Longfellow:

The United States is in the process of destroying our differential advantages in economic terms and such will be the end of the exceptionalism of the American Society. The American (US) populace has lost its sense of responsibility and leadership commitment. To a significant degree we have have become as if on a narcoticized withdrawal from the burdens of leadership and therefore lost our toughness and motivation. Such will be a shame for which nation has the discipline, power and compassionate ability to replace the US in providing the compassionate toughness the US has ever since the late 1930's. That does not mean we were always right or that at times the US did not fall prey to wrong headed selfish motives. It simply means that the Nation was generally a proponent of fair minded principles of self determination and liberty.

The worst aspect of this is that their is no potential succesor to power which has demonstrated the characteristics of fairness, toughness and yet compassion to fill the function the US has fullfilled for nearly eighty years.

It simply means that never in the long history of the world has there ever been a country which so consistently was motivated by the desire that all peoples have the option of self determination in their choice of political and economic systems. And that no Nation had the right to victimize the opportuities of other peoples. Were we perfect? Of course not. But we were a darn sight better and more even handed that any other society in functioning as a world leader without the motivation of conquer!

Brian