Do you believe that America's best days are ahead?
Posted at 5:00 AM on October 6, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(43 Comments)
Filed under: Culture, Economy, Politics/Government
In a recent interview, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly asked Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison whether America was "on the skids." Ellison replied, "No way. America's best days are ahead of her." Today's Question: Do you believe that America's best days are ahead?
Comments (43)
America's best days are over -- at least for the descendants of her founding peoples. White Gentile Americans are being systematically disenfranchised by an elite ruling class hostile to traditional America, and replaced by Third World immigrants. For these 20th & 21st century non-white immigrants, America will still seem bright compared to the cesspools from which they came. As these strangers impose their substandard, alien culture & customs upon America, the dreams of ordinary white Americans will turn into an ever-darkening nightmare -- just as they did when integration was crammed down our throats in the 60's. That debacle came into being after we foolishly sacrificed a generation to save an ungrateful Chosen People who now rule over us with utter contempt.
"America" as its founders intended to be is over. The Republic is dead. In its place is a new nation on the same continent, occupying the same halls of government, with the same flag & national anthem and called by the same name. Sure, "America" is still here -- just like "Detroit" is still there -- but do any sane white families with children in public school want to live there?? Our constitution has been overthrown by a conspiracy of judicial fiat, Congressional acquiescence & Presidential assent. Only free white gentile protestant americans, educated according to their ancestors beliefs, can ever truly carry on the American tradition. What we have now is a bastardized nation of imposters who are Americans in name only.
yes, in spite of elison.
Considering the last 200 yrs---slavery, nearly endless war with millions slaughtered, native genocide, enviromental destruction on massive scale, and return to feudalistic culture---there's a chance. But slim.
And please, MPR. No more linked disertations allowed!
Let's www.occupytogether.org
We are hitting the skids to the Dark Ages of old with the extreme distancing of the Uber Rich hoarders failing to share in the credit for the worlds development and the 99% rest of us.
UNLESS that changes we are doomed.
There is no question on this.
History repeats this lesson EVERY time.
You're kidding, right?
Not if you are gay or poor. Yes if you are white and rich. next question.
This ship has been taking on water for some time. If the captain and crew don't get it together, we are all sunk with the next crest.
It's obvious derp means duh... which way do we go George?
Clearly our best days are behind us. Our children and grandchildren will be coping with some really nasty stuff like natural disasters arising out of climate change, our burgeoning population outstripping natural resources and the debt arising out of our excesses.
Because our natural resources are limited, the standard of living enjoyed by the rest of the world can only improve at our expense, and who would argue they shouldn't want what we have/had?
Until we can have an honest discussion about an economy based on unsustanable growth, our situation is dire.
To speak very frankly, and unfortunately politically --which is sadly what our future will depend upon right now:
Only if the Republican Party can reign-in their totally out of control, self-centered, unreasonable, Tea party faction; which will "stubborn" and "unreasonable" (used as their primary action-verbs) our nation into it's untimely grave .
Well that was some heavy reading! Depends on where you are at within the social scale if better days are ahead!
damn... when I'm copy pasting my BS to all these different websites I got to remember what fake name I'm using.... If I mess it up too much david koch and the teaparty wont pay me my $25...
derp...
derp.....
HOW can America ever see better days when or own President has said nothing for three weeks about the Wall Street protesters?
Once the UNIONS joined the protesters today, things got violent! Coincidence? Is this why Obama won't speak up? because the SEIU and AFLCIO union leaders use and trick their members to spread dissent?
HOW can America ever see better days when or own President has said nothing for three weeks about the Wall Street protesters?
Once the UNIONS joined the protesters today, things got violent! Coincidence? Is this why Obama won't speak up? because the SEIU and AFLCIO union leaders use and trick their members to spread dissent?
Hey MPR! What is with all the white papers that are being posted on the question of the day? I like a well reasoned and expressed argument as much as the next person, but this is not the place to post someones doctoral dissertation. I don't even want to read most of these anymore.
