Last week Mark Steyn wrote, \u201cAmerica is seizing up before our eyes,\u201d\u009d and that is a spot-on image. She is like a brilliantly conceived machine that, poorly maintained for more years than any of us cares to admit, has gone too long untuned; the oil of her invention has thinned out and broken down and now bit-by-bit, gear-by-gear\u201d\u201deconomically, socially, spiritually\u201d\u201dshe is making an ungodly noise and grinding to a halt.<\/p>\n
And yet people want optimism. They crave it, especially when a president is telling one half of the country that it is \u201ctime to eat your peas\u201d\u009d while simultaneously encouraging another half to take to the streets and demand more dessert. \u201cWhere is our Ronald Reagan,\u201d\u009d is a phrase that rises with alarming frequency, in some comboxes, and it always unsettles me to see it, because it seems so determinedly obtuse; if we can just find someone exactly like the president from thirty years ago, we will be alright. If only someone will smile and tell us it is morning in America, again, and the city has not slid down the hill!<\/p>\n