To Rebuild America Understand its Decline

To Rebuild America Understand its Decline
By Cameron Macgregor

Talk of American decline is widespread. High employment numbers, wild fluctuations in the stock market, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the S&P downgrade of US treasury bonds are all cited as evidence of our weakening power. This matched with America’s waning influence overseas prompts many to ask what a post-American world will look like. But few are asking why?

It seems people are either missing or perhaps afraid to address the central reasons for our decline, an awareness that is critical to rebuilding America’s prosperity and restoring its greatness. In fact, three pivotal ideas are primarily responsible for the decline in American prosperity and power.

The first and perhaps, the most destructive idea is multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is an outgrowth of the 1960s, an idea designed to help alleviate deep-rooted racial divisions. However, over time, multiculturalism evolved into something far more powerful than repealing segregation laws and destroying unfair racial boundaries. Eventually, multiculturalism symbolized a new American society, a “community of communities.” Multiculturalism rejected the idea that America is a nation that speaks one language, and it refuted the Western values that inspired the Republic and the free market that created our prosperity.

The results are disastrous. A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center on rising wealth gaps in America paints a bleak picture. The economic gap between whites and the rest of the population is the largest in 30 years. From 2005-2009 black and Hispanic wealth fell by over 50%, while white wealth fell just 16%. The white population is nearly 20 times wealthier than blacks and Hispanics. The Pew Research Center unveils an America society that is increasingly bifurcated – a division that is not simply economic but cultural.

America’s cultural divides run parallel to its economic ones. Essentially America increasingly has a first world population and a third world population. The values, social orientation, and community participation of these populations are fundamentally different and in some cases conflicting. Adding to these divisions are the millions upon millions of illegal immigrant populations who frequently don’t speak English, live in balkanized neighborhoods or, effectively, countries within countries.

The second idea is big government. Before the Great Depression government on every level local, state and federal was a tiny fraction of what it is today. Today, government accounts for nearly 25% of GDP, an astronomical number. Government administers education, provides health-care for the poor and the elderly, is responsible for the retirement of 300 million people, regulates everything from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, and manages (or mismanages) countless federal bureaucracies, redistributive programs, contracts, and defense.

One of the many wondrous things that struck De Tocqueville when he came to the United States in the 1830s was the invisibility of American government. For this reason he appropriately said that in America “the state governs but does not administer.” Today, it does the opposite. Thomas Hobbes’ would be immensely proud of the size, power and intrusiveness of America’s “Leviathan.”

During the infamous battle over the debt ceiling, fear of default terrorized the nation. Obama promised doomsday if the Tea Party refused to be “reasonable” and continue enabling more spending. But few outside the Tea Party are alarmed that America has become a nation systemically dependent on big government, a tyranny Jefferson dreaded and Madison hoped to prevent.

The third bad idea is empire. It’s true, today America has nearly a thousand bases in over a hundred countries around the world – no matter how you spin it we are an empire. We maintain troops in central Europe and continue to occupy Japan while we wage wars in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq for reasons no one really understands and seldom bothers to find out. Of course, the president usually executes these wars without consulting congress, an irritant most presidents usually avoid.

In addition to commanding forces around the world American policymakers and our institutions play God with the internal affairs of other nations. We pick winners and losers, and usually end up creating enemies instead of friends. America’s meddling in the affairs of others is so extreme that during a February “Jasmine” protest in China the conspicuous presence of a US diplomat – one John Huntsman – led Chinese citizens and government officials to believe that Huntsman was secretly engineering the protests to instigate chaos in Beijing.

One might say that America’s empire exists more from circumstance than intent. That may have been true during the Cold War, but it would be hard to defend that position now. It has more to do with what diplomat George Kennan referred to as “national narcissism.” Kennan was right when he said that American foreign policy was more focused on reinforcing positive images Americans had of themselves than national interests. Americans believe that America, like its Navy, is a “global force for good.”

