American Outliers: The State of Our Country
- Oct 24, 2017
- 8 min read
The writer Thomas Paine wrote in The Crisis, “these are the times that try men’s souls.” Indeed, the present time in our nation is a time that will try the souls of even the strongest men. Our vast democratic republic has fallen into a state of arrant cataclysm; an abhorrent upheaval of the intentions and plans set forth for us by our forefathers. We have reached an impasse in the great experiment of America, the likes of which we may never fully recover. We have found ourselves in an egregious state of affairs by our own hand; our actions and our apathy have led us to this point. We have become a nation of parsimonious cowards, refusing to take the blame for our own failures. We have allowed into our midst the very things we fought against for hundreds of years, and now we must reap the fruits of what we have sown. In short, we have allowed ourselves to stand on the verge of collapse, and rather than step away from the edge, we continue to teeter ever so densely off the edge, as if we believe the fall to the bottom will not kill us. We have become arrogant in our actions, which has led us to where we are now.
This is not the first time our beloved nation has been so vehemently divided. Nearly two centuries ago, our nation fought—often brother against brother—in the bloodiest war many of our forefathers had ever seen. The equivalent of 6 million men died during that war, with many more left permanently disfigured and scarred. The war destroyed us, and we held the idea of unity in high regard for many years following, fearful of the possibility that we would see that kind of conflict on our soil once again. For years, we clung to the fantastical idea that we would suffer and rejoice as a united nation, a beacon of hope and freedom for the rest of the world. During the first World War, we were united. During the second World War, we were the victorious conquerors, the allies of freedom and champions of justice. During the time of Kennedy, we waged a silent war on communism and the Soviet Union. Our country had seen great strife, but we were the victors. We met every challenge with adversity. We continued where others failed.
Almost sixty years after President Kennedy, we are here, closer to another bloody war than we’ve ever been before. North Korea, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, is slowly gaining the capability to build nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. What North Korea lacks in technology, they make up for in expendable workers. Kim Jong Un is a ruthless man, an evil coward at his very core. It is of no consequence to him to keep killing engineers and scientists until he finally gets what he wants: the power to destroy his enemies. The Middle East is a wasteland of pestilence; we have spent billions of dollars and thousands of American lives on a conflict that cannot be won, fighting an enemy that has yet to be conquered. ISIS has taken control, and we willingly created a power vacuum when we removed Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, whether we wish to admit it or not. We are also responsible for the crisis in Syria, as we helped put Bashar al-Assad into power. We are the ones that got firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. We are the ones that gave money to Iran. We are the ones that have allowed China to become the superpower that they are. We are the ones that allowed Osama Bin Laden to walk free the first time. We propped up Fidel Castro and supported his rise to power in the beginning, as we also did with Hugo Chavez. In short, we have been responsible for calamity and catastrophe across the globe for decades, and then we pretended as if it never happened.
Currently, we are over $20 trillion in debt. We have a failing healthcare system. We have a failing education system. Our fiat economic system is on the brink of collapse, inflation continuing to increase. Americans have more debt than ever before, many of whom have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of student loans for university education. And still, with more people obtaining four year degrees, many are unable to find decent paying work. Social security will not be able to continue with our current financial situation. Fourteen percent of our adult population is considered illiterate. Twenty-three percent of Americans can only read at a basic literacy level or below proficiency. Around 30 million adults can only read at or below a fifth grade reading level. In places like rural Beattyville Kentucky, the life expectancy is drastically lower, with the median household income so low that poverty becomes an understatement.
We have allowed ourselves to be taxed into oblivion, and yet our federal government cannot seem to get its own spending under control. Cities like Detroit and New Orleans have been run into the ground by poor leadership and mismanagement of funds. Cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Stockton, New Orleans, and Memphis have become so violent that people are leaving in droves. We have allowed the government to use us and grow rich off of us, and yet we keep knowingly electing these shallow, selfish politicians every election cycle. We have allowed them to make a mockery of our constitution and our individual rights. We have watched in apathy as we slip further and further from the ideas of Federalism and liberty into Socialism and slavery. We have lived as cowards under the idea of peace, and embraced the yolk of indentured servitude under the guise of protection. We have become a society of fools, believing the lie that false security is worth the seceding of our personal liberties.
Worse than all of these affronts, however, is the startling fact that we willingly allowed it all to happen—and sometimes encouraged it.
