Quickie post before I go--2/6/14

My schedule is rather tight.  Each morning, I get to this point where I'd like to post something, but it has to be fast.  Here's the latest on this date:

Ann Barnhardt is an interesting read.  Lest I be mistaken here, she is now claiming that times are bad because people are bad.  If people became good, times would be better.

The trouble with that is why are people bad now, but good at some time in the past?  What makes people good or bad?

She probably has an answer for that.  The answer isn't explicitly in that post.  Besides, nobody is going to believe that anyway.  Frankly, the historical facts don't bear it out.

I don't know what makes things good or bad at any particular moment.  Go ask a lot of people, and you may get differing answers on how good things are today.  Some may say that things have never been better.  Others may say just exactly the opposite.

I could segue into a discussion about Barnhardt's apparent inspiration.  But a quickie post doesn't allow for that, and besides, I'd need to do a lot more research.  For a quickie post, I'd say this:  she appears to agree with Augustine of Hippo, who lived in the last years of the Roman Empire in the west.  People in that time blamed the Christians for the sack of Rome, but Augustine had a different reply.  It might have been a little in the way that Barnhardt comes across with.  People in that time were bad, therefore, and that is why Rome was sacked.  The fate of America is going to be similar because people are bad, as the Romans were bad according to Augustine.

My view is in at least partial agreement with the pagans at that time.  There weren't enough Romans who gave a damn about Rome and so nobody did anything to stop the collapse.  The Christians at that time were so focused on their other worldly beliefs that they didn't much care about the survival of the empire either.  So, I think they were at least partly to blame for what happened.  In addition, I'd say that this also appears to be attitude of Americans these days.  Not enough people care about what is going on to make things better.  It probably isn't today's Christians fault however, but something similar is going on as in Roman times.  People are too wrapped up in themselves, in my opinion.  You need to have a public spirit in evidence, or the public existence as a society will collapse.