Now, as to what I was reading: Thank You, President Bush. It is a collection of essays from all sorts of conservatives...Dick Cheney, Phyllis Schaffly, etc. all explaining how well the President has done. Lots of good stuff.
However, the BEST essay I have read so far is called "Aeschylus and America" by Jack Wheeler.
I will try to explain the theory briefly. Wheeler says that when the Greeks defeated the Perisan fleet (which was an amazing miracle) they became fearful...afraid they would draw the disapproval of the gods. In the Greek culture, excessive success would look like hubris to the Gods and draw their wrath. So the Greeks went into a period of withdrawal and decline.
He believes that this is what happened to us as a culture after the moon landing. He draws great parallels between liberals and savages who think that envy will cause them to fall victim to the evil eye...so they strive to deflect that envy by pouring money into feel-good programs. I am going to take the time to type in this passage because it reflects so well the history of the last 30 years.
America's landing a man on the moon is the single greatest accomplishment in the history of the human race. It was an act of the purest Homeric fearless optimism. And yet after it, America - like Aeschylus and Ancient Athens - had a failure of nerve. Landing a man on the moon was epic heroism on a scale far beyond anything to which any other culture on earth could aspire. It was a pinnacle which left the rest of the human race too far below. Landing a man on the moon, like the defeat of the Persians, was too unbelievably astonishing. It was a feat that placed Americans too far beyond the rest of humanity. The primordial anxiety that the gods would punish us for our succeeding too much caused us to give up.
We gave up going to the moon after the inertia of scheduled Apollo llandings ran out in 1972. We gave up in Vietnam. We gave up in the oil embargo. We gave up against the Soviets and let them colonize South Yemen (1971), Benin (1972), Angola (1975), Mozambique (1975), Ethiopia (1977), Seychelles (1977), Nicaragua (1979), Suriname (1979), Afghanistan (1979), and Grenada (1980). We gave up when the Communist Khmer Rouge committed genocide in Cambodia. We gave up and let Khomeni overthrow the Shah and gave up again when his thugs took American hostages at our embassy in Tehran. We gave up and let our economy collapse in a malaise of inflation and unemployment. We gave up and elected a pathetic nebbish for our President, Jimmy Carter.
He goes on to explain that the failure in Vietnam was a failure caused by our failure of nerve. Ronald Reagan, of course, came to our rescue.
He says this compulsion to not think themselves better than any other country is a peculiarity of liberals, who feel guilty whenever they have more than anyone else...but who do not do anything to bring others up to their level, but rather tear achievers down.
Anyway, it's a very good essay, and it explains a lot about the danger of electing anyone other than President Bush...ESPECIALLY JOHN KERRY.
Interesting that Wheeler ties the decline to the moon landing...a different-than-usual suggestion, don't you think??
That's interesting he brought up liberals feeling guilty for success. I've watched the msm trying to make Americans feel guilty for being what they are and for succeeding where other countries cannot. Look at the previous president and his minions, when they were out of country, they bad mouthed us. Yet, he and his sometimes housemate, have been grabbing success, politically and financially, hand over fist for many years. Poor jimmah...what can we say about that poor piece of llama pellet. He still thinks he's not made the success grade. poor thang!