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Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense, and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.
The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal, and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership, in the White House and in the Congress, for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they've done the most that could humanly be done. They say that the United States has had it’s day in the sun, that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems, that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.
My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view.
The American people -- The American people the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backward ourselves. And those who believe we can have no business leading this nation.
Some of this sounds similar to words spoken a scant few weeks ago at the State of the Union.
I think you would have little problem finding the same rhetorical call for optimism and supremacy in the recent histories of the British empire...or France...or the Soviet Union...and so on.
Nothing lasts forever, everything changes. No top dog, no empire, no power escapes change.
Better to move on with change, than to get entangled in denial and vainglory and have change crush you like a steamroller.
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I fear The United States is entering a period of economic decline that will lead to declining power as well. This will probably be a permanent situation and may well lead to political and social destabilization.
I heard the same in the 60's ;the same in 70's recession. I personally think that the 60's marked the biggest change or decline depending on now you view it in my lifetime. I see the 70's recsssion beig more regional or personal in decline than the nation as a whole. I really haven;t';t seen nayhting like the decline in my local area like the70's recession and ceretain the inflaqtion then brought he more pain accross the board. One can look back thru time and there are always doom and gloomers in any stiuation. I personally thnik that the 20's doom and glomers may have been the ehight since the deprssio fllowed by the war made it seem they were right. But then there were the majority who achived after that.
When I was a kid (in the 1960's) my mother was always going on about how the US was about to fall, just like the Roman Empire.
Fast forward to the Internet Age, and it amuses me to see people posting the same rhetoric as if it's a new idea that they just came up with.
Same thing with the novel 1984. Kids in their teens and twenties seem to have recently rediscovered this book and are running around telling everyone how it applies to now, just as has been said for the past few decades.
Fast forward to the Internet Age, and it amuses me to see people posting the same rhetoric as if it's a new idea that they just came up with.
Yet now the notion of American decline seems much more valid than in the past. Just because something was previously predicted to happen and didn't doesn't mean that it won't happen now.
Yet now the notion of American decline seems much more valid than in the past. Just because something was previously predicted to happen and didn't doesn't mean that it won't happen now.
I don't agree that this is necessarily true. Do not, however, jump to the conclusion that I am saying it's all sunshine and butterflies right now, either. We ARE declining in a number of ways from what we had thirty, forty, fifty years ago, yet there have been far worse moments in US history when it appeared we were on the brink of destruction.
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