America: What Did We Do Wrong?

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Stats don’t lie and it’s clear that the Big Project of America has failed.

What went wrong? What factors have made us slip to second-rate, has-been?
 
Second rate compared to whom?

Ourselves? Who we hoped we would become?

Greed and seflishness seem to be major factors.
 
I reject the conclusion that America has failed. But I fully agree that we are doing wrong in many aspects.

We have the power of the ballot. We can vote at least every two years and correct what the majority of voters see as wrong. We have in the past.
  • Look at Prohibition - a Constitutional Amendment ratified by 2/3 of Congress and 75% of the states and flushed away by the same margin when it was seen to not work.
  • Look at the great Depression - 25% unemployment, homeless, and soup lines. It took time, but we righted the ship and sailed on to greater prosperity.
I have experienced the past 50 plus years as an adult, 24 of them in uniform. I listened to President say, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” He closed that speech with this sentence:

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

What went and is going wrong? We have not lived up to President Kennedy’s closing challenge. We have turn self interest into selfishness. Selfishness being the opposite of love and devoid of personal responsibility to live within our means.

As the Tuskegee Airmen told one another in World War II: "Straighten up and fly right!"

What “flying right” is is making better effort to love our families, especially the children. Too many men expect others to raise their kids. It is not working. Most of our problems have their root in broken homes. Hugely expensive Government programs are a poor substitute for men who are allowed to shirk their duty.

Men: Man up! Live a life of Honor. Require the same of other men or drop them as close friends.
 
Where should we start?:
  1. Human sinfulness
  2. The influence of post-enlightenment thought such as that of Marx, Nietzsche, etc., and the destruction of human dignity that came with it.
  3. The influence of occultists such as Aleister Crowley and Timothy Leary in popular culture, especially in rock/pop music, and the corresponding moral decay that came with it.
  4. The work of people like Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger, and the corresponding moral decay that came with it.
  5. The worship of mammon (corporate capitalism), and the economic disasters that came with it.
The list could go on and on and on, but it really all boils down to the first item on the list 🙂

No nation remains a superpower forever. The power hungry tend to rise to power, corruption sets in, you get the idea. But we needn’t worry. God did not establish America; He established a Church, and it’s outlasted every superpower in its 2000 year history.
 
Without necessarily agreeing that the end is already here, I am reminded of something that C.S. Lewis wrote:
Screwtape Proposes a Toast:
…Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same…
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(For any who aren’t familiar with Screwtape, he is a demon bent on the ruination of humanity.)

I think that for too long we have allowed ourselves to go with “the behavior that democracies like” instead of the behavior that will preserve the country. Metaphorically (and also in many cases literally), we have not been eating our vegetables.

–Jen
 
Put a fork in us. We’re done. Greater than $17 trillion in debt with a GDP of around $16 trillion. No cuts in spending in sight.

The govt collects $2.9 trillion in taxes but spends $3.8 trillion. If they raise taxes, it puts the brakes on the economy, and tax revenue goes down anyway. So the national debt just keeps going up.

The federal reserve is printing $85 billion a month and buying toxic bonds (bailing out banks). i.e. Quantitative Easing. That’s a trillion a year that I don’t even know if it’s on the books anywhere.

By the way with 315 million people in the US, the $17 trillion national debt works out to $54,000 per man woman and child that each of us owe.
 
America turned away from God and made money, sex, and materialism its gods.
 
ahhh the sky is falling. I better buy gold/food insurance/ whatever fox news tells scared elderly to purchase!
 
What a bunch of foolish nonsense. America is its people who have NOT failed in any way. We are a diverse melting pot of 400 million people and we prosper like no other country or peoples in history. There is no true poverty in this country, no run away communicable diseases, no wide spread sectarian violence or war, no starvation, and woman are equals. Our so called poor own cars, tvs, $400 cell phones and are so fat the biggest treat to them is type II diabetes. Everyone who wishes to avail themselves of it have health care that is the finest in the world. This country protects the world and maintains a level of stability and global peace that is unprecedented. Natural disasters are shaken off without violence or a break down in order. The government so called shuts down and life for 99.99% of America does not miss a beat.

