An apocalyptic vibe seems to have settled over the West. Signs and portents abound: The Covid plague and the Russo-Ukrainian War have unleashed two of the Four Horses of Revelations. For those not terminally “woke,” gaudy transexuals performing for prepubescent school-children, and credentialed medical doctors poisoning and mutilating healthy children and young people bespeak the moral idiocy that typically marks civilizational collapse. A self-created energy crisis threatens to turn off the heat and lights and all the other amenities of modern civilization. And cities rife with murder, daylight plundering of stores with impunity, junkies shooting up near schools, excrement polluting the sidewalks, and the mentally disturbed roaming streets and subways summon up images redolent of rough beasts whose time has come round at last.
What we’re really talking about is that staple of historiographical pessimism, what in 1918 Oswald Spengler called the Decline of the West. Since then many moments of Western decline have come and gone. But is this time different? Are we finally facing the end of the most sophisticated, wealthy, and powerful civilization in history?
Our geopolitical rivals certainly think so. Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and Khamenei’s Iran watch our cultural degradation, hedonistic lives, intolerance for physical and psychic discomfort, obsession with even low risk, and dwindling faith, and calculate that we no longer have the nerve or convictions to maintain our global dominance, and can be pushed aside for new, autocratic Axis Powers that will be the global hegemons.
To this geopolitical triumvirate, the Western “new world order” postwar paradigm comprising democracy, rule by law, free-market economies, political accountability, human rights, equality of the sexes and sexual preferences, confessional tolerance, and the separation of church and state is played out. Now other, more autocratic traditions marginalized by the arrogant West will be better stewards of the global community.
And why shouldn’t they think we are declining, when for decades many of our own cultural, intellectual, and political elites and institutions have turned against those defining goods?
They have banished faith from the public square; redefined marriage, sexuality, and the two sexes themselves; polluted our schools and universities with illiberal doctrines and intellectual higher nonsense; opened our southern border to millions of unvetted illegal aliens and tons of lethal drugs; assaulted and defaced, literally and figuratively, our history, monuments, and national heroes; denigrated patriotism and embraced a utopian globalism; and replaced our national and civilizational sagas with narratives of racism, sexism, xenophobia, oppression, conquest, and other collective sins for which we should feel nothing but guilt and shame.
Why, then, wouldn’t our rivals take our cognitive elites at their word and strive to dismantle and replace this toxic civilization that for more than half a millennium has tyrannized the world, befouled the earth, and plundered its resources? Haven’t our own environmentalists for decades been preaching prophecies of climate doom brought on by Western technology, consumerism, and capitalism that have ravaged the natural world and brutalized its peoples? Aren’t our green catastrophists now demanding that the West pay multiple billions in reparations to those victims in the developing world? Haven’t our wealth, leisure, comfort, and security come at their expense?
This new axis of enemies can see that we have already been doing their work for them. We have become propagandists against our own civilization, fifth-columnists undermining our institutions of learning with self-loathing curricula devoid of basic skills; our militaries with self-hating racist dogma and transsexual pseudo-science; and our economy with cronyism, rent-seeking, and unsustainable debt.
Worst of all, the United States––the alpha power that for 77 years has defended the West, brought down its nuclear-armed rival, and led our allies in developing new transformative technologies, and widely distributing wealth––now has infected Europe with our lunatic cultural fads, and endangered its economies by driving the world’s largest economy to bankruptcy with our metastasizing debt and trillions of dollar in unfunded liabilities.
Worse, many of us are relentlessly dismantling and trying to replace with a technocratic despotism the Constitution that for more than two centuries has allowed us enough stability, freedom, and protection from tyranny to make this power and wealth possible.
Such catalogues of decline typically are accompanied by explanations of why. As far back as ancient Athens, the corruption of the citizenry’s character by wealth and leisure has explained the erosion of civic virtue like courage, service, and duty that brings on decline and defeat.
