Recessional

In his syndicated column, Mark Steyn writes that “So far, it’s been Obamateur Hour”, and ends on this ominous note:

The Obama narrative as packaged by the American media (another all-but-bankrupt industry, not coincidentally) is very appealing. Wouldn’t it be so much nicer if a benign paternalist sovereign could take care of all the beastly grown-up stuff like mortgages and health care, like he’s gonna do for Henrietta Hughes, while simultaneously blowing gazillions on “green” initiatives and other touchyfeely things?

America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality. Or it can buckle its mandatory seat belt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s Mall for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on Earth. Seventy years later…

Mark concludes “Let’s not go there”, but as Jules Crittenden notes, we may arrive at a similar destination much sooner than we think.

Related: Pejman Yousefzadeh invites us to “Stare Now Into The Abyss.”

Don’t worry; it’s not staring back into you–just your wallet.