I believe we are, originallyjustme. One wise man said that America is great for it is good, and it will cease to be great when it ceases to be good. Though there are plenty of good people in America, our nation as a whole is in a moral quicksand.

Nope. Look at the late 70s and early 80 when America was pretty shitty. Then the 90s came and we rocked again. We'll be back.

You need to look past headlines and news features into the deeper fundamentals. For example: education. It's true that many public schools seem to have lost focus on "education" and get involved with all kinds of social issues, basic discipline, 'self-esteem' and other non-core distractions. However, the US is still the biggest draw in the world for post-secondary education -- even though our colleges have their own set of problems. Corruption: Until you've done business in other countries, you have no idea what real corruption looks like. The fact that small things become big stories in the US is evidence, in fact, that there isn't a vast problem. In the rest of the world, there are places where nearly everyone in a uniform is uniformly corrupt, and bribes and mordita ("the bite") are an accepted "alternate form of taxation". Yeah, a lot of the news looks bad and getting worse, and Congress still has its collective head up its collective ass, but one way to look at these issues is: Any problem that you can resolve by throwing more money at isn't an unresolvable problem, is it? Which is not to say that we can do nothing and still maintain our quality of life; we should definitely make changes in our government (have less of it) and our economy (free it up) and each of us improve our own education and awareness and productivity. But to call this "the last days" is way too hyperbolic.

Only time will tell. If we are living in the last days, it won't happen without our permission as the American people. WE are the ones who choose our "leaders" and I use that term loosley. We decide either by not standing for good or for being part of the "bad." We ALL need to do something for our country besides just pay taxes, I believe. Just my opinion. Get involved in your local government is a start.