Callous Children

Great column from Peggy Noonan in the WSJ:

Part of the reason is that the problems—debt, spending, war—seem too big. But a larger part is that our government, from the White House through Congress and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term everyone—well, not those in government, but most everyone else—seems to know that won't work. It's not a way out. It's not a path through.

That sums things up for me. I don't have faith that our political class even has a handle on how to fix our problems, much less the will to do the difficult things necessary to do so. All that they know how to do is throw money around and pass laws without the slightest thought to unintended consequences.
Nor do I have faith that they will avoid corruption while setting up their 'solutions'. We've already seen that the health care process has been taken over by open lobbying. We see favors handed out without the blink of an eye. And the vaunted Fourth Estate? They won't hold anyone's feet to the fire anymore. 'Truth to Power' has been exposed as an empty phrase.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.

What gets me is that there isn't even the hint of a solution out there. Just band-aids as far as the eye can see. This needs to change and change quickly.