Had been since the end of the american revolution it didn’t matter if it was in the big cities or in the exploding suburbs most of the country was happy healthy in good spirits and relatively well off today that is not the case many of us are depressed unhealthy broke
Worried overworked underpaid and super negative we are a divided nation now and our power is waning fast since recorded history this planet has seen superpowers rise rule and then fall the romans the greeks the assyrians the egyptians the babylonians the british there have been a lot of books written
About the fall of once great empires each is unique in its demise the question is are we next look around the signs are all around us our people sleep on the streets our young generation is broke and refusing to work and start a family a lot of our
Good jobs are gone and many of our former great cities are crumbling our population growth peaked we’re divided politically we’re getting fatter and we’re getting poorer our teachers our nurses and our police officers are overworked and underpaid it’s not a bright future look around you there’s a lot of signs that indicate our
Empire is close to coming to an end if it hasn’t already the decades of us dominance in trade culture and morality is threatened you could say we’re just an above average nation now and that fellow americans is very sad and concerning what happened to us and is our country
In pain what happened to the great usa There is no family so poor but that the evening meal can be eaten in an atmosphere of warmth and gentleness there is no family so busy but that it can come together in the evening for a dinner date which will give its members something to look back upon with happiness all their days
Of course things change that was 70 years ago when things were a-okay in every way the future was bright back then today it seems like we’re directionless and without direction we’re going to face an uncertain future it’s happening now we have huge population shifts racial tensions job losses and we’re
Divided and a lot of that has to do with the decline in morals and values our families are breaking up almost half of our marriages end in divorce the average length of a marriage in the u.s is only seven years one in six kids in our country lives in poverty
One in four u.s kids lives in a one-parent household some will say if you destroy the american family you destroy the country studies show that kids who grow up in a house with one parent are more likely to wind up in jail but it’s not just kids from broken homes
Violence and crime around our nation’s going up big time lately you can shoot somebody and not get caught you can steal and not get penalized our police can’t or won’t do their jobs they’re understaffed and overworked our prisons are being emptied look at california it’s a total
Breakdown of law and order they don’t prosecute theft anymore and in chicago people murder each other every day and hardly anybody’s caught or punished crime is all around us but we keep our heads down we kind of have to instead we’ve become a lot more insular
Most of us are selfish and don’t help the greater good anymore myself included americans are becoming more unhealthy and a lot of us can’t afford good medical care some of us go broke trying to stay alive we’re obese and we’re mentally depressed a lot of us are helpless homeless and hopeless
We have a large poverty-stricken population that’s drug addicted but our drug abusers are given more drugs our mentally ill are ignored our criminals are roaming the streets our youth are underpaid our seniors are dying off does that sound like a world leader an empire
I don’t know if it sounds like one of me we’ve overextended our ability to help other nations we’ve over extended our ability to help our own people and not just financially or emotionally we raise taxes to pay for the poor to the point that the middle class is shrinking beyond recognition a
Lot of our schools are crowded led by teachers whose hearts just aren’t in it anymore that is if they’re even certified in case you didn’t know it’s really hard to get a teacher to fill an opening especially in our inner cities places where kids need stability more than ever
As a result our schools just aren’t as good as they once were we’re certainly not the smartest or brightest nation anymore and our colleges are overpriced and they underperform now what about our political landscape polling indicates americans feel many of our politicians are immoral and can’t be
Trusted we’ve lost faith in our elected leaders on the whole political system in general corruption egos and greed dominate at the national level our politicians redraw maps so they don’t ever have to leave office it’s both parties trump hinted that he was going to try to figure out a way to
Overturn his loss in 2020. before trump hillary said the election was stolen from her biden’s too old but he’ll never step aside and let a more competent person run the country and these days if you don’t like what your leader does you just impeach them it’s just really hard to get any new
Laws passed because our politicians are too polarized to actually agree on anything republicans are going further right and democrats are moving further left you can’t even debate anybody about politics without getting labeled chastised or cancelled everyone’s either a fascist an anti-fascist a far-right extremist or woke we’re not organized around a national
Ideology anymore instead we identify with race income levels where we live or even covet rules rural americans way out on the country are die hard one way and urban liberals believe in a completely different thing i mean that’s not a bad thing we need different opinions but today we don’t
Want to listen to one another we’re so polarized and we have all these fringe groups trying to divide us blm has an agenda the alt-right has its agenda school boards are trying to change our schools progressive leaders want to take cops off our streets san jose is hinting
