Anti-Depressants

The Quality Of Life In The United States Is Going Down The Toilet

March 2, 2021 by Michael

Is the quality of life in America getting better, or is it getting worse? Americans certainly have a lot more “money” than they did when I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean much because the U.S. dollar has only a fraction of the value that it did back then. And without a doubt our electronic devices have become much more advanced, but that doesn’t mean that we are happier. In fact, everywhere I look people seem to be deeply unhappy. It is rare to see someone actually smiling in public, but of course there is a good reason for that. If you smile too much, someone might accuse you of being creepy. As Americans, we are being trained to not express emotions and to keep to ourselves. Being friendly is considered to be “suspicious”, if you tell a joke there is a very good chance that you will deeply offend someone, and if you express strong opinions you might just get “canceled”.

Even though we are far more “wealthy” than they were, I imagine that our culture is not too different from what East Germans experienced before the Berlin Wall came down.

There is so much hate and division in our society, and everyone seems ready to rat out those around them at the drop of a hat. So most people are careful to keep to themselves, but at the same time most people are desperately lonely.

These days, most Americans walk around like a bunch of zombies. In fact, as a result of mental health problems and stress, a majority of Americans are exhibiting at least one of the symptoms of post-concussion syndrome…

A survey of more than 31,000 people shows that insufficient sleep, mental health problems, and stress were the causes of a whole host of symptoms doctors are used to seeing in head injury patients. Symptoms of what doctors call post-concussion syndrome (PCS) range from persistent headaches, dizziness and anxiety, to insomnia and loss of concentration and memory.

While 27 percent of people report having several of these symptoms, between one-half and three-quarters say they experience at least one. The most common symptoms are fatigue, low energy and drowsiness. Yet despite their findings, researchers believe the number in the general population could be much higher.

Of course one of the primary reasons why so many people are acting like zombies is because we have been drugged out of our minds. Americans take more legal drugs than anyone ever has in the entire history of the world, and each year the pharmaceutical companies come up with even more drugs for us to try.

In particular, because we are so deeply unhappy Americans take boatloads of anti-depressants. More than 50 million Americans are on anti-depressants right now, and it gets worse with each passing year.

But even though we are taking so many “happy pills”, Americans continue to kill themselves at a staggering pace, and this is particularly true for our young people.

In North Carolina, one school superintendent recently shared the fact that “the suicide rate among teens is higher than the COVID rate of death in their county”…

The debate to reopen schools for in-person learning has highlighted an alarming idea – that students are not just falling behind academically, but at a heightened risk of death by suicide.

“One of our local superintendents recently shared with me that the suicide rate among teens is higher than the COVID rate of death in their county,” Sen. Deanna Ballard, a Republican from the 45th district, recently told CBS 17, though she declined to name the superintendent or county. Ballard did not respond to NC Health News’ requests for comment.

Isn’t that insane?

You can’t just blame the pandemic for the rise in suicide either. In fact, the national suicide rate for teens was skyrocketing before the pandemic ever began…

The national rate of suicide in young people increased 57 percent between 2007 and 2018, according to the CDC.

“Even before the pandemic, we’ve been seeing an increase in youth suicides,” said Virginia Hamlet Rodillas, hotline manager for National Alliance on Mental Illness NC, which operates a statewide helpline.

If our society is so wonderful, then why are so many kids killing themselves?

The truth is that our society has become so sick and so twisted that life seems completely empty to so many of these youths. Life is such a wonderful gift, and every day should be enjoyed to the fullest, but our society has become so evil that many teens are killing themselves rather than live in it one more day.

I once wrote an entire book about why people can have hope in these deeply troubled times, and I really wish that I could get it into the hands of everyone in America.

There is hope even for those that are facing the darkest circumstances, but most people don’t realize that because our society certainly doesn’t offer any.

Overall life expectancy has been dropping in the U.S. as well. In fact, during the first half of 2020 life expectancy in the United States declined by a full year…

It’s already known that 2020 was the deadliest year in US history, with deaths topping 3MM for the first time. But the latest batch of morbid data is in, and they suggest things are about to get worse on average as life expectancy in the US dropped a full year during the first half of the year.

Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time a baby born today is expected to live. From January through June of last year, that was 77.8 years for the entire U.S. population, down from 78.8 years in 2019. It’s the lowest level since 2006, the report said.

Our healthcare system has become a complete and utter nightmare, and it is not going to get any better any time soon.

Speaking of nightmares, our system of public education has become a sick joke. Just look at what has been going on in Baltimore…

A shocking discovery out of a Baltimore City high school, where Project Baltimore has found hundreds of students are failing. It’s a school where a student who passed three classes in four years, ranks near the top half of his class with a 0.13 grade point average.

Tiffany France thought her son would receive his diploma this coming June. But after four years of high school, France just learned, her 17-year-old must start over. He’s been moved back to ninth grade.

Millions upon millions of young people graduate from high school each year, but many of them can barely read, write or speak in public.

I could go on and on. Just about every system that you could possibly name is in the process of failing, and that is probably why our satisfaction with the way our country is functioning is at the lowest level ever measured. The following comes from Gallup…

Americans’ satisfaction with seven broad aspects of the way the country functions is collectively at its lowest in two decades of Gallup measurement. This includes satisfaction with the overall quality of life in the U.S., assessments of government, corporate and religious influence, and perceptions of the economic and moral climates.

The average percentage satisfied with these seven dimensions has plunged to 39% at the start of 2021. That compares with 53% a year ago, the highest average in more than a decade amid strong economic confidence and before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S.

So once again I wish to pose a question to you.

Is the quality of life in America getting better, or is it getting worse?

The answer is quite obvious, and the rest of the world is laughing at us as our once great nation steadily deteriorates.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

If America Is Such A Happy Place, Why Is The Suicide Rate Up 34% Since The Year 2000?

November 15, 2018 by Michael

What in the world has happened to us? Despite our ridiculously high standard of living compared to the rest of the world, America is a deeply unhappy place. When I was growing up, there were no “smart phones”, the Internet did not exist, if you wanted to buy something you had to actually go to a store and hunt for it, and most vehicles were pieces of junk that completely broke down after a few years. Today, we have hundreds of television channels, we have more movies than we could ever possibly watch, video games have become wildly creative and there is an app for almost anything that you could possibly need on your phone just a few clicks away. We are literally drowning in entertainment, and yet we are far less happy than previous generations. In fact, the CDC says that the suicide rate in the United States has risen by 34 percent since the year 2000…

Men who work in construction and extraction had the highest rates of suicide in the United States, according to a report published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For women, suicide rates were highest among those who work in arts, design, entertainment, sports and media.

From 2000 to 2016, the suicide rate among the US working-age population — people 16 to 64 — increased 34%, the report says.

It greatly saddened me to learn that construction workers and miners have the highest suicide rates in the entire country. My grandfather was a construction worker, and he took great pride in his work. In fact, I still have a wooden bowl that he made for me sitting on my desk as I write this article.

On the other end of the spectrum, suicide rates are lowest among teachers, professors and librarians…

For both sexes, the occupational group with the lowest rate of suicides was education, training and library. This includes jobs such as teachers, professors and archivists.

This surprised me, because anyone that has ever spent much time in a classroom understands how much stress a teacher must endure on a daily basis.

But overall, the news is not good. At a time when the U.S. has been at peace and supposedly “prospering”, our suicide rate has been absolutely skyrocketing.

If this many people are killing themselves now, what is going to happen once things get really, really bad in this country?

Of course the authorities are at a loss as to how to solve this crisis. They are saying that this rise in suicide is a “tragedy” and that we must increase “prevention efforts”…

“Increasing suicide rates in the U.S. are a concerning trend that represent a tragedy for families and communities and impact the American workforce,” said Dr. Debra Houry, director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “Knowing who is at greater risk for suicide can help save lives through focused prevention efforts.”

In other words, they want us to throw more money at the problem.

In America today, whenever anything goes wrong the “solution” always seems to be to make the government even bigger and spend more taxpayer money.

But the truth is that big government is not going to save us. People don’t need more government bureaucrats telling them how to run their lives. Instead, what people really need is to find meaning and purpose in life, and that is not something that big government is going to provide.

