Americans appear to be very edgy these days. According to a Gallup Poll sponsored by USA Today, "Almost three-fourths of them...don't like the way things are going in the country. Given economic deprivation and political division, plus war [and] terrorism..., who would?" (Jan. 6, 2010).
Gideon Rachman, a regular columnist for the Financial Times, provides us with some specifics. "Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the 'free world.' But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world—Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey—are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy.
"Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers" ("America Is Losing the Free World," Jan. 5, 2010, emphasis added throughout).
For a short time following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the previous bipolar world of the United States and the Soviet Union became the undisputed unipolar world of an economically and militarily unchallenged America.
This didn't last long. British journalist Bryan Appleyard observed in The Sunday Times Magazine: "Japan, having grown rich since 1945 under the umbrella of American security..., began to look to China for its trading future. And auto-cratic regimes are realising they may not have to listen to Western lectures about human rights any more. They can turn to the pragmatic Chinese" ("The Gathering Clouds," Dec. 27, 2009).
During the past 100 years, the United States has been accorded a singular opportunity to provide leadership in the world at large. Now, American influence is rapidly beginning to wane in the world. Why?
One pivotal reason, often discounted by a largely secular media, involves our disappearing moral standards. Paradoxically this most prosperous of the nations also ranks among the most immoral. Larger numbers of Americans increasingly ignore the plain teachings of the Bible—casting aside the Ten Commandments as a basic moral code and guide to our national conduct.
The essence of the whole American story—historically, morally and prophetically bound up in its legacy as one of the major modern descendants of the biblical patriarch Joseph—remains relatively unknown to the general public.
Gideon Rachman, a regular columnist for the Financial Times, provides us with some specifics. "Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the 'free world.' But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world—Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey—are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy.
"Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers" ("America Is Losing the Free World," Jan. 5, 2010, emphasis added throughout).
For a short time following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the previous bipolar world of the United States and the Soviet Union became the undisputed unipolar world of an economically and militarily unchallenged America.
This didn't last long. British journalist Bryan Appleyard observed in The Sunday Times Magazine: "Japan, having grown rich since 1945 under the umbrella of American security..., began to look to China for its trading future. And auto-cratic regimes are realising they may not have to listen to Western lectures about human rights any more. They can turn to the pragmatic Chinese" ("The Gathering Clouds," Dec. 27, 2009).
During the past 100 years, the United States has been accorded a singular opportunity to provide leadership in the world at large. Now, American influence is rapidly beginning to wane in the world. Why?
One pivotal reason, often discounted by a largely secular media, involves our disappearing moral standards. Paradoxically this most prosperous of the nations also ranks among the most immoral. Larger numbers of Americans increasingly ignore the plain teachings of the Bible—casting aside the Ten Commandments as a basic moral code and guide to our national conduct.
The essence of the whole American story—historically, morally and prophetically bound up in its legacy as one of the major modern descendants of the biblical patriarch Joseph—remains relatively unknown to the general public.
1 comment:
You're looking at cause and consequence--immorality and loss of hegemony--but you leave it up to the reader to fill in the blanks, that is, how the one caused the other. Unless we can establish the how, your thesis will remain something we'll have to accept on faith. No doubt there's no lack of people of your own persuasion who are prepared to accept this causality on faith, but I'd like to propose that it can actually be demonstrated in terms of recent political developments.
Was it Thomas Jefferson who said that a nation gets the government it deserves? At least in urban legend, he did. As late as under Bill Clinton, the US economy was doing great; the dollar was worth around 1.20 euros, and the Federal budget showed a surplus. He had a saying like "it's the economy, stupid," or something to that effect. As a fact, the efforts of the Federal government then were directed towards stimulating the economy for everybody's benefit, and the nation was both doing well and enjoying worldwide respect.
In 2000, the nation accepted the hijacking of the Presidential election by the Bush campaign, and the primary goal of the Federal government became enriching the arms makers and other vendors to the Pentagon and the DHS at the expense of the nation's economic future. The nation swallowed 9/11 hook, line, and sinker, and accepted that Islam was now the new enemy, which had to be fought at any cost. The Bush administration made the nation borrow all the money it took, and the people approved of this, thinking that their low taxes somehow showed that they weren't being ripped off. This lapse has now come home to roost.
Much of the present contempt for America and her people and politics in the rest of the world comes directly from the way the nation fell for this simple ploy just by being fed a propaganda image equating patriotism with support for looting the treasury. How can such simple-minded people expect to be seen as leaders worth emulating?
Here we join your narrative above: a nation with a faltering morality among its ranks allowed its leadership to act immorally, and is now reaping what it sowed. It can all be explained in such simple terms. The surprising thing is how fast it happened: a few years ago, most critics were still talking about future generations paying the price of the looting by the Bush-Cheney administration, but, in fact, it hit the same generation that permitted it.
Can this lapse be corrected? Probably, but it'll be much harder and slower than allowing it to happen. Good luck!
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