That they want to take away our guns there’s even counties in california and oregon that want to become their own independent states everybody’s just pissed off and we’re looking to separate ourselves instead of looking for a way to work together check this out more than half of trump
Supporters say they somewhat agree they think their state should secede from the union and 41 of biden people say it might be time to split up the country too what the hell people internal fighting’s not going to help us any we’re already fragile enough look around you’ll see headlines asking
If america is facing another civil war polling indicates that more than half of us say we’re already at the beginning stages of a civil war now one political scientist researched every democracy since 1950 to look at when they experienced high levels of polarization the findings concluded that no other world democracy has experienced
So much polarization for so long as ours is currently experiencing the author also pointed out democracies have a hard time depolarizing once they’ve reached this level that’s scary it’s no wonder so many americans lack faith that politicians will change their lives for the better do elected leaders
Offer any dreams that we can even believe anymore late in the roman empire it got to the point that the throne was sold to the highest bidder are we any different much of our population is a burden on our society our sense of responsibility and accountability are fading a lot of
Us have very little obligation even to our own communities this quote’s really insightful whoever aristotle is must be a smart man it’s so expensive in our country now that many of us can’t afford to take risks and taking risks was a quality that helped build this country our economy isn’t evenly distributed
Anymore a lot of our youth can’t afford a home or they struggle to pay their rent it’s very hard to get ahead in the u.s these days half a million of us are on the streets and that number’s going up hourly if you can’t afford to move you have to live in
Filth and your kids have to walk to school on crime infested streets all over the u.s roads are bad and cities are crumbling but america’s cracks go deeper than the pavement look around many of our former great cities are ruined much of that has to do with the loss of jobs our corporations
Have outsourced many of our jobs and automated a lot more of them but our cities aren’t just decaying slowly because of a shift in the economy we’re destroying our own cities ourselves one incident can cause chaos and disintegration that’ll ruin a city forever no wonder the u.s populations
Basically stopped growing it’s hard out there to raise family these days especially in places like this we can see how fragile our distribution system is a virus comes in and we can’t get food to the table we sent all of our jobs overseas to save corporations money
And now we can’t get things from overseas if china goes down we go down and that’s not a world leader and china doesn’t just control our supply chain now we’ve allowed them to purchase our middle class homes by the hundreds of thousands how scary would it
Be if china took over as the world superpower you can blame richard nixon for that he helped build china up during the vietnam war dang mappy i didn’t realize you were such a political historian but you’re right not only did we help train china’s military but we also helped train two
Generations of their scientists and engineers yeah and then ronald reagan helped china too so that we could have an advantage over russia so china beating us now is our own fault we helped create them omg mappy i’m shocked at your political insights you get an a are we still the leader in technology
Sorta i mean we sent amanda space and we invented the assembly line and we created a lot of advanced technology we used today now other nations are beating us at our own game asia has far faster internet and they have more reliable and efficient public transportation than we do
A lot of cheap technologies made overseas now what do we even make here anymore now when things started to turn bad towards the end of the roman empire they distracted the people with entertainment if the people are distracted they won’t focus on how bad things are today we’re distracted too our attention
Is diverted by social media stupid celebrity gossip and screens look around the next time you’re out in public how many people are staring at their screens and not even engaging with the people at their own table how many hours of netflix do we watch every day instead of reading about current events
Ironically you could say the crumbling of america is happening on tv and on social media right in front of our eyes and we’re not even paying attention so what do we do we passed the point of no return our nation came together during pearl harbor
And on 9 11. is there even anything that could unite us again and no nation’s gonna come conquer us those days are over but there’s a good chance that we’re not gonna be at the top anymore you could argue that we’re not even there now and other countries around the world smell blood
Some people really believe that there’s a conspiracy theory out there to ruin this country on purpose so the high and mighty can rule i don’t think politicians or the wealthy people running our country really want america to fall do they an unstable democracy is going to make anybody richer
Maybe we’re just returning to a new normal we had a long run when we dominated the world’s resources but we can’t be the best forever can we i do believe that the spirit that made this country great still survives the lamp is dimmed but it hasn’t been extinguished