Yes, the divisiveness of multiculturalism, dependency on big government, and the wasteful cost of empire have finally caught up with us. To recover, rebuild, and re-unify the nation these ideas must be refuted and expunged from the institutions, policies, and especially the psyche of the American people where it has done the most damage.

The reasons for US decline are less policies or political parties than the ideas that animate them. Ideas possess an endurance that far exceeds the imprint of any president or congressional policy. We must stop fighting unnecessary wars, perverting American culture and values, and growing the size of government. Revisiting American history should give us hope because it is not our country that is failing but the perverse ideas that have defiled it.

Cameron Macgregor is a former naval officer and US Naval Academy graduate. He is writing his first book, The New American Nationalism.

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Cameron Macgregor

Cameron Macgregor graduated from the US Naval Academy in 2007. He then served aboard the navy destroyer USS BENFOLD for just over two years, working primarily as an engineering officer. He completed one deployment to the Arabian Gulf in 2008, a tour that involved a diverse range of operations from anti-piracy to anti-drug trafficking. After leaving the navy Cameron briefly worked for Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC). Since, Cameron has been writing and teaching. Some of his work has appeared in the Washington Times. He is currently a graduate student at George Mason University.

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One Comment

  1. “We must stop fighting unnecessary wars, perverting American culture and values, and growing the size of government.”

    Well said Sir, and thank you for your military service.

  2. Mr. Macgregor is correct in his expression about “idea’s” American’s have that manifest themselves in their politics and policies in how they end up governing themselves and the rest of the country. What has happend is we let our beliefs in how this nation should be internally, and how the world perceives us, and what decisions we were making, we allowed to be taken away from us by the liberals when they started making their big noise back in the 60’s. They challenged us in ways we never expected anyone would, and we lost the argument. They said if we believed that’s the way we saw how America should be, then we were wrong, and they were the one’s who were right (now) which I mean was then. They came from the universities as those who were the anti-war protesters, administration building occupiers, civil rights marchers, and all their siciphant supporters who were making all the noise we didn’t want to hear. We didn’t want to hear all of that because we thought that sort of noise happened somewhere else, but not here. We thought we were the ones setting the tone of the nation, and here they came along and took that belief away from us. We lost the supposed “right” to make the tone, and they showed us we didn’t have as much control over how people thought America should be as we thought.

    We really haven’t made any real attempt to take the lead back away from the left so that we can set the tone again. The tone being, what the country should stand for and that is what we said it was back then before the left come along in the 60’s was Christian morality and not drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. To many youth were discontented with the strict life styles and adherance to obeying laws that the youth wanted to break out of. That’s why drugs became a god to them back then when we believed they would reject such nonsense, but we didn’t understand how much they wanted out from under all the constraints on something inside we didn’t see was there. The youth let it “all hang out” and that was that inner rebellion that was beyound what youth had displayed before. The youth were looking for something that our society, the one we had established for them, that they couldn’t see met a demand that was inside of them they couldn’t control. Along came the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and all the music that was “expanding their minds” that the older ones of us just couldn’t understand. That, plus drugs, plus new ideas of the left, and race issues, that our youth were willing to give a try because it had to be better and more rewarding than what we were offering. We just weren’t offering enough to satisfy their desire to break free of the old ways. And the left were just waiting for an opportunity like that to come along. Especially with our girls. The girls in our society were affected more than the boys, and we just didn’t see that coming at all. That’s where the “sex” part came from and the perverts on the left were the one’s who excelled in that department.

    America changed so much so more than any of us could have ever expected when our youth went off with the liberals and what they offered was so much more different than anything we were providing for them it angered us, and we made a serious mistake but no different than our parents made, or that their parents had made in their time. Our mistake of rejecting what our youth were doing to rebel that it drove them to the liberals and the liberals were waiting there with open arms, to be accepting like we should have been, but we were to proud to let go of some of the strictness we had been raised in and took the time to teach them not to let go of our heritage we got from our forefathers was just as important for them to take with themselves as they explored the world for themselves. And teach them with understanding that when they have had their fill of what the world offered, our nations heritage was worth coming back to. But we cut that off from them and they never came back, because there wasn’t anything to come back to but only strictness and rigid Christian conservatism. The left convinced them in their maddness that what we had wasn’t worth going home to, and our youth believed the left. That was the point where our youth were captured, in all their rage and anger, and the left knew just how to direct that anger and rage and it was towards the sitting government and the “establishment” .

