In After America, Mark Steyn wrote, “...when you hit the expressway to Declinistan there are few exit ramps.”  We are now approaching the point of no return.  Future generations will attempt to understand how the most exceptional civilization in the history of mankind voluntarily ceded its culture, moral superiority, and unrivaled accomplishments to apathy, willful ignorance, egoism -- and ultimately darkness.

Several years ago I began accumulating data to support the thesis that we are living through America’s decline.  My premise was initially based upon my distress over the degradation and corruption of our moral fiber.  I watched Miley Cyrus twerk on stage, Janet Jackson expose her breast on national television, and near-naked panhandlers run rampant through Times Square.  On the heels of a philandering POTUS who swore to the nation, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” before being impeached for lying under oath and spending his retirement years with rumors of untold numbers of affairs, I have to remind myself that I’m not living in France.  Hillary standing by her man in Mao-style pantsuits makes it easy.

The legalization of marijuana and footage of people smoking across Denver made this mother of three sick.  Bob Dylan’s “Everybody must get stoned” was a song from the 60’s, not the law of the land.  Speaking of the law, with a Supreme Court that legislated out of thin air constitutional rights to abortion and gay marriage, we shouldn’t be surprised that our current president ignores constitutional restraints imposing everything from the destruction of the coal industry to socialized medicine.

In the age of reality television and social media, college students cannot identify Joe Biden but resoundingly know Kim Kardashian.  They have no idea who fought in and won the Civil War but know that Snookie appeared on The Jersey Shore.  Hollywood elites are distressed over alleged discrimination against black actors who live in $10 million homes, ignoring the real tragedies occurring in inner cities where blacks are killing each other in record numbers.

Progressives co-opted K-12 education with Common Core and an anti-American AP U.S.  History curriculum.  College campuses are rapt with progressive professors more obsessed with their hatred of democracy and capitalism than teaching facts and promoting critical thinking.  Radical 1960’s crazies are now respected professors and their hate speech against America and Israel is common in lectures.  Trashing these two liberal democracies appears to be the only exception to the PC zanies who constantly demand safe spaces rather than the more appropriate rubber rooms.

Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matters, various Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated individuals and organizations, and other virulently anti-American hoodlums are welcomed into a White House currently occupied by an angry, self-entitled, ideologically dangerous black couple.  Our president spends more time playing golf, vacationing, throwing parties, and hanging with the rich and famous than he does on critical matters.  Rather than visit with wounded warriors, lecturing youngsters on the importance of family values and hard work, and uniting a divided nation, Obama focuses his attention on transforming the “more perfect union” into a footnote in the annals of history.

But the state of affairs in America cannot be placed at the feet of Obama.  Americans elected him twice, enamored with his empty promises of “Hope and Change” and ignorantly believing his lies.  Ignoring all warning signs once, Americans could perhaps be forgiven.  But with a four-year record of ideological governance, divisiveness, and laziness, there was no excuse in 2012. 

Which brings me to the current election.  Were there any question as to whether we are a country in retreat rather than decline, the 2016 election ends the debate.  At a time when the world is in flames, Islamic terrorism is spreading like wildfire, and the government is incinerating money at unprecedented rates, the only burn Americans are feeling is that of a 74-year old Marxist.  The top candidates include a devout, unapologetic socialist supported by millennials and a growing population of people who love free stuff; an unconvicted felon supported by an older generation that should know better and an establishment that cheats and lies almost as much she does; and a narcissistic, megalomaniacal man-child Democrat-masquerading-as-Republican supported by individuals who are angrily and desperately rolling the dice on a cult-of-personality much like the Democrats did eight years ago.  Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

And shame is likely what Trump supporters will feel if he wins.  Not only has he degraded acceptable political tactics and discourse.  He epitomizes everything conservatives hate about Obama -- disdain for the rule of law, elitism, narcissistic self-indulgence, arrogance, bullying, and self-entitlement. 

Excessive partying and golfing with Obama? Just wait until the king of hob-nobbers and country clubs moves into the White House.  Abuse of executive powers? The guy obsessed with winning (and lover of eminent domain, universal healthcare, and massive government regulations) won’t even need a phone and pen when he sits in the Oval Office.  A horrific economy and high unemployment rate? Imagine what the billionaire who made his living off of bankrupting businesses and employing foreign workers will do to “make America great again.”

