OPINION: Wake up and smell the chaos

Keeping track of the decline and fall of Western civilization is a thankless task, but someone’s got to do it. Fortunately, the Internet has made it relatively easy to monitor the speed and scope of the suicidal plunge.

So, without further ado, let’s get on with the show:

— In the “I want whatever he’s smoking” category, I can’t resist starting with ex-Choom Gang member Barack Obama’s hallucinatory riff on America’s increasing prestige around the world.

Here’s the money quote, delivered to members of the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative fellows program who were visiting the White House on Monday.

“People don’t remember, when I came into office, the United States in world opinion ranked below China, barely above Russia. And today, once again, the United States is the most respected country on earth, and part of that I think is because of the work that we did to reengage the world and say that we want to work with you as partners, with mutual interests and mutual respect.”

If only the president’s cannabis-tinged pipe dream bore any kind of resemblance to reality, we could all celebrate world peace, knowing full well that in countries across the globe, children were being put to bed with the reassuring words, “Rest easy, sons and daughters, America is on the job.”

Too bad the Islamic State, China, France, Iran, Ukraine,  North Korea, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and Russia don’t share the president’s high regard for himself. What a wonderful world it would be!

— Speaking of the Islamic State, did you hear the one about the glorious martyr in Boston who was killed while trying to figure out how to cut off a policeman’s head with a military knife while he was being shot? Seriously, that was a mean-looking blade, but didn’t he ever hear the one about bringing a knife to a gun fight?

I suppose this could be seen as good news, not bad news. One more dead terrorist after all, but when will we ever again have the comfort level suggested by the words “homeland security”? Security is the opposite of what we have in our country as our executive branch, with the connivance of Congress and the federal judiciary, has imported hundreds of thousands (more like millions) of security threats in the form of jihadis, drug dealers, career criminals and probably Russian, Chinese and Iranian spies.

And what do Americans get mad about? Blogger Pam Geller (“Atlas Shrugs”) because she sponsored a cartoon-drawing contest that provoked incendiary hatred from Islamic fundamentalists. Geller was the original target of the slain ISIS sympathizer in Boston, but I doubt if he would have met any easier fate if he had tried to “smite Geller at the neck” instead of the boys in blue.

A few years ago, I wrote a series of columns about Amazon warriors who had stood tall in American history by fighting vociferously for freedom against the power of the collective (er, federal government!). That list included Ayn Rand, the author of the prophetic novel “Atlas Shrugged,” as well as 1950s political columnist Dorothy Thompson and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Well, you can add Pam Geller to the list. She is a proper guardian of free speech. Mess with her at your own risk.

I doubt she can singlehandedly save us from our own suicidal tendencies to surrender to political correctness and sharia, but if she has 300 strong Spartans at her side, she will give the Persians a hell of a fight.

—If you wondered how things could have gotten this bad, how Americans could be so apathetic to pure evil, look no further than an educational system that was intentionally severed from culture and values by John Dewey and his pedagogical descendants.

When knowledge is valued for its own sake, without any nod to right and wrong, we as a society are essentially giving a loaded gun to a baby.

A case in point surfaced early last week at Encinal High School in Alameda, Calif., where sophomore students were assigned by their teacher to pry into their parents’ private possessions to look for condoms or sex toys, then take a “selfie” exhibiting their haul of sexual hardware.

The ulterior motive of turning children against their parents, which communist educator Bill Ayers promoted as long ago as the 1960s, could not be any more transparent. Remarkably, the school is protecting the teacher who gave the assignment, claiming it was just a joke.

The joke is being played on parents who refuse to see how their cultural values are being mocked and undermined while their children are turned into the vanguard of a secular new world order where anything goes and nothing has meaning.

And if you are pretending this is just an isolated case that doesn’t reflect on the rotten, putrid state of American society, consider a story that surfaced just Friday.

Parents at a small Minneapolis private school found out after the fact that their middle-school and high-school aged children went on a field trip to (wait for it...) the Smitten Kitten sex shop for a field trip in their sex-education class.

The parents are furious, but the director of the school not so much. In fact, Starri Hedges, the director of the Gaia Democratic School, took the children on the field trip herself. I guess what do you expect from a school that has both Gaia and Democratic in its name — talk about a double whammy!

The school’s board of directors issued a statement that it “stands behind the premise of the field trip. We view it as a legitimate learning experience that relates directly to topics covered during our yearlong Sexual Health class.”

Legitimate learning experience? In a week when we are finding out more than we could possibly want to know about how Josh Duggar molested four of his sisters in the family lionized by the reality TV show “19 Kids and Counting,” it should be plainly apparent to any sane person that there is no “legitimate learning experience” that involves children and sex — period.

Unfortunately, the hallucinatory haze of delusion and deception did not stop with the Choom Gang, President Obama’s boyhood pot-smoking club. Today, our whole country and our whole culture is “under the influence” — of drugs, sex, violence and worst of all the self-delusion that tells us everything is just fine.

It’s not fine, folks, and it hasn’t been for a long time.