The Cocky Country Conundrum

By Paul B. Skousen

Brother Paul loves to read history lessons about stupidity. Looking at today’s Europe or America, or yesteryear’s Rome or Greece, or ancient Israel, just about any civilization or empire for which we have enough information, they all go through, more or less, eight steps of decay and self-destruction. I like to call it the Cocky Country Conundrum.

To begin, when prosperity blesses a society the people often become forgetful and allow personal corruption to go unchecked. They’re too rich or too smart for “the old way.” They become prideful and self-assured in their own paths, ignoring the lessons of history. Like clockwork, this always culminates in a rejection of God and all things that follow including social norms and “cohesives” that otherwise help maintain a stable, prosperous society.

Here’s how it works, as suggested by some really smart guys* back during World War II:

First—ARROGANCE: A society in decline always abandons God, trivializes religion, and normalizes aberrant behavior and practices. Their cultural catchphrase is “Look at me!”

Second—OPPRESSION: the wealthy begin to secure and strengthen their place by extorting and oppressing the poor.

Third—CLASS WARFARE: the poor retaliate against the rich and take over through forceful means (for example, the French revolution), peaceful means (electing a Marxist as U.S. President), or cultural means (the Islamization of Europe).

Fourth—SOCIALISM: the new power calls for sharing the wealth, declaring it belongs to all.

Fifth—ENTITLEMENTS: next comes the belief that society owes every man a living whether he works or not.

Sixth—TAXATION: then comes the enormous expense of keeping a great body of idlers fed, housed and entertained (remember the bread and circuses of ancient Rome?).

Seventh—DESPERATION: when community revenues fail to support the entitlements, as they always have failed to do and always will fail to do, neighbors begin to take from one another.

Eighth—COLLAPSE: Finally when the better-prepared neighbor resists theft of his goods, and resist he must or starve with his family—then death to the one or the other comes as struggles ensue, fair exchange ends, greedy free-for-all begins, and all elements of orderly society come crashing down.

Ninth—HUMBLE RESURGENCE: from the ashes of self-destruction and infighting, a more humble and religiously circumspect people always emerge to start over again. Nearly always they return to basic principle as proscribed by God—unless in their weakness the people have been overrun and conquered into perpetual submission by some other group. As history demonstrates, such conquering hordes are at the time of their tyrannical expansion already themselves in the throes of the Cocky Country Conundrum cycle.

The United States is the world’s last hope for freedom, for breaking this cycle. The power is in our hands to make that happen first in our own lives, second in our homes, third in our communities, and fourth in our local and state governments. After that, the federal government becomes chained down again by a resurgence of adherence to the Constitution.

Then will prosperity resume as it was prior to the interruption instigated by the Socialists and the Progressives beginning in the early 1900s. It’s a Cocky Country Conundrum we’ve got to break or we’re finished. We’ve been raised with the idea there are free lunches to be had—but American isn’t one of them.

Brother Paul has every confidence we’re going to make it through—if we are willing to start today. Go read The Five Thousand Year Leap . . . and then you’ll know exactly what to do next.

*[This is Brother Paul’s expansion of an idea first put forward by Heber J. Grant, J. Reuben Clark, David O. McKay in "Messages," 1945]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 2:30 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.