Has terminal decline overtaken the United States? Great nations tend to commit moral and fiscal suicide after about 200 years. But Americas success story grounded in freedom and responsibility can continue if we all do our part.
Freedom and the success it produces can be their own worst enemy unless they are tempered with personal responsibility. If America forgets this we are finished.
Alexander Tytler analyzing world history in the 1770s observed that great nations tend to decline after about 200 years. Liberty and abundance give way to complacency and apathy he warned then to dependence and bondage. Where are we on that scale?
In the 1970s historian John Glubb diagnosed the recurring pattern of decadence overtaking national greatness with symptoms such as pessimism materialism an influx of foreigners the welfare state the weakening of religion the love of money and the loss of a sense of duty." The echo with Tytler is exact; the fit with our own times sobering.
On January 20 2009 just before we launched the Centennial Institute I was completing a book on Americas need for a rebirth of responsibility to head off the danger of decline. Pausing that day to watch Barack Obama give his inaugural address I was struck by one statement: What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility." It sounded good.
Conflicting Definitions
Within a week however the new president was telling businessmen that at a time of economic crisis making profits is not responsible." Since then its been clear that words have a different meaning in Mr. Obamas vocabulary. He has misappropriated the language of personal responsibility freely chosen to cloak a radical agenda of collective constraints coercively imposed.
In the coming year of 2012 Americans will have their chance to electorally ratify or reject the Obama agenda. But regardless of who holds power renewal of our nations responsibility ethic will be a matter of citizen attitudes from the bottom up not of policies from the top down. And it will be the work of decades not months. We need a deep-rooted far-seeing agenda of our own.
In Responsibility Reborn: A Citizens Guide to the Next American Century I look to a 2020 horizon and propose ten priorities for all of us in this decade transcending the ebb and flow of elections. My first five agenda items in fact dont concern government at all.
In civil society responsible America must strengthen families insist on learning renew a common culture and expect more of churches. Then in the political arena responsible America must assert civic ownership rebuild our defenses resist over-government guard U.S. sovereignty and protect freedom of conscience. Lets look at each of these in more detail:
I. Strengthen Families
A free responsible and virtuous society rests on the marriage bond between men and women and on the lifelong relationship of loyalty and caring between parents and children. Strengthening the family is the best way of limiting the irresponsibility and neediness that lead to excessive government.
Divorce damages everyone involved. So does illegitimacy. So does abortion. Social-science findings are conclusive on this. The response in public policy remains controversial but nothing prevents us from working individually for stronger traditional families. The widespread American reality of adoption single parenting and same-sex households cannot change the fact that the optimum for human flourishing is one man and one woman married for life procreating the next generation and raising them lovingly. To repeat this agenda for responsible America is about attitudes. A pro-family pro-marriage pro-life attitude is paramount.
II. Insist on Learning
Moral and intellectual ignorance is the worst form of irresponsibility because it sets up all the others. The individual who has not been pushed to learn and helped to learn is left at the mercy of impulses from within and impositions from without. So an attitude that honors learning and that insists children must learn is vital if we are to sustain responsible America.
Unless this fundamental change in thinking spreads from the bottom up talk of education reform will remain empty. Parents are the primary educators of the child. Academics and character cannot be separated. School and state eventually should be separated.
The NEA and other teacher unions should be exposed as a money racket a leftist indoctrination machine and a partisan auxiliary unresponsive to their members and unconcerned with learning. Charters vouchers tax credits and home schooling should be encouraged. Competition choice and markets will deliver better learning performance at less cost than monopoly bureaucracy and unionism.
III. Renew a Common Culture
The Declaration of Independence said Jefferson was an expression of the American mind." What expresses the American mind today? How does the national conversation take place? Are we satisfied with it?
Americas political rebirth of responsibility since the 1970s has made no impact culturally. Sensation and celebrity coarsen the news media movies and TV books and music advertising and art. Little is heard of the ethic of mutual obligation and the grateful recognition that life is a gift.
But the idea marketplace does respond to consumer demand. We can begin demanding from it the attributes of what is best: truth beauty goodness integrity faith excellence decency duty dignity sacrifice trust unselfishness reverence.
We must also insist that American culture is one. English is the language of our shared future as well as our heritage. While the many cultural streams flowing together into this first universal nation" are to be celebrated the ism" of multicultural propaganda is divisive and demoralizing to the land we love. Away with it.
