Fatal weakening of America?

J.R. Nyquist speaks of the weakening of the U.S. and we think there are palpable signs of this. The incredibly oblivious Congressman Murtha shouting about alleged massacres on the eve of Memorial Day is one. The now familiar inability of the American civilian elite to wage war with any kind of fury and determination another.

The Constitution was long ago reduced to its present status as a mere piece of paper. Even for ordinary Americans, the Fourth of July is essentially an occasion for BBQ, sunburn, fireworks, and speeches about how our veterans preserved our freedom from Japanese and German domination but with never a word about how we all labor for the government until April 26 (in 2006) before we even begin to earn income for ourselves alone.

And it's hard to find many political leaders who don't view the national borders as mere lines in the sand to be crossed by foreigners at times and in numbers of their own choosing. Which of our leaders is apoplectic that it is not U.S. political leaders who are decided who, how many and when? Rep. Tancredo and a few others. Certainly not Alfred E. Bush, much as we like and respect his instincts and fighting spirit.

This national failure to grasp the concept of a boundary is as neurotic as it is on an individual level. Who is worthy of respect if he or she has no boundaries in dealings with family or strangers?

The monumental failure on the issue of the border is Exhibit A for the proposition of national weakness.

Exhibit B could the failure to conceive of and express accurately the nature of the most important present threat to the U.S. To say that we wage a war on "Terror" is to fall tragically short of the mark when -- in actual fact -- we are locked in a struggle with Islam itself -- a backward, pathologically patriarchal, antiintellectual curse on the societies where it is dominant.

Islam would be a matter of supreme indifference to the U.S. and the West were its adherents confined to areas where they could do little but play out the pathetic dramas of Shia v. Sunni and "moderate" Muslim v. Wahhabis. But weak Western leaders have allowed wholesale immigration to the West -- Rotterdam is 40% Muslim -- and the pathologies that have come with Islam make murder, riot, and arson a reality in the European heartland itself.

"Terror" does not just spring out of nowhere and it is itself a mere instrument of someone's life choices. To speak of the War on Terror is as to speak of the War on Artillery or the War on Plastic Explosives. When there is such monumental conceptual confusion in the most important endeavor of the nation there is, well, confusion. Where there is confusion there is muddled, purposeless action. Weakeness.

The anti Iraq War idiots are partially right. Iraq was nothing but a minor target of opportunity that only incidentally had an in terrorem effect on other knaves and varlets amongst the Arabs and Persians. A significant weakness is evident when the U.S. -- and the West in spades -- cannot bring themselves to name the main enemy. The idiots are wrong, of course, in wanting to rectify the policy error by retreating (a.k.a. cutting and running) when the corrective should be simply to turn east and south with what we have in Iraq.

Unfortunately, Mr. Nyquist is right on the money with what he says about moral and intellectual weakening:

The fact that China and Russia continue to build their forces while supporting “rogue regimes” in North Korea and Iran, indicates that the ultimate aim of their policy isn’t world peace but masked hostility to the United States. Only now the mask is gradually being removed. Meanwhile, an apparent malaise is overtaking the U.S. government . . . . Like Czar Nicholas in 1917, President Bush believes himself to be on the brink of victory in the Middle East. But economic storms threaten. . . . Negative indicators include a widening U.S. current-account deficit, a weak dollar, inflation fears, and a new Fed chairman.

The weakening of the United States is a reality, whether we choose to acknowledge that reality or not. The weakening began in the moral and intellectual spheres many years ago. This enervation communicates its bankruptcy to the financial sphere. In the end, the disruptions envisioned may lead to a revolution, a civil war or international strife. The world waits as the crisis unfolds.

"A Man of Average Ability." By J. R. Nyquist, 5/26/06 (emphasis added).