{"id":1686,"date":"2014-03-13T15:47:33","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T22:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2014-03-13T15:47:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T22:47:33","slug":"a-nation-in-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/a-nation-in-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nation In Decline?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is much discussion if the United States is in decline; I for one believe we are.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What happened to the days when America built the hydroelectric dams in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA<\/a>), the dams along the Columbia River (BPA<\/a>) and Hoover dam<\/a> that power many cities of our once great country and invited industry into those areas?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What happened with the vision of President Eisenhower to create an Interstate highway system that connected our country and enhanced our national security, and yet today we can\u2019t seemingly maintain them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What happened with the vision of President Kennedy to send Americans to the moon and back which was accomplished with Apollo 11 <\/a>in 1969, but today we have no manned spaceflight capability? Today we must send our astronauts to the International Space Station and back via the Russian space agency despite our disagreements with a new, rising Russia. The technology that was a spinoff from our space program led to calculators, home computers and enhanced our way of life and staying connected today around the globe, not to mention the rapid advancement in medical treatments and diagnostics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet today, our nation faces record deficits and we seem incapable of inventing or creating anything of real value. This once mighty nation of industry that served the world well in WWII now has outsourced most of our heavy industry, including steel and ship building to the lowest wage earners around the globe for the sake of global trade, but at what price? And what is the damage to our national security?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we have a government that has spent well over $600-million on a website for mandated healthcare that still is not functioning properly. Less than 1% of our fellow citizens serve in our military and yet we seemingly can\u2019t afford to maintain it during these very unsettling times.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I was growing up as a child and a young adult, I was proud of our country, what it stood for, and what we produced as a nation which greatly benefited the middle class and the entire world. The Midwest was the breadbasket of the globe.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps I was young and na\u00efve, but years back I believe most politicians were true public servants and patriots and today we have a pack of overpaid, spoiled, entitled adolescents constantly squabbling in D.C., lying to the American people and only worried about the next election cycle and the next lobbyist who is going to pad their bank accounts to enriching their way of life. Frankly, I\u2019ve seen more \u201cleadership\u201d from a PFC in Vietnam than I do today from D.C. \u00a0We are rapidly approaching the point where we have a ruling class that will completely destroy the middle class and dictate every aspect of our lives.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My question is this, what has happened to our once great country and how do we reverse this downward spiral? How do we encourage younger generations to get involved and believe in our Constitution and the once American Dream instead of sitting on their behinds and watching D.C. strip our very freedoms and way of life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roger Young, co-editor<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is much discussion if the United States is in decline; I for one believe we are. What happened to the days when America built the hydroelectric dams in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the dams along the Columbia River … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northwestvets.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}