Our Greatest Loss
There is a great unease among the American people, and perhaps even among other segments of the world’s population. It goes beyond the economic difficulties we are experiencing, the increasingly dangerous nature of the world, accelerating moral decay, political ineptitude and a host of other problems our 24/7 news cycle bombards us with on a daily basis. A word from the 70’s has come back to describe it; "malaise." I believe it is an emotional response to a very dangerous philosophical shift in the West in general, and America most recently. It is not an exaggeration to say that if this trend is not reversed, civilization as we have come to know it will end. The "Dark Ages" will return and condemn our posterity to intellectual and physical poverty.
I know that sounds alarmist but I hope that if you stick with me to the end of this piece, I will have justified my dire warning. This "malaise" is a result of the replacement of optimism with pessimism, not as general outlooks on life but as philosophical ideals. The Dark Ages ended with the Renaissance and most importantly, the Enlightenment. The accompanying philosophical change has brought us the advances in all areas we currently enjoy. Optimism, as a philosophical concept, is the principle that all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge (David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity). "Evils" are problems and every problem can be solved with sufficient knowledge. These problems can be moral, physical, political, economic, biological, it doesn’t matter. The philosophy of optimism includes two other important ideals. First, that there will always be problems. Even as one problem is solved, others will arise to take its place, sometimes as a direct result of the solution. Second, as I mentioned previously, problems are solvable, all problems have solutions even if they are inconceivable to us at the present. This means that this process of solving problems and the associated quest for knowledge is an infinite quest, it is a never ending process. Optimism results in the belief that societies and civilizations will advance and even though unforeseen problems will arise as a result, things will be better in the future.
Allow me to illustrate how "evil" results from lack of knowledge. Disease, for example, is often caused by lack of knowledge. In the past, knowledge of basic hygiene would have prevented many plagues. Today, knowledge of viruses and bacteria, DNA and genes, have made many of the diseases that have killed millions in the past mere footnotes in history. The diseases of today have cures that only await the expansion of our knowledge and technology to discover. What about natural disasters? In 1906 San Francisco was flattened by an earthquake. Since then, knowledge and technology has given us earthquake-resistant buildings the size of which the turn of the century San Franciscan couldn’t have even imagined. In the future, such knowledge and the accompanying technology will continue to advance and enable people to live safely under the most extreme geologic or weather conditions. These are only two examples, there are many more. The human mind has an infinite capacity for progress if it is left free to roam.
Pessimism, on the other hand, is defined by fear. It is the fear that at any moment catastrophe will overtake us. It is fear that further advancement will create problems that will make catastrophe inevitable. It is defined by the belief that this is as good as it gets, the life you have is the best there can be. Societies ruled by pessimism are autocratic, most of the people are poor and conformity is the rule. They do not advance or grow, they exist only to conserve the status quo and any new ideas conceived in such societies are directed toward more efficiently enforcing conformity and maintaining their current state. Most civilizations in history have existed under the pessimistic principle.
There is only one way to make progress in a society and that is through the process of conjecture and criticism. They must go together for conjecture without criticism is simply fanciful speculation and absolute rulers with the means to implement such ideas without the criticism necessary to prove or disprove their veracity are dangerous and often result in the deaths of many. Whether it was the Catholic Church’s speculations about heath, hygiene and the cause of the black plague resulting in the deaths of millions and the murder of thousands of Jews or the Soviet Union’s five year plans that led to widespread starvation and industrial stagnation, conjecture without criticism is often disastrous. Criticism without conjecture is simply useless bickering over inconsequential things and throughout history, such small mindedness has killed just as many through pointless wars.
The thing that conjecture and criticism have in common and makes them such potent agents for problem solving and the accompanying progress is freedom. Conjecture is freedom of thought and must be coupled with the ability to share those thoughts without fear of physical reprisal. In order to advance, individuals in society need to be able to share ideas without the fear of being burned at the stake, whisked away in the middle of the night or sent to a reeducation camp. In order to weed out the fanciful from the practical, criticism is necessary and requires the same freedom of thought and speech that conjecture does.
So far, the United States has been the best example of Enlightenment values and their results in the history of the world. By combining the freedom to think and believe, the ability to enjoy the fruits of the implementation of those ideas, a social system we call capitalism, and a minimalist government that forced individual and community responsibility, we advanced faster and farther than any society in the history of mankind. Knowledge, and its accompanying technology, has grown exponentially in the last three hundred years and in most cases, America was leading. Until today, each generation believed the next would be better off because problems would be solved and our capacity for advancement was unlimited.
