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Post by Joanna on Jul 10, 2015 2:36:35 GMT -5
The United States is Approaching Age of DestructionSir John Glubb, a British author and lecturer, argued that most empires generally don’t last longer than 250 years. Greek Empire? 231 years. Roman Empire? 207 years. Ottoman Empire? 250 years. Romanov Russian Empire? 234 years. British Empire? 250 years.
The United States of America? Well, we’re sitting at the ripe old age of 237 and deep in the midst of what Glubb called the Age of Decadence – the final stage of an empire that is marked by defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, and the Welfare State.
But we’re too big and powerful to fail! This is America, the land of freedom and opportunity. I’m sure the Greeks and the Romans felt much the same way. The fall of the Greek empire is, among other things, a story of a top-heavy government that could not tax enough producers to sustain a growing number of bureaucrats. Conflict and competition between city-states destroyed a sense of national unity. And the citizens were more interested in living the good life than in nurturing their culture.
The demise of ancient Rome has been assigned to many culprits. The empire became a dictatorship with the citizens removed from the act of governing. Heavy taxes were paid by the provinces to support the luxuries of Rome. To pay for their excesses, emperors devalued the currency. And a generous welfare state, manipulated by elites to gain power, eventually bankrupted the empire.
But that was hundreds of years ago. Things are different now. Really? Let’s see ... American citizens have never been more affluent. We have wondrous new discoveries of oil and natural gas; the biggest threat to our national health is obesity, not hunger; we have easy access to the greatest technology in the world; we have the world’s strongest military; and we enjoy a relatively stable system of government. We are on a course of destruction and decay that has struck down too many countries before us. As a nation, we have lost sight of our founding principles of liberty and the pursuit of prosperity.
The Age of Decadence. We have become a nation that pursues a policy of enforced equality, rather than unconstrained opportunity and liberty. We have become a nation that argues over receiving entitlement goodies, even as we continue to pile up trillion-dollar annual deficits. And we have become a nation addicted to debt-fueled instant gratification, spending our future on consumption today. The result is the some $17 trillion of national debt – more than $148,000 per taxpayer. We have also created trillions of dollars in new money supply that, besides creating asset bubbles in housing and student loans, will ultimately destroy our currency. And our government passed a wasteful and ineffective $800 billion economic “stimulus” plan packed with spoils for its key constituencies – and that was just for starters.
What this ruling class chicanery has produced are real unemployment figures that show nearly every fifth person in America is out of work. At the same time, every fifth person relies on food stamps. And we have loaned more than $1 trillion of money that we don’t have to college students who can’t pay it back because they are relying on jobs that no longer exist. Much like the ruling classes in ancient Greece and Rome, our government is focused on redistributing our declining wealth, instead of pursuing policies that foster the private sector’s creation of it.
The Dangers of Decline. The United States is but 237 years old, but her decline is clearly underway. US debts are so large they will never be fully repaid, so a default is coming. Meanwhile, US interest rates are so low and government is so reliant on short-term debt to fund daily operations that when interest rates begin to rise, the cost of running American government could spiral out of control, destroying the dollar.
We’ve seen the fall before. We’re not able to personally recall the demise of the Greeks and Romans, but we watched as Argentina, Zimbabwe and the Balkans suffered political and economic collapse during the past couple decades. During each of these instances, lives were lost, savings were wiped out and families destroyed.
Our friends at Casey Research, along with our own Jeff Opdyke, have released an exposé called Meltdown America that looks at the harrowing survival of three people who escaped the collapse of Argentina, Zimbabwe and the Balkans, as well as examining how close America is now to that same precipice. It may be hard to accept that such a fate is coming to America, but Jeff has offered up some wise advice that comes to mind.
To survive, you must be willing to see what you don’t want to accept ... and willing to make moves that others will call crazy. Remember: It’s never those who stay behind that survive. It’s those who act to get out of the way of an unpleasant future that live to tell the stories of how it all fell apart.
Source: Erika Nolan, The Sovereign Investor Daily, May 5, 2014.