IV. Expand Charity
Voluntary assistance to others in need along with philanthropic giving for community benefit meets the universal instinct of human decency as expressed in the Golden Rule. Charity is also a bulwark against excessive government and welfarism. Coercive redistribution is less tempting when unforced generosity prevails.
Americans already lead the world in charitable good works donating more of their income and volunteering more of their time than any other people. Yet despite welfare reform in the 1990s tax-funded bureaucratic provision for more and more peoples living standards continues to grow. The ethic of self-chosen benevolence to our neighbors must become stronger still.
Otherwise were headed for an absurd future where the law holds you and me responsible" for each others well-being and no one is responsible for himself. Irresponsible America will have become what Frederic Bastiat called a great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else."
V. Expect More of Churches
Devout as we are Americans remain unconvinced as to whether humans can be good without God. We cant. The only options are personal responsibility the real thing freely chosen in the fear of the Lord or purchased responsibility the counterfeit imposed by legal compulsion and material allurements.
Our nations greatness was forged when all of the responsibilities discussed so farfamily learning culture and charitywere far more shaped by the churches and far less tied to government. Secularists and statists seeking a sheeplike population the soft despotism that Tocqueville feared now manipulate such ideas as responsibility progress and even liberty to achieve benign control over the whole people.
The best defense against such entrapment is the Christian precept of Render to Caesar render to God" and the Jewish commandment against idolatry. Those truths dont ring from the pulpit however. Religious bodies in America todayactive prosperous and to all appearances freetoo often drift with the materialist and collectivist undercurrent neglecting the spiritual formation of their members. If the church wont shepherd its own flock Caesar is quite ready to do so. Which will it be?
VI. Assert Civic Ownership
Our responsibility agenda is not primarily a political project. It is about living well as individuals in community. Politics enter in because law and government are needful to us as social beings intelligent but imperfect above the beasts and below the angels.
Politics will go better if Americans begin to demand less of government by taking more responsibility for ourselves and our neighbors in the five areas considered above. But there is also a need for each citizen to own" his place in the body politic responsibly and conscientiously much as we own our physical bodies homes and other property.
Our polity is vulnerable to what economists call the tragedy of the commons. Each of us as citizens must take an ownership attitude as an antidote.
In the long run were all dead" some shrug when warned of the looming dangers of debt entitlements and weak defenses. Wrong; responsibility has no expiration date. We must assert civic ownership; accept it; practice it.
VII. Rebuild Our Defenses
We know this is a dangerous world. We know America needs defending because she is a target of the envious the ambitious the fanatical and the tyrannical. We know America is worth defending because she is good. So we must insist that America have a defense second to none.
Governments first job is to protect us against violent predators at home and abroad. This is obvious yet constantly forgotten. Man is a hopeful and gullible creature and Americans in particular have a pacific temperament.
A morally and militarily disarmed United States in the late 1970s came back in a decade to win the Cold War and emerge as the worlds only superpower. Now as we struggle against a new kind of enemy in jihadist Islam and its state sponsors it seems the cycle may repeat. Churchillian voices of warning are needed. Our Chinese and Russian adversaries never sleep. Will we wake up in time?
VIII. Resist Over-Government
You know it when you see it: government health care government energy policy government climate regulations government entitlements government bailouts government banks government automakers government handouts government favoritism to unions government deficits government economic stimulus. Each is a cure worse than the disease.
Over-government has never worked and never will. Something for nothing doesnt work. Command and control doesnt work. While theres not space to discuss each issue in detail one remedy fits them all: Defend free responsibility responsible freedom and resist over-government.
Does government expand because of its own power dynamic or because lapses of responsibility in civil society leave a vacuum? Yesboth. Theres a vicious circle. Moral entropy weakens individuals and institutions. Unmet needs along with the states inherent expansionism draw a political response. Civil society suffers a further loss of vitality and the spiral worsens.
The greatest threat to responsible America is not Caesar. The greatest threat is the person you see in the mirror. The line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart said Solzhenitsyn. We get the government we deserve.
IX. Guard U.S. Sovereignty
Americans became the worlds freest and richest people by governing ourselves through consent and the rule of law to secure our God-given rights. Never since 1776 have we yielded our separate and equal station among the powers of the earth." But all this may soon be submerged into global governance by the United Nations the International Criminal Court and other worldwide entities.
