Unhappiness, Yes; Defeatism, No

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"we have become much better stewards of the environment, and our young people in particularly have become much more tolerant of people from other races and cultures. These are significant achievements. So, are our people and natural resources today really fundamentally different than during periods when we felt really good about where the country was headed?"
1. We've doubled the population since the 1950's, which is hardly environmentally friendly, especially in the face of water shortages in the southwest and looming peak oil, peak fish, etc. Washington cares about ballooning population and GDP for tax revenues, but not about the long term future of the country.
2. I'm not a fan of political correctness. It seems impossible to embrace diversity without lowering quality in all institutions as quotas become the de facto norm, e.g., Sotomayor. In some areas quality is all important--science, engineering, Supreme Court, SECSTATE, but must take a back seat to PC in a diverse society. Looking around the world, it does not seem possible that free speech can exist in a diverse society. Once "hate speech" is banned, then the definition of hate speech expands to include political speech, on immigration, for ex., where today you see some immigrant groups today calling for "socially just speech," or whatever is used as euphemism for censorship of opposing views. While I'm quite tolerant about cultures that eat bush meat, practice female circumcision, force women into sex slavery, practice honor killing, are totally corrupt, etc., in their native lands, I think I prefer our pre-Teddy immigration policies and some reasonable intolerance.
3. Illegal immigration is a good subject to compare generations of politicians. Eisenhower when faced with an illegal alien invasion just got rid of them because he was patriotic, followed rule of law, and feared the corrupting influence of illegal immigration, on which point he was proved right. Today both parties are almost 100% crooked on illegal immigration, repugs for their business cronies and dems for the dream of legalizing 30 million dem voters. No patriotism, no integrity. We're just another banana republic today and spend like it.
4. The US is going down! Abandon ship.

Linda of KY 5:22PM January 25, 2010

With regard to the last paragraph of this article: While the people of Haiti are entitled to every humanitarian effort possible from those willing and able to help, for the life of me I do NOT understand why the people of the gulf coast, specifically New Orleans, did not receive even an 8th of attention and help from their own country during the devastating Katrina. That's all I could think of on Friday night while the world was watching various musicians and hollywood personalities on television raising funds for Haiti.
Shame on the US for ignoring their own but spending countless hours, funds & military on other's soil.

mt of IL 1:41PM January 25, 2010