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spiritual and philosophical areas. It is a nation leaving itself behind and watching television living in debt on borrowed money even though the people have been conditioned to have two wage-earners working at two jobs.

Challenge and response determine the fate of civilizations the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote in his voluminous 'A Study of History'. Oswald Spengler believed that civilizations had pre-determined and inevitable growth and decay cycles much like a plant given sufficient manure may grow richly them perish for a variety of age related causes, yet Toynbee believed the fate of a civilization (or a nation by inference) lay within control of the will of the people of the civilization (nation) generally. The United States today seems to be passing through a number of Toynbean phases that indicate the civilization (if you will) of the United States is at the pinnacle of success with the uncorrected prospect of being at the edge of a fall.

Like a climber trudging upward with difficulty on a steep slope through deep snow a civilization must work hard on the way up. At the top a variety of new challenges present without obvious need for immediate correction sometime unrecognized. A rapture of giddiness may arise from the success and the civilization may not recognize immediate danger and challenges at the top real and different from those of the way up.

The summit may have treacherous cornices and overhangs that suddenly collapse, footing may be lost with precipitous and lethal falls, while certainty of deeper cold of night is ever edging nearer and new responses must be made to the situation at the top.

The United States exhibits several signs of Toynbean civilization cycles such as an external proletariat entering in by the millions to become an internal proletariat. Mass illegal immigration stokes the bank accounts of the richest upper 1%. Propaganda from corporatist outlets has trained Americans to believe that corporatism is the sole alternative to socialism, and that nationalist prioritization by a national government is in some inevitable way against free enterprise. A number of specious arguments are advanced to attack and subvert national public self-interest.

The war in Iraq although initially for the noble cause of liberating a people from tyranny and the baser reason of fear of weapons of mass destruction is transforming during the nation building era into a quest for oil reserves for global oil corporations. The Vice President of the

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