I suggest those of you in perpetual self loathing about this country turn off the internet, shut off the TV and go out into the world and see how the other half lives. If you are obsessed with the moral transgression of America I suggest you compare it to the rest of the world or better yet mind your own beam before pointing out others specs. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
 
agreed. People need to look around and realize that the sky is not falling despite how loud hannity says it is
 
M1Garand said:
What a bunch of foolish nonsense. America is its people who have NOT failed in any way. We are a diverse melting pot of 400 million people and we prosper like no other country or peoples in history. There is no true poverty in this country, no run away communicable diseases, no wide spread sectarian violence or war, no starvation, and woman are equals. Our so called poor own cars, tvs, $400 cell phones and are so fat the biggest treat to them is type II diabetes. Everyone who wishes to avail themselves of it have health care that is the finest in the world. This country protects the world and maintains a level of stability and global peace that is unprecedented. Natural disasters are shaken off without violence or a break down in order. The government so called shuts down and life for 99.99% of America does not miss a beat.

I suggest those of you in perpetual self loathing about this country turn off the internet, shut off the TV and go out into the world and see how the other half lives. If you are obsessed with the moral transgression of America I suggest you compare it to the rest of the world or better yet mind your own beam before pointing out others specs. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
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Thank you Mr. President
 
M1Garand said:
What a bunch of foolish nonsense. America is its people who have NOT failed in any way. We are a diverse melting pot of 400 million people and we prosper like no other country or peoples in history. There is no true poverty in this country, no run away communicable diseases, no wide spread sectarian violence or war, no starvation, and woman are equals. Our so called poor own cars, tvs, $400 cell phones and are so fat the biggest treat to them is type II diabetes. Everyone who wishes to avail themselves of it have health care that is the finest in the world. This country protects the world and maintains a level of stability and global peace that is unprecedented. Natural disasters are shaken off without violence or a break down in order. The government so called shuts down and life for 99.99% of America does not miss a beat.

I suggest those of you in perpetual self loathing about this country turn off the internet, shut off the TV and go out into the world and see how the other half lives. If you are obsessed with the moral transgression of America I suggest you compare it to the rest of the world or better yet mind your own beam before pointing out others specs. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
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There is truth in what you say, but you are making the opposite error of saying that the sky is falling. The sky may not be falling, but it is a thing that must be perpetually supported, and the supports are in some ways weakening at the moment. And in other ways strengthening. As is always true. Everywhere.

Of course the sky isn’t falling. And it probably won’t any time soon. But this is because as the supports crumble, we notice and patch them up. We have our problems, and we need to solve them.

America isn’t over, but neither is it perfect. The problems that cause some to say that the sky is falling are generally real problems that need resolution. And maybe if they don’t recieve any attention, we will have bigger problems to resolve. The key, though, is to recognize dealing with such issues as an act of maintenance to solve problems that will always be there in some form or anther, but that get more or less severe depending on how well and how quickly we react to them - rather than thinking either that they are dooming us, or that because things are pretty good right now they just don’t matter.
 
Unless we just annexed Mexico, we do not have 400 million people.

We’d have 350 if we had not allowed abortion. And, regardless of bad loans and the rest of it, if those fifty million lost bodies were in the economy, that economy would be healthier.

There is no way housing prices would have fallen so far (triggering the 2008 recession), if the country had not eliminated thirty million potential home buyers.

Whatever happens with debts, war or otherwise, a country that loves and honors our LORD will be protected.

ICXC NIKA
 
M1Garand said:
What a bunch of foolish nonsense.
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The fact that you can’t see 1 million aborted babies a year and 18 trillion dollars in debt by walking down the street doesn’t mean they aren’t serious problems.
M1Garand said:
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
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Amen! I love this country and am grateful to have been born here, but that doesn’t mean nothing is wrong here. Some of the things are seriously wrong. We haven’t fallen yet, but that does not mean that we are not heading for a fall if we don’t change course.

–Jen
 
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