Do you think we can reignite that can-do spirit again or have we lost our way people okay everybody so we have a special guest on it’s cal thomas i’m sure you guys have heard of cal thomas he’s an author and a journalist hi cal hi nick how you doing good thank you for
Coming on i’m sure a lot of my uh viewers have read your uh books before and of and your columns uh you’ve been a journalist for 40 50 years now um and you know i’m working on a video about the future of the united states and you’ve written many books and one of
Them is called america’s expiration date the fall of empires and superpowers and the future of the united states and in the book you state that the united states is on a downward slope to self-destruction and that our expiration date is just around the corner so cal what’s wrong with america today and is
It possible that america can really crumble well one of my favorite ronald reagan quotes was uh we’re only one generation away from losing at all nick democracy constitutional republic is not the natural order of things in the world as we look around the world we see dictatorships and not just in russia
And china we see religious oppression we see the denial of women’s rights we see religious fundamentalism in places like iran and this is the normal state of the world the united states is an oasis in the midst of all of that and it doesn’t occur naturally it has to be
Fought for and renewed within every generation and passed on to the next generation or we risk losing it and the reason i wrote america’s expiration date it was inspired by the late british diplomat sir john globe who studied uh 3 000 years of human history and found a pattern to the decline of
Superpowers and great nations the number one contributor to that decline is massive national debt we just recently crossed 30 trillion dollars in national debt which would have been astounding to our founders and even the presidents up through bill clinton clinton left office with a balanced budget of all things
Imagine that 30 trillion in debt i mean people who max out their credit cards know they can’t live in debt forever so we keep doing that and then another major contributor to the decline of nations is a loss of a shared moral sense a concept of right and wrong now
Everybody is their own god deciding right from wrong themselves even if two people hold contradictory views it it only matters that they feel good about themselves well no nation can be sustained without a shared moral value system so there are other factors contributing but those are the major two
And we have 20 percent of the younger generation now according to gallup who declare none when they’re asked for their religious faith or background that’s a frightening thing what are some of the other so those are the two those are two big ones uh morality in the and the economy um what
Are some other um signs warning signs that america is about to possibly lose its status as the world empire yeah well i think military overreach you know we’re we have not been a colonial power unlike britain for example or like china wants to be but we have to decide what our purpose
In the world is uh george mcgovern who was a senator from south dakota in the 1972 democratic presidential uh candidate who lost but he he said in the middle of the vietnam war he was a big anti-vietnam war advocate he said we can’t be the policeman of the world and
That’s true and whatever one thinks of donald trump one of the many things that he did in my view that was good was to require especially europe that had lived under america’s protection economic umbrella and financial largesse for many years to start paying its own bills and that’s kind of an amazing thing
I would also say another contributing factor to the decline of nations is over reliance on government the founders wanted government to be limited so the people would be unlimited but we have half the country now getting a government check we have in the current administration wants to and thank goodness for senators
Kristin cinema and joe manchin who have stopped this want to spend even more in their their answer to inflation that is harming everybody at the food store and the gas pump is to spend more money when in fact spending more money that we don’t have and have to borrow
Is the major contributing factor to inflation it’s like trying to cure alcoholism by giving somebody a bottle of booze it just it’s it’s counterproductive so all of these things and there’s nothing new about them i mean you can study history and see this it’s it’s not a it’s not a classified document
But we don’t look to the past i’m not talking about living in the past i’m talking about learning from the past and then updating things as necessary and moving forward why don’t we learn from the past i mean it’s the the playbook on how to create
How to stop empires from going down has been written and the playbook on how to destroy an empire has been written so why aren’t we following the playbook that has been written before us well i like to say the closest we get to history these days is the instant replay
People are trying to rewrite our history or they’re trying to use the stain of slavery for example that that colors everything and statues are being torn down roads are being renamed critical race theory is being imposed in some schools you’ve seen the revolt in loudoun county virginia which fueled the election of
Glenn yonken and winsome sears as uh governor and lieutenant governor winsome sears african-american woman i loved her statement on election night she said we’re not in 1963 anymore but a lot of people want to teach that we still are and that we don’t have more opportunities for everybody in america than we’ve ever
Had and certainly more than any other country on earth so the the public schools have in the last 50 years or so become the equivalent of re-education camps in some communist countries the universities are mostly shot they’re full of leftover hippies from the 60s tenured professors who hate america and