Transnational progressives convinced the nation-state is obsolete and a world polity is preferable maneuver quietly from high-level positions in government universities foundations and the media. Both parties are susceptible to the utopian visions of these tranzies" and their corporate allies.
The latter oddly paired with the guilty-America lobby have also worked for open borders as 20 million illegal aliens poured into the country. Amnesty and a path to citizenship for these millions which was defeated in 2007 is being pressed again.
Unequivocal sovereignty for the United States of America under our Constitution including secure borders is nonnegotiable for the continuance of our way of life. Accept no substitutes.
X. Protect Freedom of Conscience
Each person must be at liberty to determine in his own heart right from wrong good from evil truth from falsehood. Actions that injure others can then be punished but laws purporting to forbid certain ideas and words are tyrannous and un-American. If absolutist minorities can persuade timid majorities to invade personal conscience Orwells 1984 is here and we are no better than robots.
Canada has tried journalists for criticizing Islam and clergymen for preaching against homosexuality. This kind of thought control is already being advocated in the United States in the form of speech codes laws about hate crimes and human rights" commissions.
Religious practice will be the first casualty. Scholarship the press and political expression are also endangered as laws increasingly decree what we may not say about taboo subjects from abortion clinics to candidates for office. Moral accountability the true meaning of responsibility is destroyed if the mind and conscience of individuals are forced into a mold by governmental coercion or its proxy political correctness.
The danger is rising. We must not yield. Jeffersons vow must be our own: I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Decade of Decision
The nation does not lack for threats and problems right now. Yet turning difficulty into opportunity has been the story of our country for four centuries past. This next American century holds more of the same.
These Obama years and their sequel are a decade of decision. Our difficulties could bring out the best in responsible America. Or the situation may fool us and frighten us into bad decisions that worsen the responsibility deficit. A generation of remarkable gains could be undone.
Irresponsibility and enemies abroad at home are not the worst threat we face. The undertow of weariness and carelessness is worse. Lincoln led magnificently in wartime. But long before the Civil War he warned of a far future when the silent armies of time" might bloodlessly take America downsimply through our forgetting who we are.
Has that day come? Not if you and I can help it. With this responsibility agenda for America 2020 we can refute the voices of decline and prove that the best is yet to come.
Has terminal decline overtaken the United States? Great nations tend to commit moral and fiscal suicide after about 200 years. But Americas success story grounded in freedom and responsibility can continue if we all do our part.
Freedom and the success it produces can be their own worst enemy unless they are tempered with personal responsibility. If America forgets this we are finished.
Alexander Tytler analyzing world history in the 1770s observed that great nations tend to decline after about 200 years. Liberty and abundance give way to complacency and apathy he warned then to dependence and bondage. Where are we on that scale?
In the 1970s historian John Glubb diagnosed the recurring pattern of decadence overtaking national greatness with symptoms such as pessimism materialism an influx of foreigners the welfare state the weakening of religion the love of money and the loss of a sense of duty." The echo with Tytler is exact; the fit with our own times sobering.
On January 20 2009 just before we launched the Centennial Institute I was completing a book on Americas need for a rebirth of responsibility to head off the danger of decline. Pausing that day to watch Barack Obama give his inaugural address I was struck by one statement: What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility." It sounded good.
Conflicting Definitions
Within a week however the new president was telling businessmen that at a time of economic crisis making profits is not responsible." Since then its been clear that words have a different meaning in Mr. Obamas vocabulary. He has misappropriated the language of personal responsibility freely chosen to cloak a radical agenda of collective constraints coercively imposed.
In the coming year of 2012 Americans will have their chance to electorally ratify or reject the Obama agenda. But regardless of who holds power renewal of our nations responsibility ethic will be a matter of citizen attitudes from the bottom up not of policies from the top down. And it will be the work of decades not months. We need a deep-rooted far-seeing agenda of our own.
In Responsibility Reborn: A Citizens Guide to the Next American Century I look to a 2020 horizon and propose ten priorities for all of us in this decade transcending the ebb and flow of elections. My first five agenda items in fact dont concern government at all.
In civil society responsible America must strengthen families insist on learning renew a common culture and expect more of churches. Then in the political arena responsible America must assert civic ownership rebuild our defenses resist over-government guard U.S. sovereignty and protect freedom of conscience. Lets look at each of these in more detail:
I. Strengthen Families
A free responsible and virtuous society rests on the marriage bond between men and women and on the lifelong relationship of loyalty and caring between parents and children. Strengthening the family is the best way of limiting the irresponsibility and neediness that lead to excessive government.