Suicide rates are particularly high in many rural areas. In fact, a previous CDC report discovered that the suicide rate in rural areas is actually 45 percent higher than in “large urban areas”…

The suicide rate in rural America is 45% greater than in large urban areas, according to a study released last fall by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A more recent CDC report said Montana’s suicide rate leads the nation, coming in at nearly twice the national average. A third long-touted CDC study, currently under review, listed farming in the occupational group, along with fishing and forestry, with the highest rate of suicide deaths.

That occupational study was based on 2012 data, when farming was strong and approaching its peak in 2013, says Jennifer Fahy, communications director for the nonprofit Farm Aid. Farmers’ net income has fallen 50% since 2013 and is expected to drop to a 12-year low this year, the US Department of Agriculture reports.

Without a doubt, things are tough in rural areas all over the nation right now. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, almost 1 out of every 4 children in rural areas is currently living in poverty. My wife and I live in a rural area, and there are so many families up here that are deeply struggling right now.

As the middle class has deteriorated, more Americans than ever have been forced to turn to the government for help. At this point, almost 52 percent of all children live in a home that receives monthly help from the federal government…

The Census Bureau has released new data that strengthens the case for calling the current generation of American children “The Welfare Generation.”

Among American residents under 18 years of age in 2017, according to the Census Bureau, 51.7 percent lived in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.

If the U.S. economy really was in good shape, we wouldn’t have such a dramatic problem with poverty.

And this is something that a lot of Americans are quite concerned about. The following are some very interesting numbers from a recent MSN poll…

Approximately 2/3 of people are concerned about the level of poverty in the United States right now.
Women are 1.2x more likely than men to be concerned about the issue of poverty.
Generally speaking, the more money you make, the less likely you are to care about poverty (although more than half of those making $150K+ are still concerned about the issue).

From those numbers, it looks like men have some work to do in the compassion department.

In the years ahead, poverty is likely to get a whole lot worse in this country.

The suicide rate has already been spiking during “normal times”, and many are deeply alarmed about what might happen once this nation enters a period of utter despair.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots. It is a premium members-only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically. The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

The Big Secret The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Tell You About America’s Soaring Suicide Rates

June 8, 2018 by Michael

This week two celebrity suicides rocked the nation, and neither of them seemed to make any sense. Kate Spade’s handbag designs had taken the fashion world by storm, and she was supposedly living the kind of lifestyle that millions of Americans can only dream about. And Anthony Bourdain was one of those rare journalists that was greatly loved by both the left and the right. His “Kitchen Confidential” book is currently the #1 best seller on Amazon, and his “Parts Unknown” series was one of CNN’s most popular shows. Why would people that seemingly have everything going for them decide to kill themselves? Well, by the end of this article you will learn some things about suicide and depression in the United States that the mainstream media definitely does not want to talk about. And all you have to do is to follow the money to discover the very disturbing reason why the mainstream media does not want to talk about them.

On average, 123 Americans commit suicide every single day, and now suicide has become the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.

But among Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, it is now the second leading cause of death.

Of course it wasn’t always this way. Suicide rates used to be much, much lower. If you can believe it, suicide rates in the United States “have risen nearly 30 percent since 1999” according to the CDC…

Suicide rates in the U.S. have risen nearly 30% since 1999, according to a report released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicides increased in both men and women, in all ethnic groups and in both urban and rural areas. Suicide and “self-harm,” a category that includes attempted suicides, cost the nation $70 billion a year in medical care and lost work time, the CDC says.

The CDC says that rates have increased “among both sexes, all racial/ethnic groups, and all urbanization levels”, and so this is not just a trend that is affecting one particular demographic group.

And virtually all age groups are seeing major increases as well. For example, hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts and attempts at children’s hospitals approximately doubled over a recent 7 years period…

At children’s hospitals across the country, hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts and attempts doubled from 2008 to 2015, according to a study published last month in the journal Pediatrics. The highest increases were seen among teens ages 15 to 17 years old.

Middle-aged Americans are also seeing a stunning rise in suicides. According to the CDC, the suicide rate for Americans from the age of 45 to the age of 64 is rising faster than for the general population as a whole…

Earlier research showed that suicides among middle-aged men and women climbed at a higher rate than the overall population. Suicide among men aged 45 to 64 increased 43% from 1999 through 2014. The suicide rate uptick was even higher among women in that age group, though more men died from suicide, the CDC said.

