the decline of american civilization

Booker · Posted: 03/11/03 - 03:38 Post subject:

something i found on another forum, good read:

-The Decline of American Civilization-

Consider.

Two hundred twenty five years ago, Americans decided that war was preferable to forfeiting their representative governments in favor of direct control from across the ocean. They believed that their lives, their homes, their families, were worth the risk in order to achieve self-determination.

One hundred forty years ago, Americans decided that war was preferable to living in a continent eternally divided between a land of free men and a land of slaves. They were willing to sacrifice their lives and suffer the horrors of war because they believed that a unified nation of free men was the only way to avoid a hundred generations of enmity on a divided continent.

Ninety years ago, Americans decided that war was preferable to watching a belligerent Triple Alliance crush France and Russia. They were willing to die on foreign soil to protect people who spoke a different language, because they believed that they were protecting freedom.

Sixty years ago, Americans decided that war was preferable to allowing Fascism and Nazism engulf Europe, while Japan’s Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere raped her neighbors of resources and lives. They were willing to sacrifice not only their lives, but their comfort, their tires, their meats, their convenience at home, because they believed that victory would create a world in which Americans would be safe from Fascist dictators.

Forty years ago, Americans decided that war was not preferable to allowing a belligerent Communist nation from swallowing her free southern sister. Americans did not want to sacrifice their comfort. While some Americans were brutally treated like animals in prison camps, while some were killed by nine-year-old Viet Cong carrying grenades into bars, while some Americans died so that a land of peasants would have a chance to some day be more than a land of peasants, other Americans didn’t agree.

Today, Americans feel that war is not preferable to allowing three belligerent, cruel regimes from threatening their neighbors. They feel that a temporary peace today is preferable than a safe peace tomorrow. Perhaps they think that one day these people will put down their AK-47s. Perhaps they believe that Iranian fundamentalists will decide that America is no longer the “Great Satan”, and when they develop nuclear weapons, they will not use them on the United States. Perhaps they believe that Saddam and his son will decide that the United States is their friend, and will not take advantage of US pacifism and enforce their will upon their neighbors in typical Clauswitzian fashion. Perhaps they believe that Kim Jong Il of North Korea will not threaten to use the power of the nuclear missiles he is developing, and that he will not attempt to subjugate South Korea, and that he would not use his nuclear arsenal to engorge his own international political power through nuclear coercion.

Pacifists believed that Adolf Hitler would cease after he remilitarized the Rhineland, but he didn’t. He didn’t stop with the Sudetenland either. Nor did he stop with the rest of Czechoslovakia. Or Memel. Or the Polish Corridor. Nor did he stop with Poland itself. Neither did Italy stop with Ethiopia. Nor did Japan stop with Korea, or Manchuria. Not even with the Rape of Nanking. Americans didn’t think it was worth the risk. They had ideals to fight for that must be preserved.

Perhaps Germany, however, would have stopped after France. Perhaps they wouldn’t have sought revenge for slights that went as far back as the Thirty Years’ War. Perhaps Austria-Hungary would not have rebuilt Hapsburg dominance in Europe. Perhaps the Ottomans would have been just to the Greeks and their Balkan neighbors. But Americans didn’t think it was worth the risk. They had ideals to fight for that must be preserved.

Perhaps the Confederate States of America would not have been a thorn in the side of the United States of America. Perhaps they would not have had a deep enmity. Perhaps their challenge to the principles of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence would not have undermined American political stability as Lincoln feared. Perhaps they eventually would have freed the Negro, and would not have subjugated him with Jim Crow laws. But Americans didn’t think it was worth the risk. They had ideals to fight for that must be preserved.

Perhaps Thomas Paine’s and Patrick Henry’s fears were unfounded. Perhaps the British were only to quell a few small uprisings, and leave the colonies in peace. Perhaps King George’s branding of the Continental Congress as rebels was just bluster, and a gallows didn’t await every single member of the council should they be taken by the redcoats. Perhaps the threats of carving the thirteen colonies into feudal dominions were empty. Perhaps the rumors that German mercenaries were hired to occupy American homes and towns were unfounded. But Americans didn’t think it was worth the risk. They had ideals to fight for that must be preserved.

But today, Americans don’t see those principles anymore. They hear words like “oil,” and “U.N. Security Council resolution”. They have grown fat and lazy on the profits gained by the blood of Americans in 1776, 1861, 1917, and 1941. The years of plenty had made them complacent, and when the call to arms came in the 1960s, they protested. Some fled to Canada, where once our redcoated oppressors attempted to invade our homes and destroy our democracies. They taught their children that the Western democracy was something we shouldn’t “force down the throats” of the Third World. That we “oppressed the Third World.”

Never mind that 19 Americans died in Mogadishu in 1993, their bodies dragged through the streets by the very people we were trying to feed by removing the man who was starving them to death.

But that is where we stand. By trying to feed the world, we have come to oppress it. By encouraging democracy in capitalism, systems that have made Japan and Germany, once our bitter enemies, now our wealthiest friends, we have oppressed the Islamic Middle East.

And now, we stand on the brink of war again. On September 11, we were sent a clear message: “The United States must be destroyed.” The people of three regimes have said as much in the past twenty years. Two of those regimes have sent money and supplies to the perpetrators of 9/11. One sat back and watched, all the while formulating its own plans of regional military hegemony.

How do Americans react? Are they prepared to defend our principles? Are they willing to die? Are they willing to endure increased gas prices? Are they willing to endure national deficit? Is peace without fear tomorrow worth the cost of lives and money today?

Or is peace and comfort today, despite fear, preferable?

Civilizations who decide the latter begin their slow, inexorable spiral into decline. Civilizations who chose the former continue their ascension. If the choice of the Americans during the 1960s is made by America as a whole, then decline is assured. We will be going the way of Rome. And we will be displaying the same attitude and temperament the Romans did when the barbarians flooded in, destroying their cities, their homes, their way of life, their nation.

the decline of american civilization

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