The End of Civilization

Civilizations fall when they abandon standards, responsibility, and long-term thinking.
 
The perennial human problem is that we want all we can get right now--debt, consumption, politics promising everything. There is no regard for the future.
 
 
THE IGNORED CONSTITUTIONAL CURE
The American Constitution, with its principles and practical rules, prescribes a civilization with staying power. That's because it was crafted to protect the future.
 
However, it has been increasingly neglected and ignored. Mission creep, loopholes, and ignoring limits repudiate its wisdom for a lasting future.
 
 
THE LIBERTINE CURSE
Instead, satisfying every need and pleasure dominates public and political thought. This selfish progressive/libertine view does not consider long-term system-wide consequences. Crime leniency, fragmentation, dependency, and flouting standards spell doom.  
 
It's now considered enlightened and compassionate to grant everyone total freedom, equality, sustenance, and unaccountability. Even obvious crimes like murder, theft, rape, and business and political graft are being excused with "understanding," "compassion," and clever manipulation of the legal system.

MATERIALISM JUSTIFIES EVERYTHING
In large part, accommodating such behavior derives from a belief that we are victims of our circumstances, genetics, upbringing, race, and socioeconomic class.
 
This belief, in turn, springs from an even more fundamental belief that we are mere matter and as such do not have control. In other words, a decision to murder someone is really not our decision. Rather, it's the consequence of chemical reactions and electrical discharges in our brains that obey laws of physics and chemistry.
 
This materialistic mindset can lead us to think that every movement, every act, should make us want to exclaim, "Well I'll be darned, look what I just did. I just don't know what came over me!" In other words, we have no free will, conscience, or accountability because we are victims of neurological biochemistry. That would make it unjust to punish anyone for any action they take.
 
The result is lenient sentencing, permissive education through schools and the media, and psychological excuses.
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However, denying free will and conscience contradicts everyone’s lived experience. People everywhere and throughout history recognize guilt, regret, and choice.
 
Rather than encourage intellectual, ethical, and skill development, those in control--bureaucrats, cultural elites, media, and institutions--lower standards, accommodate, excuse, and reward.
 
 
THE ROMAN COLISEUM IS ALIVE AND WELL
We keep edging ever closer to the Roman Coliseum. For over 400 years the cruelty and gore for man and beast in the arena took on every imaginable grotesque form in order to entertain audiences and endear them to government.
 
Its vestiges remain around the world.
 
Today, audiences at boxing, ultimate fighting, and sporting events where fights break out show the same enthusiasm and glee as the Romans.
 
War, resulting in thousands killed and maimed, is billed as "shock and awe" for our entertainment--and awe of the government.
 
When responsibility erodes, society increasingly requires shock, cruelty, and novelty.
 
History offers no examples to the contrary. Rome, Greece, Egypt, and every fallen culture were eroded by political corruption and shared the same pattern: comfort bred complacency, complacency bred self-indulgence, and self-indulgence and luxury bred loss of virtue and moral confusion. The discipline and virtue required to sustain a society went by the wayside.
 
 
THE SOLUTION
America is not exempt from those forces of decline. The writers of the Constitution were aware of the dangers of human nature and built that into their benevolent written dictator. The result is a remarkable blueprint for a durable, self-governing civilization--but only if its principles are understood, respected, and lived. No law, no institution, and no leader can preserve a nation whose people exchange responsibility for pleasure, accountability for excuses, or liberty for license.
 
Civilization survives only when individuals choose character over impulse, duty over convenience, and truth over comforting illusions and beliefs. The future will only be secured by citizens willing to think long-term.
 
 
WE ANTS HOLD THE POWER
The aversion to the Constitution and the lust for power by those charged with obeying it may seem insoluble to us ants.
 
However, as the powerful villain Hopper said in A Bugs Life, "You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one, and if they ever figure that out -- there goes our way of life!"
 
The way of life of those who are subverting the Constitution needs to go--and we outnumber them millions to one.

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