America! What Happened?

By Doug Dickenson

Most of the people leading the United States of America graduated from the best colleges and universities, and you’d think they’d be capable of making wise decisions.

But most of our founding fathers didn’t attend Harvard, Yale or any other institution of higher learning; they made decisions using common sense—and perhaps a little help from God. Abraham Lincoln learned to read from the Bible.

That’s the kind of leadership we need today, but most politicians refuse to seek advice from the Lord or even the everyday Americans they’re supposed to represent. We can’t just blame them—we’re the ones who sit back and allow them to make bad decisions.

The first step to solving the problems we face before they overwhelm us begins with understanding them. Find out where we’ve gone wrong and how to do your part to get the country back on track in America! What Happened?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483414751

Book preview

DICKENSON

Copyright © 2014 Doug Dickenson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1476-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1475-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014912456

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 07/28/2014

Contents

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Chapter 1:   America—Another Land of Milk and Honey

Chapter 2:   The Roaring Twenties

Chapter 3:   The Great Depression

Chapter 4:   Lifestyles in the Forties and Fifties

Chapter 5:   The Start of Decline (Sixties)

Chapter 6:   America’s Values are Changing Fast

Chapter 7:   Is America Converting to Socialism?

Chapter 8:   Moral Decline

Chapter 9:   The Blind Leading the Blind

Chapter 10:   What’s going to Happen, America?

Chapter 11:   What Can We Do?

Acknowledgments

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SPECIAL THANKS TO…

My wonderful wife Joan of 57 years who willingly made the sacrifices required to permit me to write this book, as she knew I felt strongly led to voice my concerns for our country and how it is being run. I would be remiss in not recognizing our four daughters, Susan, Deborah, Donna and Joanie, who provided encouragement all along the way.

The major inspiration that led me to write was the team at Fox News. The people at Fox going back to Glen Beck’s passionate concern for America’s future followed by Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly that use their programs to make the American public aware of what is happening in the greatest country on earth. I hope that those that don’t keep up with the news or their source is the three major networks might read my book and decide they are not getting the information they need.

And last but most certainly not the least, I want to thank my father who went home to be with the Lord in 1981 for the values he helped instill in me; he was a fair and just man who led by example not just talk. I remember this statement he said to me; I don’t care what you do for a living as long as it’s honest; I know my father would be pleased with my book.

Introduction

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I was born in 1939 and lived through World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all the others that followed. I am a self-made man, and my observations and suggestions are not out of a book written for the classroom to indoctrinate the young. They are based on decades of experience.

I grew up in Flint, Michigan, in a blue-collar family. My grandfather started to work for Buick in 1914, and my father started with Fisher Body in 1928. I became one of a very few white-collar workers in my family. My family did not attend church, and religion was almost never discussed. My religious beliefs did not come from my upbringing but from observing the history of the world and observing the operation and practices of most of the mainline Christian churches.

Since my family was all blue-collar autoworkers, they were all registered Democrats. I started out voting for John F. Kennedy, but as the Democratic Party started to turn away from the ideas and beliefs of President Kennedy, I moved closer to the Republican Party, which also started to change. I now consider myself an Independent, and I can choose the person running for office based on his or her beliefs, regardless of party affiliation.

I started to work for IBM in 1965. It was the beginning of the computer age, and IBM was just starting to ship the 360 computer systems for business use. The personal computer had not been developed yet. It was exciting to be involved in the leading edge of the boom in technology, and our country was prospering.

It doesn’t matter if you are an Independent, Republican, or Democrat, you must know our country is in terrible shape. What’s worse, our politicians and most of the media do not let us know how bad it is. They certainly offer little in the way of solutions, and I can’t believe whatever solutions they do offer will fix anything.

If the politicians keep procrastinating, the problems will overwhelm us. We can’t just blame the politicians because we elect them, and we sit back and allow them to make bad decisions. We never get involved to reverse them until the damage is done. It is my hope that my book will help you to understand the problems we face. I share some ideas about what it will take to get us back on the right track. Keep in mind, we have waited so long that the solutions will not be easy, but if we continue to keep our heads buried in the sand, the solutions will be even worse.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty

Together again.

As a very young child, I learned rhymes such as Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Little Bo Peep, Little Jack Horner, Jack and Jill, Mary Had a Little Lamb, and many more. To a child, they were just cute little rhymes and nothing more, but in reality, many of them were political in nature. Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" referred to Mary I of England who was called Bloody Mary for persecuting and murdering Protestants. Jack and Jill were about King Louis XVI—who was beheaded—and Queen Marie Antoinette who came tumbling after.

Humpty Dumpty was a cannon mounted on top of Saint Mary-at-the-Wall Church in Colchester, England. During a siege of the church during the English Civil War in 1648, the tower was hit, and the cannon Humpty Dumpty fell to the ground. The king’s men on horses tried to retrieve the cannon to no avail.

Humpty Dumpty appeared in a Mother Goose storybook in 1902 as a riddle with the answer being an egg. It’s obvious we can make Humpty Dumpty anything we want it to represent. To me, it represents a fall that the results are difficult if not impossible to fix.

I see Humpty Dumpty as America! We have been sitting high up on the wall since God blessed us with a land of milk and honey for the gentiles. We have had our ups and downs over the years, just as the Jews did in the land of Canaan, but finally God grew weary of their sin and rebellion. It’s true that God loves us (us being the gentiles), but it’s also true that his anger can easily match his love.

I believe the people in the United States, just like the Jews (the chosen people), have become so sinful and rebellious that we are about to reach a time with God where he removes his helping hand. Our fate will be the same as the Jews—or even worse. I’m not picking on the Jews. I’m just using their plight as described in the Old Testament to compare to ours to show that when all is said and done, there aren’t really any basic differences between peoples.

