Originally Posted by
celilo
Sure GB is not responsible for all of the problems, but when he supports the policies responsible for the problem, he certainly owns it.
Lack of leadership is something for which GB is responsible. Even if you end up compromising, in order to get the best achievable solution to an issue, you must lead with the ideal and be a zealot for your beliefs. If you start negotiating from a compromised position, you will almost always end up with an even greater compromise. Furthermore, the society that you represent sees you only for your compromise and not your ideals. This is a weakness that has passed generationally from Bush1 to Bush2. Even so, I attribute most of GB's domestic policy to a strong belief in big brother government. While he speaks of conservative ideals, his policies state otherwise. "XXX hasn't seen a spending program that he doesn't like." Heck XXX could be Bush or Clinton!
I won't give Al gore a break because he is a hypocrite, but I have a lot of respect for Tony Blair, de****e our philosophical differences.
I don't think that the US is at the end of its life, but it has drifted far from the ideals of its founders and will likely suffer great economic demise before coming to grips with the so******tic society that has evolved. Many of the US founders feared that power would concentrate at the federal level, rather than state, and that it could lead to the demise of individual rights and freedom. They have been proven correct.
I look for countries such as the emancipated Soviet block countries to become the most free and flourishing. Half of the US population is numb to the rest of the world, insulated by borrowed prosperity. Western Europe is also numb, and has long ceded the responsibility for its own defense to the US, which will not be able to maintain these policies in the future.
The European union did not unite 3rd world countries such as Mexico to gain strength, and creating unfair trade will not help the US to grow stronger. When a company in the US is required to spend millions of dollars on pollution controls and a Mexican company can import the same manufactured items into the US without incurring those same costs, US companies and jobs will and have left. Trucking is no different. If a lower cost of entry applies to Mexican trucks, there will be more of them. In fact US companies will relocate to just South of the border and run uninspected trucks to better compete.
I'm rambling with a smattering of everything ... but trying to work in the midst of this reply.