{"id":49698,"date":"2014-12-12T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T18:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=49698"},"modified":"2019-10-30T07:05:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T12:05:20","slug":"grounds-for-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=49698","title":{"rendered":"Grounds For Optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s an easy time to feel pessimistic about America.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Forget the fact that we have the worst president in history (althought that doesn&#8217;t help much).\u00a0 Part of the disaffected right would have you believe that our entire political class, GOP and Democrat, are about the same.\u00a0 I see your objection &#8211; Boehner&#8217;s depressing cave on spending &#8211; and raise you Ted Cruz and Justin Amash and a few good Tea Party Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>But yet I feel some optimism.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Part of that is I&#8217;ve pretty much internalized Kevin Williamson&#8217;s <em>The End Is Near (And It&#8217;s Going To Be Awesome)<\/em>, a masterpiece from last year about the inevitability of the eventual collapse of the current political system, and how, <em>if we&#8217;re lucky and work hard<\/em>, it could actually free up some space for the free market to actually <em>solve <\/em>things.<\/p>\n<p>Along those same lines comes\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/394384\/america-continues-thrive-victor-davis-hanson\">this piece from Victor Davis Hanson<\/a>.\u00a0 You need to read the whole thing &#8211; but this was buried near the conclusion:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>America is not saved by our elected officials, bureaucrats, celebrities, and partisan activists. Instead, just a few million hardworking Americans in key areas \u2014 a natural meritocracy of all races, classes, and backgrounds \u2014 ignore the daily hype and chaos, remain innovative and productive, and dazzle the world.<\/p>\n<p>The silent few of a forgotten America have given the entire country an astonishing standard of living that is quite inexplicable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The road to that paragraph is well worth travelling.\u00a0 Go there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s an easy time to feel pessimistic about America.\u00a0 Forget the fact that we have the worst president in history (althought that doesn&#8217;t help much).\u00a0 Part of the disaffected right would have you believe that our entire political class, GOP and Democrat, are about the same.\u00a0 I see your objection &#8211; Boehner&#8217;s depressing cave on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-49698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","tag-kevin-williamson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49698","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=49698"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49707,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49698\/revisions\/49707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}