(The audio version of this essay can be found here.)

No matter where you look, our society feels like it is rapidly spinning out of control:

• The response to the coronavirus pandemic might well be worse than the virus itself, as our economic shutdown has now displaced thirty million American workers.
• Supply chains have been disrupted, and some are predicting massive food shortages across the entire world.
• The left is using the virus as an excuse to push their entire wish list from open borders to green energy to 1984-style surveillance.
• China is ascendant in the world, using their military to bully their neighbors and their propaganda machine to cow Americans who question our relationship with them.
• Migrants are still coming to civilized nations, crossing both the Mediterranean and Rio Grande at will.

The whole world is hurtling down the road like a runaway truck, with no way to hit the brakes. How can we disengage before we utterly crash? Where is the off-ramp from this highway to hell?

Let us start with the economy, which was running at full steam just two months ago: Unemployment was below 3.5%. The stock market, which includes all our retirement accounts, was at record highs. The housing market was expanding, and new construction was happening everywhere. The response to the coronavirus pandemic has shattered that strong economy, yet the cracks were there for anyone to see. Unfunded state liabilities continued to increase, without hope of being fulfilled. Federal deficits continued to be more than a trillion dollars a year, and the growth of our national debt showed no signs of slowing. Much of our economic expansion had been driven by infinite debt, as the Fed continued printing nearly free money. The employment numbers masked some problems too, as many of the new jobs over the last decade went to temporary migrants rather than American citizens. Outsourcing has only increased over the last decade, and the massive spike in unemployment brought on by the pandemic response is unlikely to stem the tide. President Trump last week signed an executive order to limit immigration and work permits, but the big business interests that have an outsized voice in the Administration managed to carve out exceptions for foreign tech and farm workers.

The time to patch these cracks was before a global emergency, not during one. Once we are in the middle of a crisis, corporations and elected officials feel the need to take drastic measures to “save” the economy. As soon as the crisis began every big business came to Congress hat in hand demanding a bailout. After all, when the market crashed in 2008, the government declared all these businesses “too big to fail” and bailed them out with taxpayer money. In a real free market economy, there is no such thing as “too big to fail”. Ideally, we would let airlines, banks, and other corporations go bankrupt in order to clear the deck of over-extended and inefficient corporations. Bankruptcy is not dirty word; rather it is a vital part of a free market. Over-extended businesses and diseconomies of scale need to be partitioned and sold off to satisfy their creditors, not given a cheque from the taxpayer that allows them to continue operating inefficiently. Yet there are few elected officials with the courage to do what is necessary to fix the fundamental problems of our economy. Anything that is worth doing will inevitably result in electoral losses. The American people, having been fed media propaganda for generations, will not accept a politician who takes these problems seriously. Instead, we demand pat answers to hard questions. Instead of fixing the problems, elected leaders just kick the can further down the road, hoping to have retired into a comfortable lobbying gig before the bill comes due.

The pandemic is also showing the vulnerability of our supply chains in multiple ways. When China locked down in January and February, this started a chain reaction that is just beginning to reverberate through the world economy. So many of our essential goods are manufactured in China now, from electronics to antibiotics to the raw materials for most everything else. This was bad enough before Europe and the US locked down as well, and now every industry in the world is facing Armageddon. It has taken this crisis to demonstrate how weak we are left by relying on foreign nations for our supply lines, especially belligerent nations such as China. Back in the 1980s and 90s, our leaders thought they could liberalize China by normalizing trade. After all, open cultural exchange with the Soviet Union brought down that Communist juggernaut, so why not China? However, in this case the reverse happened, and the Chinese Communist Party corrupted America. Corporations such as Google and Apple happily work with China to censor the internet and crack down on dissidents, the NBA and Hollywood prostrate themselves before their new Chinese benefactors, and American media outlets reprint Chinese propaganda because it serves their short-term anti-Trump narratives.