Want their students to do the same so we you know lincoln used to say abraham lincoln that if america was ever to fall it was not going to be from an invading army but that we would do it to ourselves and he was right and we are doing it to ourselves
Uh 100 cal i agree um you know the left is getting more progressive the right is is getting entrenched i feel like we’re more divided politically than we’ve been in a long time and you would probably have a much bigger perspective on that than than i would but everybody’s
Entrenched into their political parties how much of the polarization is eating away at us right now well a lot and uh it it pays i mean you you look at uh some of these cable channels that have guests on they’ll have two guests one will say to the
Other you’re ruining america and the other responds no you’re running america well you’re a bible-thumping bigot well you’re a secular humanist and the host says and we’ll be back with more civil discussion after these messages you know bob beckel who has been a long time friend liberal democrat we wrote a
Column for usa today had a book together called common ground the problem is that so many people especially in washington who have different political points of views or different parties don’t even know each other anymore there’s no party circuit in washington anymore where people would meet and and you know
Commune over the shrimp bowl and go out and have a drink together or whatever you can’t do that anymore because if you somebody with a cell phone camera takes a picture of you having a dinner with a another party a member of another party they’re going to use it against you so
Polarization works it works in fundraising and you know the last thing the politicians in washington want to do is solve a problem and you know why because if they solve the problem they no longer have the issue so everybody knows the solutions to most problems reform social security and medicare but
Nobody wants to touch it uh go through government with an audit and get rid of programs that aren’t working and preserve those that are but you know again reagan used to say the only proof of eternal life in washington as a government program and it’s true it’s easier to kill a
Vampire than a government program if if somebody wants to reduce the rate of increase in spending not reduce the spending but reduce the rate of increase than nancy pelosi or some what about the children or you know you’re being insensitive to the poor and the homeless you seen the homeless in california
They’re covering the streets like a plague this is the result of liberal progressive policies these people used to be in in places where they could get help but thanks to the aclu 40 years ago which got a court to decide that this was against their uh freedom
They were let out so you have metal cases and alcoholics and drug addicts and criminals sleeping on the streets of our major cities fouling the uh the gutters and footpaths with their uh with their excrement and places that people don’t want to even go near anymore hold conventions there and this
Is the outgrowth of failed policies but few people especially the media don’t want to really get to the heart of it and the media part of this too they they uh they foment conflict because they think it’s good for ratings yeah i’ve been to california many times
To see what you’re talking about and it’s tragic los angeles you drive you can drive for 15 minutes in a loop and it’s nothing but tents and homeless people and sadness near downtown and you know i’ve been up to seattle i’ve been to san francisco and oakland and they’ll be like a mile
Long parking lot of tents and rvs and cars that are lined with people that are just um either intentionally homeless or or temporarily or permanently it’s just and a lot of them will tell you you know i came here because they have they give me things to help
Um well the other the other thing uh nick is the rapid rise in crime when you have a loss of a moral sense when you have no fathers in the home or very few when you have district attorneys like bragg in new york and and uh you know people in los angeles and
San francisco who will not prosecute uh crimes over at 900 when you see the scenes of looting and even security guards doing nothing there was a rite aid pharmacy in new york very famous video that went viral that showed a security guard standing in the store
It had security on the back of his jacket and this guide loaded up with stuff taking it out of the store without paying for it and the security guard didn’t do or say anything and now the store is closed they can’t they can’t afford to exist in that kind of
Environment and so this is spreading rapidly around the country the shootings of the major cities the murders chicago new york houston the shooting of law enforcement officers who no longer feel safe in their own jobs with government looking over their shoulders and interest groups and activist groups looking over their shoulders
Cops are quitting cops are not young people are not signing up to be police officers and this too contributes to the erosion of uh a civil society yeah um now in your book you said that you know we need to make changes at the individual and community level so that
The nation can not only survive but thrive again what kind of changes do you think we need to make at the community and individual level to kind of get the ship right it again we need to get our kids out of the public schools into home schools or private schools one
Of the few side benefits if you can call it that of the pandemic has been people who have discovered that they can do a better job homeschooling their kids than the government schools now it’s a struggle for some people especially single moms but if you care about the future of your
