America’s amazing future seems stuck in the past. Why does this nation refuse to embrace the promise of a better life that’s already in our grasp?
Bill Whittle and Alfonzo Rachel create two new episodes of The Virtue Signal each week, fueled and funded by our Members, to analyze the values behind the news and culture. If you’d like to join the team that makes these videos, click the big green button above.
20 replies on “What Went Wrong? Why America Refuses to Embrace the Amazing Future that’s Already in Our Grasp”
I can’t remember if it was Livy or Tacitus who said when there is war abroad, there is peace at home, and when there is peace abroad, there is war at home. I guess this is true even for mice.
Their perfect world looks like …. well it looks like the setting of Fountainhead, only with 165 “genders”.
Zo didn’t go far enough on oil “subsidies”. It’s another re-definition the left has done. We don’t GIVE the oil companies money. We charge them less than the going rate to encourage certain practices that… get us more energy (and probably to do it more cleanly). They still PAY a metric crap-ton of money. They’re not skating off, scott free, not only not paying but RECIEVING money … from the government. It’s just not true.
Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged. We need to find a way there. Who is John Gault?
Bill, you and I can imagine (me a bit better than you, perhaps, since I’m pushing the three quarter century mark) where we’d be today if we retained the drive we had in the 50’s and early 60’s and we’d continued our investment in space as it was in the 60’s. We’d be mining the asteroids. Manufacturing in space. Inhabiting the moon. And, we’d have kinetic weapons. Zo, in its own way, was the US tantamount to Eden a few hundred years ago? And, are we giving it up for analogous reasons that Adam and Eve gave up Eden? If so… define the Apple.
I listened to this hoping that you’d discuss the “why.” Why have we turned out backs on our future? Why have we turned away from the Shining City on the Hill that Ronald Reagan spoke of? Why did the British toss out Winston Churchill and embrace socialism just as they were about the grasp the victory that he led them to achieve? But now I’m left to wonder, what happened to Bill Whittle? I left California in March of 2021 because it was lost. I came to Texas to help establish a new line in the sand and find that the enemy is already inside the wire here (forgive the Army slang, but I’m sure you understand it). Yes, there is precedent in the Bible. Why did the Israelites abandon their freedom and beg the prophets to allow them to have a king? But not even Zo went there. And you want a nation devoid of dissent? I can’t believe it. If true, you’re no better than Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the progressive Left, or California. Sorry, I’m disappointed…
I don’t think Bill wants our side in charge without challenge, but able to live our lives in peace without “those others” so intent on telling us what to do and lording their own superiority over us.
I was merely responding to what he said and I take people at their word
Anyone else wonder what happens if Kennedy is not assassinated and Johnson never becomes president. I don’t think JFK initiates all the social programs and “great society” bs. Not saying he would have been a great president, but at least he knew that the Soviets were an enemy.
Was that the tipping point? Everything Johnson did had a direct line to where we are. With JFK still around, I don’t think the exploration dreams decline.
He even understood that danger of high top tax rates, probably cause his daddy didn’t like them, but even so.
I never knew a president Kennedy, but it seems to me president Johnson may in fact be one of the worst ever, between social programs and his handling of Vietnam.
Just a thought. Those of you older than I feel free to tell me how wrong I am. Really looking for a discussion here. But JFK finishing his term had to be better the Johnson.
Hmmm – I bet it already exists but sounds like a good premise for a novel.
Calling GK Masterson, has this been written already?
I’ve wondered that too, the ‘if Kennedy had lived’ thing.
Kennedy was a womanizer and a degenerate as a man, I have no truck with marital infidelity for anyone under any circumstances short of actual abuse and then the solution is separation or divorce not infidelity. But he rose to the occasion as a President.
He had the chops for the job, he had served as a PT boat skipper and knew what war looked like. (So did George H.W. Bush, who was a torpedo bomber pilot in the Pacific theater.) He knew a real existential threat when he saw it and he knew that you have to fight force with counterforce. I liked the guy as POTUS and not so much as a man. Which is also my view on Trump, btw. If Trump was just Trump but had the statesmanship of Kennedy (or preferably Reagan) I’d have no beef with him at all.
Like him or not, Kennedy was a Leader with a capital “L”. Kennedy was so much of a Leader that he put Americans on the moon after his death and neither subsequent Democrat nor Republican President dared thwart his putting this nation on the path to accomplish that. Like him or not, that’s really saying something.
I’m sure you’ve seen Bill’s series on The Cold War. Without Johnson we wouldn’t have had the mistakes in theory and practice that LBJ allowed and even encouraged to happen. I think if Kennedy thought we had to fight the Vietnam War he would have fought to win as rapidly as possible. It was LBJ and his cabinet that choose to fight a totally different, disastrous form of war.
I think if he had lived he would have served two terms and the Democrat Party would be a completely different critter today. The proof of that is I have no doubt that if he got up out of his grave and walked to the White House the Democrat Party of today would slam the door in his face. He would not be welcomed at all by today’s Democrats.