Disentangling us from China will likely be difficult. Big corporations have found it lucrative to fire American employees in favor of foreign temp workers, who are cheaper and easier to control. In addition to corporate outsourcing, China has also taken full advantage of our education system. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students come to America to learn engineering while we waste our time teaching our own young people grievance studies. Like big businesses, universities will resist any effort to stop the flow of foreign students. Once again, it would take politicians with more courage than we currently see in Congress to stop this cycle. Globalist elites see themselves as beyond such petty distinctions as citizenship, so they see no reason not to sell out to China if it helps their bottom line. For the elites, this pandemic is not an existential crisis like it is for the little people, but rather an opportunity for greater wealth and power. The time to solve these issues was before this mess began.

Our food supply might also be in danger. A few days ago, the CEO of Tyson, the country’s largest chicken producer, put out an ad saying that this shutdown is going to destroy the market for meat. I have seen stories and pictures of chickens and hogs being destroyed because farmers say they are unable to get them processed. Whether that is true or not, I do not know. I do know that far too much of our meat industry is controlled by foreign owners, who heavily depend upon migrant labor, and that it is far too centralized in the hands of just a few corporations. While a meat shortage would be devastating for the American people, the globalist left seems to be looking forward to it. Over the last year the media has been pumping out stories about meat being bad for your health as well as for the environment, and that we should switch to eating soy protein or bugs instead. Many on the carnivore right wondered about the purposes of this propaganda barrage. Well, here we are, and the American people have been primed to accept a future where we eat insects instead of hamburgers. However, it should go without saying that while we eat bugs and soy paste, the elites will still be eating steak at Davos.

The globalist left is advancing on the domestic front as well. While the Trump victory in 2016 was a blow to their totalitarian dreams, they were not vanquished completely, and the last few years have seen them redoubling their efforts to permanently crush us under their boots. They have raised their derangement to a fever pitch, and as soon as they control the government again, they plan massive retribution. This pandemic is giving them the opportunity for a trial run of authoritarianism:

• Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered stores to stop selling “non-essential” items. The government bureaucrats who decided what was considered “non-essential” banned such things as lawn tools and seeds, which a rational person would think of as being important in the face of uncertain times.
• The Democratic governors of Massachusetts and Colorado ordered gun and ammunition stores to be shut down, despite the increased risk of lawlessness and danger due to prisoners being released for fear of infection.
• Governor Andrew Beshear of Kentucky ordered churches closed on Easter Sunday, without exception for drive-in services. He sent State Patrol officers to churches to record license plates of congregants in order to cite them later.

These dictatorial orders are less about protecting citizens from a virus than about simply enforcing the will of these petty tyrants. On Good Friday, the Mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee tweeted:

“We respectfully ask that churches in our area not move forward with “drive-in” worship services or any other kind of public assembly. Allowing people to gather, even in their cars with the windows rolled up, will be considered a violation of our directives.”

Did you catch that? “…a violation of our directives”. This is not about public safety; it is about humiliating American citizens into respecting the unconstitutional authority of our elected officials.

Of course, as is usually the case, the laws made for the little people do not apply to the big people. After closing non-essential businesses in New York City, Mayor Bill De Blasio went out to his favorite gym. After telling Chicago citizens to stay home, Mayor Lori Lightfoot went out to have her hair done. She had the chutzpah to defend her decision, saying “I’m the public face of this city. I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye.” The mask has come completely off, and our bureaucratic tyrants are telling us to our faces that they are more important than us. The concept of “public service” has been inverted in America today. Rather than facing a single tyrant like King George III, we have thousands of little tyrants, each doing their best to interfere in our daily lives in a way that King George never could have dreamed.

In Arkansas, a twelve-year-old girl was playing basketball outside by herself, so city officials removed the basketball hoop. Police in Colorado found a man playing t-ball with his six-year-old daughter in an empty park, and they arrested him, putting him in handcuffs in front of his little girl. These stories go on and on. It is insane, but this is what America is like in the age of a thousand petty tyrants. However, keeping people out of public parks is just the beginning. The Atlantic recently published a piece extolling the virtues of authoritarianism and censorship:

“In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.”

