For America, decline is a choice

For some places like Japan and Russia, decline is inevitable.  They are spent civilizations with nowhere to go but down.  This is not true for America.  While we are struggling, we remain by far the freest, most dynamic, most creative civilization the world has ever seen.  We have let power hungry sophists persuade us to trade our birthright for a mess of pottage but like the Prodigal, all we need to return to our upward path is to turn around, admit our mistakes and return to our Father who even now is running down the road to greet us.

VDH on our ability to choose:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Decline Is In The Mind. Indeed. Plus this: “In America’s case, these are choices, not fate. The Constitution is still here should we wish to follow it. Our ancestors left us freeways, airports and universities and a rich infrastructure. Napa Valley, Silicon Valley, and Central Valley agriculture here in bankrupt California are still sources of amazing ingenuity and enormous wealth creation. Even with 9.6% unemployment, millions rise at 6AM to go to work; millions work the night shift. So to nullify that dynamism, well, that takes work. It requires constant sloganeering about inequality. It demands massive social engineering to create huge public work forces to administer redistributive entitlements. It must entice a new privileged elite to go over to the side of crony capitalism and insider favoritism of the GE sort. . . . If we speak ‘truth’ to power and ignore the incoming salvos of ‘mean, greedy, selfish, privileged, racist, nativist, sexist, homophobe, Tea-bagger, and yokel’, decline can stop. It really is a state of mind—the choice not to brush off opportunistic rust from hard steel after a very brief rain.”

Hat tip Instapundit