[GonzoGOP]

Egypt's 1st great pyramids fell down. The next four are still around 4000 years later. Titanic sank on it's first trip, but the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth reined as the largest liners in the world for 50 years. Chicago burned, San Francisco shaked and baked. But both cities were rebuilt in steel taller, bigger, and better than before. That is the mark of a society of builders. They push the edge, and occasionally fall over it. But they always learn and keep going.

China has been a society of builders from before the Communists, and will still be builders long after they are gone. The Grand Canal, Great Wall, in the same way that militant civilizations celebrate their generals builder civilizations celebrate their engineers. America was once a builder civilization. We celebrated the skyscrapers of New York and Chicago, the Hoover dam, and the Saturn V moon rocket. Today we celebrate Tiger Woods and Lady GaGa. Something happened in the 1960's we changed from builders to consumers. We lived for 50 years on the legacy built up by 184 years of frantic building. But that legacy is exhausted and we much now either rediscover our builder heritage, or become another Rome, that once built great things, and now survives by selling tours of the ruins.

[mo]

Heck...we can’t even get Freedom Tower built...8 years later....

[arthurus]

We lived for 50 years on the legacy built up by 184 years of frantic building.

The USSR lived for 40 yeas on the loot from Eastern Europe.

[redangus]

Great comments

[denydenydeny]

The big hole at Ground Zero is a metaphor for the process you described. How long do you think it would have taken the Chinese to put something up at that location?

[SW6906]

A great society is not defined solely by the big buildings and monuments it builds. Most of the world’s greatest inventions of the past century that made our lives better, longer and easier were made in the USA.

[AristotlePA]

Amen to that