But you tell me over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction
~ Barry McGuire
Eve of Destruction was a hit song when I was a teeny-bopper. It was a protest song, primarily against the Vietnam war. In that, singer/songwriter Barry McGuire was far from alone.
The 1960s are now sixty years ago. If we were on the eve of destruction back then, we're closer to midnight today. We live in a much more frightening world than anyone in the mid-'60s could imagine. In the 1960s, the US Constitution was the law of the land. There was no question about that among everyday citizens. That is no longer true.
We in America--formerly famous for being a free country--find that the First Amendment has been rendered largely meaningless. We labor under growing restrictions on free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and endless attacks on the Second Amendment--our right to bear arms. Many of the impediments to our freedoms emanate from unelected Federal bureaucrats. There is often no legal recourse. Legitimate cases are dismissed by district attorneys and judges that care more about criminal rights than those of taxpaying citizens.
In the past 60 years, the United States has withstood the turbulence and tragedy of several wars. We united and rebuilt after September 11, 2001. We have recovered from severe economic hardships--inflation and sky-high interest rates in the 1980s, the dotcom market bubble burst around Y2K, the financial reverses of 2008's Great Recession. In all my years, I've never worried about the USA surviving any trial.
Until now. Now, we are so fractured and degraded as a society, our government is so corrupted and incompetent, that I worry we are at the very edge of a national disaster that can never be remedied. It has happened to every great civilization in history. The Roman Empire fell for reasons disturbingly similar to conditions in America today. Among those reasons were border collapse, economic crisis, and government corruption. Rome lasted for a thousand years. But if the USA can't begin to turn the tide of chaos within our country, I think we're on a much more rapid path to self-destruction.
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