FAILING – AT 7:59 A.M. ET:  Indiana's Governor Mitch Daniels, in an otherwise indifferent speech in New York yesterday, did make one salient point – that civilizations that fail begin their death march with financial failure. 

The United States is now failing financially.  We are way over our heads in debt to foreign nations, and our own economy is in, at best, a slow, yawning recovery, with no real prospect of boom times ahead.  Without substantial economic growth, growth only free enterprise can give us, there will be no full financial recovery.  Without financial recovery, we will slide inexorably downward.  Witness Britain after World War II.  The once-great empire had become an economic basket case.

On average, government employees today earn more than their equivalents in private industry – the people paying the government employees' salaries.  This is a first for the United States, and a danger sign that tells us of a shifting of power.

Under Barack Obama, financial failure is being joined by foreign failure.  Yes, he has sent more troops to Afghanistan, and we praise that.  But his policies in regard to hardened enemies have already failed.  No one seriously believes he will reverse North Korea's nuclear program, and his policy toward Iran has collapsed.  The confidence that Europe once had in him has evaporated.  Russia treats Obama with contempt, as does China.  In Latin America, he's greeted with laughter, the savior who did not save. 

What is especially troubling is that we have, and not for the first time, a clique within America that wants us to fail.  We recall that George McGovern was widely reported to have said, when off-mike on a radio show in the 1970s, that he wanted America to lose the Vietnam War.  We have today an institutional left, which has its representatives in high places in universities, the press, and now the executive branch of the government, which believes that America is more a force for mischief than for good.  Capitalism must die.  The American military must be restrained.  The government must control health care.  We never before thought this element could succeed.  Now, at a time of economic weakness, it has its best shot since the Depression.

America has been lucky.  At critical points in our history we've had leaders who have led us through crises successfully.  And we've had a citizenry that believed in itself and in the promise of America.  We've also had a press that understood what American values were about, and how important they were to the future of our civilization. 

One of the reasons for West European decline has been the corruption in its media – the infiltration by leftists who, at heart, don't even believe in the freedoms that allow them to write and report.   We recall the moment, during President Reagan's administration, when there were huge demonstrations in the streets of European cities, protesting the placement of American medium-ranged missiles in Europe...to defend European civilization.  But there had been no demonstrations protesting the placement of Soviet missiles on their side of the border, aimed at destroying that civilization.  The Europeans had been misled by their own Reagan-hating media. 

America now is at the brink.  What we do, politically, in the next five years, may well determine our future in this century.

March 9,  2010