The Decline of a Nation

[lighthouse]

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/decline.html
The Decline of a Nation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://wwThe first stage moves from bondage to spiritual faith. The second from spiritual faith to great courage. The third stage moves from great courage to liberty. The fourth stage moves from liberty to abundance. The fifth stage moves from abundance to selfishness. The sixth stage moves from selfishness to complacency. The seventh stage moves from complacency to apathy. The eighth stage moves from apathy to moral decay. The ninth stage moves from moral decay to dependence. And the tenth and last stage moves from dependence to bondage.

These are the ten stages through which the great civilizations have gone. Notice the progression from bondage to liberty back to bondage. The first generation throws off the shackles of bondage only to have a later generation through apathy and indifference allow itself to once again be enslaved.


This is the direction this and every other country is headed. The book of Judges shows that the nation of Israel passed through these same stages. And this country will do the same unless revival and reformation break out and reverse the inexorable decline of this nation.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/decline.html





About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government'

'A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury'

'From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship'

'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years'

'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:



From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence -- back to bondage

[lighthouse]

Finally, unbelief in God became more complete, parental authority diminished, and ethical and moral principles disappeared, affecting the economy and government. Thus, by internal weakness and fragmentation the societies came apart. There was no way to save them except by a dictator who arose from within or by barbarians who invaded from without.


Although this is an ancient pattern of decline found in Greece and Rome, it is relevant today.

Ideas have consequences, and false ideas can bring down a nation



Much of the Old Testament records the history of the nation of Israel. It passed through these same stages and so will every country in the world.


As Christians we must recognize that nations will rise and fall just as individuals will be born and die. Our civilization will not last indefinitely, but will eventually pass off the scene. Only God's Word endures forever. We should not put our trust in the things of this world for they are destined for destruction. Instead, we should put our faith in God and His word.

[lighthouse]

When delegate Benjamin Franklin left the State House at the end of the convention, curious Philadelphians asked him what kind of a government the convention had created.

Franklin answered, “A republic — if you can keep it.”



British writer and Christian philosopher, G. K. Chesterston:

“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.”




This was a period dominated by youth, but also by an explosion of political and social revolutions that fractured society, and brought about profound changes for everyone. The Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Women's movement dominated national attention. The post war generation known as the "baby boomers" entered college in this period. Because of their numbers, their age is the dominant demographic fact in any period following world war II. In this period, the characteristics were those of youth-- experimentation, revolution, and innovation. Fashions of the period reflected these qualities

An Era of Youth and Change (1963-73)

http://char.txa.cornell.edu/art/dres...m/babyboom.htm

[lighthouse]

1963 was a hinge year
the beginning of the so called sexual revolution
but another year was 1968
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/681

Any history of 1968 is going to be full of if onlys, what ifs, counterfactuals and might-have-beens. You can construct a zillion parallel universes of what could have happened if a single event had turned out a fraction differently. The reality was astonishing enough. And, as the 40th anniversary approaches, the year continues to maintain a remarkable grip on anyone with a sense of modern history.


But what was the point? All year, there was a seemingly endless supply of startling global headlines. However, it is still hard to discern a coherent picture in the mosaic.

The unifying factor is that across the developed world and even beyond, people-specifically the young and most specifically students-challenged established authority. Sometimes they did this violently and sometimes this invited violent consequences. Inevitably, American concerns linked in to everyone else's. The United States was obsessed with the intractable war in Vietnam. And there was a very obvious tipping point.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For young Americans, so privileged in many respects, the campaign against the war was not some theoretical cause, any more than the black demands for civil rights were. They were subject to conscription, and liable to be shipped out to Vietnam where their contemporaries were dying (at a rate of 300 a week in 1968, compared with nearly 4,000 in all so far in Iraq).
__________________




The same applies to related social developments: in 1968 most young men still wore pyjamas and white y-fronts, even if they were now readier to take them off; casual drug use slipped only slowly from the avant-garde to the high-school playground; and very long hair for men did not become the norm until the 1970s (all the really serious student revolutionaries I knew in that era kept their hair determinedly short). Social change was far slower than history or selective memory might suggest. But 1968 made it unstoppable.

"In the end, it was a sensational victory," says Felix Dennis, "the hidden victory that set up the 21st century. And on that, the whole Western world floats as it does




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=7095

It's interesting to show people what the 1960s are about," Ortiz said. "1968 is the moment when everything explodes. It wasn't just hippies touring in painted Volkswagen vans."


People routinely say that the world has changed since 9/11," Stimson said. "The same could be said about 1968. Understanding that change and its historical consequence is useful for understanding our society now and its larger political context."

[lighthouse]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.reuters.com/article/world...72695220080215

Youth too lost, scared to rebel say '68 veterans


The 1968 generation wanted to revolutionize society, battle against authoritarianism and demolish what they saw as the old social order. In the United States, demonstrations against the Vietnam War triggered massive peace marches worldwide.


Back then there was the feeling that you had to completely revolutionize society," he said. "With today's movements you don't see that. There are demonstrations, like against the Iraq war, but they are not about revolutionizing society."




