FOR MORE than two centuries, even before the formation of the United States, the answer has been no. To ask the question was a fool's errand. Despite recession and depression, despite wars and rumors of war, despite bad presidents and worse legislators and judges, despite it all, the longer trajectory was ever upward. Choose your own measure. Material prosperity. Life expectacy. International power. Better prospects for women and racial minorities. Up, up, up.
But is that still true?
I think not.
Maybe it's because I am growing ever older. Pessimism could be a natural part of aging.
Rightly or wrongly, however, I think America's prospects are tipping over and irreversibly headed down.
It's not just because of our lamentable president, though his vision of a fundamentally transformed America is, I believe, a vision that, if fully realized, would hasten that decline.
Voters will repudiate Obamism in November 2012, I believe. That will be a good start, but no more. It will end the fiscal madness of President Obama's borrowing, but that's not enough. Stopping him will not restore our fisc to balance, even for one year. Ever more spending, though less than before, is already built into the federal budget. Our vocabulary for talking about such matters is so corrupt that stopping the momentum of spending growth is said, by apparently serious people, to constitute a cut in spending.
Who among our likely leaders is talking about doing that, much less about true spending cuts: less money next year than this year for any significant federal program? Even if one of our likely leaders should talk about doing that, what are the odds that he could actually accomplish it in Congress?
What makes Mr. Obama's fiscal imprudence so astonishing is that it has been constructed on a system that, even without his contribution, is designed to be fiscally imprudent. That's our basie national policy: to borrow and spend money we don't have. Slowing the rush toward cliff's edge is doable. Turning back, less so.
Fiscal madness is just one reason for the impending decline of America. Social disintegration is another. Children without fathers. Families without husbands. Young men who prefer not to work for a living. Rampant crime, not in my precinct and yours, but in the neighborhoods of the poor. The decline of the Christian faith among those who most need, as a group, to hear its message.
Politics is another reason for decline. The share of the vote won by Democrats will certainly decline in 2012, but liberalism as an ideology is ascendant, not in decline. The repudiation of Obamism will be temporary; the voting propensities of people who don't pay income taxes, who receive regular checks from the government, who were taught in elementary school that the most important issue of our time involves polar bears -- these are all permanent and, I believe, irreversible.
My goal for 2012 is to explore these trends, one by one. My essays will come when they come, probably starting next month. I hope you'll look for them.
I am younger than you and I agree with the premise. Here's one loyal reader looking forward to future essays!
Posted by: Gray Brendle | January 19, 2012 at 07:55 AM