To fix it is very simple: audit the Fed.

My view is the civil society is the basis for modern civilization as opposed to a few people in a primitive village which can be considered a civilization in some respects.

America and the Western world is de-civilzing in my opinion and for multiple reasons. As you said it fundamentally falls to the individual. Since we have told our overlords to manage the ‘business’ of America we have lost touch with what it means to be a civilized community or country. Whatever traditional Western culture remains is being quickly diluted by the invasion of 3rd world non-civilized cultures of corruption, crime, dictators and 7th century tribal religion.

Maybe I’m a pessimist, but from observing the course of history I don’t see how this gets fixed short of a revolution.

What you leave out is the inimical and ennervating effect of bureaucracy on virtually everything. Once a “permission culture” is put in place, it’s damn hard to throw off. Look at Germany, for examples down the years. Even Kaiser Wilhelm complained about it…

My take on the whole thing is that our approach to civilization itself is fundamentally flawed. Our conceptual model is such that we all assume and think that civilization is something imposed from above, and from outside the individual.

The reality is that such an entity is ephemeral and entirely imaginary. True civilization resides not in the institutions or the organizations which express it, but from within the individual. We focus on the externals, and ignore the internal conditions that those externalities of civilization actually arise from. You can’t create a worthy “artifact of civilization” at the point of a gun. Such things arise because of willing cooperation by individuals acting in their own self-interest and/or altruistic impulses.

Such artifacts of civilization would be the ad-hoc little groups of people you find at every accident or disaster site, each individual willingly subordinating their interests for the greater good. You couldn’t get the same results by rounding those people up at gunpoint, and forcing them to fill sandbags–You might solve the problem, somewhat, but the moment you turn your back, they’re going to scatter and actively work against you and your interests, however benign and well-meaning they might have been.

True civilization does not live in the institutions; it lives in the hearts of its members. Kill civilization there, and no institution can keep it alive.

It is a notable that an incumbent cannot be unseated and that men and women go to Washington as run-of-the mill middle class lawyers with modest assets and leave Washington as multi-millionaires. The Clinton’s are the best modern example.

We are not quite as corrupt as Mexico, and the cartels do not openly run large swathes of our territory (Chicago and LA being exceptions), but we are getting there.