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 ummah.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never set on the British empire. Now Albion exists in a 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 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, our 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 by seeking 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 as enduring as a candy bar wrapper thrown in the trash. Our music is noise that spans the spectrum from annoying to repulsive.
Patriotism is called 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 our leaders no longer believe in.
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 the nation to be inundated by an alien horde
- 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 social order.
In America, every one of these symptoms is pronounced, 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 is the nation that 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, if we lose without a fight, what will posterity say of us?
While the prognosis is far from good, only God knows if America’s day in the sun is over.
Great article! Keep writing and spreading the truth. We have to find a way to turn our youth around.
Superb article.
Alas, barring a miracle of biblical proportions, We Are Doomed.
The neo-Marxist Left’s Long March Through the Institutions is now complete.
The media, the courts, government agencies, education, and the military are each and every one lost or all but lost. And we no longer have a fair and open system of voting, which is the bare-bones baseline for a properly functioning republic or democracy.
Hard to look at when it’s all set forth with such uncompromising clarity. What took us so long to notice? How did they manage to bamboozle us into accepting that we were simply being tolerant of diverse opinions and approaches?
Very few felt confident enough to stand up and denounce the woke agenda as plainly subversive and toxic to national survival. And the few that did were marginalized, smeared and cancelled while the rest of us sat on the sidelines and tried to ignore it.
The good news about our present state of degradation is that is has become so severe that only fools and knaves can continue to ignore it.
I thought that John Leaps wrote this article long time ago: please clarify.
Julie, I researched this using Microsoft Bing,, the ChatGPT-enhanced search engine that Microsoft started using about a month or so ago.. You should try this yourself to check my results. I went 9 queries deep into a dialog with Bing.. I cut & pasted the first query:
1. SB1: Who originally wrote a piece that starts, “men, like nations, think they’re eternal…”?
a. Bing1: That’s a good question. According to the web search results, the original author of that piece is Don Feder, a conservative columnist and writer1. He wrote it in an article titled “How Nations Slip from Greatness to Obscurity” published on June 17, 20211 [swb: on Frontpagemag.com].. The article is a commentary on the decline of America and the West in general. He compares the fate of nations to the seasons of life and warns that “nations, like men, are not immortal”1.
b. Learn more:
1. frontpagemag.com
2. Wikipedia, search Don Feder
I just received this via email from a friend, and I’m trying to track down the original from the original author. Did Don Feder author this?
Thanks.
I believe this link will clarify a couple of questions above.
Good article. But what about the part, “Union soldiers who held Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg”? What were they fighting for? Certainly not for the right of self-government, because their foes were fighting for that. Our country took a wrong turn in 1865 and it has never gone back. The Republic of our Founders was decimated, and the era of “big government” initiated. Lincoln imprisoned over 30,000 of his fellow Northerners who dared speak out against his illegal war, and he shut down over 300 newspapers for disagreeing with his illegal invasion.
No, slavery had nothing to do with it. Learn your history, because all you got in the government schools was indoctrination, which is why we are where we are today. If the truth had been taught for the last 150+ years, this cultural genocide of removing monuments and renaming schools, parks, streets, and military bases would not be taking place. Communists hate the South because of what it represents; faith, family, self-reliance, and resistance to tyranny. It is the last stronghold on earth for freedom, but it is slipping rapidly due to all the Cultural Marxism taking place. The Founding Principles upon which this country was established are the strongest in the South, but they are under constant attack. We have to get back to those principles and back to God if this country is to survive. We must educate with truth, not the “accepted narrative”.
But whose „god“? It is a christian god, or islamist god or jewish god, or the ancient greek gods, or ancient egyptian gods, or native peoples gods – there are so many…. Which one or ones? Why should it be YOUR god?
And further down in the article, it says „patriots are called insurrectionists“ but i believe that if those so-called patriots had gotten to their targets, they may have actually killed someone! (Nancy, where are you? Hang mike pence! etc.)
They MAY have actually killed someone??????
THAT’s what we’re supposed to believe was an insurrection?
This country is imploding because it has replaced the firm foundation of righteousness with idolatry, perversion, and all manner of evil. God cannot honor and bless such a land as this. Our elected officials care only about how much they can put into their pockets. They lie to get into office, then lie more to stay in office, caring nothing for the people or this country. Too many people vote name recognition instead of on the record of the incumbent. We can’t continue to do the same thing and expect different results, which is the definition of insanity. We need new people on our school boards, city councils, and running for Congress. We need to purge out the old, and install the new if we are to get this country back on the right track. People must learn historical and Biblical truth to learn where we have been, and how we need to proceed. People need to turn off the MSM, which is pumping out a constant barrage of lies, get their news from alternative sources, and use some critical thinking.
We must all push back against the lies and perversion so prevalent today, and stand firm on our faith. As it has been said, all it take s for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Let us not be among those who do nothing.