I invite anyone to make a list of the major positive actons and the major harmful actions we have undertaken as a nation and see which side grows longer. Don't leave out Mickey Mouse, either -- in providing him and Minnie to the word the United States has offered the first completely gender-equal but asexual religion. Steamboat Willie is his prophet. Tooot!! Toot!! Let's tally up the dollars earned by sweat and ingenuity, siphoned into our tax stream and shiped out to those who could not or would not build their own lives. Let's not overlook such things as assembly lines, replaceable parts, the transistor and all its children, and better standards of plumbing. Let's include American wheat and the Berlin airlift. And let me add that the efforts we made, however misguided in result, to help the Afghans defend themselves against colonization by the USSR, were not without merit. They were perhaps badly executed and unintelligently managed. But nowhere near as unintelligently as the USSR's politics and economics.

Anyway I am really tired of this thread with its meaningless panic-mongering title. The emotional condition of those who gallop off in all directions crying fearful generalizations without specifics and without remedy is, to my mind, not one to try a discussion with.

A