Remember when the left was in favor of free speech, free expression, and an open internet? Those days are long gone. Today’s left looks at the authoritarianism of Communist China as an example, not a warning. Of course, the big question left unanswered here is who should decide what is compatible with society’s norms and values? I doubt the writers of The Atlantic would consider traditional American values to be their goal. A century ago, our norms and values were unabashedly Christian, with emphases on hard work, personal liberty, and the importance of the family. Today, powerful cultural forces are working to change our so-called norms to something much more sinister: Socialism and dependence upon government; collectivism rather than liberty; and the destruction of the traditional family. The people in charge of enforcing these norms are social justice warriors at Twitter, Facebook, and Google who boast of their mental illness and declare that transgenderism, homosexuality, atheism, and even pedophilia are all right and proper while traditional American values are on par with Naziism. These are the values that The Atlantic, and the rest of the globalist progressive left, want to impose upon you and your children.

How did we let this happen? Where was the off-ramp from this cultural freeway? Conservatives ceded control of the culture in the 60s, and the left never looked back. Even as the Communist experiment failed in the Soviet Union, the American left was content to march slowly through our institutions, turning public schools, universities, television, music, comic books, and everything else into instruments of cultural destruction. Where were the conservatives? Sitting on a cruise ship lobbying for tax cuts. Where were the Christians? Whistling past the graveyard while their children were converted under their noses. I often hear conservative Christian friends talk about reclaiming our culture, as if a few Bible verses posted on Facebook can reverse a century of cultural decline. That ship sailed three generations ago. The time to fix this was when the left made their first assault upon our defenses, not when they have all but won and are just mopping up the few who remain. Imagine if we tried to fight Nazi Germany by sending our children to the Hitler Youth to act as missionaries for American culture. Absurd, right? Yet that is exactly what millions of Christian parents have done over the last three generations: They sent their children to be brainwashed in progressive prisons and while naively expecting that an hour or two of church every Sunday would counter the damage.

With regards to international diplomacy, the world is due for a major conflagration. War was once a regular occurrence in the affairs of nations – as Clausewitz said, war is politics by other means. In the first half of the 20^th century, hundreds of millions died due to war and the accompanying starvation and genocides.  The “small” wars we have engaged in since Vietnam have lulled us into a false sense of security about world peace. It was just over a century ago that World War I was fought over land, colonies, and diplomatic insults. Ironically, learned men had been writing during the first decade of the 20^th century that war was obsolete. They believed that the new global economy of the 1900s made war impossible, that nations were two intertwined to possibly go to battle. Sound familiar? Nuclear weapons have been a deterrent to war between great powers since the end of World War II, but the pressure cannot keep building forever. The current diplomatic situation looks a lot like it did before World War I, with an ascendant China in place of the Kaiser’s encircled Germany.

Chinese elites believe that this is their time. If the 1800s were the British century and the 1900s were the American century, then why should the next hundred years not be the Chinese century? China has an old and proud culture, and they were the jewel of world civilizations a thousand years ago. By the Industrial Era, however, they had been eclipsed by the west, culminating in a humiliating defeat at the hands of the British who fought to keep the opium trade going. The Chinese have long memories, and they still aspire to be the greatest civilization in the world. They have been working patiently toward that end since 1948, and their work has finally started bearing fruit. Today, China has a massive economy, and consider themselves at the forefront of technological development. They are building a navy that can project power throughout the region, and perhaps even challenge the mighty US Navy for dominance in the South China Sea. They know that time is on their side. Over the last half century, America has become weaker and more dependent upon nations such as China for supplies, while China itself has become stronger. They are propagandizing our children in our own schools using fronts like the Confucius Institute. While the coronavirus pandemic is generating support for decoupling from China, it might be too little, too late. What happens tomorrow if China decides to finally seize Taiwan? What happens if they decide to occupy disputed islands in their region? Does America stand up and say stop? Or do we back down rather than risk World War III? China can afford to play chicken here, much more than we can. China’s collectivist culture would not hesitate to sacrifice a hundred million men to win a war, while our culture would not have the stomach for such death and destruction.

