Implosion (39 page)

[63]
Joseph S. Nye, “The Misleading Metaphor of Decline,”
Wall Street Journal
, February 14, 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704358704576118673650278558.html
.

[64]
Charles Wolf Jr., “The Facts about American ‘Decline,’”
Wall Street Journal
, April 13, 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576251292725228886.html
.

[65]
Walter Russell Mead, “The Future Still Belongs to America,”
Wall Street Journal
, July 2, 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304450604576419700203110180.html
.

[66]
See Thomas Jefferson et al., Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, transcription of the original document at the National Archives,
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
.

[67]
Washington Irving,
George Washington: A Biography
(New York: Doubleday, 1976; abridgement of original book published in five volumes from 1856 to 1859), p. 202.

[68]
Ibid., p. 202.

[69]
Ibid., p. 203.

[70]
Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), pp. 143–144.

[71]
Ibid., p. 307.

[72]
Ibid., p. 156.

[73]
Ibid., p. 374.

[74]
Ibid., p. 347.

[75]
Ibid., p. 481.

[76]
Ibid., p. 673.

[77]
“Gettysburg,” CWSAC Battle Summaries, Heritage Preservation Services of the National Park Service,
http://www.nps.gov/hps/abpp/battles/pa002.htm
.

[78]
See Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address,” November 19, 1863,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/gettyb.asp
.

[79]
Goodwin, p. 346.

[80]
Amity Shlaes,
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), p. 15.

[81]
Ibid., p. xiii (timeline).

[82]
Ibid., p. xiv (timeline).

[83]
See “Timeline: A Selected Wall Street Chronology,” “The Crash of 1929,”
American Experience
, PBS,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/crash/2/
; David Goldman, “Great Depression vs. ‘Great Recession,’” CNN Money,
http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/recession_depression/
.

[84]
Goldman.

[85]
Shlaes, p. 144.

[86]
“The suicide rate in the United States rises when the economy slumps, and falls when economic times improve. And this has been the case at least since the Great Depression, which started with the stock market crash of 1929, the CDC says in a new study. ‘Knowing suicides increased during economic recessions and fell during expansions underscores the need for additional suicide prevention measures when the economy weakens,’ James Mercy, PhD, of the CDC’s Injury Center’s Division of Violence Prevention, says in a news release. ‘It is an important finding for policy makers and those working to prevent suicide.’ . . . The largest increase in the overall suicide rate occurred in the Great Depression of 1929–1933, surging from 18 per 100,000 people in 1928 to 22.1 per 100,000, an all-time high, in 1932, the last full year of the Great Depression. That four-year period witnessed a record increase of 22.8 percent compared to any other four-year period in U.S. history. The suicide rate fell to its lowest point in the year 2000.” Bill Hendrick, “Suicides Go Up When Economy Goes Down,” WebMD, April 14, 2011,
http://www.webmd.com/depression/news/20110414/suicides-go-up-when-economy-goes-down
.

[87]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “First Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1933,
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres49.html
.

[88]
Shlaes, p. 392.

[89]
See online historical charts for the Dow, including Yahoo! Finance,
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=%5EDJI&t=my&l=on&z=l&q=l&p=&a=&c=
and StockCharts.com,
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/historical/djia1900.html
.

[90]
William Grimes, “Christopher Lasch Is Dead at 61; Wrote about America’s Malaise,”
New York Times
, February 15, 1994,
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/15/obituaries/christopher-lasch-is-dead-at-61-wrote-about-america-s-malaise.html
.

[91]
Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), p. xiii.

[92]
Ibid., pp. 3–4.

[93]
Kevin Mattson,
“What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?”: Jimmy Carter, America’s “Malaise,” and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country
(New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009); Steven Hayward,
The Real Jimmy Carter
(Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004); and Jonathan V. Last, “Malaise Forever: A Review of
The Real Jimmy Carter
,”
Claremont Review of Books
, Spring 2005,
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.977/article_detail.asp
.

[94]
Jimmy Carter, “Crisis of Confidence,” nationally televised address, July 15, 1979, transcript at “Primary Resources,”
American Experience
, PBS, 2002,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/
.

[95]
Jimmy Carter, “Report to the American People on Energy,” nationally televised address, February 2, 1977, transcript at Miller Center, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3396
.

[96]
Carlos Lozada, review of Kevin Mattson,
“What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?”
Washington Post
, July 10, 2009,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/10/AR2009071002343.html
.

[97]
Ronald Reagan,
An American Life: The Autobiography
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 227.

[98]
Dinesh D’Souza,
Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader
(New York: Free Press, 1997), p. 89.

[99]
See Table 5.24, “Retail Motor Gasoline and On-Highway Diesel Fuel Prices, 1949-2009,” U.S. Energy Information Agency,
http://www.eia.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0524.html
.

[100]
See Jad Mouawad, “Oil Prices Pass Record Set in ’80s, but Then Recede,”
New York Times
, March 3, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/business/worldbusiness/03cnd-oil.html/
.

[101]
Robert D. Hershey Jr., “How the Oil Glut Is Changing Business,”
New York Times
, June 21, 1981,
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/21/business/how-the-oil-glut-is-changing-business.html
.