So why is this happening?

History tells us that suicide rates tend to go up during economic recessions, but we are not in a recession at the moment.

According to NBC News, researchers have found that people that kill themselves tend to have certain things in common…

42 percent had a relationship problem
28 percent had substance abuse issues
16 percent had job or financial problems
29 percent had some kind of crisis
22 percent had a physical health issue
9 percent had a criminal legal problem

But those problems have always existed in our society.

To find the truth, we need to go down a rabbit hole, and it is a rabbit hole that the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about.

The use of antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs is absolutely exploding in our society. According to Time Magazine, the use of antidepressants rose almost 65 percent between 1999 and 2014…

A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that from 2011 through 2014, the most recent data available, close to 13% of people 12 and older said they took an antidepressant in the last month. That number is up from 11% in 2005-2008.

The most recent numbers have increased by nearly 65% since 1999-2002, when 7.7% of Americans reported taking an antidepressant.

And numerous scientific studies have shown that there appears to be a link between antidepressant use and suicide. In fact, the biggest review of clinical trials ever conducted found that the use of antidepressants “doubled the risk of suicide” for those under the age of 18…

Antidepressants can raise the risk of suicide, the biggest ever review has found, as pharmaceutical companies were accused of failing to report side-effects and even deaths linked to the drugs.

An analysis of 70 trials of the most common antidepressants – involving more than 18,000 people – found they doubled the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviour in under 18s.

If you have ever been on any of these drugs, then you already know that they can really mess with your mind, and they can result in people doing some very irrational things.

In the case of Kate Spade, we do have confirmation that she was taking antidepressants. The following comes directly from her husband’s statement…

She was actively seeking help for depression and anxiety over the last 5 years, seeing a doctor on a regular basis and taking medication for both depression and anxiety.

We also know that Anthony Bourdain really struggled with depression as well…

The television host also discussed thoughts of depression. In a 2016 episode of Parts Unknown, Bourdain traveled to Argentina for psychotherapy — something widely popular in the country.

“Well, things have been happening,” he says on camera. “I will find myself in an airport, for instance, and I’ll order an airport hamburger. It’s an insignificant thing, it’s a small thing, it’s a hamburger, but it’s not a good one. Suddenly I look at the hamburger and I find myself in a spiral of depression that can last for days.”

Considering the fact that he had been dealing with incidents of severe depression for many years, could it be possible that Bourdain was also taking antidepressants?

If anyone out there can confirm this, please reach out to me with that information.

Of course the mainstream media is never going to address this link, because they do not want to harm their relationships with the big drug companies.

If you ever spend time watching the major news channels in the evening, then you already know that you are bombarded with one drug ad after another. It is their major source of revenue, and they aren’t ever going to do anything that could endanger that.

Today, the pharmaceutical corporations spend more than 6 billion dollars a year on advertising.

So there are 6 billion reasons why the mainstream media does not want to tell you the truth, and because they won’t tell you the truth many more Americans are going to needlessly die in the years ahead…

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

America: #1 In Fear, Stress, Anger, Divorce, Obesity, Anti-Depressants, Etc.

April 22, 2013April 22, 2013 by Michael

The United States is a deeply unhappy place. We are a nation that is absolutely consumed by fear, stress, anger and depression. It isn’t just our economy that is falling apart – the very fabric of society is starting to come apart at the seams and it is because of what is happening to us on the inside. The facts and statistics that I am going to share with you in this article are quite startling. They are clear evidence that America is a nation that is an advanced state of decline. We are overwhelmed by fear, stress and anxiety, and much of the time the ways that we choose to deal with those emotions lead to some very self-destructive behaviors. Americans have experienced a standard of living far beyond the wildest dreams of most societies throughout human history, and yet we are an absolutely miserable people. Why is this? Why is America #1 in so many negative categories? Why are we constantly looking for ways to escape the pain of our own lives? Why are our families falling apart? There is vast material wealth all around us. So why can’t we be happy?

Just look around you. Are most of the people around you teeming with happiness and joy? Sadly, the truth is that most Americans are terribly stressed out. Yeah, many of them may be able to manage to come up with a smile when they greet you, but most of the time they are consumed by internal struggles that are eating away at them like cancer.