The current bully-in-chief who promised to bring a gun to a knife fight is the jayvee team compared Trump, who believes dissenters should be “punch[ed] in the face” and “carried out on a stretcher.” Conservatives who fell victim to Obama’s corrupted IRS and DOJ should brace themselves for immoral threats against those who don’t support him.  And if you think Obama left behind a divided electorate, try and explain how the candidate whose rhetoric includes attacks on Muslims, Hispanics, POWs, women, the disabled, the poorly educated, and a host of others will unite us. 

Teflon Don apparently kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed.  On Sunday he defended tweeting a Mussolini quote.  His defense?  “ [W]hat difference does it make…”  I’m not sure if he was channeling his inner fascist murderer or Hillary Clinton but it’s clear that, win or lose, millions of adoring fans cheering him on is not a good sign for the future of the country.  But no worries, the KKK’s David Duke, who Trump refused to condemn as a white supremacist, believes that “voting against Donald Trump…is really treason to your heritage.”  

How are we to believe that America is not in decline when eight years ago the electorate voted to transform the country into another failing, socialized and demilitarized Europe? How can we have faith that things will turn around when 35-40% of the GOP supports Trump who is, in business jargon, anything but a turnaround artist?

How can America remain the world’s shining beacon on the hill when the ever-growing Democratic Party with a strong possibility of winning the White House and Senate obsesses over abortion, gay marriage, transgender rights, global warming, safe spaces, white supremacy, free stuff, and “Islamophobia?” Ready for Hillary? How about Ready for the next Liar-in-Chief? Feel the Bern? Think Feel the Smoldering Remnants of a Once-Great Nation.

What is wrong with Americans who standby Clinton rather than the families of heroes Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith, and Glenn Dougherty who were killed in Benghazi? Soulless Clinton had the audacity to call these families liars for exposing that she stood over their coffins and blamed their deaths on a video.  And her fanatical devotees shout down and boo anyone who questions the facts, including a retired Marine.  One of our worst secretaries of state has spent her entire life lying, cheating, and bullying her way to the White House and tens of millions of Americans actually want to see her there!

America no longer has a Greatest Generation.  Those growing up during this great recession are reading Karl Marx’s A Communist Manifesto and cheering away their futures. Donald Trump attacks rational thinkers like Stephen Hayes, Charles Krauthammer, and George Will and Americans eat it up because he’s “telling it like it is.  “ Americans have turned off their brains because if Trump’s version of political rhetoric is acceptable discourse, Hillary’s pathological lying is ignored, and Bernie’s socialism is all the rage, we’re done.

Academia, Hollywood, journalism, and the federal government are driving us to Declinistan while Americans enthusiastically pay the fare and jump on board the train.  Socialism and open borders did not work for Germany, France, Belgium, or Sweden.  Borrowing like there’s no tomorrow didn’t work for Greece and Portugal.  And open borders resulting in massive rolls of migrant government dependents and untold numbers of terrorists are leaving Europe in disarray, the worst of which we have yet to see.

But follow in Europe’s footsteps is exactly what we are doing -- history be damned.  These are not sins of omission as we passively watch helplessly as things spiral out of control.  The future of the country has always been in the control of its citizens.  Our sins are those of commission as we elect, in the words of Trump, loser after loser.  And those of us who realize this may very well lose the battle as rational and intelligent thinkers are marginalized and demonized, demographic changes become irreversible, and ignorance remains blissful -- for now. 

The world of Father Knows Best and Happy Days has grown into the era of 24 Hours and Homeland.  Yet Americans are failing to recognize that they are welcoming the dawn of a new Dark Age.  Islamic terrorism is moving steadily and stealthily across the globe and is now within our shores.  This is a battle with which the left has shown little interest in fighting let alone acknowledging.  A citizenry of self-entitled youngsters and desperate elders ignore history’s lessons while cheering on Hillary, Bernie and Donald -- none of whom will save the Republic.

The seeds of destruction and decline continue to be sown and they will grow and flourish for decades to come until somehow the rational and sane, the good and moral, win the hearts and minds of those finally disabused of the notion that free stuff is actually free, Islam is a religion of peace, isolationism will keep us safe, we can Coexist if we sing Kumbaya, and America is the evil empire.  I won’t be around for the twilight of this Dark Age but I pray that it is short enough that my children and grandchildren help usher in a new dawn.  How much death and misery they must suffer in the interim is anyone’s guess but hope will not prevent it.  Presence of mind is all that can save us from the road to Declinistan.