P.J. O’Rourke – the greatest writer of my generation, even though he’s a generation older than me – writes on the dolorous effect of the Baby Boomers on not just American society, but the idea of America.<\/p>\n
O’Rourke laments the death of far-sweeping goals – going to the moon, building the biggest dam or the tallest building, being\u00a0<\/em>the biggest and the baddest:<\/p>\n But if America is still rich and strong, why should it matter that we\u2019re no longer interested in doing anything spectacular? Maybe critics of an America whose grasp exceeds its reach are victims of atavistic machismo. Maybe we have Freudian issues. Professional help might be in order. No Americans are scheduled to go to Mars, but plenty are scheduled to go to therapy. Perhaps the realities of 2012 demand a change in attitude.<\/p>\n Except the change has already happened, the result of our shift from an exterior to an interior existence. America once valued the high-skilled. Now we value the high-minded. We used to admire bold ideas. Now we admire benign idealism. This doesn\u2019t make us good, it makes us wrong. The bold can be achieved. Of the ideal, there is none in this life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And why does it matter?<\/p>\n America\u2019s retreat from visible, tangible manifestations of superiority doesn\u2019t hurt just our pride, our economy, and our place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It\u2019s also a bad advertising campaign. America has one great product to sell, individual liberty. It\u2019s attractive, useful, healthy, and the fate of the world depends upon it.<\/p>\n We are the most important and maybe the only country that fully embodies the sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility of each and every person. \u201cAmerican\u201d is not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a culture; it\u2019s a fact of human freedom. Our country was not created and is not governed by a ruling class or even by majority rule. America is individuals exercising their right to do what they think is best with due respect (to the extent human nature allows) for the right of all other Americans to do likewise. This is not an ideology or a system. This is a blessing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You should read the whole \u00a0thing. \u00a0And vote accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" P.J. O’Rourke – the greatest writer of my generation, even though he’s a generation older than me – writes on the dolorous effect of the Baby Boomers on not just American society, but the idea of America. O’Rourke laments the death of far-sweeping goals – going to the moon, building the biggest dam or the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,30,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-liberty","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29753"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29756,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753\/revisions\/29756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}