came to a realization about how far we have fallen in my lifetime

[rockhound]

While working out last night i flipped on the Tv in the basement. Apolla 13 was playing in the back ground, my oldest daughter came in to watch, first time she had seen it. As we discussed the events that were playing out and the fact that is was based on real events that happened as i was very young, I came to the realization about how far we have fallen.

I was born three months before Neil Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11 landed on the moon. We were the most powerful nation on the planet and secured our position as such that very day. We were untouchable. The dominant military force, the most powerful economy, the largest producers of steel and coal and vehicles. Our capability of waging war and defending ourselves, defending our allies was unquestioned. Our president was admired. Our way of life was admired and sought after by most of the worlds population.

We had jobs, and produced our own goods, no one was on welfare and were embarrassed to be so. Food stamps had their place, but were not widespread. Mom's raised their kids and fathers stuck around to lead and be the mentor for son's that would gow up to be the same honest, hard working men. Having a blue collar was not frowned upon and the sweat of a hard earned day's wages was something to be proud of.

I remember seeing the The Freedom Train come to town and we all celebrated the fact that we had built the greatest nation on earth and were proud to be a part of it.

I just turned 45 years old this week and I have come to the realization that within my lifetime this country has gone from one of shear triumph and being the envy of the world to one that is a laughing stock, riddled with debt, that is hell bent on self destruction.

I am confused and honestly dumbfounded as to how this can possibly happen so fast. I do not see any end to our stupidity and am ashamed of what has transpired and what is to come. Ashamed of what we have created for my children. That we have guaranteed that for the first time in over 200 years our children will not better off than we were.

Sorry for the downer thread, but as nearly half a century has flown by me I have started to reflect a bit.

I am hoping that somewhere there are kids that will figure this out and put down their video games and make something tangible and real that can make a difference.

[Robb]

Sure wish I was able to refute what you're saying, but I can't.

[kidicarus13]

I am hoping that somewhere there are kids that will figure this out and put down their video games and make something tangible and real that can make a difference.

Ahhh, optimism. I'll just say this, momentum is a hard thing to slow down let alone change its direction 180 degrees. Hey kids... good luck, I wish you the best.

[mtnrider]

I was having these same reflections a few weeks ago. I wonder what kind of future my young children are going to have in this country ...and it scares me.

[Zundfolge]

[Great-Kazoo]

I am hoping that somewhere there are kids that will figure this out and put down their video games and make something tangible and real that can make a difference.

As a parent, it's you're responsibility to have them put down their video games, cell phones etc. Without guidance it's not their fault.

Until parent[s] are willing to be parents and not their children's BFF it will never happen. While there is a fine line between discipline and abuse, putting the fear of [insert deity] in to them, so they open their eyes & minds, is something a lot of parents don't have the backbone to do.

[SAnd]

Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon. I used to be encouraged and inspired by that saying. Now I just get bummed out by it.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

I am confused and honestly dumbfounded as to how this can possibly happen so fast.

Because we gave up on so many things.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnh...7340/page/full

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle: There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’" — G.K. Chesterton

We hear a great deal about how America needs to be "changed" by people who don't seem to know America's history, understand our country's uniqueness, or appreciate how good we've had it as a people. Until you understand what made America a great nation to begin with, you have no business suggesting any changes to the policies, tradition, and culture that made us so uniquely successful. It's not an accident that America became a great power. It's because of these seven reasons.


1) Judeo-Christian Ethics: When people call America a "Christian nation," they're referring to the Judeo-Christian morals that shaped our country. Our strong sense of right and wrong kept corruption to a minimum, our Protestant work ethic caused Americans to be productive, and our belief in rights given by God, not government shaped our national philosophy. Respect for Christian values is a part of the fabric of our country that goes right back to our founding. Even if many people wouldn't realize it until it is too late, an America where Christianity isn't an important part of everyday life would no longer be America in any meaningful sense.

2) A Powerful Military: There's a lot to be said for "soft power," but it pales in comparison to raw military might. The United States was not always a great military power, but once the Civil War was over, we started to assert ourselves. Since WWII, we've had the finest military on Planet Earth. That one factor does more to insure our freedom and the safety of our allies than every other factor combined. As Reagan said, "History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap." At least for now, no nation could be so foolish as to believe that a potential fight with the United States would be cheap.

3) Western Culture: If the entire population of Venezuela, Iran, or South Africa were here in the United States and all of us were gone, this country would quickly turn into a pesthole, just like all of those nations because they're culturally inferior to us. On the other hand, Western culture has produced ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Britain, the United States and a host of lesser nations that are still more successful than 90% of the planet. The emphasis in Western culture on individualism, innovation, Christianity, capitalism, science, technology, freedom and individual rights has given us an enormous advantage that we are sadly eroding with our foolish embrace of multi-culturalism.

4) Geography: We can't underestimate the importance of being a large, resource-rich nation that's isolated from powerful foes. Had Britain been considerably closer, it's possible that we may have been unable to break away and take control of our own destiny. If we had powerful adversaries to our North and South, we may have had great difficulties when our nation was young and we were just finding our strength. If we had been closer to Europe, our homeland might have been decimated during WWI and WWII. If God had given us first choice of places to found a nation, this is where we would have ended up.