For example, in the direct democracy of ancient Athens, citizens could vote to spend public money on themselves through state subsidies and stipends. According to the historian Theopompus, this redistribution of money made 4th century B.C. Athenians “less courageous and more lax.” Rather than spending money on the military to check the ambitions of Phillip II, “the Athenian people thoroughly squandered their state revenues. . . . The young men dallied over prostitutes in the little flute-girl establishments, men slightly older than they over drinking, dice and similar debauchery, and the entire citizenry spent more on public festivals and sacrifices than on the management of the war” with Phillip. The sorry end came in 338 B.C. at the battle of Chaeronea, where Phillip’s victory ended Athenian political freedom and autonomy.
Over the centuries this dynamic has been blamed for a state’s decline. Wealth and leisure, along with the power of the citizens to redistribute money to themselves, become a toxic brew that weakens character. It also fosters short-term, selfish thinking that prefers enjoying today’s pleasures to preparing for tomorrow’s dangers––a bad habit endemic to democracies. Free citizens who vote in regularly scheduled elections that hold politicians accountable, encourage such thinking.
That’s why our crisis of unfunded liabilities in the big-three entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, has been neglected even as year-by-year bankruptcy moves closer and closer. And why our military budgets lack the resources and attention needed to check the aggression of our global rivals.
And don’t think China, Iran, and Russia haven’t noticed. Their economic and autocratic dysfunctions in the long-term may likely be unsustainable, but that doesn’t mean that for now these powers aren’t dangerous. Moreover, our various cultural and fiscal problems, which for decades millions of free citizens have indirectly chosen and continue to support, are part of the autocrats’ arguments against liberal democracy and political freedom, and for an even more powerful and controlling government that sacrifices unalienable rights for greater efficiency––a tempting bargain, as our own progressives and many corporations demonstrate with their admiration for China.
Another standard cause of civilizational decline is the abandonment of religion, and a mentality “that would like to see God eradicated once and for all from the public life of humanity and shut up in the subjective sphere of cultural residues from the past,” as the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI put it.
But without a transcendent authority to buttress our virtues, principles, and rights given not by other flawed men, but by “nature and nature’s God,” as our Declaration of Independence put it, our defining principles, morals, and laws are cast adrift. Especially in an open and free society, every ideal, good, virtue, or principle becomes negotiable and relativistic, mere subjective preferences and tastes for which most people are not likely to fight, kill, and die.
The central importance of religion is the argument of Russia and Iran, who contrast their regimes–– founded, whether sincerely or cynically, on faith and religious observance––with the Christophobic West. The perceived heathenism of America and Europe has been a constant theme both in jihadist exhortations, and in Vladimir Putin’s sermons and rationalizations for his brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Again, these assertions may be pretexts perfuming more earthly or venal motive. But the point is not whether they are true, but whether they are effective at marshalling support and strengthening morale for the aggression. Meanwhile, the West’s circulation of sordid images and preposterous cultural fads like transsexualism only make our rivals’ claims about our lack of faith and moral corruption more plausible.
All this doesn’t mean decline is inevitable. Our Constitutional order may have its weaknesses that give scope to the frailties and selfishness of human nature, but its enumerated, unalienable rights and its guarantee of political freedom and equality have not, despite the near-century of effort by progressive technocrats, been cast aside. At least not yet.
If we are living in the end of days, and if decline will be our destiny, it will be we free American people who make that choice.
I can only ‘wish’ you weren’t correct. It’ll have to get one hell of a lot worse before it gets better. That I’m ‘banking’ on but very willing to admit am wrong… in time.
Leftist utopianism has rotted AmeriKa like gangrene or cancer ; it’s not something that can be fixed with an election (even if they were legit)
It has slowly dawned upon sensible folks that a national divorce and pragmatic partition is the only way, but considering the tyranny of DC it’s going to have to be fought for
The worst of Western decline has been sexual immorality fueled by drugs and alcohol. Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of its militant ho m o se xuality and gross debauchery. His nephew Lot and his family lived there. They were spared but God annihilated the place.
