I came across two articles today that firmly encapsulate in my mind the direction our nation is moving in and I found myself deeply troubled.  I am troubled at a level that is visceral and almost makes me ill because I fear that the problems of the moment, as bad as they undeniably are, will usher in not a better world, but a worse one. 

The first article is from Newsweek.  The headline proclaims it all- "We Are All Socialists Now."  Rather than explain the full piece let me leave a quote from the piece that sums it well:

"A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone—a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone—a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French...

Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending. The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment). Growth has always been America's birthright and saving grace."

The second article comes from an author that I have always been deeply fond of, the Classical military historian, Victor Davis Hanson.  As I read his concluding paragraphs and thought about them in conjunction with the Newsweek story my fears of the past came back to me.  Hanson makes explicit how the post-modern, secularized man that refuses to reproduce and looks only for the pleasures of this world has led to statism.  Below is the relevant section.

"I had a conversation (an argument) recently with a European, about contemporary culture. I tried to explain the mutually reinforcing elements of socialism, atheism, utopianism, pacifism, and statism (he was giving America a second chance to morph into Euros under Obama). But if one believes in no transcendence, that there is nothing other than the present, then for too many satisfying the appetites becomes the prime directive. Childlessness, living at home in one's 30s, dependence on the state, all that derives from a system that ensures equality of result, and substitutes Logos and Ratio for any notion of a deity that sees sin and sacrifice, and reminds us that our souls are immortal and affected by their brief residences in our flesh. In other words, that Euros expect free health care, free care for their elderly parents, free schools, free defense from the USA, harbor little hopes for rising above the station of anyone else, find housing and jobs scarce, and don't feel they can or want to leave behind something for their children larger than what they inherited-- are all interrelated phenomena. European postmodern man offers mostly platitudes that he thinks please those who might be dangerous to him, and finds psychological recompense and solace by gratuitously trashing those who aren't. Note how such constitution peoples favor Hamas over Israel--and usually almost anyone over the US. Were Hamas a successful democracy that took no European aid and offered it in turn no threats, and Israel a failed fascistic terrorist movement that depended on Europe for aid and comfort, while engaging in terrorism and voicing postmodern platitudes about oppression, then we would expect Israel to be a strong European ally. (I think many Europeans are more sympathetic to the Palestinian Authority or Syria or Iran than the incipient democracy in Iraq)."

So how is "post-modern" man different from Nietzsche's terrible vision of the "Last Man."  Compare for yourself as Nietzsche's prophet, Zarathustra speaks:

"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.

Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.

'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and blinks.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.

'We have invented happiness, 'say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth...

One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

'Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink...

One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.

'We have invented happiness', say the last men, and they blink."

I see little difference.

Nietzsche said that God is Dead, by which he meant that WE have killed him in our desire to be "enlightened" during our push to become masters of our own fate in this world without transcendance.  Nietzsche saw that without God, nihilism, a lack of faith in anything, was inevitable.  He tried to replace God with a Godlike man- the notorious Ubermensch or Overman.

He may have been wrong in his solutions, but he clearly diagnosed the malady of modern man.  Today more than ever we stand on the precipice of America joining Europe and becoming "post-modern" which is really nothing more than becoming "Last Men."

The greatness of spirit that was such a constant through most of human history is intentionally being homogeneized with the vague, but discernable desire to enforce equality of outcome.  "Greatness" is scoffed at, ridiculed, and referred to as "selfish", "narrow-minded", and contrary to the communitarian ideals that supposedly will save this planet from our own evil born of ignorance.

There will not be a levelling up, there will only be a levelling down.  From where will come the next Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, or Dante?  Where will even be the next Washington, Lincoln, or Churchill?

Socialism breeds sloth.  I know that there is a need for government to restrain the excesses that are inherent in flawed man.  However, we are taking steps that go far beyond the necessary restraints and limited assistance that is needed to assure people don't "fall through the cracks."  We are choosing to make the world that our children (if we choose to have them) are born into a world of bland mediocrity that denigrates what has been so noble about humanity.

Yes, its true, the price for greatness and nobility is some instability, some danger, but the desire to eradicate that can only lead to a sterility that saps man of what has made him human. 

The religious societies are vastly more human than the experiment we are attempting to consolidate.  Ironically, there is disorder in those societies, but they are human.  Perhaps, that is not as bad a thing as so often we think it is.  Perhaps, we'll look more deeply before setting sail for a destination that is preordained to destroy our very souls and leave us empty husks that will over time be easy pickings for those that still understand how to be humans.

The Romans largely failed to do that and they became history.  America is not yet doomed for a repeat performance, but our Attila and Alaric is out there waiting for an opportune moment to strike at our cracked foundations.  We should defend those foundations and not become the "Last" Post-Modern Man.