The End Of America's Prestige

A friend of mine once told a college class that nobody ever woke up in 476 A.D. (the date historians define as the fall of the Roman Empire) and said, "Gosh, I'm in the Dark Ages."

His point is plain enough. Transitions happen gradually, and the people who live through them never realize what is happening. So it is with Americans. We are living in the ruins of a once-great republic. Now an empire utterly devoid of moral authority, the United States has nothing left but its military power and its capacity to consume on credit.

Where the world's great leaders will come from in the future, I don't know, but they will not be Americans. Look at the Republican and Democratic parties and their top leaders. Mediocrity in full bloom. Weak men with ambition but no principles. They are devious men, skilled at concealing their personal ambition in patriotic or compassionate rhetoric, depending on which constituency they are trying to bamboozle at the moment.