We’re bogged down scrapping with violent insurrectionists in the first place, insurgents whose rule of war knows no rule save kill anything and everything you can, as brutally and in as barbaric a manner as possible.

We are rattling our sabers in the second place because, well, they rattle their sabers, and because they want to refine nuclear fuel and we fear that means they would manufacture nuclear weapons.

We are concerned about the third because they have a missile that could theoretically reach our shores.

Wars and rumors of wars. No end in sight.

It has always been thus.

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Further wars seem likely. Equally likely is the demise of the United States as a world power.

At this moment in history, the United States is the most powerful nation on Planet Earth. We are the third largest in size and the third largest in population. We have the highest wealth per person and gross domestic product and standard of living makes us the richest nation on the world. We have the best equipped Army and Navy — although not the largest — the second most nuclear weapons and abundant natural resources.

Except for a single, extremely violent civil war, our government is highly stable, with a constitution that has been in effect for more than two centuries, with elections running like clockwork.

It won’t always be thus.

While we are wealthy, the income gap in the country continues to grow as does the burden of consumer debt. Meanwhile, the public debt continues to swell without any sign of slowing down.

Our manufacturing base is slowly eroding as work leaves the country. This habit of off-shoring has gone beyond what most had initially suspected as we now see white collar and technical work leaving the country as well.

We are dependent on foreign fuel sources and don’t make efficient use of our own natural resources. Our infrastructure is a model of inefficiency and our devotion to a free market and the corruption of our republican institutions by big money prevents us from doing anything about these problems.

Our society is sick. Millions are behind bars, more than half of all marriages end in divorce while millions of children are on legal drugs. We have more murders per capita than the rest of the civilized world.

Meanwhile, illegal aliens are swarming over our borders and the federal government is either unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

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Why is all this happening?

It may have something to do with the nature of republics.

Historically, a republic does best when its people are self-sufficient, living within their moderate means, where government is a part-time hobby for the better off — and doesn’t do anything that will outrage the rest of the people — and where the principal matter of state is to leave well enough alone, especially in foreign affairs.

The Founding Fathers knew that. We don’t.

Once a republic starts building an empire (empire building always starts out as a “defensive” or “premptive” kind of thing) and grows extravagantly wealthy (wealth is used as “proof” that the republic is really doing well) it doesn’t take long for corruption to rot its institutions and its people themselves.

Unlike some previous empires, we will probably not be overrun by a foreign power. However, it is unlikely that, 50 years hence, the United States will enjoy the power and wealth it enjoys at the present.

© The Republican and Herald 2006

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