Divorce damages everyone involved. So does illegitimacy. So does abortion. Social-science findings are conclusive on this. The response in public policy remains controversial but nothing prevents us from working individually for stronger traditional families. The widespread American reality of adoption single parenting and same-sex households cannot change the fact that the optimum for human flourishing is one man and one woman married for life procreating the next generation and raising them lovingly. To repeat this agenda for responsible America is about attitudes. A pro-family pro-marriage pro-life attitude is paramount.
II. Insist on Learning
Moral and intellectual ignorance is the worst form of irresponsibility because it sets up all the others. The individual who has not been pushed to learn and helped to learn is left at the mercy of impulses from within and impositions from without. So an attitude that honors learning and that insists children must learn is vital if we are to sustain responsible America.
Unless this fundamental change in thinking spreads from the bottom up talk of education reform will remain empty. Parents are the primary educators of the child. Academics and character cannot be separated. School and state eventually should be separated.
The NEA and other teacher unions should be exposed as a money racket a leftist indoctrination machine and a partisan auxiliary unresponsive to their members and unconcerned with learning. Charters vouchers tax credits and home schooling should be encouraged. Competition choice and markets will deliver better learning performance at less cost than monopoly bureaucracy and unionism.
III. Renew a Common Culture
The Declaration of Independence said Jefferson was an expression of the American mind." What expresses the American mind today? How does the national conversation take place? Are we satisfied with it?
Americas political rebirth of responsibility since the 1970s has made no impact culturally. Sensation and celebrity coarsen the news media movies and TV books and music advertising and art. Little is heard of the ethic of mutual obligation and the grateful recognition that life is a gift.
But the idea marketplace does respond to consumer demand. We can begin demanding from it the attributes of what is best: truth beauty goodness integrity faith excellence decency duty dignity sacrifice trust unselfishness reverence.
We must also insist that American culture is one. English is the language of our shared future as well as our heritage. While the many cultural streams flowing together into this first universal nation" are to be celebrated the ism" of multicultural propaganda is divisive and demoralizing to the land we love. Away with it.
IV. Expand Charity
Voluntary assistance to others in need along with philanthropic giving for community benefit meets the universal instinct of human decency as expressed in the Golden Rule. Charity is also a bulwark against excessive government and welfarism. Coercive redistribution is less tempting when unforced generosity prevails.
Americans already lead the world in charitable good works donating more of their income and volunteering more of their time than any other people. Yet despite welfare reform in the 1990s tax-funded bureaucratic provision for more and more peoples living standards continues to grow. The ethic of self-chosen benevolence to our neighbors must become stronger still.
Otherwise were headed for an absurd future where the law holds you and me responsible" for each others well-being and no one is responsible for himself. Irresponsible America will have become what Frederic Bastiat called a great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else."
V. Expect More of Churches
Devout as we are Americans remain unconvinced as to whether humans can be good without God. We cant. The only options are personal responsibility the real thing freely chosen in the fear of the Lord or purchased responsibility the counterfeit imposed by legal compulsion and material allurements.
Our nations greatness was forged when all of the responsibilities discussed so farfamily learning culture and charitywere far more shaped by the churches and far less tied to government. Secularists and statists seeking a sheeplike population the soft despotism that Tocqueville feared now manipulate such ideas as responsibility progress and even liberty to achieve benign control over the whole people.
The best defense against such entrapment is the Christian precept of Render to Caesar render to God" and the Jewish commandment against idolatry. Those truths dont ring from the pulpit however. Religious bodies in America todayactive prosperous and to all appearances freetoo often drift with the materialist and collectivist undercurrent neglecting the spiritual formation of their members. If the church wont shepherd its own flock Caesar is quite ready to do so. Which will it be?
VI. Assert Civic Ownership
Our responsibility agenda is not primarily a political project. It is about living well as individuals in community. Politics enter in because law and government are needful to us as social beings intelligent but imperfect above the beasts and below the angels.
Politics will go better if Americans begin to demand less of government by taking more responsibility for ourselves and our neighbors in the five areas considered above. But there is also a need for each citizen to own" his place in the body politic responsibly and conscientiously much as we own our physical bodies homes and other property.
Our polity is vulnerable to what economists call the tragedy of the commons. Each of us as citizens must take an ownership attitude as an antidote.
