Today is July 20th, 2013. It was exactly 44 years ago today that this amazing experiment we call America hit its zenith. This date in July of 1969 was the moment the entire world turned its eyes towards their televisions. Neil Armstrong was descending from the Eagle to became the first man to step foot on the moon. It was a crowning achievement that required the resources of a nation, the culmination of technology, the challenge of an assassinated president, and the bravery of individuals. Since the moment Armstrong’s boots left the lunar surface the United States has been on a decline, a decline that has been slowly picking up speed. In 1969 the seeds of every major innovation we take for granted today had already been planted, nothing new has sprouted since. Radio and television were mature technologies. Long distance communications and data transfer was exemplified in the very communications between the space craft and mission control. Solid state computers were controlling the flight. The items we hold so dear today, mobile communication, wireless data transfer, computing, were invented and in their infancy. The spirit of American innovation crested with those first footsteps on the moon. Sure, these technologies have been vastly improved and refined in the ensuing decades, but nothing is new. The century preceding the moon landing saw inventions that shattered the concepts of the meaning of life. Steam power, the cotton gin, the telegraph, the telephone, the electrification of America, the automobile, the airplane, the vacuum tube, the transistor, television and radio, computers, refrigeration, nuclear energy, and dozens more were invented during this time period. These concepts didn’t exist or were beyond the reach of technology before this point. Each of these inventions drastically changed the way Americans lived their daily lives. They weren’t refinements or improvements; they were magic, unthinkable, ground breaking. Immediately after this crowning achievement of landing on the moon they just stopped…why? There are lots of fingers that can be pointed, lots of social, economic, and moral reasons why this achievement hasn’t progressed. Why does it feel as if America is being dismantled piece by piece and sold at a flea market? What is the root cause of our decline? Where will it lead? I think to discover the answer to this question we first have to take a look at the foundations of this waning country. This country was the answer to the kings, castes, and fiefdoms of the old world. The founders set simple rules, trust in their fellow man and government for the protection of God given liberties and that was it. Most everything else was up to the individual. It was this simple proposition, vast opportunity, and almost total freedom that brought the best, the brightest, and the bravest individuals the world had to offer and concentrated them all in one country. It was this concentration and the competition it contrived that resulted in a fountain of prosperity and invention like the world had never seen. It wasn’t easy to get to America. In most cases it was betting not only everything you had ever owned but everything you ever knew for the promise of boundless opportunity. It was slow crossings across oceans and disease only to arrive penniless on the shores of a foreign land with the promise of this unlimited opportunity your only comfort. These risks are what kept most from making the decision to embark. It was one thing to make the decision; it was another to actually arrive on the shores of America. Starting with the first travelers to North America in the early 17th century and accelerating through the next three centuries, only the winners made it. For the most part, the weak did not embark on the journey, but if they did, the weak did not survive. It was this natural selection that ensured the greatness. It was risk taking and bravery that got you here but diligence, intelligence and invention were the ingredients to success. It was necessity of this growing nation that birthed early invention, the cotton gin, steam power, the telegraph, and the reaper. The rest arose from the fruits of labor and prosperity. It is this inventive spirit that accumulated this vast wealth we have been squandering now for decades. So how could a nation so steeped in the raw stock of success ever stop intellectually growing and succeeding? The answer can be found in a number of places. First and foremost, the blame for the decline in America can be found in the ever clamping claw of government. A government formed with the express purpose of ensuring the people the rights they were born with can never promise anything more. It is against the very principle of the concept. If you weren’t born with wealth or don’t provide for your own sustenance how can a right you were born with provide such things? It is only through the individual exercise of ones rights that these things come. When a government begins to provide these things they must be taken from someone else. The government cannot simply create these things out of thin air. They must originate from the labors of an individual somewhere. Even in our modern society, if the government “prints” currency it does so at the expense of the stored wealth of individuals who earned it. When this began happening in the early 20th century the beacon to those individuals, the creators, the thinkers, the workers, began to dim. It wasn’t such a revolutionary concept any longer. With each passing year, with each new deal, it began to look more like their motherland. The rewards of the risk were not as great. Now what about the risk? Invention itself has eased the risk. The journey that took months dwindled to weeks, and weeks to days and today, days to hours. It no longer takes a brave risk taker to hop on a jet and fly to America. There is very little chance of death on such a