The freedom we have enjoyed is based on the objective truth of natural rights, articulated most eloquently in the Declaration of Independence. (For why natural rights are objective rights, see pp. 33-56 of Leave Me Alone, A Patriot’s Plan for Restoring Pride and Prosperity in America by yours truly; www.leavemealonenow.com) "We are endowed by our Creator with certain Unalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Our right to life, to our own existence, and the liberty to act to maintain our lives are the most basic rights. The pursuit of happiness is crucial to our discussion here because it is in contrast to the utopian vision of pessimism. That may seem counterintuitive, to link a utopian ideal with pessimism. Here is why. Optimism understands knowledge and progress to be infinite, we exist on a continuum that has no end. Therefore, each individual must come to terms with the world as it exists in his lifetime, striking a balance between being content with current circumstances and striving to improve them. This will mean something different for each man or woman. Happiness is an individually subjective concept.
In contrast, the utopian ideal states that all problems have been solved, there is no new knowledge to be discovered and therefore everyone will conform to whatever the utopian ideal is for that society. The society that exists is the best there is, there is no improvement and any more steps taken can only be steps backward. Everything in pessimistic societies is designed to preserve the status quo. Who decides what constitutes the best society, the end of progress, the attainment of the goal? Someone does, usually someone with unlimited political power. Leaders in utopian/pessimistic societies educate, indoctrinate or prohibit their populations from criticizing their most important ideas. What they consider foundational ideas, whether religious, philosophical or practical, are not open to speculation, those areas are not available for inquiry for they believe absolute truth in those areas has already been found. If problems result, it is not because the ideas and traditions are faulty, it is the people and their implementation. Think about the Soviet Union and how the system was beyond question regardless of how many millions starved or consider the liberal idea that it is not the failed program or the ideals behind them that are the problem, it is just that we have not done or spent enough yet. Pessimistic societies are led from the top down and whoever is on top and the system they espouse is beyond criticism, they are infallible. The problems are never with them, it is always their own people or others which is why pessimistic societies kill their citizens and go to war with their neighbors.
If you have wondered why Islamic states, dictators and the communists hate America, this is why. As their societies stagnate and their people wallow in poverty and oppression, America is progressing, growing, becoming more wealthy and powerful and its people, healthier and wealthier, our example is anathema to the belief in all these other societies that they have obtained some utopian ideal. The Communists built walls to keep their people from knowing there was something better out there and committed themselves to destroying the capitalist pigs. Muslims, wondering why even with enormous oil wealth their societies remain backward and their people "poor and oppressed" have decided that the way of the West and its associated progress is the tool of Satan and any failings in Islam are caused by lack of purity and devotion on their part. Revelation is complete with Mohammed, no further progress is possible or necessary and therefore any deviation is evil and a suitable object of derision and violence. Pessimistic societies must eliminate optimistic societies because the existence of optimistic states threatens the very foundation of their societies and their leader’s reason for maintaining power.
The embrace of "top down" solutions is one of the reasons the French Revolution was so different from the American one. Americans, because of the distance from England, were accustomed to acting independently and had a distrust of top-down solutions. The French were used to an absolute monarchy and proceeded with the belief that top down solutions with the "right" people in charge would create the best society. If anyone disagreed, if anyone failed to conform or questioned the wisdom of the "enlightened" ones, it was off with their heads. Communism operates under the same delusion, that the road to happiness can be dictated from on high and hundreds of millions of people have died as a result. Happiness is an individual phenomenon and attempts to force it on another will make no one happy and necessarily destroys their other natural rights. After all, if your non-conformity is a barrier to the collective happiness, you need to be eliminated for the good of the many, and the security of the "top" and their ideals, for they vastly outweigh the happiness of the few, or the one.
Now, let us return to the beginning. How is it we are in danger of returning to the Dark Ages, losing our optimism, condemned to exist in a pessimistic world? The pressures on the optimism embodied in the western enlightenment in general and America in particular, have accelerated exponentially in the last fifty years. Communism, European style socialist democracy and Islam are all ascending pessimistic philosophies that are attempting to squeeze the life out of Enlightenment optimism. Such pessimism in the form of top down utopianism (communism) has been infiltrating American government for one hundred years and is now nakedly obvious with the advent of the Obama administration.