As long as the flag wavers mindlessly wave their flags and refuse to look inside themselves for the cause of the present state of the nation, and the world, and their contribution or lack there of to the direction we are moving, then yes this nation is heading down a slippery slope that sooner then later we will not be able to recover from.
If the flag wavers would put down their flags and instead pick up a book on economic theory, and remember that a theory is just that, a theory and not a philosophy to live your life by, we might once again start moving in the right direction. The only truths in economics are those shown by history, and history is not written by those who have something to gain by it today.
If the flag wavers would pick up a book on climate change and see that it is not a theory, but a truth based on science, research, and fact, and each and every one is contributing to the change, and each and every one of us has the ability and the responsibility to do something about it for the benefit of future generations, this nation could once again be great. Instead of letting the corporate promoted subterfuge affect our thinking so they can reap the short term profits at our children's long term expense we would once again become a great nation. If we would sacrifice and accept a little inconvenience and discomfort today so our children won’t be forced to accept a lot of inconvenience and discomfort tomorrow, we would be a great nation.
If the flag wavers would not promote the hypocritical stance of personal or corporate freedom while undermining the personal freedom of others. It is not theirs to choose which freedoms to keep and which freedoms to abolish. You can not justifiably call for freedom to do business unregulated while simultaneously tell others who they can marry, what they can do with their bodies, and ultimately what they can think. A great nation is built on a foundation of freedom, for all that nation’s members.
If we start to teach real life skills in schools, like the ability to think critically so political rhetoric distributed by powerful corporate entities, under the false pretense that their will is in our best interest is considered truth, then the nation as a whole would not be nothing but sheep heading to the slaughter. If the media would stand up and not be afraid to point their finger and scream “Liar!” at those who promote lies as truth for their own gain, we could be considered a great nation.
If those that back those powerful corporate entities, who gained so much when this was the greatest nation on earth, would stand up and say thanks to the people that built the roads and the infrastructure that they use to transport and create their goods, that taught them and the people who made their companies great the skills to do so, that protect their interest from the natural and man-made threats that could ruin them at a moments notice, that allowed them the opportunity to grow and become the great companies that they are, then this would be a great nation. Instead of undermining the infrastructure that allowed all this, taking without giving, and expecting others to pay, if those companies would gladly not only pay it back, but pay it forward so that all this and more will still be there tomorrow, to allow them the privilege to continue to grow and become even greater, this nation would be great too.
If the flag wavers would read only one line of the constitution, let that be the first line. ”We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”. No where in this document or the amended Bill of Rights does it say that the corporations having any rights. No where in the constitution does it even mentions corporations. The Constitution was written to insure the rights of the American people. Abraham Lincoln said it best “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
If we would see the dualism in existence, that light requires dark, that black requires white, that hot requires cold, that good requires evil, that left requires right, and that without both neither exists. That either extreme is not always the right answer, but the path to greatness lies somewhere in-between. The middle path may not seem like the correct path, but once traveled it is realized to have been the shortest path to the destination. The destination being the greatest nation on earth.
@Jim Shapiro:
If you'd let go of your prejudice against "organized religion," you might find some good allies in your opposition to those other things you list.
If our "Best Days" are defined as material comfort, sure. With improvements in technology, the rising tide will raise all boats.
If our best days are defined as economic or military dominance - yea, right. If that's what you want, teach your children Chinese.
If our best days are defined as moral and ethical leadership, there is real hope that new generations will see the ignorant absurdity of racism and sexism and consumerism and material selfishness and organized religion.
StevenP., it's not the facts that are in dispute, but their interpretation. Plutocracy presents a bigger danger to our Republic than socialism right now. Not everyone who thinks a 2nd Obama term would be less bad than any of the Republicans now clamoring for attention "adores" him. It cannot be truly said that I, for one, "adore" anyone.
Marcus speaks like a true socialist...yet 75% of Americans in polls do not want our country to become a socialist state where the government can ignore the laws and control which business succeeds or fails.
We’re finished so long as we continue to sacrifice the collective good to maintain Reagan’s imbecilic ideal of rugged individualism.
