Americans fear that the nation is becoming a second-rate power in the world. They may not have recognized and articulated this fear, but they are acting on it. America faces the rise of other economic realms that she may not be able to dominate. Japan became an industrial and financial powerhouse that supplies many of our consumer products and we have a significant trade deficit with them. The rest of Asia is becoming very economically powerful and with its larger population could eclipse both Europe and the USA. And slowly as it is coming together, the European Common Market countries also pose a threat to American financial and political dominance. With the end of the cold war the threat of a Soviet sphere of influence collapsed. Russia will not be a financial threat for some time to come, although it has enormous resources and the potential to become an economic powerhouse. America seemed to come out on top, but the national pre-eminence is being eroded as we are fighting in a world market with other nearly equal players for the first time. There is no longer a monolithic enemy out there against which to focus our wills and offer alternative leadership to the world. This has been a great shock to the American psyche. This shock manifests in the growing turn to conservative politics and some kinds of isolationism, an unwillingness to commit to needs on the world stage. Thus we lose even more prominence as a moral world leader. We are running scared and assisting our decline.

It's not easy always being first, but we Americans had grown used to it because we had been there for such a long time. It seemed like our manifest destiny, our rightful heritage. We Americans love a winner, love being on top. But nothing lasts forever. We can't stand losing gracefully. Now the dollar is falling in world markets, another cruel blow.

The rise of the American right wing has been assisted by the Cold War's end. Now that there is no large external enemy to focus their attention and policy, they turn inward to internal social issues and spin off rabid factions. They must have an enemy, and they have found it in misunderstood minorities, such as gays and others leading alternative lifestyles and in failing liberal social policies.

A nation in decline must have someone to blame, whether it is internal or external. We won the Cold War, so we can't blame anyone outside our borders. There must be a reason. Liberals and their policies became the first scapegoat. Those policies weren't working well and the liberal position had grown tired and weak. It had run out of good, new ideas. The right now had their chance.

But America's ills can't entirely be blamed on the New World Order or on exclusively liberal policies. Technological innovations, as well as many bad decisions, both conservative and liberal, have allowed the wealth of America to be concentrated into fewer hands without the responsibility and duty that should go with it. And with multinational corporations dominating the world marketplace the money doesn't concentrate here at home, as it once did. Thus we have an economic crisis even with a growing economy because we have not adjusted to that new world order. There are growing numbers of the homeless, jobs are less secure, more people are earning less than ever before, more are falling into poverty. Everyone is frightened of losing economic status and we are less willing to help the unfortunate because we feel we cannot afford it, personally and as a nation. We are already resigned that our children will not have the economic advantages the baby-boomers had. In such lean economic times we cannot be socially adventurous, we clamp down on ourselves and society and try to create a false respectability that forces others to tow the line. Traditional values reign. But traditional values are a large part of our problem. The rest of the world is forgoing traditional values for a super capitalism and a better economic life. Nowhere else in the world, except perhaps in radically conservative moslem countries, are the ills that the right wing promotes as our greatest problems seen as causing economic and social decline.

As we have become afraid of losing our prominence in the world and our economic status we have become less caring for our own people, we allow hate-mongers to use their divisive rhetoric to create us vs. them political tactics against marginal groups and even among the mainstream. It creates more and more classes, more haves and have-nots, more political elites and more political pariahs. Fear rules, crime proliferates. We are losing our ability to offer trust and good will toward others. It leads to violence and terrorism. We cannot agree to civilly disagree anymore. This breakdown in our social order could lead to harmful draconian laws or a right wing dictatorship which would eventually burn itself out, as all such political entities must, but at a price of perhaps millions of lives. DeTocqueville warned us in the last century that democracy must deteriorate into tyranny. Will we prove him our national prophet?