Child in your country you’ve got to do it i remember something barbara bush said years ago our success as a nation your success as a family depends less on what happens in the white house and more on what happens in your house so getting the kids properly educated historically grounded and morally true
Is going to produce the kind of individual and citizen that will benefit the nation for the next generation and those following that so i remember the late bishop fulton sheen a roman catholic bishop years ago said this was in the 50s imagine what he’d say now he said
America is not a intolerant nation as some people say we are tolerant of everything and that’s what the problem is you remember a lot of quotes well i speak a lot so you know so um which country who do you think is gonna if we fall
And you know the pattern is every 250 years an empire rises and then falls we’re five years from that right now um who would take over as the world leader you think well okay there’s several things about that i thought you were going another direction it doesn’t it doesn’t necessarily
Mean that the united states will cease to exist so i think the united states might continue to exist but not in its present form look at china the rise of china is uh is phenomenal look what putin is doing with ukraine uh we are being chat look at iran now uh
Clearly very close to developing and uh and launching if they choose to do so nuclear tip missiles against the united states and i mean against israel and in some cases the united states so this is all the result of perceived weakness in the country and it’s not just military
Weakness it’s moral weakness it’s intellectual weakness so i think that you know the united states will probably continue to exist in some form but i don’t think we’re going to be the economic and military and influential country that we have been for 200 and almost 50 years
And that’s that’s a real problem it’s not only a problem for us and our people it’s a problem for a lot of the freedom loving world because if the united states doesn’t lead who will yeah who do you think i’m curious to know who would be your perfect
Looking at the political landscape right now who we have on the on the republican side future potential candidates or current folks that are in office is there a perfect candidate is there somebody that you would trust to get us back on track that’s well you know when king david was
King over israel he said put not your trust in princes and kings or immortal flesh that cannot save so there is no perfect candidate the to me the best candidate would would be uh someone who said look stop relying on government as the first resource and put it back as a last resort
Uh we want you to have a safety net but we don’t want you to have a hammock big difference so personal responsibility look when i was growing up i was taught three things inspiration followed by motivation followed by perspiration improves any life now we flip that and it’s envy
Greed and entitlement if you make two dollars and i make one dollar you owe me 50 cents to make it fair that’s socialism i should come to you and say how did you make the two dollars where did you go to school what’s your philosophy of life i want to be like you
Someday i don’t envy people who make more than me as a matter of fact i wrote a column a couple of years ago tongue-in-cheek when the whole idea of income inequality was sweeping the networks and the politicians verbiage and the rest i said yes i i suffer from income inequality
There are lots of people who make more money than i do you know what i don’t care as long as i have the opportunity to work hard and consistent with my abilities to make a decent living to support my family and live a decent lifestyle i’m content but this pitting against each
Other you know economically racially gender everything else this is dividing america instead of out of many one he plural bassoon out of one many we’re hyphenated americans now this is not what the founders intended we can’t afford it we can’t continue to go on like this or we won’t
Well the legendary author and journalist cal thomas thank you for your insight uh the book is america’s expiration date the fall of empires and superpowers and the future of the united states cal you spoke um wisdom uh for about 20 minutes straight and i hope that a lot of people see this
And it kind of sinks in because a lot of people need to hear stuff like this you know well thank you nick for the opportunity i hope so too yeah okay everybody right now we have paul engel he’s an author he wrote the book the constitution study returning
The constitution to we the people how’s it going paul it’s going pretty well doing pretty well all right now you’ve advocated that we need to restore our nation to its proper order what did you mean by that paul well most people assume that all power resides in washington dc
And they delegate some to the states and then they delegate sun to the people which is actually backwards you see the people created the states when we created the states through their constitutions and they created the united states the federal government through their constitution we actually
Have a the the constitution says we have a limited federal government there’s only a few things the federal government’s actually authorized to do and by putting all that in washington we’ve lost control of it we don’t have uh we no longer have effective control over most of what
Impacts our lives day in and day out and if we restored it to its proper order you’re dealing with local then with state then with federal well we i believe we’d have a uh we have a lot more of our rights intact and we could all live a happier life
The mess america is in first of all we spent well over 100 years making this mess and the people are responsible because we’ve done nothing about it we have sat back and let government go well beyond our consent and powers uh we’ve actually encouraged our government to go beyond and as in any
