Are America's Best Days Behind Us?

by Janice Shaw Crouse - December 17th, 2011 - American Thinker

It takes more grit to be optimistic about the future, with all its uncertainties, than to be pessimistic. The greatest sin of today's liberals or progressives is that they refuse to learn from the multiple failures of historic, indeed tragic, attempts to achieve Utopia through big government, whether through Nazism, fascism, communism, or European socialism. On a smaller scale, ask anyone involved in trying to start up a new business, and you'll hear how hard it is and about the slim odds of succeeding. There is more than enough ammunition to be a naysayer about America's future.

After this opening paragraph, depressing enough in its own right, the author proceeds to enumerate a litany of troubles afflicting our nation. She then ends by listing positive indicators which she believes are evidence we can overcome the troubles she sees. From my perspective she is ignoring the nagging doubts that we can overcome our current problems.

Lets examine each of her 3 positives.

#1 - "America is still the world's best success story."

She may believe that. However 40 years of socialist dogma preached to our children in a school system that is under the control of unionized socialists has left few in our youngest generation who believe that. People who believe that are now in the minority. It is irrelevant whether the statement is true. The reality is colored by a famous quote, "perception is reality." Her perception is losing out among a majority of our citizens. At the same time we have a government that is actively working to sabotage small business and free enterprise. That is where we should be focused.

The party that should be resisting this, Republicans, are not for a simple reason. The corrupt crony capitalists of Wall Street control the beltway elites who are the power in the Republican Party. Together with Wall Street they are more focused on creating business monopolies who partner with government than in permitting capitalism to survive. The competition that comes with small business is being destroyed by government regulation to protect big corporations. Both major political parties are thus dedicated to this idiocy. How is this good news?

#2 - "The current crises have captured the attention of Middle America."

It is true that middle America has woken up from its indifference to the economic and culture war being won by the liberals, however it is not yet clear it is not too late. This Middle America is as brain washed by the left wing dogma as the rest of the nation.

As a perfect example of the susceptibility to this "perception", a great number of the Tea Party movement were convinced that we had to support Herman Cain to get blacks on our side. With nearly half of the people on TV commercials black, with a huge majority of sports figures also being black, with a constant parade of entertainment figures being black, I could not find one in twenty among my Tea Party friends who could accurately identify the actual percentage of blacks in America.

Most thought it approached half the nation, or would shortly. That it has instead fallen from 14% of our population to 12.6% of our population was rejected by more than two thirds of the Tea Party supporters. Rejected. They simply would not believe it. Let's assume that you could persuade some portion of the 95% of blacks who are dedicated to the socialism of the Democrats to switch sides. At best we are talking about a huge effort to change the minds of 1% or 2% of the total population. Personally, I doubt even that big a swing is possible. The reality is that more blacks are turned off by what they see as a traitor to their socialist cause, when we support a black conservative, and are thus less amenable to listening to the causes for their economic failure than they might otherwise be.

How do we change this blind acceptance of a lie by our own side?

#3 - "Conservatives are winning on numerous cultural fronts where decline is threatening the nation's well-being."

Rather grandiose statement of victory. Yet not a single example proving this true is provided. That is called an unproved assumption. It is followed by the argument that "pro-marriage, pro-family, and pro-life" values provide "opportunity for everyone willing to work." First, pro-life has little to do with jobs and anyway, their argument is losing. Pro-marriage and pro-family are really the same thing, and again the direct relation to jobs is at best long term, more likely non-existent. The number of illegitimate children continues to climb even as Planned Parenthood has successfully resisted any attempt to stop government promotion of abortion.

America's long term success may be related to the social issues, however the immediate crisis is economic in nature and whether abortion is reduced this year will make no difference in the crushing debt we are building. Yet pro-life adherents are determined that their battle must be won right now. They demand action which sucks political resources during this crisis. Even though I agree with them on their issues (though not on their solutions), I have become disgusted by the social conservative movement's blind refusal to prioritize. The author Crouse obviously has rejected my frustration (and a lot of other Tea Party supporters as well) as meaningless just as so many other social conservatives have. At this time of a clear need to reduce government telling us what to do with our lives, they want to empower government to a bigger nanny state for what they see as moral reasons. As a result, we have reached a point where I see social conservatives as my enemy as much as I see socialists as my enemy. What value do social conservatives accomplish making their allies their enemies?

Democracy is evil. Its slow corrosion of national focus from freedom to selfish self interest is insidious. Yet Crouse has ignored this problem and focused on issues that make no difference to national survival during this crisis.

Her positive outlook is not going to help. Making sure that "America's Best Days Are Not Behind Us" needs to start with some honest self appraisal that she has avoided. Unfortunately, a large part of the conservative movement is as self delusional as Crouse.