Has America hit our peak?

Sir - thanks for the response - I can never understand how people have "issues" with facts... :-)
It's not so much about the report or the data therein, rather has good ole American Pride taken a hit and will it ever recover? I was trying to illustrate the fact that I thought 30 years ago America was really, really strong and was "the place to be" - and obviously a lot of other people thought the same way. At the same time, we didn't have such a big government and we certainly had a lot more working people and less issues with border security (maybe we have these issues now because of that strong American pride back in the day)!
I'm also not so naive to think all these are directly related - yes, there are many other factors, but bottom line - are we still prideful like we used to be?

CMSgt Mark Schubert, MANY people will take issues with anything they don't agree with and don't let facts get in the way of opinions. Liberals will argue with facts as presented by conservatives and conservatives will argue with facts as presented by liberals.

It's the classic debate situation where the person is emotionally tied to an idea because it matches their philosophical outlook. Good luck trying to get any of them to pay attention to something that doesn't match up with that.

I generally keep an open mind with stuff being presented, regardless of the source. If it is something I am interested in or doesn't match what I know about the topic, then I do the research to see if it's right or wrong.

While I don't agree with him on many things, I like MAJ (Join to see)' approach in that he commonly gives references to the information he is talking about and is open to discussion and debate on it (many others just write him off because they don't agree with what he said).

CMsgt Schubert, while many living here may not particularly think this is the "place to be", people in other parts of the world obviously think differently, else they'd stop trying to come here. What I think is the problem is perspective. Most people have never left the US, and if they have, have never gone to a crappy second or third wrld country. Quite frankly, Americans don't know how good they have it, and take for granted what we do have.

I am old enough to remember the song from West Side Story titled Officer Krupke (the spelling is probably wrong) where they list all of the reasons for delinquency (the trouble is he's crazy, the trouble is he drinks the trouble is he's lazy the trouble is he stinks and so on) This is much the same. We have those that are being raised as professional victims ( a belief which can be reinforced by ___ history months discussed in other forums on this site) . As a result children are being taught that they are entitled because their predecessors were mistreated in the past. ( that could be said of any group in history) and therefore they don't strive to do well. We have those that want to create affirmative action programs to promote certain groups, which in turn makes the promoters feel good but does no favor to the supported group. We also have a failing educational system which isn't getting better no matter how much more money we throw at it, (You will notice in all of the places we have fought the oppressor usually punishes education or limits its availability). Then we have the various efforts to protect our kids from life where we have counseling for every adversity that life puts in our way so that they never really learn to deal with life on their own. I think this also contributes to the drug problem and suicide problem. We no longer expect folks to learn English as a condition of citizenship, which hurts them because it limits their opportunity to advance in our technological society) then of course you have the ever increasing government programs, and so it goes. My point is like the song from West Side Story, it is a system of problems not a host of problems that can be fixed in a serial fashion. Having said that, how do you fix it? I am not sure. We have the potential but re ignighting the will is another issue. Oddly enough the all volunteer force has been a good thing for the military but bad for us as a society. As you indicated you have been exposed to different cultures and seen how bad certain areas are. Today, since they don't have to serve, fewer have had that opportunity. I was an Army brat. I went to Japan with my dad in 1947 to 1949 and then from 53 to 55) and witnessed first hand the destruction and also more importantly the rebuilding of that nation and what it took. Later I joined the Navy and my education continued. Today kids don't take advantage of these opportunities because they are not required to do so. They grow up in their cocoon isolated from the world as opposed to those who serve. So to restore America is going to take a lot of work and I am not sure where to begin.