Is America skittering toward the great abyss?

This started out as a deeply depressing Sunday, courtesy of an article in the American Thinker (that Cicero of Washington Rebel likes,) by David Deming - America is Gone.  To sum it up, Mr. Deming sees our American way of life irrevocably gone and envisions a bleak and unhappy future.

"There is a whiff of anarchy in the air this morning. As I sit here writing, a conservative victory in the midterm elections looms. But I find no reason to be optimistic. The midterm elections will solve nothing. The plain fact is that conservatives have lost the battle for America. The country that many of us were born in has ceased to exist. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Nothing can or will change until we come to terms with the grim reality of moral degeneration. And I have no hope that this can happen, save by some terrible trial." entire article

The sad fact is, Mr. Deming is probably more correct than not.  Most of my readers are whippersnappers who don't remember much before the 1980's or at most, the 70's (which makes it all the more remarkable  you're the conservatives you are.)   Those of us a bit older remember a far different America than the one we live in now.  Was everything better?  No, it never is.  It is human nature to glamorize, romanticize, and gloss over the ugly parts.   However, each generation since the late 1800's has become progressively more morally corrupt.  I believe the only thing Mr. Deming managed to leave out of his article was our willingness to have a discussion over the moral rights of a woman to butcher her child in the womb, or administer a "hot shot" to an ailing senior citizen, let alone actually performing these odious tasks.

Next, I headed over to the Plantation Nation for a quick bit of John Stossel interviewing Angelo Codevilla, author of The Ruling Class, and Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, about the coming elections.  Mr. Stossel believes, as does The Plantation Nation, that it will be "business as usual" after the elections.  And, in their own way, so do Mr. Codevilla and Mr. Welch. Again, I tend to agree.



Already we hear prominent Republicans talking about "working with" or "compromising" with the Democrats, which is exactly what the majority of the American citizens oppose.  True conservatives don't want to have the growth of Government "slowed"; they want the Federal government to be divested of the myriad of departments, czars, and unconstitutional activities it has co-opted over many decades.  Two major places they can start is with the bankrupt Medicare system, which is nothing more than a coercive form of welfare most seniors are forced into, and the reform and privatization of Social Security.  Once done, they can move on to defund the hundreds and hundreds of departments that have been formed unconstitutionally.

In "The Tea Party vs The Ruling Class" by Robert James Bidinotto, we see our first ray of hope on this Sunday morning.  Mr. Bidinotto elaborates on what Mr. Codevilla has to say about the "ruling class," while recognizing the Tea Party movement as a rising up of a conservative movement that will continue the good fight after the election. 

[...]Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been paying close attention to politics since I was a teenager in the 1960s. I’ve never been so optimistic about America’s future—and you are a major reason for that. For nearly half a century, I wrote and preached about our lost liberties and endangered rights, feeling like a lonely voice in the wilderness. But now, millions of voices are carrying that message.  read the rest

 So which camp is right; the glass-half-empty folks, or those who like viewing their glasses half-full?  Are we doomed, or will the country battle its way back to the vision of our founders?  Most days I think the possibility of pulling this country out of the sink-hole isn't very good.  Other days I have great hope, a theological virtue of, well, great hope - that we will return to the intentions of our founding fathers.  When Mr. Deming says he sees no hope (a sin against hope), save by some terrible trial, he has stated a historical truth.  It will take a profoundly disturbing, even ugly event, to make some people turn their hearts and minds back to our Creator and to the "truth that will set us free."