There is a two pronged pessimistic approach endemic to our government that is now becoming pervasive within our society. The first is the top down utopian approach. The assumption among all the politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government in our country is that they know how to best order society, and by extension, your individual life. Too many citizens have also accepted the idea that the government is run by experts who know what is best. This idea is antithetical to natural rights and the resulting avalanche of legislation and regulation has put fear in the minds of citizens who are often unsure as to which behaviors and actions are acceptable and which are not. When even light bulbs and toilets, medical treatment and basic financial transactions become illegal or so stringently monitored and controlled as they are today, it should be obvious our basic freedoms are long gone. This is to say nothing of the exorbitant amount of money stolen and spent in pursuit of the utopian dream of equalizing outcomes for all in the pursuit of universal happiness. The only ones happy in such a system are the politicians, bureaucrats and their friends who are looting the system.
The second attack on optimism is the "war on success." This began with the progressive income tax, a central tenant of communism, which increases the penalty for success as success increases. Add to that the class warfare standardized by Franklin Roosevelt and practiced by Democrats, and some Republicans, ever since and you have a social stigmatism and financial burden placed on success that are the complete opposite of the original American vision.
Now consider the attacks on the central tenets of optimism. Progress is a result of conjecture and criticism. In order for that process to work to advance society, there must be freedom of thought and speech, freedom from fear of reprisal. Political correctness has been limiting this for decades. We now have an administration monitoring speech and collecting information on average citizens on the internet and other places, using regulation to harass and appropriating the legal justification to hold without charge or trial individuals it deems a threat. We are well on the way to stifling dissent the way Hitler or Stalin found expedient. Add to that the fact we now have a generation or two indoctrinated through a government educational system designed to advance government acceptable modes of thought and speech, and we have an ever growing segment of society unable to think critically or outside certain clearly defined boundaries. I fact, I would say that a large segment of America’s population have lost the ability to think critically about government and their solutions. Too many of our fellow citizens blindly accept the idea that a government solution, regardless of its feasibility, cost or track record of failure, is the only solution.
While it is horrible that a minority are persecuted for conjecture and criticism beyond the bounds of politically correct discussion, every individual who has been brainwashed to the point where it does not even occur to them to go beyond those bounds is an unfathomable loss and another nail in the coffin of a free society. A fearful mind may still operate underground or find the courage to speak out regardless of consequences. But a mind drugged and/or limited in its ability to think is a mind whose unlimited potential has been destroyed. Just as abortion may kill the next great inventor or doctor who will solve our most pressing problems, so a mind put in a drug induced or politically correct straightjacket is a mind to whom some solutions will never occur that otherwise might have. That is an unrecoverable loss.
If the government is putting problem solving in the straight jacket of political correctness by moving to become the sole distributor of resources for the problems it deems worthy of attention (the carrot) and punishes those who operate outside those bounds through regulation and taxation (the stick) our progress and technological advancement will slow. If creativity is limited and ambition destroyed by eliminating rewards, we will stagnate. When the vast majority lose the ability to "think outside the box" and even conceive of critical thinking, we will become mindless slaves to the powers that remain. If fact, our situation, and the world’s, will be worse than that of the Soviet Union for there will not be an optimistic society left to steal from.
At that point, we will be taught to expect no better. In fact, this is already happening. Consider that eight to ten percent unemployment is now the "new normal" just as double digit unemployment is "normal" European socialist democracies. We are being encouraged to acquiesce to the government’s theft of twenty-five percent of our national wealth, up from the twenty percent that was the previous exorbitant norm. Too many have accepted government dependency, which is making your fellow your slave, as a way of life. We are expected to tolerate stagnant growth, a declining standard of living and a rude, violent society. This should be completely unacceptable to every one of us as inheritors of the Enlightenment and custodians of the American ideal.
A majority of Americans no longer believe succeeding generations will be better off. That demonstrates how deeply pessimism has taken hold of us. However, a majority also believe that America is going in the wrong direction, which demonstrates how deeply optimism is imbedded in our collective psyche. It is not too late for us, we can still turn things around. Optimism is not blind, will will reap what we have sown, but there are solutions to even our most pressing problems. They will not, however, come from government. The state is the biggest problem we have and cutting it down to the size envisioned by the founders so we will once again be able to exercise our freedom to create, solve problems and yes, reap the rewards of our success, is our greatest challenge today.
