America in decline

Must Read: America’s Expiration Date, by Cal Thomas

Long before I had the pleasure of meeting Cal Thomas, I was a big fan of his books.  The first one I read was in 1989, The Death of Ethics in America.  The book perfectly articulated all of my feelings regarding the moral collapse that was rapidly occurring in the USA.  Cal was warning America back then, as he generally does in all his major writings, that unless we get back to the kind of character and virtue described in the Bible, we, as a nation, are doomed.

Fast forward 31-years and Cal’s message from ’89 seems prophetic.

He has a new book out now and it’s another warning, in fact it’s a final warning:  America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers … and the Future of the United States.

In a commentary piece Cal wrote at FoxNews, he talks about the book, saying,  “Nations are made up of people. While modes of transportation, hairstyles, clothing and other things change, human nature remains the same. A nation’s strength and sustainability require more than economic and military success. There are issues of character and virtue that are stronger supporters and sustainers of any nation. As the Psalmist asked, ‘If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?’ He isn’t talking about money and a military.”

In writing America’s Expiration Date, Thomas examined eight empires that believed their economic strength and military power were enough to sustain them well into the future and in the case of the Roman Empire, eternally.

The book is inspired by the late British diplomat Sir John Glubb, who found a pattern to the decline of nations. He said that pattern has not changed in the 4,000 years of history he studied and that the average age of great nations is 250 years. Rome was an exception, but even Rome followed the same path to self-destruction.

By the way, the final stage before collapse is what Sir John calls “decadence.”

Prior to that there is uncontrolled immigration without assimilation. “No nation can be sustained if it forgets its identity and fails to absorb new immigrants, requiring they learn the native language and understand the native history while leaving behind the agendas and issues of the country from which they came, while obeying the laws,” Cal states.

Massive national debt is another cause of the decline of superpowers.  The U.S. currently is $23 trillion in the red (and going up quickly). Neither political party will do what is necessary to reverse course, though both parties know entitlement reform is a key to the restoration of financial stability.

A third contributor to national decline is military overreach.  President Trump is cutting us back, but we have troops all over the world. In some cases – especially in Afghanistan and now increasingly in the Middle East – the wars seem never to end.  They are costly in blood and money and victory continues to elude us.

The loss of a shared morality and abandoning God are perhaps the greatest contributors to decline. “We live in an ‘anything goes’ culture,” writes Thomas,  “in which everything is to be tolerated, except those who disagree, who are denounced as intolerant and bigots. The Pew Research Center asked millennials their religious preference. Twenty percent said ‘none.’ A nation that does not have a transcendent sense of purpose beyond just existing will not exist for long.”

Sir John Glubb calculated that the average age of empires and superpowers is 250 years. On July 4, 2026, the United States will be 250 years old. We have been living off the inertia of past generations.

As Ronald Reagan used to say,  “We are only one generation away from losing it all.”

 

The Great Unraveling

This post is a must read for anyone who is deeply concerned that America and the world are headed in the wrong direction.  If you’re unaware of the unraveling of the fabric of global society then I beg you to continue reading.  Hopefully you will be enlightened as to the state of our terrestrial ball.  If your position is that my assessment is wrapped in hyperbole then be damned by your attitude and I’ll pray for you anyway.

Roger Cohen wrote a poignant editorial in the New York Times entitled, The Great Unraveling. It is the most powerfully insightful opinion piece I have ever read.

I’ll quote portions and add a few of my own comments. Cohen begins addressing the most barbaric enemy the U.S. has ever faced: fundamental Islam.

It was the time of unraveling. Long afterward, in the ruins, people asked: How could it happen?

It was a time of beheadings. With a left-handed sawing motion, against a desert backdrop, in bright sunlight, a Muslim with a British accent cut off the heads of two American journalists and a British aid worker. The jihadi seemed comfortable in his work, unhurried. His victims were broken. Terror is theater…

He next addresses the resurrected Russian Bear.

It was a time of aggression. The leader of the largest nation on earth pronounced his country encircled, even humiliated. He annexed part of a neighboring country, the first such act in Europe since 1945, and stirred up a war on further land he coveted. His surrogates shot down a civilian passenger plane. The victims, many of them Europeans, were left to rot in the sun for days. He denied any part in the violence, like a puppeteer denying that his puppets’ movements have any connection to his…

Cohen next takes to the United Kingdom.

It was a time of breakup. The most successful union in history, forged on an island in the North Sea in 1707, headed toward possible dissolution…

My beloved United States of America follows.

It was a time of weakness. The most powerful nation on earth was tired of far-flung wars, its will and treasury depleted by absence of victory. An ungrateful world could damn well police itself. The nation had bridges to build and education systems to fix… The nation’s leader mockingly derided his own “wan, diffident, professorial” approach to the world, implying he was none of these things, even if he gave that appearance. He set objectives for which he had no plan. He made commitments he did not keep…

He painfully continues.

It was a time of hatred. Anti-Semitic slogans were heard in the land that invented industrialized mass murder for Europe’s Jews…

It was a time of fever. People in West Africa bled from the eyes.

And Roger Cohen concludes.

It was a time of disorientation. Nobody connected the dots or read Kipling on life’s few certainties: “The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire / And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.”

Until it was too late and people could see the Great Unraveling for what it was and what it had wrought.

I am so sad to think of the future my children and grandchildren will inherit without men and women of good character standing up for the truth and praying for a divine intervention.