governmental system known to man - one that we would model our own constitutional republic after.
In a nut shell, both were essentially meritocracies that greatly valued virtue at the height of their greatness relative to their respective eras, and both became collectivist, morally deprived welfare states. In other words, both transitioned from societies that valued and rewarded individual excellence to collectivism which only fosters the break-down of societal value systems, mediocrity, and reliance on a central government. Although one might argue that the U.S. has not reached the level of deprevation or degradation that Rome reached during its rapid decline started in the era of Diocletian (fifth century A.D.), we have been undergoing the same transformation for the past century since Presidents Wilson and TR got the ball rolling down the progressive slope. Couple short decades later, Hoover and FDR institutionalized progressivism by plunging the dagger further in to the heart of the American constitutional republic. Since than, progressives from both political parties (most notably LBJ, Nixon, GWB, and Obama) as well as the judiciary have twisted the dagger in a final attempt to vanguish the single most successful meritocracy this world has ever known. At the same time, fabian socialists masquerading as progressives have corrupted our public and higher educational institutions while media has engaged in a decades long propaganda war against everything held sacred by our founding fathers.
So, are the progressives winning the hearts and souls of Americans? If so, how can that happen in a country where free market capitalism (or at least a bastardized version) is figuratively in the DNA of its people?
Simple. Human spirit is corruptable as history has shown us. Alongside our yearning for freedom from oppression, people have a needy or what I would call a weak side. Fabian socialists disguised as progressives have patiently and gradually corrupted the human spirit by creating a permanent dependancy class over the past century. This has been accomplished through governmental policies, courts, public education (as well as academia in general), media, and other societal institutions like pop culture.
So how successful has this bloodless coup has been? In a Pew Poll about a month ago, it was found that, although capitalism still enjoyed a slim favorability advantage over socialism among those surveyed, a slight
plurality of the young adults (described as those between 18 and 29 years old)
have a
favorable view of socialism.
Just as bad, if not worse, is the alarming favorability rating of progressivism which stands for european style fabian socialism. Although one must chalk this up to the poor educational level of many in our society, this
neverthless is also the inevitable result of cultural Marxism that plagues our school system
from the earliest grades all the way through to graduate school.
By undermining the learning process, Marxists ensure that the society gradually undergoes a genetic reengineering of sorts.
Ever since in the 1920s and 1930s Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the father of
cultural Marxism who argued that traditional values must be obliterated in order
to free “oppressed” social groups, called for eliminating social decorum and
glorifying perverse behavior in order to destroy the Western middle class and
collapse society from within (guess where Cloward and Piven got their strategy
from), the radical teacher unions in the U.S. have adopted his blueprint to
undermine free market capitalism as the enemy of a "socially just" political
and economic system.
As such, schools have given up on developing
critical thinking skills that usually take place during the second stage of
one's education - the logic (or dialectic) stage. The reason is as obvious as
day: teach a child to think critically and you will lose a future progressive.
Here is the math.
The
future of
America - the youth -
views socialism, and just as alarmingly progressivism, as being
acceptable.
This can only be translated
as such: majority of people in the longer range will prefer collectivism to individualism.
Just like todays OWS movement, participants of which want freedom from their student loans and right to "good jobs" that pay a "living wage" among other things that are essentially non-rights (but rather "wants"), a progressively larger portion of society will come to expect the government to fill the role of a surrogate that is tasked with providing these wants. Already over 40% of the working age population pays no federal income taxes under our progressive tax code, which was determined by OECD to be the most progressive of any developped nation.
Through disingenuous initiatives like amnesty for illegal aliens and anti-voter ID measures, progressives are making the last push to get America over the line wher a critical mass will have been achieved so that classical liberal views like ours will be in permanent minority. This is the exact the reason why Obama cannot be allowed to win another election. He has proven time after time that even without congressional authority, he is willing to break the rules and rule like a benevolent dictator.
Can America
survive the entitlement mentality fostered by our progressive education and
policies? That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. History is against us but we have no other choice than to fight back against the ever creeping tentacles of progressivism. Can people be weaned off dependancy on the government? Late 1990s experiment with welfare reform showed that it can be accomplished. So, there may be hope after all. And, should our attempts prove to be in vain, I am confident America will rise from ashes once again -- even if it means fighting a second American revolution as Thomas Jefferson seemed to predict: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to
time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
