This article from Rod Dreher outlines where some of my fear comes for our country, as evidenced by the recent absurd drama that took place regarding our public debt ceiling. I don't agree with the entirety of his article, especially the premise that it is our secular evolution that has led to this crisis, but on this particular point, I agree completely:
The world has just witnessed the appalling spectacle of the American government risk the full faith and credit of the United States in a high-stakes game of chicken over the debt ceiling. Though we appear to have swerved at the last second to avoid a cliff-plunge, everybody knows that the country's fiscal policy continues to be driven by bipartisan recklessness.By extension of this, he includes our treatment of this nation's natural resources, in his example, topsoil. We treat these resources as though they are infinite, when world history clearly demonstrates to the contrary.
Given the staggering level of debt -- which must include massive entitlements obligations yet to be paid -- there appears to be no politically realistic way the American economy can do what it must to avoid a catastrophic smash-up right down the road.
This is not just an economic crisis. At bottom, it is a moral and spiritual crisis. We Americans have been living as if the historically extraordinary bounty of material wealth and personal freedom are the natural state of mankind.
We -- and in a democracy, the government is "we" -- have been living far beyond our fiscal means for far too long, and punishing any politician who failed to lie to us about the free lunch. But our disastrous failure of prudence is not only financial.
This is not a problem for government to solve, at least not entirely. Americans as a whole need to awaken from their blissful ignorance about the real problems this country faces and we need to make some hard choices. Some involve the moral question of guaranteeing every citizen in this country health care and retirement benefits. This is not to imply we cannot or should not do this, but merely to force people to look at the actual costs of these choices, and then decide if they are prudent long-term.
Our government has failed us, because job preservation and the thirst for power makes any consideration of these moral choices a persistent third rail of discourse at any level. If we fail to evaluate these choices responsibly, they eventually will be made for us, and some may argue that they already have. The price of failing to act on these choices will be the very liberty we celebrated a month ago.