America's best days are indeed ahead but not until we get a real President elected that abides in the Constitution and can stand up and say, WE ARE a REPUBLIC, we are not a democracy."
That is a huge distinction and with that, people in MN need to know that something is very wrong when our Congress feels they have no power to curtail wrongful deeds of the President; e.g. Mr. Obama created a "panel" to decide which American citizens can be put on an Assassination List. That is how the dispicable Anwar Al-Alaki was listed for killing instead of going to Congress to declare war on Al Queda and other terrorist Islamic groups. Saying we are at war with terrorism is stupid since Terrorism is not a country or a group, it is the effect from others actions. Using the phrase of, "we are at war with Terrorism" only plays to the political correctness to not offend the traditional Islamists that seek to destroy Israel an America.
The liberals that back Obama should reconsider their views when they understand that their favored President has violated the very Constitution of the Republic of the USA. The records show he has done this through Assassination Hit lists, re-writing and controlling our laws on bankruptcy, appointing self proclaimed Marxists and anti-Constitution types such as the deposed Green Jobs czar _Van Jones,
the current Attorney General who chooses NOT to enforce selected Federal laws of voter intimidation and illegal immigration, giving back door amnesty to garner favor with radical groups that proclaim desire to re-take America's southern border lands and instill socialism _ such as "the La Raza" group, and appointing EPA czars to circumvent Congress.
Obama has almost kept his campaign promise of
"FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMING AMERICA" making it a European socialist state that is controlled by the anti-American countries within the United Nations and by giving up our economic system of free market capitalism completely over to the secretive members of the Federal Reserve. Today, one senator calls for auditing the Federal Reserve..in the past none would sign the bill because they feared for the consequences to them.
These are facts that are clearly available to all so if we want to see America have better days and return to prosperity, we need to vote with our heads and not from a vague theme of Hope and Change which meant nothing specific. Bumber sticker politics got us where we are today_ above 9.1% unemployment.
Now for those few who adore Obama, don't make yourself look silly with snide replies if you can't refute these comments with documented sources; try using the Congressional record statements as a starter. Thanks!
Thank you Gary for saying it best!
Herman Caine is the best hope, a non career politician who worked his way up through hardships most have not seen, who kept his values and stood by others, one who does not endorse the European socialist ideals...so just look at Greece to see how that worked for them and all should acknowledge that Caine is the best answer to restore America to his greatness not four more years of our President apologizing to foreign leaders and blaming his failed policies on everyone else.
Posted by GaryF | October 6, 2011 7:19 AM
"If we continue to follow the policies of Europe with more big government, then we might be done.
If we continue the policies that put more people in the wagon and punish the people pulling the wagon, then we might be done.
If we punish the companies that do well while bailing out the companies that do poorly, then we might be done.
If we keep individual and economic freedom, we can still be great.
If we believe in American exceptional-ism that we can still be great.
We can chase Europe down the drain, or we can make America great again.
EAL, I beg to differ with you on one point: Capitalism is not synonymous with the pursuit of happiness. Reducing happiness to mere economic wealth is at the root of much of what's wrong with America these days.
What the founders of the U.S. got right was framing a country based upon several human freedoms (e.g. speech, assembly, religion, bear arms, etc.). Not to mention power sharing between three branches of governement. These principles are not shared in many if not most countries across the globe. This is especially true as it relates to the pursuit of happiness which is done [globally] through capitalism in which America leads the world.
This foundation has created a society which has the capability to be flexible to meet the challenges of the future. Even as China continues to grow, at some point their growing middle class will demand freedoms they do not have.
Consider this the next time the 24/7 negative news outlets broadcast how bad things are. There were approximately 640,000 Americans killed by other Americans in the Civil War. Add about 240,000 in WWII. Then of course there was the dust bowl and the Great Depression not to mention the politically powerful Klu Klux Klan.
Challenges exist but then we must take time to pause and smell the roses. They are there today and will be in the future.
Oh my goodness - what a great question! And what a complex question!
We certainly have had our share of difficulties in the past 3 years.
