[TheThinker]

You see, what Americans don't understand is that

WE THE PEOPLE ARE AMERICA.

It's not the government or even the soil we stand on. America is an idea where THE PEOPLE own the country.

AMERICA IS OURS AND WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE TAKEN FROM US BY POLITICIANS.

[wintertime]

Does that mean we give up? No.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Give up? No! Of course not. Please read my tag line.

Ideas are very powerful. Just ask the enslaved Soviets who wrote books out in cursive on tiny pieces of paper and passed them from person to person.

The Soviet downfall took place in the minds of the people years before the walls finally tumbled.

[Nowhere Man]

Whether we realize it or not, the US went through another mental revolution of thought over the past few decades -- maybe beginning as far back as the anti-war protests of the 1960s, maybe to Roosevelt's New Deal, maybe to Lincoln forcing a more centralized Union...whatever.

I know, it is tough for me to put a finger on when the United States has "jumped the shark" although I say we've jumped a few times. We might jump again with Cap and Trade unless we stop it in the Senate although I still hear the twin Evenrudes idling with healthcare reform although it might be starting to run our of gas. If we apply the pressure, we can stop that too, but if not, that I think, will be the final shark jumping moment.

However, I think if I had to fix the first moment, it was the South losing the Civil War although a huge shark jump was Woodrow Wilson and the progressives. Even with Lincoln, we were still mostly what we should have been as a nation.

[Clemenza]

The US as we know it ended when, over a century ago, we let in masses of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who brought with them a tradition of statism and paternalism. Later waves have also brought statist traditions as well (and continue to do so). Add to it the native-born eggheads who have decided to bring social(ist) engineering, and a permanently dependent “middle class” of government employees, and you see the mess that we are in.

[Kozak]

See my tagline.

[mysterio]

The problem is we have two political parties acting as one. Washington warned us.

The structure has shifted from a representative republic to more of an oligarchy. It's time people woke up.

[patriot preacher]

bump!