Dear Reader: Here is an excerpt form a great article by Walter Russell Mean. If you get a chance, I would recommend that you read the entire posting found HERE.
And when your finished with the above please take a look at this article on the Lefts inability to practice what they preach.
But by historical standards, the average American is actually ahead of his or her ancestors. Today’s average Americans are smarter, more sophisticated, better educated, less racist and more tolerant than ever before. Immigrants face less prejudice in the United States than ever before in our history. Religious, ethnic and sexual minorities are more free to live their own lives more openly with less fear than ever before. There is more respect for science and learning, more openness to the arts and more interest in the viewpoints of other countries and cultures among Americans at large than in any past generation.
The American people aren’t perfect yet and never will be — but by the standards that matter to the Establishment, this is the best prepared, most open minded and most socially liberal generation in history. Unsatisfactory as the American people may be from the standpoints of Georgetown and Manhattan, this is as good as it gets. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman could only dream of the kind of sophisticated and cosmopolitan understanding that folks in Peoria have now compared to the old days.
The American people are less prejudiced, more globally aware and more willing to meet other cultures and societies halfway than ever before. Minorities today are better protected in law and more fairly treated by the public than ever in our history. No previous generation has been as determined to give women a fair chance in life, or to attack the foul legacy of racism. The American people have never been as religiously tolerant as they are today, as concerned about the environment, or more willing to make sacrifices around the world to promote the peace and well being of humanity as a whole.
By contrast, we have never had an Establishment that was so ill-equipped to lead. It is the Establishment, not the people, that is falling down on the job.
Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed. (There are, of course, many honorable exceptions to generalizations this sweeping; anyone wise enough to be reading this blog can safely assume that none of these terrible things apply to you.)
Take Wall Street. (Please!) Our corrupt financial and corporate establishment has by and large lost its concern for the well being of the American state and the American people. Raj Rajaratnam’s conviction on 14 counts of insider trading is only the latest of a string of scandals, blunders and crimes that demonstrate the moral vacuity of the best and the brightest in the United States. Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone may be a little over the top for some tastes, but even if the Goldman Sachs executives he describes did nothing illegal, it is painfully clear that a great American financial institution has lost its moral compass. There is a dangerous moral vacuum at the heart of the American Financial Establishment.
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