Other situation when the government becomes so large and so corrupt its fall is easily anticipated the question is as we see just how how bad things have gotten will the american people wake up and realize that we can we we need to protect our rights our freedoms our liberties
We need to regain control of our government while we can still do it at the ballot box in the courthouse uh in you know without violence by the mess so you said the mess that we’re in is our fault what mess are we in so the mess
Came from here’s the powers that we gave government and we have drifted so far from that that not only does government rarely pay attention to the constitution the american people have no clue most of them have no clue what the constitution actually says and there’s a reason why millions of people
Try to come to this country and have for what 150 years because this is the place where you could become successful where any child born here could legally become president where an immigrant could come and create a life for themselves for their children that was more prosperous than
Anything they had in the old country the the uh the rights that we’ve had the private property we could own the opportunity the idea of a this experiment in self-government allowed america to do things no other nation has been able to do and we won the war and we when we were done
We were left with the only functioning uh nation with the strength to say for the world to look at us and say america we trust you we will make the u.s dollar the reserve currency because we trust you europe said we will we will shed much of our military
Because we trust you to protect us and then of course when you end up in the cold war and you’ve got the the well do you do let me ask you this do you think that the world does not look at us and says we trust you anymore to lead
The world um like they did back in the 1940s and 50s is that is that the case certainly a lot like they did in the 40s and 50s but more and more yeah you’re seeing uh uh you’re seeing countries look towards um well look at they’re looking to china
Right they’re looking to in some places looking to russia um germany didn’t sign a deal with a western ally for gat natural gas they went to russia um so no i don’t think they look at us now are we still better than are do do more countries look towards us
Than uh than than somewhere else yes but we’re going the wrong way in other words the basic idea of you know there’s a there’s a theory that says our allies should trust us our enemies should fear us think about how many of our allies truly trust that america is going to do the
Right thing right now and how many people how many of our enemies are afraid of what america is going to do and this isn’t simply a thing for the last year this has been going on for years as we’ve become caught up in our own uh uh our own self-reinforcing turmoil
What would you say about so how much of the fall is because of our manufacturing going overseas when we started shipping all of our jobs um out of the country well there’s there’s there’s actually two parts to that because uh at least from my point of view uh the reason we
So many of the jobs went overseas is because it was cheaper it simple math it’s cheaper it was cheaper i i read this article it was a amazing when i read it but um it was cheaper for texas chicken farmers to ship their chickens to china to be butchered packaged and shipped back
Than it was to have them actually processed in the united states did they do that yeah why don’t they just go down to mexico it’s a lot closer because it was cheaper in china it was cheaper in china than mexico it’s just don’t know don’t know all the economics
I’ve just i read this article and i was a bit shocked but uh the consequence of that is um our we saw the consequence with the supply chain where we are so dependent on things coming from overseas that that becomes a choke point now that’s that is actually that’s part
Of the story the other part of the story is we’ve spent so much time and effort and money and again i’m talking as a society trying to live the way we did in the last century um the uh the the days of getting a job at 18 working 40 years retiring with gold
Watch they’re gone the days of uh you know uh you know i remember walmart did a an experiment uh because you know walmart buys gets a lot of their stuff from china because it’s cheap they actually put made in america stickers on all the products that were actually manufactured in america
Because i wanted to see with the with that increase they said hey that will increase the sales right because we’re all patriotic we want no the sales went down is the price was the price the same i don’t remember all the details but we used to be american american-made used to be a
It used to be a symbol of quality in the 70s you kind of lost that right you could get better cars made cars were made better and cheaper in japan than they were here there’s still a lot of manufacturing in the united states it tends to be
The more as i understand it the more highly technical the more involved the more you know we’re not making sneakers and t-shirts um we make some computer chips we design several things does it really matter that we’re maybe not going to be number one in the world
Anymore should we even really care i mean what would it what would it mean for the country what would it mean for the world if we’re not number one if we’re not the best big bad empire like we once were well there’s a saying that he who pays the piper calls a tune
The person who the the country that becomes number one the the largest economy the biggest military the most influence they set the the standard so think of it this way uh i forget what it was who wasn’t said it but think of how many wars that america has fought
