Decline Is A Choice

“… the United States is in the express lane to Declinistan: unsustainable entitlements, the remorseless governmentalization of the economy and individual liberty, and a centralization of power that will cripple a nation of this size. Decline is the way to bet. But what will ensure it is if the American people accept decline as a price worth paying for European social democracy.”

When Mark Steyn gets going he can depress one more than Glenn Beck ever thought about doing.

As you may recall I wrote a piece that Rush Limbaugh read on air called “Is Rush Right?” The gist of it is that I cannot wrap my mind around his premise that Pres. Obama is trying to destroy the economy. I still don’t buy it. Do I think Pres. Obama is going to? Probably. But I’m still not willing to believe he would do that on purpose. It’s absurd.

But I’ve been wrong before.

Almost daily Glenn Beck is telling us to buy gold and store up on survival food. Yes, I know he is being paid to do so, but it’s embarassing. On the one hand Beck is really doing a great job of teaching people history who might never know it, and showing the roots of the progressives and where they want to take this country. But on the other hand he cries and tells us the end may be just around the corner.

I don’t see it like that. I don’t see it like Mark Steyn does. But two things he and others point out is without a doubt true. One is that we do have unsustainable entitlements. People seem to think that the money that pours into these programs are neverending, like Willa Wonka’s chocolate river. We have been living on borrowed time (not to mention money) for a long long time. Sooner or later this will catch up to us in a huge economic way. And probably sooner than later.

Which is why adding this huge healthcare entitlement is reckless and irresponsible. It’s as if the Democrats don’t care. Or maybe they just buy the chocolate river theory. I’m not sure.

The second is the slow leak of liberty. From property rights, to gun rights, and now to our decisions in healthcare, we have gotten so used to the incremental changes that we don’t see it. We just shrug our shoulders and say, “That’s the way it is.”

This didn’t start with Obama. Not by a long shot. It started with Woodrow Wilson and FDR, and it was even carried along by Pres. Bush with his bailouts and prescription drug plan and spending. It started with compassionate programs. We are a good people. We want to take care of those in need. But it became like the old horror movie, The Blob” and it just grew and grew until it consumed everyone.

Medicare is one example. Of course we all want to take care of the medical needs of the elderly poor. But my parents are wealthy with good private insurance. They don’t need Medicare, but the government requires that they are on it. Federal rules say they cannot collect Social Security benefits if they try to opt out. Not only is that liberty taken away, it makes no sense. Imagine how much of our taxpayer money is wasted on well off elderly who don’t even need Medicare. And what right is it of the government to blackmail people with their OWN money in Social Security, so they are forced to opt into Medicare?! The founding fathers would be appalled. But, this is where we are.

Bernie Madoff’s clients thought they were rich. The dividends just kept coming. But what they didn’t know was that their money was long gone, and he was simply sending them the checks from the new clients. Soon, Bernie Madoff will have nothing on our government, because they are doing the exact same thing and we are all held captive as clients. There is an end to the money train. Printing money and borrowing from China cannot go on for long.

Steyn points to Britain if we wish to see our future. The point below struck home to me because of one of my main frustrations. The fact that the left refuses to see what the welfare state did to the black family, and it continues to mire it in generational poverty:

As Europe demonstrates, a determined state can change the character of a people in the space of a generation or two. Look at what the Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population: That’s what happened in Britain.

A lot of people are waking up to our decline. We are fighting against it. I hope we are not too late. The last thing I want to be doing is crying in front of the TV with Glenn Beck.

So get off your computer, get off your couch, turn off the TV, and go out and fight for our liberty. Tell your friends, your family, your church, that we all have got to remind everyone that this is “a government of the people, by the people, for the people” AND IT “shall not perish from the earth. …”

We are not there yet.

But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, “decline is a choice.” The Democrats are offering it to the American people, and a certain proportion of them seem minded to accept. Enough to make decline inevitable?… in the words of Arnold Toynbee: “Civilizations die from suicide, not from murder.”

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