The orginal articles are archived but you can get the gist:

http://tinyurl.com/anmz8

A longer article on infrastructure:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/102605E.html

Sewers may seem a trivial issue but public health
is very dependant on them. There are indeed thousands of bright spots of progress and the future can be bright but I simply caution against too cavalierly dismissing the pessimists.

The upcoming struggle in the decades ahead will, I believe, consist of the ruling elites who sit up on the top of the social pyramids attempting to crush and stifle the social evolution below them that is rendering them obsolete. The UN’s attempt to seize control of the Internet is just one manifestation of this conflict. The anti-democratic structure of the EU is another.

Could you provide some references for that?

Aside from the latin speaker’s snarky and inappropriate jibe, I don’t think much of what appears in the comments constitutes a personal attack on Peggy Noonan. Certainly nothing that I wrote was intended that way.

You were hoping that someone would convince you that Noonan is wrong, but how, exactly, does one refute “a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming?” I can offer examples of progress for the rest of the day, but they aren’t going to do much in the face of a vague feeling that things aren’t right.

You “read somewhere” that things are failing and have some notion that the “sewers don’t work.” Well, the sewers are working fine here. I may be woefully misinformed, but I haven’t hard of a big sewer failure anywhere.

I’m not persuaded that our inability to get a new skyscraper up says all that much about where the world is going. Perhaps it says that bureaucracies are not as good at keeping up with and driving change as they once were. But I see that as bad news for bureaucracies, not necessarily bad news for us. If systems are failing, I have a “vague feeling” that they’ll be replaced by systems that work. I also think there is plenty of evidence to back up that vague feeling.

I recently read how much of our key instruture is failing. Can I be convinced of singularity when we can’t even get our sewer systems to work?

In the midst of the Depression the Empire State Bldg was buildt in two years. Four years late the World Trade Center remains a hole in ground.

It is this inability of society to tend to the basics that fuels pessimism.

I hope Noonan is wrong and you all are right but nothing I have seen or read gives me hope.

Dear Peggy, I share your concern for where America is heading, and I have a similar concern as for where Europe is heading.

You are right in your observations that people sense the government is not doing well.

Most people don’t want their country to go into war, especially not when it’s their money paying for it. Most people agree that state schools are shitty, and rather want to choose themselves the schools to educate their children. Most people think government is spending too much taxes on the wrong things.

So why not let most people decide, by installing a right for citizen-initiated referendum?

Some words of Alexis de Toqueville, who visited America in 1835 and wrote the book ‘de la démocratie en Amérique’ in which he describes the democratical town meetings of America:

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

How about making America a real democracy?

It exists in Switzerland today. And how many wars did they start? Or, how big is their national debt? Do they have confidence in their government? (answers: 0,0,yes)

links for direct democracy:

http://www.democracy-international.org http://c2d.unige.ch/?langÿ http://www.iandrinstitute.org

P.S.

I’d like to make a comment on the comment of AST.

“I thought that democracies weren’t supposed to have elites other than those we elect. The root meaning of the term is ‘the chosen.’”

We don’t live in a democracy today. We live in a particracy, where a minority has the power to virtually do as it pleases for years after it’s being elected. How indirect democracy works can be illustrated as follows:

‘You are walking on the street at night. Suddenly, a thief pops up from behind a bush. Seconds later, a second thief enters the scene. After arguing a few moments on who is going to get the lute, they agree that I get to choose whom I give my wallet to.’

Inderect democracy is getting to choose which thief you give your wallet to.

Cross-Atlantic greetings, Tuur

Noonan is one of this species of elites that happens to claim allegiance to the conservative tribe. That bugs me.

Ronald Reagan read some of her words, but he never had a mind meld with her and his spirit never was reincarnated into her soul. Ronald Reagan came from a depression era household with an unstable father and he faced a real impression that the world was falling apart every day. Like other great Republican presidents in their youth, he “Constructed” a man. He became a lifeguard. Teddy Roosevelt took a sickly body and became a body builder and a boxer. Nixon watched his brothers die of disease in poverty, yet put himself through law school and was on more presidential tickets than any other american in history. Lincoln lived in the most wretched poverty as his mother withered before his eyes and witnessed the destruction of what the Union once was, yet he rolled out of bed each day.

Teddy Kennedy, not a great president, Takes a stiff belt of booze and proclaims the lament of nearly all men drifting into old age…”Kids, the world is going to hell in a handbag”. As the baby boomers age, be ready for more of this lament. Commercials telling the young how they are doing it wrong or “…When we were your age, etc.” That is the only thing that might make me consider snuffing it.

Peggy, Here is the headline. “We live in a dangerous world”. It has always been dangerous. The 50s were not carefree. Eisenhower was busting his tail to make it feel carefree. JFK had a tough week? Read your history books. 1942, now that was a tough year. An american GI lying in the mud breathing his last breath may have asked himself, “for what have I paid this price?” The answer is so that his children could live carefree in the 50s or his grandchildren in the carefree 90s. A Pax Americana wasted on a bunch of spoiled brats we call baby boomers. What gall must a President have to stand in front of the 1996 Dem. Convention and state, “The missles are no longer pointed at us”. What chutzpah!

The missles never stopped threatening us. The Romans faced earthquakes. The Spanish flu killed millions. Galveston dwarfs Katrina. It never stops. …and surprise! people die eventually too.

Tomorrow is dangerous. Bush like Reagan is a man of faith. Both men had their morning coffee while reading about all the different ways our enemies could snuff the light from atop the shining city on the hill. Both men did not cower because it was possible. Both men were driven because it was possible.

Every time someone waves a sign that says, “Bring the troops home”. The subtext is, “Take me back to that perfect time when we didn’t live in fear”.

There never was a “perfect time” and the fear is your problem not mine. Buck up, Peggy and get to work. The elites don’t get it. But from the poorest corners of the red states are common people that are ready for the job at hand.

The cost of living is intolerable, yet the product continues to draw a loyal following.

Point of all this stupid rant: WE are not very good at these kind of transitions. Consider the latest big ones: 1989 and 1914.

Elites have always imagined themselves to be more important than they are. But now they sense that the illusion can’t last. Two reasons: People are seeing through the facade AND elites really are becoming less important.

You see this in the attacks against bloggers. The latest is Forbes.
But this has been going on since well before the CBS scandal. “Yuck. Too many voices.”

If some guy only eats peanut butter sandwitches, he’s going to hate supermarkets. “Why do we need all this other stuff? I just want peanut butter and bread!”

The rest of us are happier with a larger market – of both food and ideas.

I thought that democracies weren’t supposed to have elites other than those we elect. The root meaning of the term is “the chosen.” Who elected all these jerks who constantly pour FUD over everything? We’re over informed. We know a whole lot of stuff that isn’t true, and we do a lot of stupid things because someone else has given us bad advice.

There’s a paper by Hugh W. Nibley written back in the fifties called “Victoriosa Loquacitas: The Rise of Rhetoric and the Decline of Everything Else” which is directly pertinent to our time. It was written in the 1950s, discusses how the development of the arts of persuasion by the Sophists and rhetors corrupted the societies of the Greeks and Romans. We have the same problem in spades because we have so many more means of communication.

We’ve just witnessed an example in the debate over Harriet Miers wherein it was assumed that she could not be qualified to be a supreme court justice because we didn’t know enough about her views, an argument which had just been repudiated when made against John Roberts. Apparently he was more elite that she. Her nomination was withdrawn without even giving her a hearing, which went the Democrats’ filibusters one better.

I propose returning to a standard where elites have to be chosen and constantly prove themselves.
Without a permanent skepticism, how can we take anybody seriously anymore?