[102]
“Ronald Reagan TV Ad: ‘It’s morning in America again,’” YouTube video, posted by “avmorgado,” November 12, 2006,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY
; text of the ad available at
Wikipedia
, s.v. “Morning in America,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_in_America
. (Sites last accessed
January 12, 2012
.)

[103]
Reagan,
An American Life
, p. 317.

[104]
D’Souza, p. 110.

[105]
Ibid.

[106]
Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Proposed Natural Gas Deregulation Legislation,” February 26, 1983; see transcript at The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=40982#ixzz1VExHr0rg
.

[107]
For more on this important topic, I would recommend an excellent resource: John F. Walvoord,
Every Prophecy of the Bible
(David C. Cook, 1990, 1999, 2011). Walvoord was one of the most respected scholars of prophecy in the twentieth century. Before his passing in 2002, Walvoord served on the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) for half a century. He was the president of DTS from 1952 to 1986, and he later served as chancellor.

[108]
Survey for Joel C. Rosenberg, “American Attitudes toward Bible Prophecy,” National Omnibus Survey, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates on February 13, 2006, of 1,000 likely voters. Margin of error +/- 3 percent. For detailed survey results, see Joel C. Rosenberg,
Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future
(Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2006), Appendix 2, pp. 303–305.

[109]
See “WWI Casualties and Death Tables,” resource for
The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
, PBS,
http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html
.

[110]
The 46-million figure comes from British historian Martin Gilbert, though he himself acknowledges the number could be significantly higher. See Martin Gilbert,
The Second World War: A Complete History
(New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1989), p. 746. American historian Gerhard L. Weinberg believes the number of total deaths worldwide was at least 60 million. See Gerhard L. Weinberg,
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 894.

[111]
See “Historic World Earthquakes,” U.S. Geological Survey, accessed September 2, 2011,
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/historical_mag_big.php
.

[112]
See “Earthquakes with 50,000 or More Deaths,” U.S. Geological Survey, accessed September 2, 2011,
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/most_destructive.php
.

[113]
See “Historic World Earthquakes,” U.S. Geological Survey.

[114]
The deadliest quake in all of recorded human history occurred in AD 1556 in China. See “Earthquakes with 50,000 or More Deaths,” U.S. Geological Survey.

[115]
See “Earthquakes with 50,000 or More Deaths,” U.S. Geological Survey.

[116]
Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy,
The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House
(New York: Center Street/Hachette Book Group USA, 2007), p. vii.

[117]
The
JESUS
Film Project, “History,” accessed on September 1, 2011,
http://www.jesusfilm.org/aboutus/history
.

[118]
See Lawrence O’Donnell,
The Last Word
, video segment discussing Glenn Beck and the End Times, March 17, 2011,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42141858#42141858
and Jonathon M. Seidl, “Wacky MSNBC Segment: Lawrence O’Donnell Begs for Viewers While Blasting Beck & Bible,” The Blaze website, March 18, 2011,
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/wacky-msnbc-segment-lawrence-odonnell-begs-for-viewers-while-blasting-beck-god/
.

[119]
Gershom Gorenberg,
The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount
(New York: The Free Press, 2000, updated by Oxford University Press in 2002), pp. 1–4, 223.

[120]
Bill Moyers, On Receiving Harvard Medical School’s Global Environmental Citizen Award,” speech, Harvard University Center for Health and the Global Environment, New York City, December 1, 2004,
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1206-10.htm
.

[121]
Kevin Phillips,
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century
(New York: Viking Books, 2006), pp. vii, 252.

[122]
Nicholas Guyatt,
Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 63.

[123]
Ibid., pp. 18, 91–92.

[124]
Clark Clifford (with Richard Holbrooke),
Counsel to the President: A Memoir
(New York: Random House, 1991), p. 3.

[125]
Ibid., p. 3.

[126]
Ibid., p. 4.

[127]
Ibid.

[128]
Ibid., p. 5.

[129]
Ibid., p. 10.

[130]
Ibid., pp. 10–14.

[131]
Ibid., p. 14.

[132]
For example, in his 1997 book,
Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers), Michael T. Benson of the University of Utah wrote, “The role President Truman may or may not have played in lining up votes supporting partition is still a matter of considerable controversy. Even vocal critics of Truman’s alleged ‘arm-twisting’ concede that if the president
did
give the order to step up lobbying efforts days before the U.N. vote, no records of such an injunction can be found anywhere” (p. 105).

[133]
David McCullough,
Truman
(New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 601–602.

[134]
McCullough wrote, “It was in late 1947, on Saturday, November 29, over the Thanksgiving weekend, that the United Nations, at the end of a dramatic two-and-a-half-hour session, voted for partition by a narrow margin, the United States taking a lead part behind the scenes to see the measure through. . . . Eddie Jacobson recorded in telegraphic style his own chronicle of the unfolding drama: ‘Nov. 6th—Wash.—Pres. still going all out for Palestine. Nov. 17th—Again to White House. . . . Wed., 26—Received call from White House—everything O.K. Nov. 27—Thanksgiving. Sent two-page wire to Truman. Friday, received call from his secretary . . . not to worry. Nov. 29th—Mission accomplished.’ Truman, Jacobson noted, had told him that ‘he [Truman] and he alone was responsible for swinging the votes of several delegations’” (pp. 601–602).