Preaching doom and gloom has been beneficial to the political class. They use it to gain more power and control.

We should view our government the way we should a friendly, cuddly lion. Just because he's friendly and cuddly shouldn't blind us to the fact that he's still got teeth and claws.

Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement.

More important than anything else is for Americans to wise up to class warfare demagoguery and reject the politics of envy.

For the multiculturist/diversity crowd, culture, ideas, customs, arts and skills are a matter of racial membership where one has no more control over his culture than his race. That's a racist idea, but it's politically correct racism. It says that one's convictions, character and values are not determined by personal judgment and choices but genetically determined. In other words, as yesteryear's racists held: race determines identity.

Once Congress establishes that one person can live at the expense of another, it pays for everyone to try to do so.

The prospects are dim for a society that makes mascots out of the unproductive and condemns the productive.