Townhall
– By John Hawkins, June 29, 2013
Freedom
is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t
pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for,
protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will
spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s
children what it was once like in the United States where men were
free. --Ronald
Reagan
Those
who attack American culture and tradition should recall that
historically, freedom and prosperity are the aberrations, not
servitude and poverty. Our nation's success is not a happy accident
or part of a natural, unstoppable progression that can't be changed.
Nothing could be more foolish than to abandon the traditions,
religion, work ethic, family structure, moral code and culture that
made this country wealthy and free while expecting to continue to
reap the rewards of practices we now scorn as too demanding and
judgmental. What we sow as a nation, we should expect to reap and the
crop these days isn't looking very good.
1)
The CBO estimates that the interest
payments on our debt alone will
take up 36% of the budget in 2030, 58 percent in 2040 and 85 percent
in 2050.
2)
Fears that America would go bankrupt in the next few years used to be
a fringe belief. Now, Doomsday Preppers is a TV
show, gold, guns and survival seeds are being widely advertised and
vast numbers of Americans are making decisions about purchases,
investments, and saving money that take into account the possibility
that the country could bankrupt within the next decade or two.
3)
"Half of all children born to women under 30 in America now are
illegitimate. Three in 10 white children are born out of wedlock, as
are 53 percent of Hispanic babies and 73 percent of black babies."
-- Pat
Buchanan
4)
"The IMF calculates that to maintain the present spending trend
the United States will have to nearly double (88 percent increase)
all federal taxes to maintain theoretical solvency." -- Kevin
Williamson
5)
In 1963, a movie that wanted to get the approval
of the Production Code of the Motion Picture Association of
America "could
not include any profanity stronger than hell or damn," couldn't
take the Lord's name in vain, and"couldn’t
present sex outside of marriage as attractive or justified." Today,
even many video games targeted at teenagers don't meet those
standards.
6)
"Fewer Americans are at work today than in April 2000, even
though the population since then has grown by 31 million."
-- Mortimer
Zuckerman
7)
The U.S. put a man on the moon in 1969; yet we no longer even have a
manned space program.
8)
Like the Roman Empire in the decades before her collapse, America is
unable to control its borders or properly assimilate vast numbers of
people entering our country.
9)
In 2005, roughly
10% of our Gross Domestic Product was
spent on compliance with regulations created by the federal
government.
10)
America lost
its AAA credit rating that it has held since 1917 and
no one is even discussing how we could get it back.
12)
Forty seven percent of Americans don't pay income tax. That means not
only are the poor not paying their own way, a significant number of
Americans in the middle class aren't being asked to pay in taxes what
they receive in government services.
13)
There is a 100 trillion -- with a "T" -- gap between what
our government is currently promising to pay to retiring senior
citizens and the money it's on track to have. Just to give you a
little perspective, our current national debt is approaching 17
trillion dollars.
14)
Only about 30% of Americans think the country is on the right
track.
15)
Only about 15%
of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.
The British undoubtedly would have had better poll numbers than that
before our ancestors revolted against them.
16)
"In the fifties, one in twenty members of the workforce needed
government permission in order to do his job. Today it’s one
in three."
17)
"In 1950, 78% of households were occupied by married
couples. Today,
that number has slipped all the way down to 48%."
18)
"Consider this: the U.S. economy has created 2.6 million jobs
since June 2009. In the same period, 3.1 million workers have signed
up for disability benefits. Back in 1992 there was one person on
disability benefits for every 36 people in employment. Now the ratio
is 1 to 16." -- Niall
Ferguson
19)
Gun sales hit record
highs in
2012. That's partially because of fears of gun control, but it's also
because of a growing fear that a breakdown in societal order is
coming down the road.
- "John Kichen of the U.S. Treasury and Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin published a study in 2010 entitled: Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World — and At What Cost? The fact that sane men are even asking this question ought to be deeply disturbing. As to the answer, foreign official holdings of U.S. Treasury securities have usually been less than 5 percent of the rest of the world’s GDP. By 2009, they were up to 7 percent. By 2020, Kitchen and Chinn project them to rise to 19 percent of the rest of the world’s GDP, which they say is….do-able. Whether the rest of the world will want to do it is another matter. A future that presumes the rest of the planet will sink a fifth of its GD into US Treasuries is no future at all.”—Mark Steyn
My
Comment:
This
discussion is from a strictly secular point of view but
it is symptomatic of the Spiritual reality of America today.