Crushing the Collective

The American way—independence, entrepreneurialism, liberty—has been under assault for decades. The cultural foundations of the United States and its institutions are devolving along the line of some futuristic apocalyptic novel and producing social, moral, and economic dry rot that can lead only to chaos and ruin.Attacks on individuality, freedom and personal responsibility for most of the last century have resulted, as Alexis de Tocqueville once predicted, in a gradual degradation of the people and the descent into slavery of once-free people.Crushing the Collective illuminates the very real dangers of the socialistic mind-set that is currently threatening Americans' freedoms and the very existence of our great nation. As Benjamin Franklin said, "When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." Therefore, we must know the destructive history of nations drawn into the collectivist deceit, or we will be doomed to follow their same paths.In Crushing the Collective author Charles Sasser explores the various collectivization philosophies, processes, and movements that have destroyed individual freedom in their drive toward the collective utopian state. In collectivist nations like Cuba, Russia, China, and North Korea the dependence came by tyrannical force. Even the path of "soft socialism" that progresses stealthily toward greater and greater government control is inevitably a slippery slope to ultimate destruction. During Rome's final days people were so distracted by social decadence, hedonism, materialism, corruption, and rejection of basic truths that they failed to notice their rights and liberties were being dismantled. No one remembered and stood up for their foundational values. Rome suffered from excess which led to laziness which led to tyranny. Americans today are buying into the same mind-set as evidenced by twice electing to the presidency Barack Obama, a leader who believed the people were too selfish, greedy, and reckless to make economic decisions for themselves.Scottish professor Alexander Tyler describes an endless cycle societies undergo, from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from great courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back to bondage. As a historian, Charles Sasser makes the case in Crushing the Collective that America is in the dependency stage and that we are witnessing and living through what can only be the political, cultural and economic decline of the United States and the fall of Western Civilization.And yet though America has been cut to the core, the liberty tree has not yet collapsed. Crushing the Collective is in the end a powerful wake-up call for free people of character, conviction, and courage to stand up against the collective madness and together, restore America as the beacon of freedom it once was, and must be again.