[Defiant]

I think we have a danger period that will be slowly phased out as the leftists and hippies gradually decline in numbers. Objective criteria for running an economy, a foreign policy and one's life make it clear that socialism is a failure. But the unrecalcitrant will continue trying to impose socialism and tear down the old order, and a determined minority can sometimes prevail.

If we can govern, and begin to roll back 70 years of socialism, over the next 2 generations, the left will become a fringe element, still there, but not a danger. If we give them an opening, if they take back the government and impose an increasingly dictatorial government (see Hillary 2008), then they may still win. In that scenario, your concern about a breakup of the republic would be well justified.

I have a lot of faith in the younger generations, much more than in the baby boomers of which I am a member. They are returning to old fashioned values, in spite of the barrage of propaganda they get through popular culture and the education system. We can reverse the Democratic welfare state/anti-american/anti-morality society, but it will take a long time.

[CGVet58]

"...I think we have a danger period that will be slowly phased out as the leftists and hippies gradually decline in numbers..."

Yep. Abortions have a nasty habit of doing that to that crowd.