The president of the United States has lied on every important issue of the day, from the targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS to the murder of those serving the country in Benghazi.
Blockbuster films are visual comic books with Marvel the cultural equivalent of Henry James.
Members of the press corps are now part of the Democratic Party, offering no real critique of the president or the Senate.
Taxes and regulations militate against the generation of wealth.
A nation once known for its innovation, now relies on foreign entities for new ideas since the education system is failing America.
The unfunded liability in the United States is equivalent to all the wealth in the world.
U.S. population has grown fat and soft as the increase in obesity and adult diabetes would suggest.
Rap music personalities who degrade women in their music are part of the cultural elite in the United States.
Television fare pushes the envelope of extremism with ever more explicit sexual acts on screen.
Many college graduates cannot identify the decade in the 19th century when the Civil War was fought.
Muslims are seemingly immune to criticism since a hostile response is likely, but every other religion is fair game.
Gitmo, a prison holding known terrorists, spends $800,000 a year for each and every prisoner.
The best selling book of 2013 deals with sado-masochism.
A Boston Patriots football star is accused of serial murders soon after signing a multi-year $40 million contract.
Edward Snowden is accused of stealing secrets from the NSA and is charged with treason, but the president refuses to prevail on Russia to extradite him.
The Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act giving same-sex marriage equal status with heterosexual marriages.
Arab protests throughout North Africa were unanticipated by the U.S. State Department.
An inability for the U.S. to develop a strategy for Syria has left the government in a catch-up position with rebel forces.
The Obama administration believes the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderating influence in the Arab world.
Attenuated delays and an unwillingness to entertain seriously the development of nuclear weapons in Iran means the Persian mullahs will soon have weapons of mass destruction.
The systematic reduction of our naval fleet means, in effect, that the U.S. cannot protect its interests and allies in the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea or the Sea of Japan.
Federal Reserve easing along with the fiscal deficit will at some point result in an inflationary tsunami.
The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan has led to a temporary political vacuum which is likely to be filled by the Taliban.
Seventy-two percent of Afro American children are born out-of-wedlock.
The Leave It To Beaver family is gone, a distant memory of an earlier period.
The best selling history text in the nation is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States, which is a contentious view of competing interests in our national past.
American students came in next to last on the OECD science and math tests.
President Obama has exercised Executive Order more than any other president.
The debt increased by $5 trillion over the last four years.
These are randomly selected facts and opinions that lead inextricably to one conclusion: national decline. I am not one of the declinists who believe in determinism, nor am I a tired old man who is going through a lamentation of “the way things used to be.” But there is a theme and it is a worrisome theme. America is not what it once was – the great colossus that strode the globe as a force to be emulated. The task before us is a recognition of the issues we face and an examination of manifold ways to address them.
Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book The Transformational Decade (University Press of America). You can read all of Herb London’s commentaries at www.londoncenter.org
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