    The attacks were relentless and intence with violence we, sitting in our living rooms, just couldn’t believe what we were seeing on TV. And TV was the instrument they learned how to use so well, and used it to convince millions of American’s that the “old ways” had run their course and it was time to change what America was, and the message it was sending out to the world that it was ready to be part of the world community and grow with the rest of the world in this New World Order that our youth believed so much in that they would use it later on to do to us what they believed we deserve for rejecting their new ideas and feelings about how things should be. We just weren’t ready for such new ideas, and feelings we had never used to look at the issues that the whole world was waking up to.

    Now, the youth we had to let loose have become the establishment, now. And look what they have let happen to their country, and their heritage, and what they believed were what our forefathers had forgotten to give to American’s in their founding documents. They want to throw out those documents and start over. The problems is it is not their beliefs that they want to use to construct these new documents, it is the sick, evil beliefs of the left that has filled the minds of our youth and don’t reflect what our youth actually believe. What do our youth actually believe America should be? They don’t know, they didn’t take anything with them from us when they left many years ago. All they have is what the left gave them to believe. The solution is to give to those who will accept it as the way America has to be in order for it to survive. As for our youth who have become the establishment? We will have to discard them in the trash heap of a ruined past. Their history will be blocked for future generations because their mistake of making anger and rebellion is to sick to include as something to learn from. What we’ll have to teach those who want to learn what America is supposed to be will be what we didn’t give to our youth before they left for the world. It’s our second chance to save the country.

  3. For I am that youth that left and took nothing with me. But I instead didn’t go the way of the youth of my day who rejected what our parents were offering us to stay. I joined the Army and went to war. When I came back I was spit upon and called names, rejected. I couldn’t stang being rejected twice, once by my parents for wanting to be different, and then rejected by those who were driving a new society that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of. But after I went through all that rejection the left had for us who were coming back from Vietnam, I gave in to the pressure because I didn’t expect being treated that way by my own countrymen for going to war for this nation, and fighting against an enemy that I saw being what was backing all the rebellion the young were going through. I wanted to be part of that, and stepped into it with eyes wide open.

    But after awhile I realized that what I was seeing wasn’t what I was being told it was. It was fake, it was shallow, it was a lie. So I left the left because at least I did have family who did understand what I was going through, but weren’t my parents. That ‘s who I needed understanding from but at least it was family and they did care about what happened to me, and I realized that. I felt that in my heart, and knew that the difference between the liberals out on the street when they said they cared, understood, and knew my heart was a lie, and I could tell the difference between real love and fake love. The left is always trying to trick people into believeing something that is a lie. You have to be beside yourself in order to fall for what they are offering. Many are still beside themselves, and the left will have a hold on those people for some time to come. Many will not ever come back like I did. But it was an opportunity that I took advantage of, it could have gone on it’s way, but I didn’t want to loose that chance to have a second chance to preserve myself and my country.

    Mr. Macgregor is right when he says that it’s the ideas of the people who produce the politics and policies our country has as the basis of where do we go from here. Will America survive? Will we be drawn into the New World Order? Will we be able to expose this lie before it’s to late? If we do the left will have to try to destroy us in order that the rest of the world won’t get inspiration in our resistance to those who are promoting what the left is offering, and that is world community, and world unity. The only thing the world should be resistant to is those who would try to take our freedom to make our own choices away from us. That is what we should be trying to put an end to, and those who are running such a destructive machine. We need to be the wrench that shuts that machine down for good. But will it be big enough?

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