As long as a number of people keep the dreams of the Founders alive through their beliefs and their actions. America the Idea is not dead.
Add to that the hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have served so admirably in the GWOT and it leads me to predict a resurgance of The Great Experiment.
I pray there are still enough folks who DO remember what this place was to have been.
My great fear is that our collective, institutional national memory has been terminallyy diluted by the massive influx of illegals who come from oligarchies, dictatorships and other tyrannies.
We have been warned many, many times over the years:
* “Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they
keep it? Or, will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the
memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the
path to destruction. Thomas Jefferson (on the free
market/private property system they tried to leave us and the
incredible wealth they knew it would allow us to produce and
what MIGHT happen to us as a result. The familiar vernacular
expression today is “Fat, dumb and happy.”)
“...the natural tendency of things is for government to gain
ground and for liberty to yield...let no more be heard of
confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains
of the Constitution.” Thomas Jefferson
(Contrast this with the reliably reported comment by G.W.Bush that “The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper.”)
“...when all government...in little as well as great things,
shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will
render powerless the checks provided of one government on another
and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from
which we separated.” Thomas Jefferson, 1821
” A nation of well informed men, who have been taught to know and
to prize the rights that God has given them cannot be enslaved.
It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
Benjamin Franklin
(And contrast that with this: “We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ...” (President Bill Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993, Page 2A)
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” — Judge Learned Hand, 1944