Year end presents the opportunity to engage in our most serious reflection of the past and strengthen our resolutions of amendment for the future. It has been a year to be remembered and a year of warning, in that, we hope the country will reflect upon and realize the consequences of their actions (i.e., the election of B. Hussein Obama). We must resolve that this type of travesty never be allowed to threaten our country again. We must also resolve to make every effort roll back the most egregious actions of the last Congress and to mitigate the adverse effects of those we cannot.
This past year has produced, under the most inept and corrupt Congress and Administration in history, unimaginable national debt, recession, unconstitutional power grabs and political infighting. A palpable fear permeates ‘America the Great’ that it will soon be replaced by more vigorous rivals abroad. This, understandably, is cause for most Americans to feel depressed, anxious, and just plain angry. Yet, as prominent as these feelings are now, this fear and anxiety is as old as it is unlikely.
The Great Depression of the 1930’s was widely believed to portend the death of entrepreneurial American capitalism; the 1950’s, was portrayed as a morose period of mindless American conformity, McCarthyism and the much maligned corporate group-think.
The assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, along with the Vietnam War of the 1960’s spawned the ‘hippie counterculture’ that was supposedly going to replace the ‘evil’ American establishment. (The current administration is rife with the burn-outs from this movement.) Oil shocks, gas lines, Watergate and rust belts were said to mark the post-industrial decline of America of the 1970’s.
We were told, at the same time, that other nations (communist and socialist) were doing far better.
Mao Zedong took the throne in China and instigated and/or inspired communist revolutions from North Korea to Cuba. Liberal elitists, worldwide and in the US, crowed that Statist central planning was going to replace the perceived unfairness and inefficiency of Western-style capitalism and reign supreme for millennia. Yet, a mere half-century later, most communist dominated countries have (or are about to) implode and now adorn the ash-heap of history.
By the 1980’s, Japan, Inc., with its focus upon the group rather than the individual and its state capitalism was heralded as the perfect balance between the public and private sectors. The bubble burst in the ‘90s with a real estate crisis and a lack of fiscal transparency leading to a collapse of property prices followed by a general recession. Since then, an aging and shrinking Japanese population, led by a secretive government, continues to struggle in recovery mode. (These are lessons we should study carefully.)
The beginning of the 21st century saw the European Union hailed as the enlightened paradigm of Western Civilization’s future. Now Europe lurches from major crisis to major crisis, dysfunctional with its socialist entitlements. The European system is ossifying as evinced by a shrinking population, a growing atheism, and an inability to integrate immigrants (Muslims) or field a credible military.
Today, the ‘Big C’, China, we are told, will be the global colossus replacing the United States in influence and power. However, these doomsayers fail to account for the mounting social tensions, mercantilism, environmental degradation and state bosses with more a 19th century mindset than a 21st century nation.
All this doom and gloom we perceive today has been present in various degress over the decades and begs a couple of observations:
First, America goes through periodic bouts of anxiety and self-doubt only to wake up and snap out of it, more confident than ever.
Second, ‘decline’ is as subjective as it is relative. As the economic and scientific values of the United States ripple out to the undeveloped world, it is inevitable that countries like China, India and Brazil will be thrust into the 21st century experiencing initial rapid growth.
All this being said, a nation’s strength and future is demonstrated by its demography, culture and institutions rather than temporary lapses of sanity, as demonstrated by the 2008 US presidential election. America absorbs and assimilates immigrants of multiple races and ethnicities in a way that Russia, China, Japan and the Islamic world are simply not culturally equipped to do.
The American Constitution, tested for over 223 years, has proved resilient in surviving a bloody civil war, two World Wars, police actions, ‘authorizations of force’, depressions and bouts of self-pity and doubt. It shall, as shall we, survive our current state of affairs and be the stronger for it. Our time-honored political, economic, military and social foundations remain strong and able to withstand the assaults, current and future, as they always have.
Be heartened, therefore, America and turn your eyes, at the dawn of a new year, upon the opening scenes of a grand future, secure in the confidence that victory will be ours over all threats … foreign and domestic.
Semper Vigilans (Always Vigilant)!
