As an undergraduate at Purdue in 1987, one of my Professors, Harry Targ, lectured on the Cold War. He had just published his book Strategy of an Empire in Decline, in which he explained his belief in the moral, economic and political superiority of communism viz capitalism. In his mind, the USA Would not long withstand the inexorable and inevitable expansion of the Soviet Union. He was right regarding the collapse of an empire but wrong about everything else.
While Professor Targ is a run of the mill exemplar of the Marxist-Socialist bias in secondary education, he illuminates a larger point. He was a full-time academic on the Soviet Union. In 1986, there wasn’t serious discussion or analysis regarding the forthcoming USSR implosion. Notwithstanding his expertise on the Soviet Union, Professor Targ didn’t see the collapse coming in a relatively few years. None of us did.
Life works like that. Major historical events rarely appear obvious or inevitable as they happen. They are only clear in retrospect, if ever.
In contrast to the failure to foresee the swift and surprising nature of the USSR’s collapse, there are serious red flags that Western liberal democracies in general and the USA in particular have become financially, politically, and morally unhinged. Spending well beyond the available means is the norm not the exception for governments and families throughout the West. No leading political figure in any way advocates significant spending cutbacks.
We’re politically dysfunctional as the federal government divides fairly equally between those wedded to socialist statism and those that prefer corporate and military statism (while occasionally mouthing traditional conservatism).
Post-modernism has supplants Judeo-Christian beliefs as our moral foundation. Regarding sex, sexuality and marriage, what had been regarded as immoral, perverse and often illegal in the 1950s, is now acceptable and often routine and laudatory. When the highly accomplished Coach Paterno was fired for harboring a child molester on his coaching staff, thousands of students at one of our most esteemed Universities protested … not over the sexual improprieties that had occurred between Paterno’s subordinate and boys, but over the fact Paterno was fired over it. These outraged students are some of our most gifted minds and the future of this country.
There are clouds on our national horizon.
We should however fear and fret not. One kingdom will last forever, and it’s not our beloved USA. The everlasting kingdom will provide perfect justice and governance. As much as I love the USA and what we stand for, that future perfect government has not yet been established on Earth.
The future King of nations will not be delivered via an election. He will arrive with the sound of trumpets. Instead of water, he will baptise with fire, providing terribly perfect justice and loving grace. Under his perfect reign, the curse will be lifted and a new world reborn. Death will no longer sting and eternity will be a reality. That day should be our hope for the future. In Christ and not the works of mankind should we place our faith. Jesus Christ return and his perfect reign will endure forever. Pray soon. Amen.
Sapphire Sky 