By Nathan Barton

There are times when things seem to be swimming around the drain, faster and faster as the spiral gets tighter and tighter. Incompetence in business, in institutions (religious and educational), and in government at all levels grows. A lack of professionalism, of care, of due diligence seems to be more and more common. Sometimes it seems to grow daily.

There are many phrases that can be used to describe this, of which going down the drain is just one:
– the straw that broke the camel’s back
– the drop that tips the balance
– the last light goes out (or sinks beneath the water)

Well, you get the idea. The real question is, why? What is doing this? Why are we seeing a growing problem in dealing with things on an everyday basis?

– the pothole that always grows
– the new bullet holes added to that road sign
– errors made on bank accounts or other financial matters
– errors in simple purchases
– employees who fail to show up on time, or at all, on flimsy excuses
– customers who cannot understand simple requirements
– parts or items that fail without any real reason

Is it that the world is now too complex? Are people now incapable of dealing with the everyday stresses of life? Or are we just getting too old and grumpy? It seems like every other time I have to deal with a “customer service representative” or even a store clerk, their level of incompetence and inability to reason and/or do basic math (or English or reading) is a problem which has to be overcome in order to get a problem solved or even a product purchased and put to use.

But, you say, things like this happen everyday – that’s life, just accept it.

Is it? Or are we seeing the cumulative effects of decades of greater and greater stress on a complex system that is now too cumbersome to operate? Or of poor education and “excellent” propaganda that is now achieving its objective?

For those who love liberty, it is important to remember that increased liberty has always, for six millennia of recorded history, led to more prosperity, better living conditions, and advances in science and technology, at least in civilized society. When liberty is reduced or lost, we have worse living conditions, economic decline or even collapse, and find technology slipping away, with science replaced by rote and worse. Societies which have been subjected to more and more tyranny, even for relatively short periods, become more lawless, less educated, and poorer physically and even spiritually.

To put it another way, when you treat people like children, they start acting like children. When you treat people like criminals, they start acting like criminals. And when you start treating someone like they are stupid, they will act more and more stupid. It happens again and again.

I think we are seeing this process in the Fifty States and around the world today, and can trace that back for two decades (or more) right here at home. We have seen it before, in the last century, in a score of countries: Germany, Russia, Italy, Mexico, and many more. Some (Germany and Mexico come to mind) have gone through several cycles of this. (And that should be a sign which gives us hope: it usually is cyclical, but the length of the cycles can vary a lot from country to country.)

However, history also shows us that time after time, the pendulum DOES swing back: the stupidity triggers collapse, and there is a (usually bloody) reset button pushed. Things DO get better… eventually. People will argue on what makes the most sense and will be the least painful and quickest (not necessarily both): a slower, more gradual decline into societal collapse, or that sudden, heartbreaking event where everything collapses into heaps of rubble. (Today, many people figure that those will be glowing heaps of rubble.)

I don’t know. Perhaps I hope more for the sudden jolt, because then I know my family won’t have to put up with any more of the current government stupidity: just the daily, run-of-the-mill human variety. There is always a risk that we haven’t slid all the way to the bottom.

But whatever happens, we CAN rest assured that the spiral downward WILL eventually end. And we, or someone, will be able to start climbing back up. In liberty, in freedom, and even in relative peace.

Mama’s Note: Amen, Nathan. That hope is the only thing enabling me to continue the fight for liberty and justice.