yeahwho
09-11-2004, 02:41 PM
The following is an excerpt from the NYTimes book review "Running on Empty" by Peter G. Peterson.........................
The guarantee of a secure retirement is already being rescinded in the minds of the citizenry, if not yet in the statute books.
But Mr. Peterson also entertains a darker possibility: that ''our national leaders are providing the American people with precisely what they want." Debt, he notes, is particularly alluring in periods of partisan intransigence. If the two sides cannot compromise on priorities, each can take what it wants while dumping the bill on future generations. Americans used to understand this temptation and flee it. Thomas Jefferson warned: ''To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
So it may be that some terrible change has come over the national psychology that admits to only two diagnoses. Either the complexity of government has outrun the capacity of a democratic public to understand it, or that public, understanding well the options Jefferson put before it, has chosen servitude.
LINK:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/books/12cald.html?ex=1095048000&en=c10409d2af61edaf&ei=5070
How do we as citizens end this cycle? Which candidate has the best plan?
The guarantee of a secure retirement is already being rescinded in the minds of the citizenry, if not yet in the statute books.
But Mr. Peterson also entertains a darker possibility: that ''our national leaders are providing the American people with precisely what they want." Debt, he notes, is particularly alluring in periods of partisan intransigence. If the two sides cannot compromise on priorities, each can take what it wants while dumping the bill on future generations. Americans used to understand this temptation and flee it. Thomas Jefferson warned: ''To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
So it may be that some terrible change has come over the national psychology that admits to only two diagnoses. Either the complexity of government has outrun the capacity of a democratic public to understand it, or that public, understanding well the options Jefferson put before it, has chosen servitude.
LINK:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/books/12cald.html?ex=1095048000&en=c10409d2af61edaf&ei=5070
How do we as citizens end this cycle? Which candidate has the best plan?