God will only tolerate the sin of a nation for so long. That’s why they come and go. Arrogance and tyranny last only for a “season,” maybe a couple of hundred years, and then the s*** hits the fan. It’s a terrible thing to live through. I’m glad I’m in my seventies and am an evangelical Christian. We know what’s coming.
Today I was having a conversation with my dental hygienist who is a young mother of three. Her generation is worried. I told her they have to organize and break up the public school system and demand a return to decency in our nation.
That’s never going to happen as the Left’s long march through the institutions is irriversable as they have captured the youth and most women
We are now at the stage of trying to save what still can be saved in Red State America as the Blue States are a total write off
The Dem =Blosheviks are in some way more radical than the original Bolsheviks who as socially conservative folks from a very conservative country would never has thought about abolishing the sexes and trying to create Homo Sovieticus as an Androgyny, but that’s what the deranged Leftist in Amerika intend to do ; yes abolish one of the major pillars of society, the division of male –female
And destroy the family.
No, destruction of the family is one of the pillars of Marxism.
I’m no Leftist but it would seem that you want God to play the role of mass murderer. Well, let’s hope God is a libertarian once in a while.
What has caused the decline in America? I would look at the 1800’s when most of the cults (Seventh Day Adventis, Mormon, Jehovah Witnesses, Masonic/satanists temples, the New Age movement, and so on), surfaced including the teachings of Darwin, Liberalism, The Critical Text Movement which was used to take away trust in the Bible and the furtherance to the Roman Catholic Church’s (also a cult) claim of giving us the Bible (they were the cause of the critical text movement) and their lies of Tradition and worshipping of idols (Mary) when the Bible came to us from God through the Je wish people.. The decline in America has come because of false prophets and everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. Judgment is coming! As the Bible’s prophets called it ‘The Day of The LORD!
Agreed, and teh author is wrong, we have NOT entered the Tribulation period, so there are NO horsemen riding.
Paul Harvey, news commentator, gave a good summation of what the devil would do to destroy America. We’re living it now.
It’s definitely up to their generation now. We have fought to retain American and Western values for our entire lives, but now we’re tired and want to pass the torch on to our children. I can only pray that they will accept it and carry it proudly.
The idea of secession is thoroughly absurd. Even if it were politically and militarily possible for Red States to secede from Blue States the Red States would be taking the fundamental philosophical ideas that produce a totalitarian state with them.
Florida, arguably the reddest state right now, is chuck full of statist ideas and policies. Ron De Santis is chuck full of statist ideas and policies — conservative ones that conservatives approve of like Social Security and Public Schools.
Hardly any one in Florida would vote to get rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Public Schools. Harldy any one in Florida would vote to get rid of the government safety net. And you actually think they would vote for Laissez-Faire Capitalism? For actual freedom and liberty?
And try to understand that once you accept even one welfare program, like Public Schools, you have accepted the totalitarian principle of altruism-collectivism in full. The totalitarian principle that claims that it is right for the government to steal from your neighbor to fund your need, it is morally noble for the government to enslave your neighbor and you to fund any and all needs, the rest is just a matter of time.
Social Security is not a social program. It is a worker funded “investment “ that our power hungry politicians have stolen from. Now it’s being called an entitlement program given to those who haven’t contributed to our retirement fund, so to speak.
Social Security is an altruist-collectivist welfare program. It is allegedly implemented for your welfare against your will. You have no choice and no freedom not to participate. You can not opt out, if you try you will be prosecuted and punished by the Almighty State.
The underlying totalitarian premise rationalizing the confiscation of your earnings by the elite of government is, “You are too stupid and irrational to plan for your retirement, too stupid to know what’s good for you or your neighbors. Therefore we the elite of government will FORCE you to sacrificially surrender your income to us, for your own good, the good of your neighbors, and the altruist-collectivist “common good” of society.