Are we about to fall off our perches and break apart just like Humpty Dumpty in the children’s nursery rhyme? Remember all the king’s horses and all the king’s men? But we don’t have a king. Perhaps all the president’s senators and all the president’s congressmen couldn’t put America together again. Did I forget his advisors?

God gave the Jews a land of milk and honey because they were the chosen people of the time. They weren’t perfect—no one is—but compared to the other people in the world at that time, they were the best. Those of us who are familiar with the Old Testament know they fell away from God, and he removed his hand from the twelve tribes of Israel. Life deteriorated, and their enemies defeated them. The Israelites would repent, and God would restore them to grace and power. Every time they turned their backs on God—who had blessed their lives greatly—their punishments would get worse. God decided (to what I believe is mankind’s last chance) to give his son Jesus as a sacrifice so that all who believe in him, repent of their sins, and follow him would be indwelled with the Holy Spirit and capable of living a righteous life. He left us without excuse!

Israel, for the most part, rejected Jesus as the Messiah mentioned in the Old Testament in spite of his teachings and the many miracles he performed. Since the Romans occupied their land, they may have convinced themselves that the Messiah would free them and restore Israel to the power and influence it once had enjoyed. About thirty-five years after the Crucifixion, the Jews rose up against the Romans and were easily defeated. The Romans burned their temple to the ground. About seventy years later, they again attempted to defeat the Romans, and they were banned from Jerusalem and from worshiping God.

Over the centuries, the Jews were driven out of many countries in Europe. They were blamed for every disaster from the plague to worldwide depression, which was the diaspora of the once-great nation. For almost 1,800 years, the Jews did not have a country. Following WWII, when it was reported that several million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust, the Allies decided to give the Jews a homeland, which is where they reside today. The Jews have really never known peace since the Crucifixion. To this day, they are surrounded by nations that hate them and would like to destroy them completely.

CHAPTER 1

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America—Another Land of Milk and Honey

America enters the scene in a land that I believe is a land of milk and honey provided by God for the Christians. Oh, if you’re not a Christian, don’t worry—you still get to reap the benefits. It’s not that there weren’t Christians in Europe, but the practice of Christianity was not what it should be. Many of our early immigrants were escaping religious persecution in Europe. This was the opportunity to establish a Judeo-Christian country that provided religious freedom. We were the example to the world in the way we lived our lives. We were the most respected, feared, admired, and successful country on earth.

Our ancestors came to a new world that was wild and unsettled. Many died from disease and starvation, but in spite of the hardships, a nation started to form. This nation would be different from any nation on earth.

We take for granted where we are today—how far we have come in such a relatively short time—when you consider that European countries had existed for many centuries when we were just beginning.

Europe was already well established when we decided to break away from European control and influence and start over, while rejecting many of their ways. The United States was just getting started, but it was not long before we passed them by. Some would consider this bragging, but it’s just a fact that is obvious to the whole world.

President Theodore Roosevelt said, The world will never love us. They may respect us, they might one day fear us, but they will never love us, for we have too much audacity. Webster’s New World College Dictionary describes audacity as brazen, insolent. I believe we are what Roosevelt described, and that’s part of why we were so driven. Success quickly followed.

I have always believed the two main reasons America became such a unique and unusual country is because the immigrants who came to such an undeveloped land and left everything they knew—country, family, and friends—had to be quite unique. I do not compare these to the illegal immigrants crossing our borders because they are coming to an established country to make more money.

The second reason for our success is we were able to keep the best ideas and traditions of the various nations while rejecting their worst ones. This was only possible because we were not a country of one nationality—but a melting pot of the world. The result was a society different from the rest of the world.

Perhaps the best example of this difference between America and most of the established countries was our ultimate approach to religious freedom. Most countries had one or two main religions, and in some cases, a person would be persecuted if he or she failed to endorse the state religion.

It is human nature to take for granted what we have and how we got there. When you look at our accomplishments in just 234 years, it’s really quite amazing! We are leaders in medicine, inventions, technology, and space travel, just to name a few. No other nation on earth has ever reached the level of achievement of America, and it was all accomplished by a melting pot of people from every country in the world.

Because of how our forefathers founded our country—combined with the kind of people who immigrated here looking for a better life—we enjoy an exceptional standard of living. Not only do we have one of the largest per capita incomes but our cost of living is much lower than Europe’s.

One of the main reasons Europe has such a high cost of living is taxes. Most European countries operate under socialism, which has the goal of giving everyone the same standard of living. This would be accomplished by income redistribution or taking from those who have and giving to those who do not. Financial equality has never actually been accomplished in any country. I see the entire middle class living at a level below America’s lower class. The privileged upper class still exists, and the government makes most decisions instead of the people and free enterprise.

A good example of the government making decisions to control life is in France. They buy gasoline at the same price as in the United States, but the government doesn’t want people to drive. They place a tax that accounts for about 57 percent of the cost of gas. ¹ In our country, the total tax—both federal and state—averages just 11 percent.

Finland has a 20 percent value-added tax, which means if they buy a $40,000 auto, they pay $8,000 in taxes. ². I know a couple who flies to the United States, buys the same car, and ships it home. They save thousands—and that’s exactly what they do.

Are you aware that a value-added tax is one of the options being considered by the administration to help pay off the debt? A value-added tax on top of federal income tax and state income tax and sales tax and property tax and gasoline tax and luxury tax and on and on go the ways government has to take your money and lower your standard of living.

Do you remember reading about how our forefathers threw the tea in Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation?

Socialist societies have high taxation with representation perhaps because they’re looking for the government to take care of them instead of taking care of themselves—and they are