We missed the off-ramp to stopping China thirty years ago, before they reached this point of cultural, economic, and military dominance. We should never have normalized trade relations with a country that is willing to kill millions of their own people on the road to progress. We should never have allowed them to use our universities to train their engineers and researchers. We should never have allowed them to wantonly steal our intellectual property, proprietary designs, and even nuclear secrets, as well as to spy on our elected officials. Now it could be too late. There might be no way to stop China from achieving the dominance they desire. Our best hope is to disengage as much as possible and return manufacturing to within our borders.

International diplomacy might be the least of our worries, however. Demographic change looks likely to end our nation soon anyway. Vdare.com recently published a chart showing the decline of the white population in New York City over the past century:

In 1910, it was 98% white. This was the New York City of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, of Jay Gatsby and Captain America, of King Kong and The Miracle on 34^th Street. Today, however, that number is down to 32%, and possibly lower, depending on how you count Jews. (Many Jewish people online identity as white when it suits them, only to draw a contrast when it does not.) I believe the world should have a variety of cultures and ethnicities. Yet this wholesale replacement of our people is not cultural diversity, rather it is cultural genocide. Cities and countries that were once filled with people of western European descent are being occupied by other races and cultures, while any word of criticism is called racist and is grounds for censorship and ostracism. If someone on the right points out how demographic change is altering American society, they are denounced as white supremacist Nazis. If someone on the left does it, as the ambitious Georgia politician Stacy Abrams does, it is considered a good thing, and inevitable.

Of the twenty-five largest cities in America, only seven are still majority-white in 2020, and zero of the top ten. Our great cities have become miniature earths, with varying proportions of ethnic groups from across the world. Globalists call this beautiful, as if our cities were merely snow globes full of different colors. Yet what does this diversity portend for the future of America? The descendants of African slaves who migrated to Detroit and Philadelphia after World War II have no reverence for the founding fathers; in fact, they most likely hate them as racist white slave owners. Same for the Hispanic population that is rapidly increasing in our southern states. As each of these different cultures gains more political power, they are going to use it to transform our country into something it was not. Once again, the globalist left will call that a good thing, saying that America has always been evil, racist, and white. (Note how they often use the word “white” as a pejorative.) Those of us who descend from America’s founding fathers are having our civilization conquered by force, but the worst part is how we are made to celebrate our own annihilation.

The seeds for this sad end were sowed many years ago, but even as late as 1965 we were still a Christian nation of mostly western European descent. Our leaders, many of whom traced their American ancestry back to Ellis Island rather than Valley Forge, told us that we must open our doors to the whole world lest we be accused of that dreaded word, racism. So we dutifully opened our doors, and now our country is permanently changed. Other nations have occupied our great cities, and the only rational ways to take them back are abhorrent to our own values.

Europe faces the same problem, with migrants from Africa and the Middle East pouring in every day. Turkey uses these migrant mobs as a weapon against Europe, restraining or unleashing them as it suits their purposes. The last few weeks have seen clashes on the Greek border as migrants try and force their way past fences and guards. It feels like these clashes could escalate at any time to all-out war. These migrants have been told by globalist organizations that Europe and America are theirs for the taking, and that they have the right to live here for free, and to take advantage of our generous welfare. Centuries ago, Muslim armies crossed into Europe with the belief that their god willed them to conquer the world. The only difference then was that Christendom was willing to defend itself. Today we simply open the gates and invite our conquerors into our homes. The resistance to this cultural genocide by the Greeks is a welcome sign, but again, possibly too little, too late. The time to stop this invasion was before it started, but our culture had long since lost confidence in itself and so saw no reason to stand in the gap and say stop.

Our civilization is driving toward the edge of a cliff at breakneck speed. The brakes no longer work. The last off-ramp was passed many miles ago. All we can do is hold on, or maybe try our luck and bail out the door before it is too late. The only thing that is for sure is that we have passed the point of no return. Our country faces a reckoning, and the forces of history have gathered at our gates to deliver it. There is no saving America as we know it now; we had our chance decades ago and blew it. Yet it is imperative we survive the coming crash so we can still be here to rebuild again.