The Village Square

“We the people”… only less good

September 27th, 2008

As our presidential politics play the standard election year blame game for the Wall Street fiasco (and everything else for that matter), as our retirement funds head steadily south, humility requires that we take a moment to reflect on ourselves.

Worthy of contemplation: On his book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Andrew Bacevich, who says he’s a conservative, thinks our behavior has put America’s leadership in the world on the fast track to extinction:

Ultimately we the American people refuse to look in that mirror and to see the extent to which the problems that we face really lie within. We refuse to live within our means. We continue to think that the problems that beset the country are out there beyond our borders and to the extent that if we deploy sufficient American power we can fix those problems and therefore things back here will continue the way they are for decades.

Entry Filed under: Beyond our borders,Economics Lose the Ideology