frenchie said:
Cattle Rustler said:
Samseau, if the US is in cultural decline... Can you point me to some examples of cultural peak/climax?
I think you can peg 1950s Americana as the zenith. The 60s were when the slope began to start.
No. I would actually peak America's cultural zenith around 1910, right before the 20's gilded age. The gilded age was truly the last hurrah. The gilded age was decadence built on debt built on WWI that brought about a terrific crash of the world economy, and then things deteriorated so much the American government of limited interference was forever changed into the Monster it is today by FDR.
WWI caused European nations to start taking out massive loans from the US gov in order to sustain themselves. At the same time, the USA just had created it's first Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. As part of the creation of a national bank system, the FED said it would guarantee all banks deposits up to an unrealistic amount. So a huge influx of cash came to American cities via European war debts and began the first real era of American metropolitan cities. This money fueled the start of huge American extravagance in major American cities (famously captured in The Great Gatsby) based on nothing more than debt money.
Millions of Americans wanted to spend more; the FEDs promised backstop allowed American banks began to lend out money to anyone for any reason; Americans started to invest in stocks with the lent out money; the stocks continued to rise throughout the rest of the 1920's with this borrowed money; when the crash came the FED discovered it lacked sufficient reserves to bail out the system. (Contrast this to today's FED, which did bailout the system after 2008's crash.)
By the end of the 1920's Europe had been seriously injured in WWI, but now the United States was also bankrupt. Citizens of the USA elected FDR, the worst president in American history. Not only did he do nothing to restore the economy, but he also kept himself in power by abusing the executive and legislative branches in ways that has caused permanent damage to the American political system.
FDR marked the true end of classical Republic America and the start of Empire America. Under FDR the executive branch expanded its powers to an enormous degree that has since turned the president into a de-facto dictator. FDR established all of the "alphabet agencies," such as the CIA, NSA, etc, which were given full authority to make laws. Think about this: in addition to elected representatives, now there were bureaucrats making American laws. Both unprecedented and probably one of the worst problems with American government today, the expansion of the Executive branch in the 1930's has all but guaranteed the non-stop centralization of American government whose process continues to this day.
You might say American was sucked into a war it did not want to be in, and perhaps you would be right, but keep in mind FDR did everything in his power to prevent a Hitler victory without declaring war. His lend-lease act (unconstitutional) gave huge financial support to Britain and Russia, who in exchanged promised to repay back the debts after the war. In essence, America was hiring them to do the job of fighting Germany. It is extremely doubtful Britain would have kept fighting if they faced Germany without American support.
After WW2, the old days of the sleepy American Christian villages turned into imperialistic materialistic and hedonistic America. Huge cities, endless suburbs. It did not happen overnight, but between 1940 - 1950 America went from a country focused on simple communal living to a country obsessed with all affairs of the world.
Taking over Germany meant America was charged with protecting Europe from Russia, who was worse than Hitler. Indeed WW2 seems like a mistake in hindsight, as the escalating war with America prompted Hitler to order the Final Solution, and Poland, which was supposed to be returned to its own dominion became a territory of the USSR. And thus America's permanent military was born.
At the same time the endless war was occurring, America became supremely rich from the spoils of WW2. Everyone knows the story of how American factories rebuilt Europe, and provided them with everything from Automobiles, food, oil, to the culture machines called television.
The centralized government, the unprecedented power of American military, and the enormous wealth enjoyed by most Americans really meant the death of everything that once made America's culture great. The great increase in luxury meant most Americans no longer cared about whether or not they followed the norms of their forefathers. The old virtues were lost. The sexual revolution was of course the inevitable outcome. Even had the advances in birth control not come about, I maintain the sexual revolution would have happened anyways, as it did in Ancient Greece, Rome, Byzantine empires. Even Arab Empires drowned in excesses of endless slave girls which made them softer over time.
And as ordinary Americans became soft and spoiled, fewer Americans paid attention to what their fellow citizens were doing or believing. Things taught in American universities in the 1960's were brought in under free-speech, but once those left-wing ideologies became dominant on campuses they quickly suppressed any dissent. And now of course these same destructive ideologies pervade the cultural fabric so much, fathers are thrown in jail for being unable to pay a certain amount of money to a woman who divorced him, even if the amount of money ordered to be repaid is far too high. Unfortunately, no one can really fix the system easily at this point, as once the government gains power (as it did during the 1910's, 20's, and especially 30's,) it rarely relinquishes it without a bloody fight.
Thus, it was the centralization under FDR combined with the decadence brought by the war spoils of WW2 that brought about the end of America's old Christian republican culture. So it was more during the turn of the century that still represented the zenith of old American culture before the corruption of FDR and WW2 came about.
otd:
