When you are the guest of a foreign country, it is generally considered bad manners to criticize it.

I’ve been an ex-pat resident of the U.S. for going on sixteen years. I love my home country which is a most loyal ally of America, but I’ve also come to love America, and have a particularly affinity with the people of Oklahoma, our state of residence for our tenure in the U.S.

The fact that my daughter married a real Okie, who was born in Muskogee, adds a personal touch to our attachment to this most conservative of states of the Union.

Mind you, I don’t like the climate in OK—freezing in winter, steaming hot in summer, with but little relief in spring and autumn. Then there are the tornadoes …

Added to all that this coastal boy from Aussie greatly misses the sound of the surf and the feel of golden sand between the toes.

Having said that, it must also be said that I live in one of the friendliest states of the Union, in, culturally, one of its most pleasant of cities, Edmond.

And there’s something else.

There’s still a real feeling of national pride here where Old Glory is respected for the heritage it signifies as is, generally, the nation’s constitution. It’s really akin to the depiction of the Oklahoman as expressed in the Merle Haggard song. Still, even dwelling here in red state Oklahoma, one cannot avoid observing that something has gone wrong, terribly wrong, with this once great country during the last decade and a half.

So I am moved, for what it’s worth, to speak out on what I have observed take place in this once great Superpower during my time of residence here.

Bill Clinton had been elected to a second term as president of the United States just a month before I relocated to America with my wife following a five-year tenure in Britain. Days later Madeleine Albright was appointed as America’s first female secretary of state. I did not consider either as worthy appointments to their respective offices for this great superpower, which America still was, at the time.

As time would reveal, of all post-war governments, it was the Clinton administration that brought to bear, on both domestic and international politics, some of the worst aspects of post-war moral relativism. That administration was overpopulated with children of the ’60s and ’70s who had their minds “closed” to reality (in the term used by Prof. Allan Bloom in his masterful work The Closing of the American Mind) via the brainwashing received from liberal-socialist professors at their universities and colleges during those two socially disruptive decades.

Within the U.S., in particular during the Clinton administration, moral sickness in the White House skewed the perspective of the governing elite away from the old moral absolutes and tore at the fabric of true democracy that had underpinned America in its greatest era of growth and development. The result was a warping of the national perception of just what it is that American democracy was supposed to stand for.

As Prof. Wesley McDonald of Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, commented, “The American political culture has changed so dramatically during the Clinton era that it is now reasonable to conclude that the social, moral and cultural basis necessary for the prevalence of genuinely conservative ideas no longer exists” (Salisbury Review, Winter 2000). That was over 12 years ago, and the situation certainly has not improved since.

There simply cannot be a genuine democracy without a strong representation of the genuine, timeless values and virtues upon which it was founded. Unless those fundamental values and virtues are given a strong voice of support, the moral relativism of the left will overwhelm society and work to destroy its democratic foundations.

As America has dumbed down its culture—its taste in all things from food to dress, from music to sitcoms—the quality of life and the fruits thereof are painting a very different picture of the results of democracy to the rest of the world from that which the Founding Fathers envisioned. Family breakdown, a huge drug subculture, rampant sexual perversion, violent crime, the failing family structure—all these bitter fruits now being reaped by an Anglo-American society in decline are being perceived by undemocratic, religiously zealous, reactionary regimes as dramatic proof of the failure of the great Western dream.

After visiting the autocratically ruled state of Turkmenistan, British journalist Katie Grant observed that “We extol democracy, which allows societies to operate on the level of the lowest common denominator, as the best way to function. But when you compare our filthy streets and yob culture with the dignity of the Turkmen, democracy seems a shoddy affair. We haven’t risen to Bach; we have sunk to Marilyn Manson. … When we export democracy, we export Big Brother. When we insist on the supremacy of individual rights, we export family breakdown and the culture of whinge and litigation” (Spectator, June 29, 2002).

Those tendencies have been terribly exacerbated under America’s current administration. The acceleration of the “big brother” approach to government that has occurred over the past four and a half years has been staggering. The loss of the traditional freedoms enjoyed by Americans from the time the Founding Fathers put their signatures to the Constitution of the United States has, over less than half a decade, been breathtaking. The sense of impending national catastrophe is overwhelming to any independent observer inside America.

Yet the answer to halting this spreading quagmire of deeply entrenched fraud, corruption, sleight of hand and immoral purpose that emanates from the most senior levels of government in Washington is not a return to a truly democratic government. To completely route this perversion of government will take an administration of far greater purity in its motives of ruling the masses for the good of all: in fact, a government that is literally out of this world—believe it or not, the Government of your Maker!

Herbert Armstrong explained the root cause of our misgovernment in his booklet titled A World Held Captive. In that booklet he stated, “You live in a world of awesome progress, but paradoxically, of appalling evils. Why? It’s a world held captive, deceived into loving its captivity. … [M]ost astonishing of all is the actual fact of the colossal kidnapping of all time—in which the captive for 6,000 years has willed to pursue the life and evil philosophy of the archkidnapper—Satan the devil. The willing victim in this case is the world that inhabits this planet Earth! Yet this world has been so completely deceived that it cannot realize what actually has happened to it.”

The Trumpet’s editor in chief, Gerald Flurry, has outlined the current effect of that Satanic captivity on the American nation in his booklet America Under Attack. In that masterful expose of just what has happened to America over the past half decade, he states: “Many people are deeply concerned about the direction of America today. Many can see that the nation is on the wrong course and is rapidly losing its moral character and its strength. … [W]e have seen a rapid breakdown of law and an increasing amount of poison spreading through America’s political system.”

Identifying the root cause of the nation’s demise, just as Herbert Armstrong did, Gerald Flurry declares, “Satan is bringing these nations down. Through all the destruction, he is using individuals that he can to destroy law and government, so everything comes unglued and falls apart. That is what this is all about.”

The end result?

As Mr. Flurry states in the aforementioned booklet, “I’m watching as this government takes one step after another that is weakening this country and hastening the fulfillment of some of the most terrifying prophecies in the Bible! And I know that the devil, who is a liar and who hates law, is behind that.” That means that Satan, who is a spirit and thus a level above that of the human, can only be dealt effectively at the spiritual level.

Yet with the vision of Bible prophecy, we may look beyond the disheartening events of the day as we witness the rapid collapse of effective government within Anglo-Saxon society, to a time of great hope for the future, when this deceitful spirit will be finally dealt with.

As Gerald Flurry states in the conclusion to America Under Attack: “The events we see around us are deeply sobering. But they should also fill us with hope—and anticipation of the great event they lead to: the Second Coming of Christ to this Earth!

“Once Christ banishes the devil and takes his rightful place on the throne over the Earth, we will have joy and happiness and peace for the rest of eternity!

“Thank God for that!”

Only then will not only government in America, but the totality of government worldwide be fixed forever!

Read our booklets America Under Attack and The Epistles of Peter: A Living Hope for a real prophetic perspective on the broken government in America and the guaranteed solution to that problem.