Um we may not agree with all of them but how often have we fought a war to help somebody else and then left and all we asked for as i think was colin powell said all we asked for was a plot of ground to bury our dead
Do you think a russia or a china would do that and i i spend every day writing about the problems in america ultimately um we we will frequently fight to protect other people and not ask to get paid back for it would you rather have the the world run by
America as we used to be america as we are or russia or china where do you think you would have the the the most opportunity to live a a happy and successful life not china so what if there’s one thing you could do to get the country turned in the
Right direction again what’s the first thing that you would do the first thing that i would do i think regardless of whatever whatever else gets done i think we need a the american people need a bedrock of education we need to understand and i think a lot of that’s because
We we deal a lot with emotion but not necessarily with facts there’s no we don’t know uh what our rights are and we don’t know about the importance of protecting other people’s rights if you don’t have the right to live your life as you want then how much else really matters
I mean i’m with you on that i i think that i do agree with you on the fact that we need to be educated about you know where we’re headed and where we’ve been and what the implications could be i just don’t really think most of us
Really seem to really care i mean we put our heads down we’re distracted um where things are handed to us the motivation level is down everybody’s complaining everybody seems like they’ve got a gripe i i don’t see any leadership standing up that has our interests in
Mind to try to get america back in order again so i don’t think it matters how educated we are i don’t think people are a lot of people are i don’t think upset about their rights they just want to be left alone um and just want to just
Live a an average to above average life anymore and i think that’s a big part of the problem well it’s interesting because i agree that most people are ignorant and apathetic they don’t know they don’t care but the very thing you say they want which is to live their life unhindered
Unmolested and make it better than before is one of the basic core rights protected by the constitution that very few americans actually realize it’s this idea that you are you’re not to be deprived of your liberty your ability to live your life without external influence except is absolutely necessary for the safety of
Society those are the rights that the constitution was designed to protect and if you don’t learn how to protect them your right to live as you see fit evaporates okay guys so right now i’m being joined by aaron tolini she’s an entrepreneur and an attorney and a former politician how how’s it going
Aaron hi i’m doing well thanks for having me good morning yeah thanks for coming on so i’m i i’ve been doing um you know some some thinking and some pondering about you know the the future of our country and there’s a lot of discussion um online that’s been going
On for years about where is america headed and and there’s some pundits out there that kind of feel like america has peaked and our empire may be coming to an end um how confident are you about the future of the united states aaron well i definitely think the united
States is at an inflection point right now i think there has long been some polarization that has only increased as of late covet i think accelerated it so i really do think you know the united states is at a point where we have a lot of problems i
Mean as abraham lincoln famously said a long time ago a house divided against itself cannot stand and i think we are in danger of being at that extreme sense of polarization where the united states has a really hard time getting things done and i think that is
Reflected in a lot of the political discussions we see happening today that being said i do think that there are reasons that the united states has held its superpower status since probably about since world war ii and even though i think we have 99 problems i do think that um we will
Not have i don’t think that there is a nation that is currently poised to overtake us in that superpower status why are we so polarized i know social media my take is we were already kind of going there and then social media especially facebook just like totally divided people even more
Um into their different camps um but you know besides social media why do you think we’ve become so um polarized and divided politically i think there’s a few things i think first of all unfortunately a lot of people who get into politics are driven more by ego than by actually wanting to make
People’s lives a better place i have long said that local politics is a place where politics still works and for the most part i think the people who get involved in local politics really want to make a difference they are involved in their community they run into people
In the grocery store that are affected by their decisions and it’s that immediate feedback loop whereas i think in national politics you have less of that and you have people who really tend to grandstand and get their egos involved and really put an emphasis on getting reelected over
Trying to do something that benefits their constituents i think a second thing is the press i think a lot of people on both sides have lost some faith in the press i think that the press tends to go for ratings and shock value and a lot of times negative news is what sells
And then i do think social media exacerbates it i think people who are in fear tend to cling to what they know and they don’t they’re not open to hearing other perspectives and i think that there has been a lot of fear especially in the last couple of years
