...If that trend persists, then we do end up being like Greece. Not because of growing national insolvency, but more because our citizenry begins to view the government as a piggy bank to be exploited, rather than an instrument which mobilizes national resources for broader public purpose. Absent this political authority, everything begins to break down.
I do not know how to reach Mr. Larsen directly, but if he's reading this (as millions do every day!), I would like to tell him: while it is always nice to be appreciated, our self-respect has never been dependent upon the goodwill of rubes. If you think we need to be forgiven our electoral choices, lest we should lose the great emotional (and scant financial) largesse you poured forth after September 11, let me assure you that your self-esteem is grotesquely overinflated. To prosper or even survive in this tough town, we do what we have to do, not what we think would be pleasing to the suburban bacon-cheeseburgermeister.
Too many progressives seem to want to sit on the sidelines until someone, a Marquess of Queensberry, comes along and changes the rules of the game to make it more civilized. What they don't seem to grasp is that democratic politics are the Queensberry rules. They replaced mob rule. The fractiousness, unpredictability, and feralness of politics are vestiges that remind us of what the real alternatives to democracy are. The real alternative is not a debating club and smoking jackets.
In short, you'd want to make Israel look like a paranoid, bloodthirsty and extremely belligerent nation of racist freaks, determined to murder fuck out of civilians with total impunity year-in, year-out, so that the entire planet disowns them by, for example, withdrawing their ambassadors and issuing a barrage of denuncations.
Ha ha. So neighbor-lady is fucking Sarah Palin and not in the way that forces Rich Lowry and Matthew Continetti to give each other sad unsatisfying dutch-rudders
