To follow on to Lucid's post...

I came across this article in the Washington Post from Susan Jacoby title "The Dumbing of America". I believe that this is part of the problem with why we, as Americans, do not accept the hard truth about Iraq, Oil, health care, whatever you want to throw into the mix. We don't want to worry about what is happening until it directly affects us. We don't pay attention to the world. We give it a cursory glance and look the the eyes of the internet browser but rarely do people apply their own thought processes to what they are reading.

We are a people who close our eyes to anything outside our immediate viewpoint, or beyond our recent time frame. In the world of instant on, high speed data transfer and instant video we no longer want to wait. We want it all now and don't want to work for it. An old adage of "practice makes perfect" has gone down the wayside. We want a plug in the back of our head like Neo in the Matrix to learn Kung Fu in a few seconds.

Where is our work ethic? What happened to us? We used to be the standard that was looked up to... with hard work anything is possible. Now we want it all done for us. We don't want to make hard decisions. We don't want to change. Why?

I believe Ms. Jacoby is right on throughout her article. We are an arrogant people who have gotten lazy. At the same time we cannot replace arrogance with appeasement for the world. It is a delicate balance. What Ms. Jacoby misses is that we have lost our way and that we have failed to maintain a unique identity as America. We need to get back to our roots... To what made us great... The great melting pot...

-End of Ramble