But, in my breast, hopes beats eternal. I have great confidence that we will forego some of the self-serving behaviors we've all seen and work toward solving our common problems.
If we, the people, want our best days to be ahead of us than we can work together to make that happen.
Absolutely. Once the baby boomers allow the young people to change the country it will grow grow grow. That doesn't mean the Baby boomers need to leave the work force or that some of their ideas are not important for the future. It's just that the idea of my way or the highway (taken from 1980's America) doesn't work anymore and the country needs to move on and move forward.
Whether they become more flexible now or we have to wait until they're dead, America WILL do what it NEEDS to do to become even greater. I would just prefer if it happens sooner than later.
If the current generation can rise to the challenges presented it, then yes, absolutely. Otherwise, no.
20 years ago Harvard professor, and soon-to-be Labor Secretary, Robert Reich wrote ‘The Work of Nations’ in which he warned us about trends that would undermine anyone who earned a living by performing a routine.
His message was not ignored by the media. Over the last two decades it has been repeated and reiterated.
It was ignored by most Americans. The best days are behind any country which chooses not to upgrade its human capital.
Maybe, if we can give up our idollartry.
I personally think that the current anti-tax / anti-revenue political climate will delay possible improvements in our society. The boomers have been riding on the shoulders of giants, the greatest generation, who spent the money to develop our highway system, electrical grid, educational system, etc. This system has been allowed to deteriorate since Reagan. So instead of improving our society we are letting it rot because the wealthy, and those who think that they'll actually beat the ever steeper odds and get a chance to be wealthy, don't want to pay their fair share of taxes.
Add that we are maturing as a nation in our natural resource use, no longer cheap and plentiful, the best thing to do is invest in our people through education, retraining and a strong safety net. We are moving away from the model that could make America strong.
We could continue to be great if we invested in our society, however it does not look like we are planning to do what is needed.
Nope. We're a lazy, overfed, and complacent society. Our glory days are over.
HUH ????
If we continue to follow the policies of Europe with more big government, then we might be done.
If we continue the policies that put more people in the wagon and punish the people pulling the wagon, then we might be done.
If we punish the companies that do well while bailing out the companies that do poorly, then we might be done.
If we keep individual and economic freedom, we can still be great.
If we believe in American exceptional-ism that we can still be great.
We can chase Europe down the drain, or we can make America great again.
That depends on what you're calling America.
In general our days will be better, this however, is a good day.
Only a pessimist would believe otherwise...
That "Declaration of Evolution" (by Timothy Leary, btw) is ideological bullshit, every bit as much as the right wing's idolatry of the Invisible Hand.
I wish I did, but I think countries, like individuals, have something like a normal lifespan and that we as a country are a little past our prime. Hope that I am wrong.
Only if people let go of ideological bovine feces, whether from the left or right or any other direction, and learn to think pragmatically about what really works to promote the common good.
I like this distinction I heard recently: Ideologues believe what's right will work; pragmatists believe what works is right.
Only if we decide to make them so.
The Declaration of Evolution
When in the course of organic evolution it becomes obvious that a mutational process is inevitably dissolving the physical and neurological bonds which connect the members of one generation to the past and inevitably directing them to assume among the species of Earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent concern for the harmony of species requires that the causes of the mutation should be declared.
We hold these truths to be self evident:
*That all species are created different but equal;
*That they are endowed, each one, with certain inalienable rights;
*That among them are Freedom to Live, Freedom to Grow, and Freedom to pursue Happiness in their own style;
*That to protect these God-given rights, social structures naturally emerge, basing their authority on the principles of love of God and respect for all forms of life;
*That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and harmony, it is the organic duty of the young members of that species to mutate, to drop out, to initiate a new social structure, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its power in such form as seems likely to produce the safety, happiness, and harmony of all sentient beings.
Genetic wisdom, indeed, suggests that social structures long established should not be discarded for frivolous reasons and transient causes. The ecstasy of mutation is equally balanced by the pain. Accordingly all experience shows that members of a species are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, rather than to discard the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, all pursuing invariably the same destructive goals, threaten the very fabric of organic life and the serene harmony of the planet, it is the right, it is the organic duty to drop out of such morbid covenants and to evolve new loving social structures.
