I stumbled upon an archived copy of a Wall Street Journa article, with the title “Quantifying Americas Decline” (available here).
It deals with all the statistics we are used to seeing, such as crime rate, children born out of wedlock, divorce rate, teen suicide rate etc. As I was browsing through the text, I came across a single defining sentence, which explains exactly why the counter-movement in the US has failed. The interesting thing about the US is that there is no lack of people who see the problem (although they may be getting fewer and all just wanting their own Obama-phone at this stage). There is similarly no lack of organizations that have been trying to fix the cultural malaise during the last 30 years. Yet they have all failed miserably. Why? Because they have all misdiagnosed the problem.
Although the Great Society and its many social programs have had some good effects, there is a vast body of evidence suggesting that these “remedies” have reached the limits of their success.
The problem IS “The Great Society”. The problem IS all the social programs and “remedies” that the US government has been trying to fix the cultural, moral and economic decline. And not until people realize this will things change. The US could turn around tomorrow. All it takes is for all the people, and all the organizations that so hopelessly try to fight the tide of decay to turn their focus in the right direction. If all the forces of civic society were to turn their focus straight at the government, and proclaim “You have destroyed us. Leave us alone. Go away. Let us rebuild.”, then this entire decadent paradimg would end. Society would be reborn.
Sadly, the likelihood of this is about 0, because people are married to the idea of political power. Not until political power is abandoned and scorned can anything be rebuilt. The positive news is that the rebuilding of America would be faster than anyone could imagine. The negative news is that there is a long way to fall before anyone will even consider it.