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

read this one
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...6422-9,00.html

1968 Like a knife blade, the year severed past from future

In 1968, by the Hoffman hypothesis of atomic aging, the world was about 22 years old. The baby-boom generation, not only in America but in much of the rest of the world, grew up not merely in the shadow of the Bomb but also in an envelope of common experiences. Television gave them a collective memory -- of Howdy Doody and Beaver Cleaver, of public events (most vividly and traumatically, the assassination of President John Kennedy). Then, in the mid- and later '60s, the young endlessly enriched and elaborated their culture, through music mainly and through drugs and costume and linguistic style (groovy, far-out, rip-off, bummer, bread, acid head, pigs, narcs, rap, trash). They made a worldwide cultural revolution.




The youth of the world's atomic age came to a sort of critical mass in the spring of 1968. Nineteen days after King's assassination, students at Columbia University began occupying five buildings on the campus and held them for almost a week.

The uprising at Columbia was the work of a minority of student radicals. But it was not an aberration. Around the world that year in cities as widely spaced as Paris and Tokyo and Mexico City and Berkeley, students rose in protest and revolt. The spasms of unrest seemed almost psychologically coordinated, as if a mysterious common impulse had swept through the nervous system of a global generation. The theme of the protests, and of the generation, was . . . what? To challenge authority. To change the world. To take possession of the world. To announce itself.


1964 - The Year The Sixties Began

Viewing a transformation that still affects all of us—through the prism of a single year

http://www.americanheritage.com/arti...006_5_32.shtml


These were the days when Tom Matthews, a high school senior in California, could run for class president on the stirring platform “Vote for Tom—He’s a Real Good Guy.” “That’s the way we were,” Matthews later remarked. “… Around my high school, guys were still padding the halls in saddle shoes and humming ‘Sh-boom.’ A nice girl was a virgin who didn’t smoke cigarettes. Ideology? No one even heard of it. There were no issues. We were suspended closer to the Age of Sinatra than the Age of Aquarius.”


If the kids were still loitering in the fifties, so were their parents. In early 1964 people had tremendous faith in their elected officials, their elders, the police, and the Army. Seventy-six percent of respondents to the University of Michigan’s American National Election Study that year believed that they could trust the federal government to do what was right “most of the time” or “just about always.” By the close of the decade barely half of all Americans had faith in their public institutions. But those days of popular cynicism and skepticism still lay in the future.




Courtesy of the population bubble that produced 76 million children between 1946 and 1964, a higher birthrate than in any era before or since, young Americans not only represented a larger portion of the general population but also formed a more unified, self-conscious entity.

[lighthouse]

Jesus People: The '60s Intriguing Offspring


Approximately 25(40 now) years ago a most curious social phenomena stunned religious analysts. On the heels of the 1966 “Death of God” pronouncement, a revival broke out among the North American hippie populace. Time magazine reported that Jesus People had taken to the streets and were "embracing the most persistent symbol of purity, selflessness, and brotherly love in the history of Western man." Once again, Jesus was more popular than the Beatles. With fingers pointed to the sky and shouts that “Jesus is Coming,” the ensuing revival spilled over into dozens of countries in its wake and has left a continuing legacy within North American evangelicalism.

The decade of the 1960s was one of transition where the norms and mores of the previous generation were seriously challenged by the young. Civil rights, the brutality of the political assassinations, student protest against the war in Vietnam and the threat of nuclear disaster all added to the increasing tension which spilled over into individual households. Kitchen tables became the ideological battlefields where child and parent clashed. Although regarded as the most affluent and educated group in history, the 'baby-boomers' (those born between 1945 and 1960), rejected the materialistic vision of their parents with the hopes of creating their own utopia. Theodore Roszak dubbed this affront to the status quo the counterculture.
http://jesuspeoplemovement.com/research-3.html

[lighthouse]

The counterculture became a rallying point for youthful protest. Urban pockets of dissident teenagers gathered in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district and Toronto’s Yorkville area to find collective expression. Encouraged by self-proclaimed prophets, the media-dubbed “hippies” were invited to “tune in, turn on and drop out” in submission to the altar of experience and self-introspection. Drugs, eastern mysticism, sex and communal experimentation all pointed to the counterculture's desperate yearn for truth. When introduced to the message of Christ, the response was overwhelming. The ensuing revival spread across the continent like wildfire.
__________________


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The advent of the Jesus People offered the ultimate rebuttal to God's 1966 obituary. At the very moment when the church was announcing that a post-Christian era would ensue, the Jesus freaks proved that reports of His death were greatly exaggerated. At least one of the “death of God” pundits has recently come forward to “eat a little crow” for his miscalculations. The growth of evangelical churches continues to mystify the experts.

the song of the movement


We are One in The Spirit
Ephesians 4:4
"There is one body, and one Spirit,
even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;"




We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored.

Chorus:
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love, by our love,
Yes they'll know we are Christians by our love.
We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand.
We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand.
And together we'll spread the news that God is in our land.


