Mayberry No More: The US is “Coming Apart”

Photo Credit: Javier Rojas/Zuma PressAs we anticipate Mitt Romney’s (hopefully delicious) victory next Tuesday, we shouldn’t be fooled to think that all will be right in America if he wins. His victory, which is in no way assured, would only give us a bit of breathing room to buckle down for the long haul, because a Romney victory will only make the left mad (well, madder than they are already. Remember, they have been berserk since Bush “stole” the 2000 election).

Charles Murray, of the American Enterprise Institute, writes in “Coming Apart” that today’s leaders lack bravery and perspective. While many readers can hang on to the memories of the Greatest Generation and of Chuck Yeager in “The Right Stuff”, what exemplifies America to a large extent is 56,000 square foot houses such as Aaron Spelling’s 123 room villa. I would have been happy to have raised my family with four bedrooms. Ok, five, to be honest.

“Unseemly” is how Murray puts this decadence, which in large part describes contemporary American government, with “Washington [being] in a new gilded age of influence peddling that dwarfs anything that has come before.”

Can the U.S. recover from this unseemliness? In Marvin Olasky’s book review, he points out the courage and perseverance of one man, William Wilberforce, who led England to abolish slavery in the early 1800’s. Olasky reminds us too that the American Revolution was fueled in part by the patriot’s aversion to the decadence of London.

Murray, like all of us, hopes for “a civic Great Awakening among the new upper class” where the wealthy can lead a more balanced and rewarding life as they focus more on society and less on their Maseratis.

With Mayberry RFD (and Leave it to Beaver) long gone, America has reached a point of “Coming Apart”. But we are not finished by any stretch of the imagination, as we shall see next Tuesday.

__________________________________________
Bill Peck is a software developer, Christian, conservative, West Point grad ’81, and part-time blogger. He is also a graduate of Johns Hopkins University with a masters degree in administrative science, with a concentration in Information Technology. He helped Joe Miller become the Republican nominee for Senate in Alaska in 2010, fell in love with the Alaska people and the grandeur of the 49th state, and is now Joe Miller’s spokesman.