So why is this happening? Is modern life structured in a way that is fundamentally unhealthy?

Below I have posted a short excerpt from a message that one of Charles Hugh Smith’s readers named Kenneth Daigle recently sent to him. I think that it does a good job of describing the incredible stress that many people contend with on a daily basis…

Think about how our culture is now structured for the average adult: STRESS, everywhere you look–commuting in horrible traffic, as you want to scream in frustration–money stress, to pay rent/house note, tuition, utilities, gas, insurances, vacations, cable bill, rising food costs, and on and on and on–stress from family problems, divorce, delinquency, drugs, crime, infidelity, keeping up with the Jones, etc.

People have too high an expectation of what they should have out of life, and get overly stressed over it all. How does all of this manifest itself? A prescription drug culture (Zoloft, Xanax, etc.) that tricks people into thinking a pill will knock back the stress, when these drugs, in my opinion, only make things worse.

I am hearing more and more that people just want to drop out from it all, as they are reaching a breaking point, and have decided less income and dependency on entitlements will reduce their stress, and is not so humiliating, so giving up working becomes more acceptable, to KEEP ONE’S SANITY.

I know I am correct, from the feedback I hear every day, and the financial media does not see this like I hear it every day. People don’t want to admit that they are too weak to deal with stress, so the financial pundits are not aware of this critical factor because they don’t talk to Joe Sixpack.

Most Americans live lives of “quiet desperation” that are punctuated by moments of great crisis. We spend our prime years working for others (making them rich) in order to pay off debts that we have foolishly accumulated (thus making the banks even wealthier). When most Americans reach the end of their lives, they look back and wonder what they actually accomplished.

James Altucher published an incredible article the other day entitled “Why Do People Hate Their Jobs?” It did a great job of describing what life is like for the modern worker in America. The following are a few of the reasons that he says people tend to hate their jobs…

-Jobs are modern-day slavery. We are paid just enough to live and not more. You are punished if you ask for more.

*****

-We are often verbally abused on the job and we take it because we think it’s normal that people would yell at us.

*****

-The government gets up to 50% of your paycheck and then 10-20% of that goes to kill people on other parts of the planet, including our own children.

*****

-From 7am to 7pm you are either A) going to work, B) at work, or C) coming back from work. Hence, the times when you can be most creative are garbage-compacted into your cubicle.

*****

-When you are paranoid at a job, you are probably correct. THEY are, in fact, talking about you and backstabbing you right now.

*****

-You realize that all the dollars you spent on degrees to get you a job that will make you happy were completely wasted. You were scammed but you can’t let the next generation know how stupid you were so now you become part of perpetuating the scam.

*****

-Your spouse is tired of hearing about your job after six months. And you couldn’t care less about hers. Ten years later you wake up next to a total stranger. 40 years later you die next to one.

*****

-When you were a kid you liked to draw, and read, and run, and laugh, and play, and imagine a magical world. You’re never going to do any of that again.

*****

-Over time everyone is getting fired and being replaced by younger, cheaper, more temporary, more robotic, versions of you. You see this but are afraid to do anything about it.

And of course when we get home from work there is even more stress. In America today, we are witnessing a breakdown of the family unlike anything we have ever seen before. The United States leads the world in divorce and in single person households. We are having an increasingly difficult time relating to one another, and many of us drown our sorrows in our addictions. We are addicted to pills, to alcohol, to food, to entertainment, to sex, to gambling, to shopping and to anything else that will make us feel good and forget about our problems for a while.

The following is a collection of facts and statistics that prove that America is being absolutely consumed by fear, stress, anger and depression…

-Suicide has now actually surpassed car accidents as the number one cause of “injury death” in the United States.

-More U.S. soldiers killed themselves than were killed in combat last year.

-As I mentioned in another article, Americans will spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs during 2013.

–Nearly one out of every four women in the United States are taking antidepressants.

-The percentage of women taking antidepressants in the U.S. is higher than in any other country in the world.

-In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.

-Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.

-According to a recent article by David Kupelian, “one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and more than half of all ‘millennials’ (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress that keeps them awake at night, including large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder.”

-Tens of millions of Americans use alcohol and drugs to numb the pain that they are experiencing. In the United States today, there are about 28 million Americans with a drinking problem and about 22 million Americans use illegal drugs.