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Post by jane on Jul 10, 2015 19:07:06 GMT -5
Someone said that if Edward Gibbon, the author of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," were alive today, he'd be taking notes like mad. There's too much turmoil in the country today and we're causing too much turmoil in other countries.
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Post by pat on Jul 11, 2015 17:41:15 GMT -5
You're right, Jane. Sometimes I think it would be better for everyone if we just started over.
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Post by madeline on Jul 13, 2015 9:11:39 GMT -5
You're right, Jane. Sometimes I think it would be better for everyone if we just started over.
I agree. The United States has deteriorated into a politically correct cesspool. Although I worry about what's going to happen to the few good people left, the U.S. can't survive much longer the way things are going. People need to start investing in gold and silver.
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Post by kitty on Jul 13, 2015 10:56:40 GMT -5
It seems like Obama and the liberals are determined to destroy this country. People can be pushed just so far before they start pushing back.
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Post by Sam on Jul 14, 2015 4:12:01 GMT -5
This may be a little bit off topic, but I've heard some older people say that when the law passed that allowed gay people to marry that the United States was going the same way as Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. They say that the reason Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed was because of homosexuality.
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Post by pat on Jul 16, 2015 17:54:31 GMT -5
This may be a little bit off topic, but I've heard some older people say that when the law passed that allowed gay people to marry that the United States was going the same way as Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. They say that the reason Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed was because of homosexuality.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Jul 18, 2015 9:15:13 GMT -5
Bestselling Author Warns Political Correctness is Killing America
Brad Thor, author of bestsellers Code of Conduct, Act of War, Hidden Order and many other thrillers, has warned that “political correctness” is killing America. The country faces many threats, but if we continue cowering to the laws of political correctness it will be “the death of us,” he said. With good reason. We are dying – but we are allowing them to turn the knives in our backs:
“[Progressives have] chosen a clever path – wordplay and bullying,” Thor said while guest hosting The Glenn Beck Program. “Here’s how it works: Progressives lay out an unconstitutional idea – let’s say amnesty, for example. They give it a flowery name like ‘dreamers.’ Now the trap is set.” Anyone who disagrees is “publicly chastised, mocked, ridiculed as a paranoid racist who wants to crush the dreams of poor minority immigrants. Progressives have unleashed a war on thought, and since speech governs thought, political correctness is being used to change the way we speak and even the meaning of our words,” he argued. “Don’t believe in same-sex marriage? You’re a homophobe. ... How about not believing in the redistribution of wealth? You obviously hate poor people. How about amnesty; do you believe in that? No? Well, you obviously hate Mexicans.
“But you believe in God? That makes you an extremist zealot,” he added. “The owners of Memories Pizza found this out the hard way. They were sought out, isolated and viciously smeared merely for answering a hypothetical question about wedding pizza! They were forced to temporarily close their doors simply for having a different opinion. My God, a high school coach even threatened to burn the shop to the ground!” Thor said political correctness is the “vehicle that’s now used to chastise, label and bludgeon the population into conformity,” and the price of non-conformity is growing increasingly severe. If the government is capable of using [the IRS as a weapon] against certain political viewpoints, just think what they’ll do with Obamacare,” he warned. “How much power, how much leverage do they have over the country now that they have access to your medical records? Forget the power of the IRS. This has the capability to be a thousand times worse.”
Thor asked why the Supreme Court was so eager to rewrite legislation to make it legal, saying “words matter” and “twisting them, changing them and limiting them is a dangerous precedent. As George Orwell said in 1985, if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” he concluded.
Source: Erica Ritz, The Blaze, July 17, 2015. |
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Post by Isbeau on May 1, 2018 15:28:11 GMT -5
I think the US is more like Tyre in the Bible than anything else.
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Post by jason on May 1, 2018 17:34:11 GMT -5
I think the US is more like Tyre in the Bible than anything else. Better to be confident and proud of one's wealth and beauty than a big pussy like a certain country that I won't name. Tyre was supposedly destroyed because the people stopped kissing Israel's ass and it's high time we followed suit. |
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