Editor's note: WND's J.R. Nyquist is a renowned expert on America's fatal illusion of an international balance of power; diplomatic and Cold War history; the survivability of a thermonuclear world war; and is the author of "Origins of the Fourth World War." Each month Nyquist provides an exclusive in-depth report in WorldNetDaily's monthly magazine, WorldNet. Readers may subscribe to WorldNet through WND's online store.

Imagine you are on a tall ladder. It is a nerve-wracking situation because you might fall and break your neck. So you take a pill to calm your nerves. Unfortunately, if you slip while working on the ladder, the pill won't break your fall. It won't soften the pavement or prevent injury. But anxiety might save you from a misstep. It might lead you to move with greater care.

As citizens of a republic, we sometimes forget that nations rise and fall.

Take America, for example. In a matter of speaking, America has "climbed the ladder of success." It has risen to a great height. Consequently, it has a long way to fall. The law of gravity is said to affect all heavenly bodies -- and by analogy it affects all political bodies as well. In its political form, gravity has a number of components. There is the inescapable fact of oligarchy, the badness of human nature, and recurring cycles of peace and war which follow one another as night follows day.

To remain at the top rung of history's ladder, America must maintain its political balance. We must check oligarchy with democracy, mend human badness with spiritual teachings, and preserve peace by preparing for war. It is with regard to the last two items that we are failing miserably.

When history is forgotten, when spiritual teachings are neglected, when the Founding Fathers and the ancients are no longer authoritative, what then will hold us up? Worse still, modern science has given us biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Thanks to this new technology, a single false step could result in a fall like no other in history.

Even as we have neglected the historical sciences, we have mastered the science of destruction. Other nations have also mastered this science, especially Russia and China. But there are smaller countries developing this technology as well, like Iraq and North Korea. According to Joseph D. Douglass Jr. and Neil C. Livingstone, in their book "America the Vulnerable," Russian instructors at Cuban chemical warfare schools in the 1980s boasted that Castro was prepared to kill tens of millions of Americans with toxins he had stockpiled.

Some Americans, upon realizing our precarious position, would prefer to treat their nuclear age anxiety with a pill. As it happens, this pill is nothing but sugarcoated optimism. Easily swallowed, it is a favorite remedy with politicians and voters. It is cheap and quickly neutralizes the brain, where it deadens all worry. In fact, many Americans have been taking this pill for decades. That is why the country is famously listless and incredibly calm in the face of unprecedented danger. We are so doped up on optimism, in fact, that we tolerate politicians who oppose an effective national missile defense, not to mention their longstanding neglect of civil defense.

Sugarcoated optimism has dulled our sense of collective self-preservation, even as it enfeebles our wits. As you might have already guessed, the optimism pill destroys the defense-logic function of the brain. Once sufficient brain damage has taken place, a person is able to accept the wisdom of arms control treaties devised to ensure our country's nuclear vulnerability. The idea of defense or protection from nuclear bombs is suddenly unthinkable. Assured death and destruction, rather than survival, is seen as a good thing.

Strangely, the drugged optimist of our time doesn't care about surviving. Protected against truth by a bodyguard of lies, the pill-taker's lack of vigilance promises to unleash the very war he no longer fears. This is because the pill directly inspires two fundamental delusions, which have influenced American policy: First, there is the delusion that there will not be another world war; and second, there is the delusion that surviving such a war is impossible.

In general terms, anyone who says that this column is off base, that its message is somehow an irresponsible attempt to scare people, needs to explain by what magic history will advance without another world war, and they need to explain by what magic we will preserve our country in the absence of national missile defense and well-stocked underground shelters. In this context, if we are adults and not children, able to face reality instead of running from it, we should easily find the political will to construct real defenses for ourselves and our children.

If we fail to defend our country and our freedom, and this failure results in a destructive war for which we are unprepared, tens of millions of our countrymen might die who otherwise might have survived. Those who hate this message, who do not see a grave danger in Russia and China's nuclear and biological programs, who do not think there can be another world war, might call me any bad name they like.

But one word suffices for them.

That word is "empty."