David McElroy

It’s easy to assume that life is always going to go on pretty much the way it does right now. I’m sure the people of Rome thought their empire would last forever. The folks of the Ottoman Empire felt the same way. As did the Greeks and Egyptians and Mayans. What do they all have in common? They all eventually fell. The same fate awaits every powerful nation in time.

Empires don’t fall quickly. We have short attention spans. We think that if something doesn’t happen in days, it’s not happening. The truth is that changes happen slowly — over years, decades and even centuries. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for the U.S. “empire” to crumble, but the warning signs are all around. I don’t know how long it’s going to take before the European welfare states — which is the first cousin of our own “mixed economy” — will take to fall.

I’m not a psychic, and I’m not going to make predictions that I don’t believe anyone can reasonably make. I can’t tell you exactly what the end game is going to look like. But what I can tell you is that it’s coming. It might be triggered by a financial panic and collapse soon. It might be that governments and central banks are able to prop up the whole rotting system a bit longer. But it’s coming down.

When it comes down, it won’t be pretty. When it happens, what’s going on in London will look like tea and cake with the queen by comparison. (See more pictures as it’s spreading to other parts of the country.) Think now about how you’re going to protect yourself and your family.

This picture represents one of my biggest frustrations with what passes for news today. Two local television stations had photographers and reporters at the City Council meeting I went to Tuesday night, but they were both gone after the first few minutes. They can’t actually cover the meeting, because they weren’t there for it.

The next time you see a “news report” about a meeting such as this, please understand this. It’s pretty much standard procedure. They show up and get a few bits of video from a few people before something starts, then they’ll stick around briefly to get some background footage of the actual meeting starting. Then they shoot a wrap-up with the reporter talking to the camera outside of the building (while the meeting is going on inside). Then they leave. They can’t tell you what happened at a meeting, because they aren’t there for the vast majority of it.

Keep Reading

When Barack Obama was elected president, many liberals were ecstatic, because it would mean the end of the George W. Bush policies and practices that they hated so much. With few exceptions, though, Obama and Bush have pursued courses that are remarkably similar.

When Obama said at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, “I have put forward a plan that will get our troops out [of Iraq] by the end of 2009,” liberals believed him. He represented “hope” and “change.” But the truth is that we live in a one-party state that simply presents two faces at election time. Despite major rhetorical differences and a few remaining real differences, what you get under a Republican president isn’t a lot different from what you get under a Democratic president. (Health care is the biggest one I can think of, but Bush was responsible for the biggest single long-term expansion of government since the ’60s when he pushed a program to give free prescription drugs to older people.)

The Humble Libertarian has put together a list of 100 similarities between Bush and Obama in office, some major and some minor. Can you read this list and believe that Bush and Obama are substantively different on the very many issues?

For conservatives, here’s the real question. Do you honestly believe that the next Republican president is going to give you something substantially different from what you got from Bush? Why is it that so many still believe the political system is going to deliver change?