Part II: How will America End; "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" lets you map out the death of the United States by Slate Magazine
If and when America expires, we probably won't agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.
In tribute to Demandt, I've gone looking for every possible reason why America could fall. I've paged through the work of scholars who have studied the characteristics of declining and failed societies. I also collected theories from futurists, doomsayers, separatists, economists, political scientists, national security experts, climatologists, geologists, astronomers, and a few miscellaneous crazy people. The result: a collection of 144 potential causes of America's future death.
Of course, the fall of America probably won't come to pass for any single, isolated reason. A nation as powerful, cohesive, and enduring as the United States won't go down easy—the death of the United States will be the consequence of a bunch of different stressors converging at once. What are those stressors going to be? Will America go down as part of a worldwide collapse, or will we perish as the rest of the globe flourishes? You can take a stab at answering all those questions with our "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" tool. (Note: While many of the factors here represent a threat to the entirety of human civilization, the title of this feature should not imply that the end of America is equivalent to the end of the world. We're not that self-obsessed—"Choose Your Own Apocalypse" just has a nice ring to it.)
Actually, the US and Rome are a perfect parallel
Rome was brought down by a number of symptoms that should sound familiar:
1. A huge military empire guarding the known world
2. Massive welfare programs that increased with every election
3. A currency rendered worthless as it was inflated (coins cut with base metals) to try and pay for numbers 1 and 2.
4. All of this caused by a general movement toward unfettered democracy, wherein the people acted under the belief that they could vote themselves other people's property.
A quote from Plutarch about Julius Caesar bears this out:
"As soon as he entered upon his office (consul) he proposed various measures for the allotment and redistribution of land - measures that would have come better from some revolutionary tribune of the people than from a consul."
After looting the property of his citizens to redistribute to the people that put him in office, Caesar trotted off to Gaul to loot the people there with his Roman legions, demonstrating that even then, warfare and welfare - the use of violence to obtain the property of others without their consent - have always been intimately related.
Tom Mullen
author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America
Tom Mullen
author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America
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Tom Mullen
author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America
End it will.
In 1776, the world population was 3/4 of a billion. The industrial age was just unfolding. Coal was a new energy source. Before that most energy came from renewable sources, primarily wood, peat, animal dung, wind and water. It took a huge amount of time for the human population to reach the 3/4 of a billion mark.
On the back of coal, then oil, then natural gas, then nuclear fission, the economy expanded very rapidly by historic standards, and the output of the industrial age allowed the human population to explode in those short 233 years to near 7 billion. That population is now hopelessly dependent on the output of the industrial age, and the industrial age is hopelessly dependent on energy, the most important source of which is oil.
The cost of acquiring energy keeps increasing; this is because we pick the low hanging fruit first. The shallowest, biggest, most proximate, sweetest pools of oil are those which were the easiest, and what is left is the deep, smaller, remote, dirty pools. There is absolutely no known replacement for oil that can hold a candle to the energy in oil. The reality is that the rate of extraction of oil is about to collapse simultaneously with the increasing cost of extraction. In just 5 years the USA will have 1/4 of the oil energy we did last summer, and in 10 years we could easily be down by 1/2. There is a direct correlation between oil production, economic output, and human population. The economic contraction we are experiencing today is just the beginning of one massive economic contraction that will not end until the human population falls by 80%, all this century.
In addition to the geological reality, we also have witnessed the destruction of freedom and the growth of government plunder and control of our lives. The skewed distribution of wealth is evidence of the evil hand of government in economic matters.
The combination of the geological reality, the effect that will have on the ability of most of the population to survive, and the continual plunder of the average man by government and those who pull the political strings, all can lead to only one result and that is a violent struggle by a desperate population, a struggle to survive and a struggle to get the burden of governmental imposed slavery off our backs.
The pain of accepting the present system is about to exceed the pain of fighting back against our masters.
So the very near future will be one of the lack of the necessities of life and increased governmental plunder and control, followed by revolution, civil war, succession or whatever name best describes the effort of we slaves to throw off the burden of supporting our masters. Death, disease, violence, and hunger are just around the corner.
How quickly we will go from the riches to rags. If you aren't already there, don't plan on experiencing old age.
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence." Thomas H. Huxley
1 reason alone ....that will
1 reason alone ....that will allow all the other zillion reasons: Too broke to maintain the empire.
I think...
a severe inflationary depression that will lead to a collpase of the dollar.
Followed by civil unrest...and the break up of the union
Can't happen soon enough for me....Let's get it over and done with...not sure how much more I can take.
whatever...
You are a humanitarian internationalist. You're convinced mankind will terminate America—but at least we won't off ourselves in the process. You'll know you're right when: Everyone on Earth pledges allegiance to a world government; the feds default on the national debt.
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Stupid.
'Peace is a powerful message.' Ron Paul
Same Answer
Maybe there is a trend, perhaps because it is true.....
Visit http://thelibertyguardian.com
earth is the lowest heaven
according to both bible and koran...I crave for making this planet into higher heaven with no wars no more suffering....
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." -- Patrick Henry
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"How can we justify to the unemployed and underemployed in the United States the incredible cost of maintaining a global empire?" - Dr. Ron Paul
I'm a Humanitarian Internationalist?
Picked World Currency, Asteroid, World Government, One-Party Rule, Modified Organisms and got:
"You are a humanitarian internationalist. You're convinced mankind will terminate America—but at least we won't off ourselves in the process. You'll know you're right when: Everyone on Earth pledges allegiance to a world government; the feds default on the national debt."
there's never really an option for what I'm thinking.
Another humanitarian internationalist here
Very hard to narrow it down to 5, but I picked food supply, nine nations, world government, socialist revolution, and patriot act.
Colchester, New London County, Connecticut
me too
who knew?
i picked vermont and texas secession.
Despite his research for Part 1, the author
remained clueless as in his cowardly Part 2 article only looking back, not facing the reality of our current path. Of course his ignorance skewed the options.
Which one will Slate choose
I hope Slate leads the way and we can watch them self destruct.
WE ARE GOING TO WIN!
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My Top Five...
Civil War, World Government, North American Union, Nationalized Industries and Deficit Spending.
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
-Alexis de Tocqueville
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
-Alexis de Tocqueville