5) Industrial Capacity: Economically, America managed to take full advantage of the Industrial Revolution and most people still don't realize how important our ability to churn out material was to winning WWII. Just to give you one of many examples,

"By 1944 America built 96,300 planes, more planes than were possessed by the Axis combined and this does not include British and Soviet production. The Germans built 40,000 war planes in 1944, but the arrival of P51 Mustangs in the skies over Germany resulted in the destruction of the Luftwaffe. And American production was 75 percent combat aircraft.....This was the peak of production, an incredible 11 planes an hour were rolling out of American aircraft plants."

We lack this capacity today and make up for our inability to mass produce weaponry by creating high quality war machines. This is a potentially dangerous strategy because if a large chunk of our superior weaponry were ever destroyed somehow, it would take us an inordinately long time to rebuild it.

6) A Merit-Based Society: America's lack of an aristocracy, tribes, and castes helped allow the cream to rise to the top in our society. Although we certainly weren't perfect in this regard as any slave or woman throughout most of our history could tell you, we were well ahead of much of the rest of the world. The fact that we're still regarded by the rest of the world as a "land of opportunity" is one of our greatest strengths, although our antiquated immigration system does little to take advantage of this fact. The more we penalize success as a society, the more stratified, stagnant and sterile we'll become as a country.

7) A Constitution That Limited Centralized Government: Nothing could be more fundamentally American than a deep and abiding distrust of government. That's why the Constitution was specifically designed to keep our own government from oppressing the people. This contributed mightily to our success because the bigger and more powerful the government becomes, the smaller, weaker and poorer the people become. Our Founding Fathers understood this and were fanatical about small, decentralized government. The further we move from that principle, the more economic stagnation, frightening levels of debt, and potentially dangerous tyranny we'll see from our own government.

[Zundfolge]

I am confused and honestly dumbfounded as to how this can possibly happen so fast.

I know I reference Anonymous Conservative a lot lately, but he's really on the ball when it comes to at least part of a Unified Field Theory of liberals and liberalism, but he really covers why we're in the state we're in in his most recent post. http://www.anonymousconservative.com...-the-amygdala/

One of the things which I have seen first hand is the slowly corrupting nature of resource excess and peace. This doesn’t happen all at once to a culture, but rather creates a slow, perceptible slide from generation to generation. When I began martial arts training, I rolled with a club that was full of vets fresh from the Korean war. These guys were hard men, in a way you don’t really see today in civil society.
...
Those Korean vets I knew came from parents who, (based on a cursory examination of the traits their kids carried), probably sliced a bloody swath during WWII through a place where the threat of their own violent end at the hands of a brutal enemy was ever present. Next thing you know, I’m sparring with guys who would have put the fear of God into a bar full of PCP-laden Hells Angels.


Take away the threat stimulus of war and shortage, and decades later I’m laughing, as I fight, at the ridiculous comedic antics of a twenty-something goofball opponent, who I couldn’t imagine ever killing anyone. For decades I marveled at that phenomenon as I watched it slowly play out in front of me, long before I ever knew why it was happening. It wasn’t genetic – it was too fast, and there weren’t enough people dying, or enough selective breeding. It wasn’t an endogenous bio-chemical desensitization, it was too gradual, over generations and decades. Epigenetics is the only mechanism I am aware of which fit what I observed, and I have no doubt, that is what it was. And the mechanism I saw there is the same one I see playing out in our politics as the decades pass, and each new generation seems to lack something the previous generation had. Today, as I look out on the nation, I see a rapidly growing cadre of imbeciles, totally blind to the economic destruction and national and cultural failure that each election brings us closer to. This is why those imbeciles are out there, and why they are growing in number.

The simple truth is that peace & plenty erode the character of a people until they are no longer deserving of their peace & plenty so they either wake the hell up and straighten their shit out, or more likely someone comes along, sees their weakness and takes everything from them.


I really hate to say this in company of people with children (especially young children) and I really am not trying to poke any of you in the eye, but drive by any grade school at recess and look at those little children engaged in non-competitive, gender neutral & politically correct play. Unless we wake the hell up and take the culture (not just the government) back within the next decade, I would bet you that there is a greater than 70% chance that at some point in their lives they will have to take up arms against either an invading army of Russians or Chinese or our own government (or hell, all 3).

And I'd put their chances of survival at less than 50% and success at less than 20%.

[Sawin]

.....

I am confused and honestly dumbfounded as to how this can possibly happen so fast. I do not see any end to our stupidity and am ashamed of what has transpired and what is to come. Ashamed of what we have created for my children. That we have guaranteed that for the first time in over 200 years our children will not better off than we were.

Sorry for the downer thread, but as nearly half a century has flown by me I have started to reflect a bit.

I am hoping that somewhere there are kids that will figure this out and put down their video games and make something tangible and real that can make a difference.

Rockhound, I am 30 years old and have my first child in the oven... I have had the same thoughts as you for the past 6-7 years at increasingly depressing levels. That being said, I have chosen to give the big picture up to God and do my part in my own circle of influence, as best as I can. For a while, I thought I might not even want kids because how bad I imagined the world to become at this rate. I pray that folks with the proper mindset and abilities will make a difference in this generation or the next. Life will go on, regardless of how "bad" it looks respective of our childhoods...All I know now is that I fully intend to teach my child(ren) about the 7 values that made the United States of America great, from Jeffrey Lebowski's article.