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Review of Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America's Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity. Marco Rubio. 2023. Kindle online sample.
From introduction:
Thirty years of telling Americans they don’t need families, communities, or a shared history is destroying what made our country the envy of the world.
While many Americans have worried about China, open borders, opioids, failing communities, and families in crisis, OUR ELITES HAVE TOLD US OUR DECLINE IS FINE BECAUSE IT’S NOT ONLY INEVITABLE, IT’S FOR THE BEST.
Every part of our nation is now in decline, and it’s all connected.
…
In Decades of Decadence, MARCO RUBIO EXPOSES THE ELITES’ ATTACKS ON THE FOUR KEY ELEMENTS OF AMERICAN STRENGTH:
-good local jobs
-stable families
-geographical communities,
-a sovereign nation that serves as a beacon of freedom and prosperity
These have been eroded not only by globalization, but by the lies we tell ourselves, including, “Anyone who loves each other is a family,” “Real community can be found on the internet,” and “We’re all citizens of the world.”
…
It’s not too late to reject these errors.
America remains a powerful and wealthy nation, built on timeless truths ingrained in the very creation of mankind.
But WE CANNOT AFFORD ANOTHER MISGUIDED AND DECADENT DECADE.
In this book, Rubio shows how we can avoid another dark age and restore America’s place as the global ideal of harmony, opportunity, and democracy.
….
From book sample:
This is a book about what happens when the country’s elite decide all the things that brought our nation this success are, in fact, the things we most urgently need to bring to an end.
[From ChatGPT: "The End of History and the Last Man" is a book by Francis Fukuyama, published in 1992. In this work, FUKUYAMA DISCUSSES THE IDEA THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM REPRESENT THE TRIUMPH OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AS THE FINAL FORM OF HUMAN GOVERNMENT and the endpoint of humanity's ideological evolution.]
The “end of history” began a conflict in American society we still live through every day, a conflict we consistently get wrong.
We fail to see the big picture.
…
We know the elite say it doesn’t matter if some towns lose all the jobs and collapse.
In fact, this is necessary.
The elites say we don’t need traditional families anymore.
The elites say you can find everything you need online.
PEOPLE WITH GOOD JOBS AND STRONG FAMILIES BUILDING THEIR LOCAL COMMUNITIES ARE, THE ELITES TELL US, NOT AMERICA’S GREATEST RESOURCE, but an outmoded way of living that needs to be left behind.
…
We are all citizens of the world, and America’s leadership is no longer needed or wanted.
THEY TELL US THE QUALITIES THAT GAVE THIS COUNTRY STRENGTH FOR OVER TWO CENTURIES ARE NOW THE SOURCES OF GREAT WEAKNESS.
For most of us, we did not realize in the 1990s the next battle would be fought on these grounds.
…
In the pages that follow, I’m going to argue we continue to lose this battle because we still fail to see the way it all ties together.
THEY ARE ATTACKING ON FOUR FRONTS: good local jobs, stable families, geographical communities, and a nation that serves as a beacon of freedom and prosperity.
When they weaken one of these, they weaken all of these.
That’s the point.
How can the elite have gotten it so wrong?
The elites believed as long as we could make other countries—specifically China—adopt the principles of capitalism, liberal democracy, and progressive values, then those countries would soon come to look just like the United States.
…
NEOLIBERALISM, IN THIS SENSE, MEANT A BELIEF IN FREE TRADE ABOVE ALL ELSE.
It meant wide-open borders, which would ease the flow of goods and people.
It meant cheering on politicians and candidates who made these their causes.
It meant attacking and rolling back any values seen as retrograde, like a belief in equality of opportunity, not outcomes, or the existence of two—and only two—genders.
…
This ideology was hostile to even the slightest whiff of patriotism.
THEIR IDEOLOGY DOWNPLAYED OR OUTRIGHT DENIED THE GREATNESS OF OUR NATION AND THE EXISTENCE OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM.
Once all the globe had submitted to this elite ideology, our leaders believed the world would become a liberal democratic utopia, and the only remaining work would be deciding how to spend our days.
…
Instead, this led to a sustained period of decadence—a term characterized by conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat as “economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development.”
During this period, the cost of some luxuries like flat-screen TVs has dropped, but CRITICAL GOODS LIKE HOMES AND HEALTH CARE HAVE BECOME PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE FOR MILLIONS OF AMERICANS.
…
At the same time, technological innovation outside of the internet—in other words, in the real world—has dropped, and our culture and politics have become listless.
THE RESULT IS UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS OF APATHY AND UNPATRIOTIC FEELING, ESPECIALLY AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE.
Our decadent elites have come to believe things that used to matter—human nature, patriotism, and community—don’t matter anymore.
They believe the era of global conflict is over, and the only job left to do is sit around, get rich, and endlessly criticize our history.
…
Over the course of this book, you will hear stories you may be familiar with but in a new and different light.
WE’LL LOOK AT THE NEFARIOUS ACTIONS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (CCP), the decline in academic freedom, and the never-ending push for open borders.
Two key dynamics will emerge.
The first is the external threats to our way of life that we survived during the Cold War are still very much with us.
…
In Cuba, for instance, the country my grandfather had fled in 1956 for the shores of the United States, Fidel Castro was growing even more committed to the socialist, anti-Western cause than ever.
CASTRO WAS PREPARING HIS PEOPLE FOR A LONG, DRAWN-OUT PERIOD OF AUSTERITY, AFTER WHICH, HE CLAIMED, THEY WOULD RETURN TO PROSPERITY.
And the people in his regime, much to the surprise of Western observers, were willing to follow him through years of hell to get there.
…
According to the foreign policy elites in Washington, this shouldn’t have happened.
In their minds, the struggle of the Western world against tyranny and socialism was over.
COMMUNIST GOVERNMENTS WERE CRUMBLING ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND OUR ELITES HAD NO REASON TO BELIEVE THE TREND WOULDN’T CONTINUE.
According to their position papers and foreign policy journals, the collapse of the Soviet Union—which until very recently had supplied Cuba with almost all of its oil, fertilizer, and grain, as well as most of the island’s military protection—should have brought the Castro regime tumbling down soon afterward.
(end of section 1)
… …
(OWN COMMENTS)
“Neoliberalism meant a belief in free trade above all else. It meant wide-open borders, which would ease the flow of goods and people.”
Personally believe in free flow of goods and people, it’s the libertarian stance, the whole world should be like an expanded U.S.
Expansionism, not nativism, is the solution and answer.
Our opening up must be accompanied by We U.S. Real Republican HATrs covertly and overtly assisting the 47.5% HATrs happy-lover positives in the countries where the people flood in from to turn round squares, overthrow and suspend their 5% shapeless-form mafia downlooking kings who have been empowered by zeir 47.5% misery-wuvver (we’re united victims and victimizers) Omrondles-led and bled negatives.
People everywhere have the same abilities and potentialities.
To become successful and rich All We only need be own persons and brainpower freed and incentivized.
We and They see and know the reason so many are poor in dem depressed countries be shapeless-form in-power monopoly mafias rule, enabled by negative misery-wuvvers who want things miserable, zei enjoy complaining not gaining.
The actual cause of the illegal immigration problem and oll the world’s maladies be We U.S. standing-around not yet living HATrs don’t accept the 47.5%-47.5%-5% HATomic philosophy fact and then act to spread tHAT All over here and everywhere, Earth and universe.
All tHAT above be veracity and/or efficacy, to be accepted by We and rejected by dem.
(The Byrds songs Eight Miles High, Space Odyssey)
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