How Nations Fail. Is America on a Path of Permanent Decline?
By Don Feder
Men, like nations, think they’re eternal. What man in his 20s or 30s
doesn’t believe, at least subconsciously, that he’ll live forever?
In the springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons. As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality.
Nations, too, have seasons. Imagine a Roman of the 2nd. Century contemplating an empire that stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking: This will endure forever.
Forever was about 500 years, give or take.
France was the thing in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to becoming part of the Muslim community.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never set on
the British Empire. Now Albion exists in perpetual twilight. Its
95-year-old sovereign is a fitting symbol for a nation in terminal
decline.
In the 1980s, Japan seemed poised to buy the world. Business schools
taught Japanese management techniques. Today, its birth rate is so low,
and its population is aging so rapidly that an industry has sprung up to
remove the remains of elderly Japanese who die alone.
I was born in 1946, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century
– the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never
greater. Thanks to the Greatest Generation, we won a World War fought
over most of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble
and put the rising sun to bed.
It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented
prosperity. We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and
fought international terrorism. We rebuilt our enemies and lavished
foreign aid on much of the world.
We built skyscrapers and rockets to the moon. We conquered Polio and
COVID. We explored the mysteries of the Universe and the wonders of
DNA, the blueprint of life.
But where is the glory that once was Rome?
America has moved from a relatively free economy to socialism – which
has worked so well nowhere in the world. We’ve gone from a republican
government guided by a constitution to a regime of revolving elites. We
have less freedom with each passing year.
Like a signpost to the coming reign of terror, the cancel culture is
everywhere. We’ve traded the American Revolution for the Cultural
Revolution.
The pathetic demented creature in the White House is an empty vessel
filled by his handlers. At the G-7 Summit, Dr. Jill had to lead him like
a child.
In 1961, when we were young and vigorous, our leader was too. Now a
feeble nation is technically led by the oldest man to ever serve in the
presidency.
We can’t defend our borders, history (including monuments to past
greatness), or our streets. Our cities have become anarchist
playgrounds.
We are a nation of dependents, mendicants, and misplaced charity.
Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in
hotels.
The president of the United States can’t even quote the beginning of
the Declaration of Independence correctly. Ivy League graduates
routinely fail history tests that 5th graders could pass a generation ago.
Crime rates soar, and we blame the 2nd Amendment and slash police budgets.
Our culture is certifiably insane. We have men who marry men. Men who
think they’re women. People who fight racism seek to convince members
of one race that they’re inherently evil and others that they are
perpetual victims. A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale said she fantasizes
about “unloading a revolver into the head of any white person.”
We slaughter the unborn in the name of freedom while our birth rate dips lower year by year.
Our national debt is so high that we can no longer even pretend that
we will repay it one day. It’s a $28-trillion monument to our
improvidence and refusal to confront reality.
Our “entertainment” is sadistic, nihilistic, and enduring as a candy
bar wrapper thrown in the trash. Our music is nothing but noise that
spans the spectrum from annoying to repulsive.
Patriotism is called an insurrection, treason celebrated, and perversion sanctified.
A man in blue gets less respect than a man in a dress.
We’re asking soldiers to fight for a nation in which our leaders no longer believe.
How meekly most submitted to Fauci-ism (the regime of face masks and hand sanitizers) shows the death of the American spirit.
How do nations slip from greatness to obscurity?
- Fighting endless wars, they can’t or won’t win.
- Accumulating massive debt far beyond their ability to repay
- Refusing to guard their borders, allowing alien hordes to inundate their nation.
- Surrendering control of their cities to mob rule
- Allowing indoctrination of the young
- Moving from a republican form of government to an oligarchy
- Losing national identity
- Indulging indolence
- Abandoning faith and family – the bulwarks of social order.
In America, every one of these symptoms is unmistakable, indicating an advanced stage of the disease.
Even if the cause seems hopeless, do we not have an obligation to those who sacrificed so much to give us what we had?
I’m surrounded by ghosts urging me on—the Union soldiers who held
Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, the battered bastards of Bastogne, those
who served in the cold hell of Korea, the guys who went to the jungles
of Southeast Asia and came home to be reviled or neglected.
This nation took in my immigrant grandparents, whose uniform my
father and most of my uncles wore in the Second World War. I don’t want
to imagine a world without America, even though it becomes increasingly
likely.
During Britain’s darkest hour, when its professional army was trapped
at Dunkirk, and a German invasion seemed imminent, Churchill reminded
his countrymen, “Nations that go down fighting rise again, and those
that surrender tamely are finished.”
The same might be said of causes. If we let America slip through our
fingers, what will posterity say of us if we lose without a fight?
While the prognosis is far from good, only God knows if America’s day in the sun is over.
Sent in by reader Skip via ( ronaldyatesbooks )