-More people have been diagnosed with mental disorders in America than anywhere else on earth.

-There are also tens of millions of Americans that try to deal with anxiety and stress by eating. Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is #2.

-Back in 1962, only 13 percent of all Americans were obese. Today, approximately 36 percent of all Americans are obese.

-Many people try to escape from the pain of reality by getting lost in entertainment. Incredibly, the United States is tied with the UK for the highest average number of hours spent watching television each week.

-The United States has the highest divorce rate in the world by a good margin.

-The United States has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.

-According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all American adults are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.

-At this point, approximately one out of every three children in America lives in a home without a father.

-For women under the age of 30 living in the United States today, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.

-The United States has the highest child abuse death rate in the developed world.

-In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.

-The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world by a very wide margin.

-The United States produces more pornography than any other nation in the world.

-If you can believe it, there are 20 million new STD infections in the United States every single year.

-The U.S. has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world.

-It is estimated that about one out of every six Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 have genital herpes.

-Sadly, one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease.

-The United States leads the world in eating disorder deaths.

-Nobody in the world gets more plastic surgery done than Americans do.

-Americans spend more time sitting in traffic than anyone else in the world.

-America has the highest incarceration rate and the largest total prison population in the entire world by a very wide margin.

Fear is one of the primary things that motivates the American people, and that is a very powerful weapon that can be used against us.

As I wrote about yesterday, those that commit acts of terror want to get attention and they want to create fear.

And that is exactly what the Boston Marathon bombing accomplished. It captured the attention of the nation for days on end, and it absolutely paralyzed the entire Boston area with fear.

When we allow ourselves to be terrorized, we actually encourage more terror attacks. When we give terrorists what they want, it just encourages more psychos to commit acts of terror. If you don’t believe me, just check out the following links that I found posted on The Drudge Report on Monday…

*”3 Alabama hospitals evacuated after bomb threats“*

*”Connecticut Courthouse Evacuated After Bomb Threat“*

*”South Hills Village Evacuated After Bomb Threat“*

*”Rock Island neighborhood evacuated after bomb threat“*

*”Bomb threat forces evacuation of Seabreeze office building“*

The appropriate response to a terror attack is to refuse to be terrorized. Yes, we should also work to expose and punish the individuals, organizations and governments that are behind terror. But we should also not let terror change how we live our lives, and we should definitely not allow terror to be used as an excuse to rip our liberties and freedoms away.

Sadly, as Ron Paul has detailed, some of our politicians are already calling for “tighter security” in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing…

Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”

I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties.

But no matter how much liberty and freedom we give up, we will never be 100% safe. Bad people are always going to do bad things, and unfortunately we are probably going to see some pretty nightmarish things in the years ahead as the world becomes even more unstable.

If we allow the bad guys to get us so frightened that we throw out the U.S. Constitution and abandon our liberties and our freedoms, then we are the ones who lose.

Yes, the years ahead are going to be tough. The economic collapse is going to accelerate greatly, there will be tremendous natural disasters, there will be war in the Middle East and there will be other problems that we cannot even conceive of right now. At the same time, the American people will continue to become even angrier and even more frustrated. According to a recent Pew Research survey, the percentage of Americans with a favorable view of the federal government is now at an all-time low. As the economy crumbles, there will likely be great civil unrest as people demand solutions. Unfortunately, our problems took decades to develop and they will not be solved overnight even if we did have good people in office.

So why am I saying all of this?

And why am I constantly warning about the coming economic collapse?

Is it because I want to create fear?

No, just the opposite of that.

I am a watchman on the wall.

In ancient times, a watchman would warn the people when the enemy was approaching.

When you receive the warning, there are a few different ways that you can respond to it…

#1 You can become consumed with fear and run away from the enemy. Unfortunately, cowards never get the victory in the end.

#2 You can dismiss the warning and pretend that the enemy is not approaching. But then when the enemy comes you will be completely unprepared.

#3 You can do everything possible to get prepared to face the enemy that is coming with strength and courage.

And that is how I would encourage all of you to approach the coming economic collapse and the other great problems that we will soon be experiencing as a nation.

Do not be afraid.

Instead, be strong and courageous and prepare well for the storms that are coming.