I agree there is significant decline and a troubling penchant of a significant portion of this country to be more concerned with entitlements than responsibility.
What perhaps troubles me more is one or two of the reponses to my post, however. They reek with a pessimism that doesn’t seem to have any bounds. Makes me wonder what would have happened Lexington and Concord had the participants been so filled with it.
You say “pessimism” I say realism. Here’s the one thing I read that I haven’t seen posted here on FR:
“Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States. Oh, well. As the president would say, obviously our hearts are with you.”
We have posted here, again before anyone else, that we’re not sure whose side Zero is on.
The point is that we’re running out of allies, of nations that trust us to do the right thing. America is close to being alone. That’s not a tendency on our parts to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view. It’s a fact and as the man said, facts are stubborn things.
In 2012, Eurabia, Israel and all of the others facing determined, murderous muslim religious fanatics, they all look at us—at the things we do and fail to do—and they wonder whose side we’re on.