journey. Arriving penniless on our shores only to immediately beginning work anew is a distant memory. There is no risk in coming to America, quite the contrary. You come to America poor? No worries, we will lavish you, squandering the wealth of centuries of hard work on your food stamps, medical care, housing, schooling, cell phones and spending money. Instead of uncertainty whose success offers great reward there is now guaranteed mediocrity. This attracts the lazy, un-intelligent, unmotivated and unsuccessful. No, the promise of America to a citizen of another country looking to emigrate is no longer boundless opportunity. Sure, it is still the promise of a “better life”, but not because of your efforts. It is the promise of a better life on the government dole with no input from you. Let us not forget the home front, those of you whose families have been here for many generations, maybe since the beginning. Just because your original family members had the fortitude to leave everything and come here does not mean that spirit has lineage. Whether it be genetics or environment, the lack of a hostile penniless circumstances or resting on the laurels of past invention, nothing guarantees that same diligence, intelligence or inventive spirit resides in successive generations. While I am sure it pops up here and there, your trial wasn’t by fire. American stock is now diluted, the beacon is dim and we are only eliciting the best and brightest from places of great oppression or a horrendous lack of opportunity to move up in society, like India and China. For most other countries a move to America is sideways at best, a chance to better yourself on the teat of Government at worst. Unfortunately, the influx cannot replenish what we have lost or what we lose every day. The claw of government stifles individuality and trumpets community and mediocrity. Communities don’t invent, individuals do. As law requires a higher standard of living it comes at the expense not of the uber rich, but of what was once the middle class. The uber rich are exempt because we are moving towards the very same fiefdoms our original immigrants left behind. As citizens we no longer produce. We consume. For those of us with jobs we service the rest of society as a whole. We facilitate leisure time and entertainment, neither of which create wealth in the strictest sense. Wealth creation begins when something is dug out of the ground or transferred from one’s imagination to reality. The major reason the world is at an inventive standstill is minds aren’t forced by necessity to find solutions, they spend countless hours a day, wasted, on electronic entertainment. While we are busy wasting our skills and talents the manufacturing base of the world is busy turning out widgets designed on America’s past ingenuity. Widgets we consume and toss on big piles of consumed “stuff”. So what does this all mean? Where does it end up? We have spent the capital accrued over the centuries long ago. As a country we are now living on a borrowed promise that can never be fulfilled. Very soon the world is going to lose faith in that promise. The very moment it does the house of cards will collapse. Unlike the empires of history the collapse will be instantaneous and known to the whole world. It will be invention again that facilitates this instant communication of collapse. The collapse of the Roman Empire took decades, in part because of the slow communication and the disassociated markets of the day. Everything in today’s world is intertwined and information travels at the speed of light. When this imminent collapse occurs there will be no outrunning it. Your cards will be called at that exact moment, whatever hand you hold will be the one played. I feel as though I have the spirit within me of the former immigrants. I do not know if I have the fortitude. I woke up a few years back with the realization that I needed to leave. I feel as if this was the moment experienced by my great-great grandfather over a century ago in his home country. He had a beacon to turn to, a promise, and a free land of opportunity to which to escape. I don’t. I say this not with patriotic fervor, but America is the greatest country in the world. This is it. As a survivalist my response to this feeling and realization was to do the best I could. I’ve squirreled away “America” on a small plot of land. I’ve put all of my efforts into creating a small piece of normal for myself and my family. In a very short time this country, and the world for that matter, will collapse. The folks that don’t have the original spirit of this country will be weeded out. There will be no safety net to catch them as they fall. The spirit of necessity will awaken again for some. The question is, will freedom be there as the fertile soil of prosperity? Neighbors, communities and states banding together under the pretenses that founded this country are our only hope. So,tonight, look up at the moon. It has been four decades since we left. Nothing has revolutionized the world since then. We were the last stand on this little blue green ball. Our nation has stopped innovating, stopped leading, and stopped progressing. It is being dismantled and its wealth spread to the four corners of the earth, taken from the creators and given to the takers. The wealth of centuries has been squandered, it’s gone. Only an empty promise is left. I fear it is too late to correct the course before collapse. The percentage of takers is accelerating; the sentiment in the country is a feeling of being owed something even if you did nothing to deserve it. For those of you still reading, create your own little “America”, dissociate yourself from the game. Prepare for the collapse and wait for the true Americans to emerge.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 23:19:57 +0000
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