If that’s not welfare-state socialism and the altruist-collectivist-socialist premise, then what is?
Hardly any state is uniformly blue or red. All divisions would be messy in the extreme.
Yes. I’m thinking of my own state, Pennsylvania, which is defined as “Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and Alabama in between.” I live in Pittsburgh and vote as far right as the ballot allows for, as do a few of my neighbors. But you only have to travel five miles from downtown to find yourself in Alabama, at least in terms of culture and values. A Red/Blue split of the country would be chaos in Pennsylvania, and we are fairly typical of most states.
Alabama in between is a good thing as it is a safe red state ; it’s those country bumbkins who are often the best , most patriotic Americans ..it is urban folks who are most receptive to decadence , while country folk are ”backward ” in a good way ; whoever said that all progress was good ?
Considering you never had a job, I doubt if you will be taking your S.S.
I contributed heavily to my S.S. It’s my money and I’m going to tap in as soon as I can.
Welfare is getting money that is not yours, but I assume you can’t see the difference.
While you don’t need to reflexively insult THX, who lately has been posting some pretty good comments, I agree with you about taking Social Security. I worked hard for it, still work and pay into it handsomely (same with Medicare), and see nothing wrong with taking what is mine. And Ayn Rand collected the Social Security that her employment history entitled her to, for the same reason.
Any secession would necessarily include the “blue” cities within red states. Not to mention some portion of the national debt. And I’m assuming they’d still be tied to the (declining) dollar. So yeah, breaking up would be messy,
Divorces are ugly. We really ought to do everything we can to restore the Republic without resorting to secession,
The country is too far gone as the cancer of Leftism has set in ; you may want to stay on a sinking ship but I don’t … you are deluding yourself and engaging in wishful thinking but reality always rudely intrudes into such fantasies
Divorces are indeed ugly but they are often the lessor of two evils
How I would love to see Florida secede from the US
Florida could use company.
“ They have banished faith from the public square;”
They have banished the public square from Europe.
You guys seem to think that Europe has followed your example but my experience is the opposite.
I worked in government for a few years in the 90’s diversity and inclusion was pushed on us constantly. I am quite proud to have been one of the few who failed a post training exam.
“…a bad habit endemic to democracies.”
The Founding Fathers did NOT design or intend America to be a democracy, why does Bruce Thornton ignore and obscure this fact? Has the USA become a democracy? There lies the problem, the USA is not supposed to be a democracy. The Left has intentionally promoted the idea that America is and should be a democracy and pushed the concept of a republic off the table altogether. Has the Left succeeded in brainwashing Bruce Thornton on this point? Has “republic” become a naughty word in his mind? Not altruistic and egalitarian enough?
“The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn’t like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one’s rights.
Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom . . . .
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.” – Leonard Peikoff
As one of the founding fathers stated, the US Constitution was made for a moral people. This was not the morality of self interest, but came out of Biblical morality. They knew that lawlessness and surrender to any form of pagan morality would undermine the Republic. The secularist/atheist mindset has been growing over time. When enough generations are told that they are not created in the image of God with a responsibility to Him, the social and political consequences will inevitably follow. We are now seeing an acceleration toward moral and spiritual decline in the USA and Europe. The rejection of biblical Christianity in the west will be its final undoing. Secularism and atheism cannot produce a moral people. It is now considered backward to follow the ten commandments. The rejection of the knowledge of original sin and the fall of man is setting the world up for the events described in the final book of the bible, the Revelation. God may give a final revival of Christianity or He may not, depending on His time frame. Certainly God would be justified in letting fallen man have his own way and bringing on the judgement He has determine for the end of the present age. If one is too afraid to read the Revelation, at least read Matthew 24.
“Democracy,” said Benjamin Franklin, “is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to have for dinner.” Clever, and still correct.
“Another standard cause of civilizational decline is the abandonment of religion… But without a transcendent authority… every ideal, good, virtue, or principle becomes negotiable and relativistic, mere subjective preferences and tastes for which most people are not likely to fight, kill, and die.”
