Does America Still Work?
American Greatness,
by
Victor Davis Hanson
Original Article
Posted By: earlybird,
8/26/2021 3:17:59 PM
For nearly two years, Americans have engaged in a great woke experiment of cannibalizing themselves. American civilization has invested massive labor, capital, and time in an effort constantly to flagellate itself for not being perfect.
Yet neither America’s resilience nor its resources are infinite. We are now beginning to see the consequences of what happens when premodern tribalism absorbs Americans.
There are concrete consequences when ideology governs policy or when we take for granted the basics of life to pursue its trappings.
Who cares whether the blow-dried media is woke if it cannot report the truth and keep politicians honest?
Reply 1 - Posted by:
earlybird 8/26/2021 3:21:36 PM (No. 893817)
Hanson articulates a long list of wrongs that the media cover up…or ignore. Hanson is always worth a read. You’ll say “I knew this all along” but it doesn’t hurt to find someone like Hanson who agrees with us….
17 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
SilkCity 8/26/2021 3:24:55 PM (No. 893822)
Does a building still stand when its tenants are hacking away at its foundation?
13 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
marbles 8/26/2021 3:31:39 PM (No. 893834)
We didn't suffer a defeat. Joey & Co chose to run away, purposely leaving our enemy well armed with all of our high tech stuff and abandoning our people to savages.
8 people like this.
No. America no longer works because the American Dream, our culture, and our ideals have been destroyed by liberal scum, communists and fellow travelers.
22 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Quigley 8/26/2021 3:59:55 PM (No. 893863)
Like bi.den the dims foul every thing they touch. Between the stealing by the leaders and the vandalism by the woke followers, much damage has been done. The Gullibles are so confused i do not think they can any longer recognize their own self interest and thus are ungovernable.
Will the dims pull back from national suicide? They seem to think it’s a wonderfully dramatic gesture, but will they pull back before knife cuts wrist? Will they decide it’s a good life after all, and shouldn’t be thrown away. Is it already too late?
7 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Clinger 8/26/2021 4:01:34 PM (No. 893866)
I'll still say what first popped into my head inspired by just the headline. NO it doesn't. When Congress men and women become multi millionaires living in DC on 174K a year something is broken. They are beholding to their source of great wealth and it isn't we the people. Everything else is a symptom not the cause.
12 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Heraclitus 8/26/2021 4:37:13 PM (No. 893900)
The fraying and disintegration of our national fabric began before Biden wound up in the Oval Office. The Left has been busily gnawing away at all our institutions, and like the viper, spitting in its poison to necrotize the entire system.
Too many people are proving to be passive and easily frightened into obedience. Too many stand by in the shadows when the bold and courageous step forward in opposition to burgeoning dictatorship.
A civilization appears to be solid, withstanding shocks over some years; it appears strong and unmovable. But as Nietzsche said of Germany in the later part of the nineteenth century, what seemed glittering and superior was a "thin veneer of culture." It is the character of its citizens which will or will not sustain and reaffirm the nation's continuation. A nation with a rotting core will at some point suddenly dissolve into mush, it certainly isn't able to fend off the sharp blade of war, or even the onslaught of fruit flies.
History books tell the birth, development, demise and death of every civilization ever known. These describe a sort of organic nature of political systems or "organizations" which was how the Ancient Greeks thought of them.
Greek philosophers analyzed and identified and developed a political "science", but as far as I know could only promise how political senescence might be delayed, but is in the final analysis, death was unavoidable.
Can we turn back the degenerative process now being spurred on by people who hate their own Constitutional Republic and loathe their fellow citizens and thus stop the "cannibalization" of the Body Politic which VDH identifies? It will take a ferocious determination of patriots, and an awakened populace to join in, and a re-ignition of love for each other and country.
My own belief is that to do this we need a renewed reading and study of Scripture from which we have gotten the ethos and structure of our civic order which has proven over the decades to be the sturdiest and most moral foundation of all civilizations in history.
There have been civilizations lasting millennia, but they have survived by imprinting the boot on the necks of their subjects and obliterating mercilessness on enemies.
We only have a little more time before the degradation we are anguishing over is irreversible.
4 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
3XALADY 8/26/2021 4:41:13 PM (No. 893908)
I have wondered this for years. I've been retired since 2006 so I'm out and around during the day. In stores I see young people, men and women, and wonder why they weren't at work. Surely every one can't be on the night shift. For 40+ years I went to work 5 days a week and sometimes more. Now you know they don't want to work because Uncle Sugar is paying them more to stay home than to get off their duff and go to work. Things are just upside down and I don't see a fix any time soon.
3 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Sully 8/26/2021 4:44:28 PM (No. 893913)
Yeah, Mr D-H is worth a read. He'd be worth a lot more if he didn't drop the #1 reason our country is in collapse: the stealing of the office of the POTUS and the end of free and fair elections in the United States.
The academic Mr. D-H needs to put on his elbow pads and maybe a cup and get into the real game. Of what value is his telling us how it sucks to be us, if he will not discuss what we must do to ensure that we can take corrective action through the ballot box?
Bc right now, he can write all the pretty pose he wants, but we DONT have ELECTIONS. And if we can claw em back, it'll be no thanks to him.
4 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Omen55 8/26/2021 5:28:49 PM (No. 893971)
As an Historian VDH knows that in this kind of situation a nation renews itself by destroying the cancer.
That cancer must not be shown any mercy as it deserves none.
Do to the cancer what it is doing & wants to do to US.
The dynamics of History/Human Nature demand it.
1 person likes this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Faithfully 8/26/2021 5:38:07 PM (No. 893979)
The U.S. and Canada still work and would work better without corrupt government employees feathering their own nests off the taxpayer's trough. They are pigs and tyrants.
1 person likes this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
MDConservative 8/27/2021 10:36:03 AM (No. 894674)
Prosperity is our biggest "cancer". Yes, prosperity. It gives each the freedom to be "generous" to others and themselves. It helps to have money that has no intrinsic value, that can be manufactured by politicians and printing presses, and an endless credit card that can never max out, with low interest rates to the horizon. It's not all "free"...but they're working on it. Now, the issue become whether we can crate that benevolent New World Order that will be all things to all people, do our thinking, distribute our goods, and make life a joy for us all. Imagine no possessions...imagine if you try...
0 people like this.
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