In 1979 amidst the malaise, double digit inflation and high interest rates, a stagnant economy and a seemingly unstoppable communist expansion, Ronald Reagan was able to convince us that our best days were ahead, that individual freedom was the solution and faith in the progress of mankind was not misplaced. More than anything else, recapturing a philosophy of optimism and putting it into practice in our own lives will save our society. If we lose our optimism it will not be long before the moochers and looters destroy our civilization and we wake up in the new Dark Ages. Optimism is our greatest asset and would surely be our greatest loss if we allow pessimism to win
I know that sounds alarmist but I hope that if you stick with me to the end of this piece, I will have justified my dire warning. This "malaise" is a result of the replacement of optimism with pessimism, not as general outlooks on life but as philosophical ideals. The Dark Ages ended with the Renaissance and most importantly, the Enlightenment. The accompanying philosophical change has brought us the advances in all areas we currently enjoy. Optimism, as a philosophical concept, is the principle that all evils are caused by insufficient knowledge (David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity). "Evils" are problems and every problem can be solved with sufficient knowledge. These problems can be moral, physical, political, economic, biological, it doesn’t matter. The philosophy of optimism includes two other important ideals. First, that there will always be problems. Even as one problem is solved, others will arise to take its place, sometimes as a direct result of the solution. Second, as I mentioned previously, problems are solvable, all problems have solutions even if they are inconceivable to us at the present. This means that this process of solving problems and the associated quest for knowledge is an infinite quest, it is a never ending process. Optimism results in the belief that societies and civilizations will advance and even though unforeseen problems will arise as a result, things will be better in the future.
Allow me to illustrate how "evil" results from lack of knowledge. Disease, for example, is often caused by lack of knowledge. In the past, knowledge of basic hygiene would have prevented many plagues. Today, knowledge of viruses and bacteria, DNA and genes, have made many of the diseases that have killed millions in the past mere footnotes in history. The diseases of today have cures that only await the expansion of our knowledge and technology to discover. What about natural disasters? In 1906 San Francisco was flattened by an earthquake. Since then, knowledge and technology has given us earthquake-resistant buildings the size of which the turn of the century San Franciscan couldn’t have even imagined. In the future, such knowledge and the accompanying technology will continue to advance and enable people to live safely under the most extreme geologic or weather conditions. These are only two examples, there are many more. The human mind has an infinite capacity for progress if it is left free to roam.
Pessimism, on the other hand, is defined by fear. It is the fear that at any moment catastrophe will overtake us. It is fear that further advancement will create problems that will make catastrophe inevitable. It is defined by the belief that this is as good as it gets, the life you have is the best there can be. Societies ruled by pessimism are autocratic, most of the people are poor and conformity is the rule. They do not advance or grow, they exist only to conserve the status quo and any new ideas conceived in such societies are directed toward more efficiently enforcing conformity and maintaining their current state. Most civilizations in history have existed under the pessimistic principle.
There is only one way to make progress in a society and that is through the process of conjecture and criticism. They must go together for conjecture without criticism is simply fanciful speculation and absolute rulers with the means to implement such ideas without the criticism necessary to prove or disprove their veracity are dangerous and often result in the deaths of many. Whether it was the Catholic Church’s speculations about heath, hygiene and the cause of the black plague resulting in the deaths of millions and the murder of thousands of Jews or the Soviet Union’s five year plans that led to widespread starvation and industrial stagnation, conjecture without criticism is often disastrous. Criticism without conjecture is simply useless bickering over inconsequential things and throughout history, such small mindedness has killed just as many through pointless wars.
The thing that conjecture and criticism have in common and makes them such potent agents for problem solving and the accompanying progress is freedom. Conjecture is freedom of thought and must be coupled with the ability to share those thoughts without fear of physical reprisal. In order to advance, individuals in society need to be able to share ideas without the fear of being burned at the stake, whisked away in the middle of the night or sent to a reeducation camp. In order to weed out the fanciful from the practical, criticism is necessary and requires the same freedom of thought and speech that conjecture does.
So far, the United States has been the best example of Enlightenment values and their results in the history of the world. By combining the freedom to think and believe, the ability to enjoy the fruits of the implementation of those ideas, a social system we call capitalism, and a minimalist government that forced individual and community responsibility, we advanced faster and farther than any society in the history of mankind. Knowledge, and its accompanying technology, has grown exponentially in the last three hundred years and in most cases, America was leading. Until today, each generation believed the next would be better off because problems would be solved and our capacity for advancement was unlimited.