What would you do i know that like that’s a question that you could ask anybody and maybe there’s a million different answers but like if there’s one thing that you could that you think you could you would do or we could do to kind of get things kind of pointed in
The right direction again is there is there one thing that kind of stands out that you think it it would help the most with our nation i don’t know if there’s one thing a couple things i’ll give you a couple things yeah i think who we elect matters
I think when you elect people who you can tell are in it for their egos that can’t end well i think when you elect people that really seems like their agenda is not to be reelected but really wants to help our country progress and is willing to reach
Across the aisle and try to find compromise i think that really matters um i think choosing what media you consume matters trying not to kind of find the echo chamber or the the the people screaming out headlines and arguing and not really trying to find a path forward but trying to chase
Ratings i think that matters look where are those people though i mean we keep saying we need to elect leaders of karen like you know and i agree with you but like you know i do see there are people that you you hear about grassroots that you
You believe in that person and you’re like man i would support that guy um and then they just never make it i don’t know if the system just keeps them down or they can’t get i mean is that part of the problem is just the people that do care
That have our intentions at our best that aren’t in it for themselves just can’t get to the top because of the way the system’s just designed is that i mean from a former politician standpoint too yeah no i do think there’s some truth to that and honestly at different times
People have tried to get me to run for higher office and that has been a little bit of my hesitancy is i don’t know if i could govern the way i want to govern and still get elected so i think that that is part of it people i’ve read a
Lot about people’s ideas of how to fix it and some of it is you know move to um rank voting where it’s not just the top person takes all the votes but then a second person who may not be one of the two-party candidates could come in
And take away enough of the vote that they could be a real contender um i think you know the the gerrymandering that’s happening on both sides is making everything worse then now the amount of competitive seats is so low it’s just basically predetermined which which district is
Going to go to which party um and honestly i i think part of it are the politicians who are in charge i’ve heard stories of as soon as you get elected to the house of representatives they pull you into room and say you vote along party lines i don’t care what your
Conscience says i don’t care what you think it doesn’t matter you vote along party lines and you don’t ever stray from that and i think that’s a shame and that it needs it i think it needs to change at all levels from who personally we elect and what types of policies we
Vote for to the very top where um our top politicians say no enough enough of this it’s time that we put the country first does it even matter that we’re so like clearly america has probably peaked in terms of its prosperity and its social status and its impact on the world and
Our own morals i would i would say um but like does it even matter for number one i mean can we just be above average is it really do we really have to impress the world like how do you feel about that i do think it matters i think whoever is
Number one kind of sets the stage for global politics and i think that matters um i wouldn’t necessarily agree that we have peaked i definitely agree like i said earlier that we’re in at an inflection point i do think the united states has kind of peaked at gdp growth
And china like i said earlier is probably going to overtake the united states but i don’t think that that’s necessarily a bad thing i think any developing country is going to have a long on-ramp for high gdp growth until they kind of hit the full employment and
Full technology and all that kind of thing and the united states was at accelerated gdp growth through you know the industrial revolution the time as we were up and coming as a nation and we’ve definitely stabilized and i don’t think that that’s a bad thing i think that we have a high
Quality of living i think that people can come here from just about every country in the world and say wow these people live nice lives and i think that as long as that exists and we have freedoms and freedom of speech and you know the ability to chase the american dream which some
Would argue is not as strong as it once was but i do think everyone would still say there are some opportunities to chase the american dream i think that the united states is always going to be an attractive destination for people around the world and hopefully we can
Continue to attract people who want to start businesses and invest in technology and study at our schools and i think as long as we have those types of things um that we’ll continue to maintain both our our economic and military power and our soft power hey everyone so it’s pretty clear by now
That elected leaders aren’t going to help you if you don’t like what you saw in this video demanding change won’t work you’re going to have to do it on your own if you want to be safe and want your community to be a place where people want to live you’re going to have
To clean the place up yourselves you’re going to have to work with your friends and neighbors to lower crime politicians clearly don’t care as much anymore it’s up to us this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production are you looking to move and need advice
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