In Shakespeare's Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester wins a military campaign, later becoming Richard III and bringing tyranny and calamity to his opponents and the realm.  So, too, the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the USA will likely usher in an irrevocable death blow to America's love of freedom and ability to overcome tyranny at home and abroad.

Obama's re-election has brought upon us a desolating period for our beloved America.  It is a tragedy of grievous proportions for this country and for the few remaining allies we have left in the world.  This president has stirred up class warfare and social division in America -- a genie which, now released, may never return to its mythical lamp.

I never felt comfortable with the euphoria expressed by many in the conservative ranks prior to the election.  I feared three main reasons why Obama and the ever-left-leaning Democratic Party would defeat us.

The first was the mainstream media, which allied itself with Obama and smothered news of all the excesses of his regime, thus leaving a huge part of the population in the dark about Benghazi and the outrageous gun-running operation into Mexico called Fast and Furious.

The other reason for the re-election of Obama was the massive increase in food stamps and entitlements, thus deliberately creating near 50% of the population reliant upon the government.  They would hardly vote against a regime granting them such valuable freebies, and they most certainly will care naught for the future so long as the largesse keeps flowing.

But above all else, there has been a pernicious and perhaps fatal falling away from Judeo-Christian values and civilization in today's America.  Those of us who remain steadfast in our belief in the Bible and in the United States Constitution, and who persist in the belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, are increasingly mocked.

I fear the worst for this great country.

To paraphrase Dennis Prager, the conservative talk show host, "the difference between the passengers on the Titanic and the American voters is that the passengers on the Titanic didn't vote to hit the iceberg!"

So where do we go from here?

I am reminded of the outline of a civilization's rise and fall given by the 18^th-century Scottish writer Professor Alexander Tyler.  He wrote the following about a nation's rise and what would precipitate its eventual fall:

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependency back into bondage.

He went on to argue that:

A democracy is always temporary in nature: it simple cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

Are we at that moment in history?  The infamous 47% indicates that almost half of the American population prefers to abandon the time-honored American spirit of rugged individualism and hard work, preferring to suck from the government teat and become an army of takers, not creators.

The great American dynamo, the envy of the world, which was created by individuals willing to risk all in a glorious attempt to bring personal wealth to themselves and their families -- and, in doing so, create high employment -- is faltering.  Its cogs and wheels are coming apart.

The American enterprise system, which attracted so many to America's shores -- so that they too could be free from the stultifying and oppressive socialist and Marxist mediocrities they escaped -- is now being dismantled by the Obama regime.  Higher and higher taxes are coming -- and with them, a flight from all innovation and production, along with higher and higher unemployment.

With so many in our country the product of the failing public school system and in what Michael Savage, the conservative talk show host, famously called "the colleges of lower learning," the dumbed down electorate now have little knowledge of the Constitution or what the founding fathers so courageously instituted in this nation of ours.

They are now easily manipulated by socialist and Marxist doctrines and have become, as Lenin once called them, "useful idiots."

I fear that the insidious siren song of totalitarian and all-encompassing central government is upon us in ways we cannot avoid.  And that is an epic tragedy for these blessed United States of America.

Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author.