The freedom we have enjoyed is based on the objective truth of natural rights, articulated most eloquently in the Declaration of Independence. (For why natural rights are objective rights, see pp. 33-56 of Leave Me Alone, A Patriot’s Plan for Restoring Pride and Prosperity in America by yours truly; www.leavemealonenow.com) "We are endowed by our Creator with certain Unalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Our right to life, to our own existence, and the liberty to act to maintain our lives are the most basic rights. The pursuit of happiness is crucial to our discussion here because it is in contrast to the utopian vision of pessimism. That may seem counterintuitive, to link a utopian ideal with pessimism. Here is why. Optimism understands knowledge and progress to be infinite, we exist on a continuum that has no end. Therefore, each individual must come to terms with the world as it exists in his lifetime, striking a balance between being content with current circumstances and striving to improve them. This will mean something different for each man or woman. Happiness is an individually subjective concept.
In contrast, the utopian ideal states that all problems have been solved, there is no new knowledge to be discovered and therefore everyone will conform to whatever the utopian ideal is for that society. The society that exists is the best there is, there is no improvement and any more steps taken can only be steps backward. Everything in pessimistic societies is designed to preserve the status quo. Who decides what constitutes the best society, the end of progress, the attainment of the goal? Someone does, usually someone with unlimited political power. Leaders in utopian/pessimistic societies educate, indoctrinate or prohibit their populations from criticizing their most important ideas. What they consider foundational ideas, whether religious, philosophical or practical, are not open to speculation, those areas are not available for inquiry for they believe absolute truth in those areas has already been found. If problems result, it is not because the ideas and traditions are faulty, it is the people and their implementation. Think about the Soviet Union and how the system was beyond question regardless of how many millions starved or consider the liberal idea that it is not the failed program or the ideals behind them that are the problem, it is just that we have not done or spent enough yet. Pessimistic societies are led from the top down and whoever is on top and the system they espouse is beyond criticism, they are infallible. The problems are never with them, it is always their own people or others which is why pessimistic societies kill their citizens and go to war with their neighbors.
If you have wondered why Islamic states, dictators and the communists hate America, this is why. As their societies stagnate and their people wallow in poverty and oppression, America is progressing, growing, becoming more wealthy and powerful and its people, healthier and wealthier, our example is anathema to the belief in all these other societies that they have obtained some utopian ideal. The Communists built walls to keep their people from knowing there was something better out there and committed themselves to destroying the capitalist pigs. Muslims, wondering why even with enormous oil wealth their societies remain backward and their people "poor and oppressed" have decided that the way of the West and its associated progress is the tool of Satan and any failings in Islam are caused by lack of purity and devotion on their part. Revelation is complete with Mohammed, no further progress is possible or necessary and therefore any deviation is evil and a suitable object of derision and violence. Pessimistic societies must eliminate optimistic societies because the existence of optimistic states threatens the very foundation of their societies and their leader’s reason for maintaining power.
The embrace of "top down" solutions is one of the reasons the French Revolution was so different from the American one. Americans, because of the distance from England, were accustomed to acting independently and had a distrust of top-down solutions. The French were used to an absolute monarchy and proceeded with the belief that top down solutions with the "right" people in charge would create the best society. If anyone disagreed, if anyone failed to conform or questioned the wisdom of the "enlightened" ones, it was off with their heads. Communism operates under the same delusion, that the road to happiness can be dictated from on high and hundreds of millions of people have died as a result. Happiness is an individual phenomenon and attempts to force it on another will make no one happy and necessarily destroys their other natural rights. After all, if your non-conformity is a barrier to the collective happiness, you need to be eliminated for the good of the many, and the security of the "top" and their ideals, for they vastly outweigh the happiness of the few, or the one.
Now, let us return to the beginning. How is it we are in danger of returning to the Dark Ages, losing our optimism, condemned to exist in a pessimistic world? The pressures on the optimism embodied in the western enlightenment in general and America in particular, have accelerated exponentially in the last fifty years. Communism, European style socialist democracy and Islam are all ascending pessimistic philosophies that are attempting to squeeze the life out of Enlightenment optimism. Such pessimism in the form of top down utopianism (communism) has been infiltrating American government for one hundred years and is now nakedly obvious with the advent of the Obama administration.
There is a two pronged pessimistic approach endemic to our government that is now becoming pervasive within our society. The first is the top down utopian approach. The assumption among all the politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government in our country is that they know how to best order society, and by extension, your individual life. Too many citizens have also accepted the idea that the government is run by experts who know what is best. This idea is antithetical to natural rights and the resulting avalanche of legislation and regulation has put fear in the minds of citizens who are often unsure as to which behaviors and actions are acceptable and which are not. When even light bulbs and toilets, medical treatment and basic financial transactions become illegal or so stringently monitored and controlled as they are today, it should be obvious our basic freedoms are long gone. This is to say nothing of the exorbitant amount of money stolen and spent in pursuit of the utopian dream of equalizing outcomes for all in the pursuit of universal happiness. The only ones happy in such a system are the politicians, bureaucrats and their friends who are looting the system.
