The Decline and Fall of our Once Great Nation

Our nation, the cradle of freedom, "the last best hope" as author William Bennett calls us, is collapsing around us. There are many reasons for our seemingly pending demise, but Edward Gibbon in his classic work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, summed it up very nicely:

1. The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home—the very basis of human society.
2. Higher and higher taxes; the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace.
3. The mad craze for pleasure; sports and other entertainment becoming every year more and more exciting, more brutal and more immoral.
4. The building of great armaments when the real enemy was within . . . the decay of individual responsibility.
5. The decline of religion—faith fading into mere form; losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people.

Where to begin? Let's launch into the second half of number four—the decay of individual responsibility.

In 1993, the last first lady of the twentieth century, Ms. Hillary Clinton, was commissioned by her husband, the president of the United States, to develop a plan for universal health care. The failure of this effort is widely known, and Ms. Clinton herself has owned up to the washout with the explanation that she shot for too much, too fast. She has acknowledged that she failed to listen to Congress, who would ultimately have to approve her plan. She wanted 100% coverage for every American, a massively huge step that the Congress was not prepared to make.

Barring a political earthquake, Clinton's Democratic primary opponent, Barak Obama, will in August, become his party's nominee for president. The silver tongued one, the man who has mesmerized so many with his silky smooth rhetoric, is also promising "universal health care."

But that isn't all he is promising. In the closing moments of his speech on the night of the last primary, June 3rd, Mr. Obama promised us the world:

"... generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."

WOW!

So prior to now, the sick in America have never been cared for? And I guess work for the unemployed has never been remedied by the private sector before, so now it's up to Obama to fix all of that for us? Somehow the marvelous Barack Obama is going to quell the invetiable swelling of the oceans from melting icebergs, and heal our planet!

Al Gore, the man who invented the Internet and is raising our consciousness on global warming, better watch his back! Obama is out for his title of Mr. Wonderful.

"College education is the birthright of every American."

So claimed Mr. Obama in that same triumphant speech. And people actually believe this stuff.

As Francis Schaeffer so clearly iterated, "ideas have consequences."

Recently, a friend of mine said that "everyone has a right to healthcare." I asked him, "Did people in the 16th century have a right to health care?" I ask now, "Was a college education a birthright for the people of the 16th century? How about the people of Jesus' time?"

Our nation's wise founders identified but three components of the human birthright: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Has something changed? Do we 21st century Americans suddenly have more unalienable rights than our forbears?

Many Americans now want something for nothing. Many claim helplessness and an inability to do much for themselves anymore. Big government is the answer to our every need.

". . . the decay of individual responsibility."

It is rampant. It is toxic. It is deadly. We careen carelessly toward the edge of a cliff, our selfishness applying ever more pressure to the gas pedal, led to our own demise by a blinding self-absorption, and by those who promise us the world.

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