The idea of God IS SUBJECTIVE (who’s God, which God, who gets to define God and his will — a theocracy?). The idea of a supernatural Heaven and Hell in a supernatural after-life IS SUBJECTIVE. 72 Virigns In Paradise is subjective. Adam and Eve In The Garden Of Eden is subjective. There is and has never been one iota of OBJECTIVE, demonstrable, logical, evidence for religious, supernatural, fantasies. That is why religion necessarily leads to theocracy.
An OBJECTIVE morality is the antidote for a SECULAR or RELIGIOUS subjective morality but an objective moral code requires and demands the objective and provable, demonstrable, logical, facts of REALITY.
“Religion versus America” – Leonard Peikoff
Whose objective reasoning? Whose reality? This professor or that professor? This philosopher or that philosopher?
Big bang or multiple parallel universe theories?
Let me try to gently try and explain, I have tried before and either you sincerely can not understand the explanation, or you refuse to understand.
“Who” decides what the facts of reality are? NO ONE decides what the facts of reality are. The facts of reality simply ARE. Reason and logic are the means of discovering what the facts of reality are. A human being does not decide what the facts of reality are, he uses reason and logic to DISCOVER what the facts of reality are and then he chooses to ACCEPT and live by the facts of reality or he can reject them and become IRRATIONAL.
A RATIONAL human being does not create, invent, or decide what reality is, he discovers and accepts reality.
“Who decides?” – Ayn Rand
“The concept of objectivity contains the reason why the question “Who decides what is right or wrong?” is wrong. Nobody “decides.” Nature does not decide—it merely IS; man does not decide, in issues of knowledge, he merely observes that which is. When it comes to applying his knowledge, man decides what he chooses to do, according to what he has learned, remembering that the basic principle of rational action in all aspects of human existence, is: “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” This means that man does not create reality and can achieve his values only by making his decisions consonant with the facts of reality.” – Ayn Rand
“Objectivity” – Ayn Rand
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivity/1.html
Exactly. Who determines what is reasonable? Do we take a poll? Have an election? Throughout history it appears those standards are set by whomever has the power to enforce them. There have always been those to “rail against the empire”. And, inevitably, when those revolutionaries become the empire they have to constantly look over their shoulder for the next revolution. “Reason” is not the be all to end all. It is one more human construct that appeals to what one could consider Gnostics. As you said, Mo, who will be the grand arbiter we’re all supposed to fall in line behind?
The political kaleidoscope is coming into clear focus ; Remember how unexpected the soviet collapse was and how it happened within two years 1989-91 ? Well something like that is clearly going to happened to Amerika when the long suffering Red States have finally had enough of the insane Dem policies and demand a national divorce
The Dems have the feckless youth and most women on their side, and crucially the zeitgeist and historical tide that flows towards liberalism . As such we conservatives are fighting a losing battle and must pragmatically salvage what we can from the formerly USA
You conservatives don’t even know what the hell you’re fighting for. Are you conservatives fighting for freedom, liberty, and capitalism? The religious conservatives claim that freedom, liberty, and capitalism come from religion, which is thoroughly absurd, THEOCRACY, not capitalism comes from religion. The secular conservatives claim that morality has nothing to do with social-economic-political issues, that those issues are amoral. Both camps of conservatism are morally and intellectually impotent to defend capitalism.
“Today’s “conservatives” are futile, impotent and, culturally, dead. They have nothing to offer and can achieve nothing. They can only help to destroy intellectual standards, to disintegrate thought, to discredit capitalism, and to accelerate this country’s uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship.” – Ayn Rand
“Conservatism: An Obituary” – Ayn Rand
Christianity prepared the ground for Marxism. What Marx did was to secularize Christianity. Marxism is a religious fish out of water and what it is doing is preparing the ground back to a religious theocracy.
