The American Democratic Experiment Is Over.
~~ Paul V. Hartman ~~
All great empires or civilizations die internally before they are conquered from without. America has been a great civilization - we prefer to call it a culture - and could have been the world's greatest empire too, had its people desired it. But, like the Roman Empire, it has entered its decline, for it is dying internally. We are too close to it to see that clearly, and even the historians who have studied the patterns of "rise and fall" may reject the notion that the American democratic experiment is failing "at this time", just as the Romans of the 5th century believed that Rome was great and even eternal. But we are dying, internally. And for the same reason that all great cultures die - indeed, the exact same reason. The culture is rotting. Morality is rotting. Our system of justice - one law for all - is rotting. Even our reason for being - freedom - is losing out to a new rot, which is "security". Every day, politicians make new laws which promise more "security", but all such laws reduce responsibility, choice, freedom, and still, ultimately, fail to provide security.
Does anyone believe that this generation, or the next, would go to war to preserve America, like the World War II generation did? An enormous apathy surrounded the discovery that the American president lied under oath and then committed numerous acts of obstruction of justice to conceal those lies. These same citizens would actually put their lives on the line to preserve this country? No reasonable observer could draw such a conclusion. We would, instead, hear: "let the military do it". People saying such things have no concept that, in the end, they ARE the military of last resort.
It has all happened before. The Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Mongolians, the Ottoman Turks, the British. Each begins with vigor. Each succumbs to languor. Each begins in individual initiative, each becomes buried under mountains of regulation. Each begins with inspiration, each ends in corruption, immorality, special privileges for "Leaders", and confiscatory taxation.
Said Scottish historian Alexander Frazier Tyler, late in the 18th Century:
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back into bondage."
When did the American experiment begin to die? Since the drive to obtain security over freedom preceded the equally fatal features of corruption and immorality, it began to die with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he of the ponzi scheme known as "social security" and the start of numerous regulatory agencies. Things built slowly for 15 years, then Lyndon Johnson appeared with his "Great Society" scheme which attempted to tax productive Americans for the purpose of lifting, financially, the unproductive Americans. The scheme didn't work but it bled us, and remains in force today - larger, fatter, meaner. Finally there was Clinton (a one-word president) to add the final ingredient of permitted immorality, permitted corruption, the presidency elevated to imperial status - above the law.
Roosevelt, Johnson, Clinton: Democrats, all.
Since the level of permitted corruption by public officials has now been set so high, this is now inexorable: future presidents - indeed, future congressmen - will promise everything to the have-nots (the non-productive), for the purpose of getting their votes. Taxes will rise to pay for the programs, but the productive citizens bearing the tax burden will quit, move away, or join the non-productive - why work? The percentage remaining to pay the taxes will be taxed more to pay for those who are no longer paying the taxes. (This has happened in every major American city.) The military - always the first program to be cut by tax and spenders - will desolve to nothing except for a force necessary to maintain domestic order, by which is meant a force necessary to contain rioting. At some point, another country will see its opening, attack, and conquer. Why attack a rotting country? The eternal answers: territory, natural resources, a people to rule. The attack will be nuclear. Russia is the obvious choice, for one additional reason: they are in even worse shape then we are, and, unlike us, they have a restless military.
Where are we now on the path outlined by Tyler, above? We have passed the point of Complacency, and the point of Apathy. We are either in the cusp between Apathy and Dependency, or we have slid into Dependency on the way to Bondage.
The reader of this essay can have several responses: 1) It is not true. 2) It is true but not as bad as here portrayed. 3) It is true but will never effect me since I won't live long enough to see the worst of it. My answer to that is that this process is historically accurate, the people living at the time can seldom perceive the decay, being inside the fish bowl, and, unless you die within 5 years, you WILL live long enough to see the worst of it, though it will be your children and grandchildren who will bear the greatest burden.
When the history of America is written, presuming that there will be a future democracy that will record it faithfully, the label - "Democrat" - will attach to all of it, will explain all of it. Perhaps, then, it will all begin again (it always has), from a new starting point, the citizens promising each other: "we will never make THOSE mistakes again."
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