Such has been the patient sufferance of the freedom-loving peoples of this earth, and such is now the necessity which constrains us to form new systems of government.
The history of the white, menopausal, mendacious men now ruling the planet earth is a history of repeated violation of the harmonious laws of nature, all having the direct object of establishing a tyranny of the materialistic aging over the gentle, the peace-loving, the young, the colored. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to the judgement of generations to come.
*These old, white rulers have maintained a continuous war against other species of life, enslaving and destroying at whim fowl, fish, animals and spreading a lethal carpet of concrete and metal over the soft body of earth.
*They have maintained as well a continual state of war among themselves and against the colored races, the freedom-loving, the gentle, the young. Genocide is their habit.
*They have instituted artificial scarcities, denying peaceful folk the natural inheritance of earth's abundance and God's endowment.
*They have glorified material values and degraded the spiritual.
*They have claimed private, personal ownership of God's land, driving by force of arms the gentle from passage on the earth.
*In their greed they have erected artificial immigration and customs barriers, preventing the free movement of people.
*In their lust for control they have set up systems of compulsory education to coerce the minds of the children and to destroy the wisdom and innocence of the playful young.
*In their lust for power they have controlled all means of communication to prevent the free flow of ideas and to block loving exchanges among the gentle.
*In their fear they have instituted great armies of secret police to spy upon the privacy of the pacific.
*In their anger they have coerced the peaceful young against their will to join their armies and to wage murderous wars against the young and gentle of other countries.
*In their greed they have made the manufacture and selling of weapons the basis of their economies.
*For profit they have polluted the air, the rivers, the seas.
*In their impotence they have glorified murder, violence, and unnatural sex in their mass media.
*In their aging greed they have set up an economic system which favors age over youth.
*They have in every way attempted to impose a robot uniformity and to crush variety, individuality, and independence of thought.
*In their greed, they have instituted political systems which perpetuate rule by the aging and force youth to choose between plastic conformity or despairing alienation.
*They have invaded privacy by illegal search, unwarranted arrest, and contemptuous harassment.
*They have enlisted an army of informers.
In their greed they sponsor the consumption of deadly tars and sugars and employ cruel and unusual punishment of the possession of life-giving alkaloids and acids.
*They never admit a mistake. They unceasingly trumpet the virtue of greed and war. In their advertising and in their manipulation of information they make a fetish out of blatant falsity and pious self-enhancement. Their obvious errors only stimulate them to greater error and noisier self-approval.
*They are bores.
*They hate beauty.
*They hate sex.
*They hate life.
We have warned them from time to time to their inequities and blindness. We have addressed every available appeal to their withered sense of righteousness. We have tried to make them laugh. We have prophesied in detail the terror they are perpetuating. But they have been deaf to the weeping of the poor, the anguish of the colored, the rocking mockery of the young, the warnings of their poets. Worshipping only force and money, they listen only to force and money. But we shall no longer talk in these grim tongues.
We must therefore acquiesce to genetic necessity, detach ourselves from their uncaring madness and hold them henceforth as we hold the rest of God's creatures - in harmony, life brothers, in their excess, menaces to life.
We, therefore, God-loving, peace-loving, life-loving, fun-loving men and women, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the Universe for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the Authority of all sentient beings who seek gently to evolve on this planet, solemnly publish and declare that we are free and independent, and that we are absolved from all Allegiance to the United States Government and all governments controlled by the menopausal, and that grouping ourselves into tribes of like-minded fellows, we claim full power to live and move on the land, obtain sustenance with our own hands and minds in the style which seems sacred and holy to us, and to do all Acts and Things which independent Freemen and Freewomen may of right do without infringing on the same rights of other species and groups to do their own thing.
And for the support of this Declaration of Evolution with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, and serenely confident of the approval of generations to come, in whose name we speak, do we now mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.
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