We allowed people like Margaret Sanger to decide who lives and who dies, and as a result we kill the most innocent among us under the guise of protecting the rights of women. We no longer value human life, so we kill because we can gain from it. We steal from those who have nothing to give. We have become a lawless society that confuses order and tyrannical control with morality and law. We sexualize children and claim it’s under the guise equality. We normalize degeneracy in Gay Pride events, refusing to acknowledge those in the gay community who are actually activists, trying to do good in the world. We allow, encourage, and normalize pedophilia and the exploitation of children. No longer is Christianity widely practiced; rather, it is persecuted. Churches can no longer speak out against homosexual marriage, because of the argument “love is love”. Churches are being sued into bankruptcy by those who claim persecution. We have allowed the threat of radical Islam to creep in, taking a stronghold in places like California, Michigan, and New York. We have ignored the warnings that we have seen from Europe, and have welcomed the Trojan Horse into our lands with open arms, with many believing the lie that Islam is a religion of peace.
In short order, we have made a mockery of the great American experiment. We have made a mockery of everything that our forefathers intended. And yet, we continue with our apathy, choosing to fight each other in superfluous matters rather than focusing on important issues. In short order, if we worked together as we ought, we could solve the problems that so frequently plague us. Rather than find solutions, we have spent our time bickering, using social media platforms to dissolve our communication and our relationships with others. No longer do we have healthy debates regarding the issues; we fight one another because we as a collective have lapsed into selfishness. How ashamed of ourselves we should be! While countries like Venezuela are clamoring for food, we fight over issues that no longer matter—that haven’t mattered for some time. We have allowed our economy to wither and our society to crumble, and we’ve done it all while being as easily distracted as primates at a zoo. Perhaps that is all that we’ve devolved to?
Truthfully, we have none to blame but ourselves for the state of affairs we have found ourselves in. We allowed it to happen, under the guise of progress and moving forward. In an attempt to be enlightened, we have forgotten the men like de Tocqueville, Paine, Locke, and Spinosa. In an attempt to sound compassionate, we have censored speech to the point that we are living in an Orwellian nightmare. In an attempt to give justice, we have punished those who did no wrong. In an attempt to police the world, we have forgotten ourselves. In short, we have forgotten our purpose. We are no longer a nation of innovators. We have become a nation of fools.
It is truly a terrifying notion to think that the age of men like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla, and JP Morgan no longer exists. Unfortunately, society has demonstrated that we no longer yearn for knowledge and success, rather, we can only focus on the immediate desires of our minds—the carrot dangling in front of us. No longer are we a nation of problem solvers; we have become a nation of victims. Too many adolescents and young adults—and even some middle aged men and women—have no concept of the true history of our beloved country. Further still, too many Americans have no understanding of our laws or how our government is supposed to function. Too many assume that the yolk of slavery we have been living under is normal. We have conditioned ourselves to believe that giving up our liberties for the idea of security is a better alternative than the potential for terrorist attacks on our soil. We say that we don’t want to see the horror again; millions of Americans clearly remembering the attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001 in New York and Washington DC. The horrible truth, however, is that if those attacks occurred in today’s society, we would turn our televisions off, rather than deal with the problem. In this mentality lies part of our problem: we say that we cannot ignore the atrocities around the globe, but when there is trouble for our own people, we turn our eyes from it. We must remember the words of the philosopher Plato: “only the dead have seen the end of war.”
To fix a problem, we must acknowledge that the problem exists in the first place. We must acknowledge our own failures, as much as we acknowledge our victories. We must work together, rather than dividing each other. We must become a nation dedicated to freedom and liberty once again, rather than looking to blame others for our own mistakes. We must understand that the beauty in a democratic republic—which is what we are—is that it is our differences that make us unique, and our differences that unite us. We are a nation of people who have seen war and famine. We have fought communism and evil across the globe. We have stood up against injustice and won. We have produced innovators and thinkers, and put men on the moon. We have proved that grit and determination could see us through. We must remember the roots from whence we came.
We can no longer afford to be failures. We can no longer afford to follow the pattern of the rest of the world. We are the United States of America, the great experiment from a few bold men. If we continue down this path of failure—of lunacy—we will never be victors again. It is time for the silent majority to rise to the occasion and restore our beloved homeland to the glory it once was. There is no longer time to wait, we must act swiftly and with courage.
If this country fails, the blood will be on our own hands. It is up to us to give the future generations something to be proud of. It is up to us to do what is right because it is right. We are the captains of our own fate. It is time to determine whether or not we want that fate to be glorious or doomed.
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