In the long run were all dead" some shrug when warned of the looming dangers of debt entitlements and weak defenses. Wrong; responsibility has no expiration date. We must assert civic ownership; accept it; practice it.
VII. Rebuild Our Defenses
We know this is a dangerous world. We know America needs defending because she is a target of the envious the ambitious the fanatical and the tyrannical. We know America is worth defending because she is good. So we must insist that America have a defense second to none.
Governments first job is to protect us against violent predators at home and abroad. This is obvious yet constantly forgotten. Man is a hopeful and gullible creature and Americans in particular have a pacific temperament.
A morally and militarily disarmed United States in the late 1970s came back in a decade to win the Cold War and emerge as the worlds only superpower. Now as we struggle against a new kind of enemy in jihadist Islam and its state sponsors it seems the cycle may repeat. Churchillian voices of warning are needed. Our Chinese and Russian adversaries never sleep. Will we wake up in time?
VIII. Resist Over-Government
You know it when you see it: government health care government energy policy government climate regulations government entitlements government bailouts government banks government automakers government handouts government favoritism to unions government deficits government economic stimulus. Each is a cure worse than the disease.
Over-government has never worked and never will. Something for nothing doesnt work. Command and control doesnt work. While theres not space to discuss each issue in detail one remedy fits them all: Defend free responsibility responsible freedom and resist over-government.
Does government expand because of its own power dynamic or because lapses of responsibility in civil society leave a vacuum? Yesboth. Theres a vicious circle. Moral entropy weakens individuals and institutions. Unmet needs along with the states inherent expansionism draw a political response. Civil society suffers a further loss of vitality and the spiral worsens.
The greatest threat to responsible America is not Caesar. The greatest threat is the person you see in the mirror. The line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart said Solzhenitsyn. We get the government we deserve.
IX. Guard U.S. Sovereignty
Americans became the worlds freest and richest people by governing ourselves through consent and the rule of law to secure our God-given rights. Never since 1776 have we yielded our separate and equal station among the powers of the earth." But all this may soon be submerged into global governance by the United Nations the International Criminal Court and other worldwide entities.
Transnational progressives convinced the nation-state is obsolete and a world polity is preferable maneuver quietly from high-level positions in government universities foundations and the media. Both parties are susceptible to the utopian visions of these tranzies" and their corporate allies.
The latter oddly paired with the guilty-America lobby have also worked for open borders as 20 million illegal aliens poured into the country. Amnesty and a path to citizenship for these millions which was defeated in 2007 is being pressed again.
Unequivocal sovereignty for the United States of America under our Constitution including secure borders is nonnegotiable for the continuance of our way of life. Accept no substitutes.
X. Protect Freedom of Conscience
Each person must be at liberty to determine in his own heart right from wrong good from evil truth from falsehood. Actions that injure others can then be punished but laws purporting to forbid certain ideas and words are tyrannous and un-American. If absolutist minorities can persuade timid majorities to invade personal conscience Orwells 1984 is here and we are no better than robots.
Canada has tried journalists for criticizing Islam and clergymen for preaching against homosexuality. This kind of thought control is already being advocated in the United States in the form of speech codes laws about hate crimes and human rights" commissions.
Religious practice will be the first casualty. Scholarship the press and political expression are also endangered as laws increasingly decree what we may not say about taboo subjects from abortion clinics to candidates for office. Moral accountability the true meaning of responsibility is destroyed if the mind and conscience of individuals are forced into a mold by governmental coercion or its proxy political correctness.
The danger is rising. We must not yield. Jeffersons vow must be our own: I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Decade of Decision
The nation does not lack for threats and problems right now. Yet turning difficulty into opportunity has been the story of our country for four centuries past. This next American century holds more of the same.
These Obama years and their sequel are a decade of decision. Our difficulties could bring out the best in responsible America. Or the situation may fool us and frighten us into bad decisions that worsen the responsibility deficit. A generation of remarkable gains could be undone.
Irresponsibility and enemies abroad at home are not the worst threat we face. The undertow of weariness and carelessness is worse. Lincoln led magnificently in wartime. But long before the Civil War he warned of a far future when the silent armies of time" might bloodlessly take America downsimply through our forgetting who we are.
Has that day come? Not if you and I can help it. With this responsibility agenda for America 2020 we can refute the voices of decline and prove that the best is yet to come.
