I just came across one of those columns that I want to excerpt from, but feel so strongly that you ought to read the whole thing that it will be difficult to resist the temptation to reprint it in its entirety.
It's
the latest from Dennis Prager. I'll give you the first few paragraphs in which he lays out his overall point:
As of tonight, we may know if Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate. And, barring unforeseeable events, it is certain that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Those are two reasons -- of many, unfortunately -- why, other than the first years of the Civil War, when the survival of the United States as one country was in jeopardy, there has never been a darker time in American history.
The various major wars -- the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars -- were worse in terms of American lives lost.
The Great Depression was worse in economic terms.
There were more riots during the Vietnam War era.
But at no other time has there been as much pessimism -- valid pessimism, moreover -- about America's future as there is today.
He then enumerates his reasons - beyond what increasingly appears to be our choices for president - and I'll summarize most of them, letting Prager take the stage for a couple I feel to be of paramount importance.
He mentions the antics of the speech police.
This one, I think, is at the core of post-America's present darkness:
According to a series of Harvard University polls, about 47 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 believe that food, shelter and health care "are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them." That means that nearly half our young believe they have a legitimate claim on the labor and earnings of others for life's basic necessities.
He talks about how the nation's young don't give a rip about the Founding Fathers, mainly thinking of them as privileged white guys. And
And maybe their distorted view of what rights are stems from something else Prager mentions: their condescending dismissal of the assertion that rights come from God.
The next one also merits its full reprinting:
The view that male and female are distinctive identities -- one of the few unquestioned foundational views of every society in history -- is being obliterated. Simply saying that one believes (all things being equal) a child does best starting out life with a married father and mother will ensure they'll be considered a "hater."
He then points out that many university campuses are lacking an American flag.
I'm going to reprint the next several:
Religious institutions, which, for most of American history, have been the most important institutions in everyday American life, are being rendered irrelevant. And a larger number of Americans, many more than ever before, do not identify with any religion.
The traditional family has become nothing more than one of many options open to Americans. For the first time in American history there are more unmarried women than married women. The number of adults age 34 and under who have never been married is nearing 50 percent. In recent years, data showed just 20 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 are wedded, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960. Additionally, more than 40 percent of American births are to unmarried women. Among Hispanic women the percent is over 53, and among black women the rate is over 71 percent.
Universities (outside the natural sciences and mathematics), are intellectual frauds. In terms of ability to think clearly, they actually make most students dumber than before they entered college. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens wrote recently, "American academia is, by and large, idiotic."
National, state and city governments have no doubt largely engaged in Ponzi-scheme-like practices, racking up levels of debt that will crush the economy of the country sooner or later.
The size of the federal government, and its far-reaching meddling in and control over Americans' lives, is the very thing America was founded to avoid.
The arts are as fraudulent as academia. Artistic standards have been destroyed. In music, art and architecture, nonsense and ugliness have replaced the pursuit of meaning, edification and beauty. The scatological have replaced the noble.
So it is no surprise that the ultimate political products of a culture so rotten would be Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
I write this blog from Indiana, the state that is the focus of all eyes today. If a miracle delivering us from the final extinguishing of the last ray of the setting sun of God's blessing is to occur, it must be in this state by 6 o'clock this evening.
It's a long shot, as everyone by now acknowledges.
I'm not optimistic, and neither is Pager. His qualification of his pessimism, though, is the same as mine:
I will not end on a happy note because there isn't one; but neither will I despair.
One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do, and because America remains, as Lincoln said, "the last best hope of earth."
You never surrender your breastplate and armor. Not if you love that which is good and true and right.