I glanced at the comments at the beginning of this video and started answering you right away. Now thanks to you I have to go back and watch the video, paying attention this time. Way to go, buddy 😉
Thanks for the compliment.
As to Bill’s The Cold War – I have listened to it twice.
I had sent Apollo what we saw to a HS teacher friend (his daughter’s name is Reagan, good guy) but the Cold War was already behind the pay wall at the daily wire. I actually sent them an email (to which they responded) asking if there was a teacher discount (there is not).
Many good stories there.
As much as Carter and Obama and now Biden get labeled the worst by conservatives, I still think it is Johnson.
Agree, Johnson was one of the worst presidents in history. The “Great Society” was sold as a benevolent program, but was in reality a means to introduce socialist programs.
I’ve been saying for a long time that the world turned upside down in 1965, among the things listed above ,welfare became an entitlement, no gratitude necessary. The Civil Rights Act has been described as the law that ate the constitution. We innocently didn’t know about Gramsci, we couldn’t imagine that there were people who WANTED to destroy paradise .
All true and all good points.
If you check the calendar, you’ll find that the early/mid 60’s was when the “Supreme” Court expelled God from the classroom and started it’s war against decency. It’s like the old Toyota commercial: “You asked for it? You GOT it!” God doesn’t force Himself on anybody. He said, “You don’t want Me and want to do things yourself? Go for it.” Now He’s saying, “How’s that “self-reliance without Me gig working out for you?”
Zo, death was brought into the world through sin. NOT, “Human death was brought into the world by sin.” The notion that THE literally perfect Communicator was unable to help a literally perfect, sinless, listener understand exactly what death was is absurd. I don’t have to jump into an active volcano to completely understand that it’s not a good idea, and I’m not even a sinless perfect person like Adam was.
I think that the metaphor that you are looking for that describes the cause of the decline is that portrayed by the Pixar movie named Wall-E. The population became a dependent and lazy collection of humans that lost the will to pursue large-scale innovation until the point that they forgot how to survive when things began to break. Western society is well on its way to that same demise. The following quote, is a truism that always seems on point to me:
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” ― Unknown
The cause of our societal decline is not due to one, or even a few things, but our collective wealth has caused us to ignore for many years what is truly important. Perhaps the temptations of copious drugs, “free” sex, socially-normalized covetousness and other such life-destroying behaviors are some of the root causes — essentially we are fallen humans who will repeatedly partake in the same destructive activities that doomed Adam and Eve.
We are living in a time of weak men, and if the quote above is truly representative of the human condition throughout time, then we are destined to be diminished in the short term. It will take a lot of hard work, teaching and learning to overcome the entropy. Without intending to sound nihilistic, it is obvious that a utopian existence is an impossibility when humans are in control of their own collective success.
What happened in the mid 60’s??
Well, I graduated high school, but I don’t think that had that much influence on things. Mostly just a few more dollars into the public coffers than might have otherwise been the case.
But we had the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, (as probably positive results) and — tah -dah!! — the Great Society legislation*, EEOC, etc. etc. But that was also around the time that our being the sole major industrial and commercial supplier after WW II came to an end, with Europe and Japan making good and respectable and responsible inroads into our markets and economy. Recall that by the 70’s and 80’s, Japanese quality control practices were all the rage since too many American companies did not provide decent quality/value at that time. Followed in the 90’s by globalization and financialization, with the “workers” failing (or being ignored) to improve their own value and marketability in the global market. Hard to do against $2/hr. to $6/hr. foreign workers, though.
Coal, wood, oil, and gas are also “free” in the ground. Locke said this becomes your property when you make the labor effort to retrieve it and sell it. The “clean energy” aspect may have had more appeal than the “free” aspect of renewables to the Greenies. But of course ignoring the associated mining and conversion efforts is still major ignorance or purposeful obtuseness.
The Progressive, living constitution, admin state of “experts”, critical theory, and the Frankfurt school ideas had a lot of influence here**, starting to reach fruition in the humanities departments, etc. Only much later making any inroads into the STEM arenas. But we also have the insights from Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions, concerning constrained vs. unconstrained visions to fold into this discussion. These are core aspects of human nature that the Founders tried to alert us to, and that we ignore at our peril.
*And let me note (again!) that this was passed by legislators voted into office by the grandparents, parents, or older siblings of the Boomers, not the Boomers themselves, as they weren’t yet old enough to vote.
**And a big thank you to Bill for bringing this perspective and information to my/our attention.
That’s it, George. We are blaming you from now on! 😉
And I agree on the GS and Frankfurt school.
See my post above (or below depending on how your sort) I’d be interested to hear your opinion.
The media, education systems and entertainment industry were taken over by communists. We all saw it and we did NOTHING about it. There are times when war is war and being the nice guys who refuse to use violence when it is called for will NEVER win.
The Soviet Union fell because they could no longer hide the fact that they could NEVER compete with free market economies in supplying the advancement of the human race. After that, it became evil and destructive to the planet to provide the advancements of the human race. Media, Hollywood and the liberal parties then began working to stop the advancement of the human race, declare it evil and destructive to the planet and provide communism as the way to do it.