noteworthy wrote:
k wrote:

Plenty of people simply hate Bush, but I believe on a deeper level, many people have learned to believe, to steal a phrase, that their issue is with the game, not the player. The culmination of so many failures, failures of government, over the past 7 years strongly undermines the faith people have that government is capable of solving their problems.

Who are these people?

From 2005, Tom Friedman:

Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement?

Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

From 2004, "specialK":

I for one, am sick of our society of entitlement.

From 2004, a letter in the NYT Sunday Magazine:

It is sad but common evidence of our sense of entitlement that we in the West consider whatever we get our hands on to be ours.

From 2006, Decius:

I think many Americans feel a sense of entitlement to the greatness of America. They wrap up our country's accomplishments, sprinkle on a bunch of stuff we didn't accomplish, pin it on their chest, and claim personal responsibility for it. They believe that they are personally great because they are Americans and America is great.

From 2004, David Brooks:

Most students today are overprotected, uninterested and filled with a sense of entitlement.

Finally, a comment you made after the 2006 elections:

You want a return to civilized dialogue and respectful disagreement, but you'll have to forgive my cynical laughter. It ain't happening this cycle or the next.

I'm not entirely sure what you're intending to say... that there are a number of people who have never thought that the government should be in the business of solving our problems? That you agree with them?

I would never argue the first point. Of course "limited government" has been a foundational plank in Republican and Libertarian platforms pretty much forever.

I won't assume the second point either, since, as I said, I'm not at all sure what you're saying.

I can respond to the series of references you made. Frankly, I don't at all believe that a sense of entitlement is our major problem, except insofar as it applies to the presumption many people clearly have that our society and form of government can function without them using their brains (which I think is the thrust of Decius's comment above).

Of course there are people that expect too much, I won't question that. And I also don't deny that social programs need to be balanced by expectations for minimizing the number of people that have to rely on them. That's all reasonable. What isn't reasonable is coupling an "every man for himself" philosophy with a claim to compassion or social responsibility. There's an irony in that those with the most fervent expressions of that philosophy are also the more fervently religious most of the time. Most of the time it's outright self contradictory, not to mention that it doesn't square with reality.

I'm not sure what my quote above has to do with it... am i being exceedingly partisan here? Is my conspiracy theory evidence of a deep seated liberal paranoia of the motives of my enemy? Or is it that by posting that thought, I'm doing the same thing... diminishing faith in the process to solve problems.

I'll admit forthrightly that I myself am a casualty of the attack I describe. I absolutely have a lot less faith that the system works, or can work, any longer. I have people in my office who don't trust Obama because he's a Muslim. No more thought has gone into it than that. This doesn't give me a lot of hope.

RE: Legacy of Deficits Will Constrain Bush's Successor