this is radio tabs

This was an e-mail sent on 10/29/08 to a friend.

..................................................................................................... .................................................................

What free market system? I do not want to be cynical. It is too heart breaking. Here is what I think. Americans have delegated their civic duty, they have become complacent. After all since WW2 everything has basically been peachy keen, no real Depressions, no long and protracted down turns. [The government and media has been more than willing to promote living beyond Americas means by deficit spending. Starting in 1968 and LBJ's Great Society & Vietnam war...placing the Social Security Trust into the General Account.\ So Americans have thought well I don't need to pay attention anymore, everything is going along just great. After all I am too busy watching the World Series...................... The America of the 1950's and even 1960's that YOU remember NO LONGER EXISTS. First of all the Pre WW2 generation was still in power (Eisenhower). The Depression Generation was coming into power JFK, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush, and now they are all but gone to. The character of the American people has changed by being conditioned to having the Government take care of them so they have come to expect it. . Look around at the media...look at what passes for being good. It ain't the same anymore...................... Look at the education system. It is institutionalized, one shoe fits all. The only ones who survive are the kids that have parents that have taught their kids how to game the system. To play the politics of the class room. Any kid that has issues falls and fails...........................................

It is not that people are different it is their attitudes and expectations are now different Which captain of industry was it that recently said? "Americans from the end of WW2 till recently have been able to take it for granted that the US is competitive. Well now the US is going to have to start proving it again." Have you ever read. "I Claudius" by Robert Graves. The book chronicles the decline of values in a Super Power nation, in this case Rome. By reading about Rome of the 1st century AD and comparing it to America today one sees a lot of parallels. The most striking passage in the book was when Claudius's mother Antonia decides to kill herself in her old age. She says that she no longer recognizes Rome, that all the honorable men are now gone. Only to be replaced by dishonorable men, and that she no longer wanted to be around................................................ Remember we only have 2 hands, and can only do the best we can. We can not save society, we can only keep on doing what we think is right. Even in the face of the tide of the times being against us.