Chorus:
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love, by our love,
Yes they'll know we are Christians by our love.
We will work with each other, we will work side by side.
We will work with each other, we will work side by side.
And we'll guard each man's dignity and save each man's pride.


Chorus:
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love, by our love,
Yes they'll know we are Christians by our love.

[lighthouse]

Imagine that it's now 2013. Illegal immigration, gang warefare, HIV infections, race tiots, rape, murder, inflation, corrupt politicians & foreign terrorism all are 10 times worse than today. Would a future Congress give the President wartime powers to clean up the mess? YES


This deterioration makes a strongman - a "man on horseback" to rein in an out-of-control nation - plausible and perhaps attractive.



definition:

man on horseback
n. pl. men on horseback
1. A man, usually a military leader, whose popular influence and power may afford him the position of dictator, as in a time of political crisis.
2. A dictator.





Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning

[lighthouse]

The fact that the Americans refrain from killing their enemies does not mean that their enemies will refrain from killing them, as America was recently reminded. On September 11, 2001, around 3,000 people were murdered in a barbarian raid upon the USA, when the fanatical followers of an Islamic sect deliberately crashed hi-jacked passenger planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

The Barbarians Are Coming—With A New Dark Age
The World Trade Centre attack is confirmation of Arnold Toynbee's claim that the decline of a civilization means the appearance of Barbarian war-bands. And it is clear that, in one way or another, it is only a matter of time before the increasing senility of the countries that make up the Western world, will see them succumb to invaders. The result will be the final extinction of Western Civilization, along with its wealth and power, and a return to the Dark Ages: a time when there is no human community anywhere that is sane.



The French Revolution was not a protest against tyranny, but against authority. It marked the time when Authority stopped being the master and started being the servant of its charges. Which was a choice to abandon sense—sensible rule where parents rule children—with nonsense—the rule by popular whim where children rule parents.

Rule By Democracy Is Decline
Being ruled by the occasional will of the people, which is democracy, is to replace the rule of wisdom with the rule of wishes, and inevitably obtain social decline.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/theend.htm

[lighthouse]

Corruption Progresses a Generation at a Time
The corruption of tradition progresses a generation at a time, with each succeeding wave of offspring corrupting more tradition, which in turn means showing less restraint and thus less understanding than the last generation




Or as the ancient Roman poet Horace (BC 65-8) said:

"Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they,
and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil."

And the result is a community growing ever more demented and impotent







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



3. Determine if the community is discarding traditional morality, a condition immediately marked by the disappearance of manners, which themselves are dictated by morality. Politeness is a prerequisite for public order, which is why it is constantly refined by the improving understanding of a waxing community. The opposite result is documented by Edward Gibbon in his work "The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire", which reveals the decline of the Roman empire was paralleled by a decline in the morality of its citizens.
__________________




Corruption Progresses a Generation at a Time
The corruption of tradition progresses a generation at a time, with each succeeding wave of offspring corrupting more tradition, which in turn means showing less restraint and thus less understanding than the last generation




Or as the ancient Roman poet Horace (BC 65-8) said:

"Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they,
and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil."

And the result is a community growing ever more demented and impotent







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



3. Determine if the community is discarding traditional morality, a condition immediately marked by the disappearance of manners, which themselves are dictated by morality. Politeness is a prerequisite for public order, which is why it is constantly refined by the improving understanding of a waxing community. The opposite result is documented by Edward Gibbon in his work "The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire", which reveals the decline of the Roman empire was paralleled by a decline in the morality of its citizens.




#46 05-21-2008, 07:00 AM
lighthouse
Moderator Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 869

Re: The Decline of a Nation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5. Consider the community's general attitude to truth; a civilization rises because it pursues truth, it falls when it suppresses truth

6. Consider the attitude of children towards their parents. When a civilization is waxing progeny revere their parents whom they dare not disobey, but when a civilization is waning it is the parents who revere their children whom they fear to upset—see the law of reverse civilization.



When a civilization declines it goes into reverse with all the wealth, power and wisdom realised by its rise being discarded at an ever increasing rate until dissolution.
2. The essential requirements of:

i. Peace will be disturbed by increasing interruptions of:

• Noise.
• Indecency (see f-word and loss of shame)
• Violence from within and from without the community

__________________




1. Growing Communal Dementia is because of increasing public confusion as a result of the widespread abandonment of the community's founding morality along with its associated beliefs, which are the wisdom of society.

2. Faltering Communal Strength is a direct result of the growth of selfishness among its citizens, for a community's strength is built upon its members' willingness to make private sacrifice for the common good.


1. Wisdom cannot be restored because it has to be founded upon a morality, which no longer exists. And inspiring a people with a morality can only be the accidental work of events because it must precede understanding. This means that just as a man cannot choose his morality nor can a community, so once lost a morality can never be regained.

2. Strength cannot be restored because it needs a pool of unselfish citizens who no longer exist, and it is impossible to change the existing selfish into unselfish people.

__________________