Pope Francis was perfectly accurate when he said “I can only say that the communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the center of the Gospel… Communists say that all this is communism. Sure, twenty centuries later. So when they speak, one can say to them: ‘but then you are Christian”.
“The Threat of “National Conservatism” – The Ayn Rand Institute
“Christianity prepared the ground for Marxism.”
Same old garbage….just a different day.
Today, people should focus on taking care of themselves, family and friends.
The devil take the hindmost.
And we all need to pray. Prayer doesn’t change things, and it certainly doesn’t change objective reality. But it changes us. Concentrate on prayers of thanksgiving (start by thinking of even one good thing in your life and thanking G0d for it) and go on to prayers of petition (a brief cry for G0d to protect your children or other loved ones is a good place to start, but remember that He runs the world and doesn’t take orders from you). and move on from there. And keep in mind that G0d sees history happening as one vast panorama whereas we see it one minute at a time, so we can’t possibly see the whole picture.
Author forgot to mention Soros, Rockefeller and other billionaires and international bankers who finance and profit from this treason.
David Rockefeller died a couple years ago. But it is true that there are financiers who profit from national disintegration.
It is tragic that the US which won the Cold War now is being challenged from within what Mark Levin aptly called American Marxism
“Is the West Living in the End of Days?”
Yes. Unless there is a mass turning to Jesus Christ in full repentance, it will only get worse.
It is Christ or chaos. Those are our choices.
The return to the Christian Dark Ages beckons.
Christian dark ages??? Jesus is the light of the world. BUT. You have to understand and accept his teaching then live by them.
Give me a RATIONAL argument why I should accept Christianity? What is the central, core, crucial, and fundamental teaching of Christianity and why is it rationally and objectively true?
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” ― The Buddha
Ooooo the Christian Dark Ages that never existed. You are a very bad propagandist.
Words of Truth, That come from the Mouth of God. Psalms 2:1-2. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed,” Jesus.
Isaiah 57:20-21 “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”
The debauchery, hatefulness, and immorality of man is beyond comprehension: stealing, lying, abortion, false religion, hypocrisy, murder, adultery, sodomy, rape, child molestation, drunkennes, drug abuse and violence. God’s earth has been defiled by unregenerate men.
No doubt it must be extremely comforting to KNOW OBJECTIVELY that all life as we know it sprang from some microscopic form of life billions of years ago…without needing to know where that already existing life came from. Yeah…
If you want to believe that life was created by Yahweh in the Garden of Eden and preserved on Noah’s Ark that’s your right. As an Objectivist I’m certainly not going to use force to change your mind.
But freedom, liberty, the Rights of Man, and capitalism can not be successfully defended on the unprovable, the undemonstrable, the supernatural, the mystical, or the irrational.
“Why Religious Conservatives Should Embrace Secular Rights” – Craig Biddle
https://theobjectivestandard.com/2016/04/why-religious-conservatives-should-embrace-secular-rights/
How’s that job search coming along? I gave you four links.
forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/1901-objectivist-professors/
www.atlassociety.org/post/government-jobs-for-objectivists
ari.aynrand.org/about-ari/get-involved/
www.atlassociety.org/post/careers-in-medicine-and-social-work
But I get it. You would rather sit on your assets and accomplish nothing.
For ordinary people, the decline of America so awesomely described
by Bruce Thornton – wretched as it is – is merely a prelude to “You
ain’t seen nothing yet”. Soaring felonious crime and the staggering
cost of food and essentials remind us daily that the worse is yet
to come.
Our founders nailed it when they officially proclaimed that our rights
come from “nature and nature’s God”. A flowering plant has the
right to the sun and water or it will not thrive and survive. Humans
have the right to freedom to pursue their own individual destiny,
their particular happiness – or they will slavishly go through
the motions but will not thrive.
God’s plan for us is found in the perennial choice between right
and wrong which no one on Earth escapes from. And God has
endowed us with unalienable rights, not only to thrive, but to
fulfill that plan. In God We Trust has to become more than a
slogan. It has to become our battle cry.
