No time to go soft

TownHall.com ^ | Monday, June 7, 2004 | Suzanne Fields

[JohnHuang2]

The glory of America is that there are many Americas, red and blue, North and South, conservative and liberal, secular and religious, and the strength of our great experiment is that we've found a pot big enough to melt it all down. We've actually made alchemy work.

What makes alchemy work, of refining gold from baser metals, is the optimism that infuses the American spirit. The good news is that despite the nay-saying in media and in academe, the crucial optimism we've always counted on is alive and well. Two new public-opinion polls, for example, find that we still have confidence in our public institutions - particularly the armed forces and the police-and even when we're unhappy with the institutions we're "satisfied with life."

Americans trust the military the most, according to a Gallup poll - 75 percent say they have a "great deal" of confidence in the men and women in uniform, Abu Ghraib or not. Substantial majorities express confidence in cops. Confidence levels fall below 50 percent only in rating the usual suspects: doctors and hospitals, public schools and the courts. "Big business," unions, the media and Congress lie at the bottom of public regard. Anybody surprised by that?

But 56 percent of us, says the Harris Poll, are satisfied with our lives. We think life has improved over the past five years. Other polls show a majority of Americans are happy in their jobs and nearly seven in 10 of us would take the same job again. The breakdown of who holds these sunny attitudes is particularly fascinating: 62 percent of whites expect their lives to improve over the next five years, and 86 percent of both blacks and Hispanics, who are supposed to be the unhappiest of all, think so.

[Texasforever]

Well there is always the 30% that would gripe if you hung them with a new rope.