The second attack on optimism is the "war on success." This began with the progressive income tax, a central tenant of communism, which increases the penalty for success as success increases. Add to that the class warfare standardized by Franklin Roosevelt and practiced by Democrats, and some Republicans, ever since and you have a social stigmatism and financial burden placed on success that are the complete opposite of the original American vision.
Now consider the attacks on the central tenets of optimism. Progress is a result of conjecture and criticism. In order for that process to work to advance society, there must be freedom of thought and speech, freedom from fear of reprisal. Political correctness has been limiting this for decades. We now have an administration monitoring speech and collecting information on average citizens on the internet and other places, using regulation to harass and appropriating the legal justification to hold without charge or trial individuals it deems a threat. We are well on the way to stifling dissent the way Hitler or Stalin found expedient. Add to that the fact we now have a generation or two indoctrinated through a government educational system designed to advance government acceptable modes of thought and speech, and we have an ever growing segment of society unable to think critically or outside certain clearly defined boundaries. I fact, I would say that a large segment of America’s population have lost the ability to think critically about government and their solutions. Too many of our fellow citizens blindly accept the idea that a government solution, regardless of its feasibility, cost or track record of failure, is the only solution.
While it is horrible that a minority are persecuted for conjecture and criticism beyond the bounds of politically correct discussion, every individual who has been brainwashed to the point where it does not even occur to them to go beyond those bounds is an unfathomable loss and another nail in the coffin of a free society. A fearful mind may still operate underground or find the courage to speak out regardless of consequences. But a mind drugged and/or limited in its ability to think is a mind whose unlimited potential has been destroyed. Just as abortion may kill the next great inventor or doctor who will solve our most pressing problems, so a mind put in a drug induced or politically correct straightjacket is a mind to whom some solutions will never occur that otherwise might have. That is an unrecoverable loss.
If the government is putting problem solving in the straight jacket of political correctness by moving to become the sole distributor of resources for the problems it deems worthy of attention (the carrot) and punishes those who operate outside those bounds through regulation and taxation (the stick) our progress and technological advancement will slow. If creativity is limited and ambition destroyed by eliminating rewards, we will stagnate. When the vast majority lose the ability to "think outside the box" and even conceive of critical thinking, we will become mindless slaves to the powers that remain. If fact, our situation, and the world’s, will be worse than that of the Soviet Union for there will not be an optimistic society left to steal from.
At that point, we will be taught to expect no better. In fact, this is already happening. Consider that eight to ten percent unemployment is now the "new normal" just as double digit unemployment is "normal" European socialist democracies. We are being encouraged to acquiesce to the government’s theft of twenty-five percent of our national wealth, up from the twenty percent that was the previous exorbitant norm. Too many have accepted government dependency, which is making your fellow your slave, as a way of life. We are expected to tolerate stagnant growth, a declining standard of living and a rude, violent society. This should be completely unacceptable to every one of us as inheritors of the Enlightenment and custodians of the American ideal.
A majority of Americans no longer believe succeeding generations will be better off. That demonstrates how deeply pessimism has taken hold of us. However, a majority also believe that America is going in the wrong direction, which demonstrates how deeply optimism is imbedded in our collective psyche. It is not too late for us, we can still turn things around. Optimism is not blind, will will reap what we have sown, but there are solutions to even our most pressing problems. They will not, however, come from government. The state is the biggest problem we have and cutting it down to the size envisioned by the founders so we will once again be able to exercise our freedom to create, solve problems and yes, reap the rewards of our success, is our greatest challenge today.
In 1979 amidst the malaise, double digit inflation and high interest rates, a stagnant economy and a seemingly unstoppable communist expansion, Ronald Reagan was able to convince us that our best days were ahead, that individual freedom was the solution and faith in the progress of mankind was not misplaced. More than anything else, recapturing a philosophy of optimism and putting it into practice in our own lives will save our society. If we lose our optimism it will not be long before the moochers and looters destroy our civilization and we wake up in the new Dark Ages. Optimism is our greatest asset and would surely be our greatest loss if we allow pessimism to win
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