Nit to pick with author regarding unfunded liabilities. Social security is 85% funded and fixable. Medicare/Medicaid is 15% funded and not fixable. I wish people would stop lumping them together.
Social Security is privatized in five counties in Texas including Galveston County.
It yields much more than S.S. and most importantly – it’s solvent.
It was an experimental program set up by a right-winger with only government public employees involved.
It’s such a success that so far none have opted for yoking themselves to the gov’t run down version.
When Bush43 tried to find a winning alternative, he only offered only a 2% option, and that lackluster commitment petered out quickly. (Yet a successful model was flourishing right under his nose in his own state.)
Are Medicare and Medicaid lumped together? I thought that the former was closely allied with Social Security.
I’m not Catholic, but even Pope Benedict the XVI said that we are in the times of the Antichrist. In scripture the Antichrist’s right hand man is the False Prophet Revelation 19:20. The False Prophet is pictured as serving as the head of a worldwide religion that supports the Antichrist.
Look at what the elites have done, the rulers, those in high places, who live for their own greed.
Psalm 2:1-2. says, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? (The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed,” ) Jesus.
The world wants a secular society without God, that means freedom and liberty die,
Isaiah 26:21 See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed on it; the earth will conceal its slain no longer.
Psalm 33:5. The Lord loves righteousness and justice. Proverbs 14:34 Righteousness exalts a nation.
Look at the world, worldly wisdom and wokness is flawed and destructive.
When the Christian superstition ruled supreme over the West it produced the Christian Dark Ages. Christianity is the enemy of freedom. liberty, and capitalism. Christianity prepared the ground for Marxism. What Marx did was to secularize Christianity.
“A related claim advanced by Edward Gibbon and other historians, that Christianity bears significant responsibility for Rome’s fall, is largely true. The Christians egregiously devalued existence in the here and now for existence in the hereafter. By the time Rome fell in the 5th century AD, Christian rejection of this life in the form of asceticism had proliferated throughout the empire. Worldly success cannot and does not proceed from an otherworldly philosophy.” – Andrew Bernstein
“Christianity’s War against the Mind – Aristotle Versus Religion” – Andrew Bernstein
Let’s be honest about Gibbon. He was militantly and irrationally anti-Catholic. I have read that this was because he wanted to gain “street cred” with the father of a young lady he wished to marry.
Your definition of the “West” is superficial. You are defining Western civilization by non-essentials. Russia has never been Western, it has always been abjectly Oriental, in no small part because of the irrationalism, mysticism, and superstition of Oriental Christianity. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not Western, they are Oriental irrational superstitions that have invaded, compromised, or destroyed the rational aspects of the Greco-Roman West.
There are two diametrically opposed philosophical influences on the West, the Oriental irrational, superstition of Judeo-Christianity and the essentially secular and reason-based culture of the Ancient Greeks. Philosophy, science, mathematics, history, literature, drama, all the rational aspects of Western civilization come from Ancient Greece not from the invading, Oriental, superstitions of Judaism and Christianity.
Japan and modern Israel are now more Western than they are Oriental thanks to the influence of the reason-based culture of Ancient Greece. The Russian mind, to this day, is still much more Oriental than Western in no small part due to the influence of the Christian superstition.
Thank you. Extremely well written.
1*
How could anyone with even only a single brain cell not have seen this coming? I was born in 1941 and I felt it coming with Korea, and really saw the dam break with Vietnam. I didn’t think it would last this far! Glad I was wrong, but the vast numbers have no idea how quickly it may come and how utterly horrible it would be!
the whole world is in the end of the last days, all the signs Yeshua told us about in Matthew 24 are converging now. All I can say is if you don’t know Yeshua you better get to know him very soon because he is coming for his bride in the very near future. And for all of you naysayers out there, if you think it’s bad now you haven’t seen nothing yet, after the harpazo all hell will break loose on this earth.