A. Leclair wrote...
I would take my own life (without taking the lives of others) or move instead of living in a country where I'm at war with neighbors or what is supposed to be my own gov. If things get that bad, it's not worth saving, since you just run the risk of it happening again anyway.
I'm more reacting to the very pessimistic tone expressed than any particular comment. I've read a great deal of material the last few years expressing very dark sentiments about the future.
I understand that there's an element in the human soul that always sees the current state as dire, notwithstanding reality. But, it's absolutely irrefutable, by virtually every measure, that we're living in the best times in the history of mankind. Yet there's a large cadre of people who see catastrophe at every turn, and who fail to see the future with the great expectations called for. This country has issues, for sure. But we have nowhere near the issues of the past. In my relatively short life time (longer than many of you, for sure, but not THAT long!) I remember air raid drills, in anticipation of a nuclear war. I remember the draft and Vietnam. I remember Watergate. I remember broad-based denial of rights based on color or creed. I remember Jimmy Carter ripping the soul out of America with his "the best is past" nonsense.
There's an interesting book, "The Progress Paradox", which addresses the phenomenon of people always looking at the past as the good old days, and ignoring the objective evidence that the state of our world today is far better than any "old days".
The people and institutional safeguards inherent in our form of government ensure that our freedoms will be maintained. I've heard the bells of warning for years now, up to and including the National Continuity Policy. Yet, people still have freedom of speech, assembly, religion, press. If anything our freedoms are more robust today than at any time in history.
In short, I'm quite confident that America has a self-balancing mechanism that will ensure our system sustains itself. But when we have a Presidential candidate who proclaims that there is no war on terror, coming only weeks before the attempts at Fort Dix and JFK Airport, what we have to fear is complacency and the "love me" brand of diplomacy--not a governmental usurpation or a dictatorship. Concerns that are neither practical nor probable only serve to take our eye off the very real risks that threaten to assault us; and those threats come, for the most part, from outside our borders, not from a government which is, for the most part, us.
A rifle is no match for a tank.