TmjUtah: Good point about the finish line, but having an accurate picture of where it is is necessary to running the race: sprint or marathon?

As for BHO’s radicalism, I know many sober, competent people who are planning to pull the Barack Lever on Nov 4, much to my mystification. Perhaps they know that many people had asinine marxist-collectivist feelings as callow youth, but have grown out of the worst of them enough to be trusted with running the government, while still possessing the core liberal sensibility they also had when they were young? In the end, Bill Clinton was more interested in staying President than vigorously pushing the liberal agenda when he had to choose between the two courses. Let’s hope BHO is faced with the same choice – and makes the same choice. I agree with your characterization of the danger, but having lived through Jimmy @#$%ing Carter’s idiocies when faced with the Soviet Colossus at the height of its power, it’s hard for me to get too freaked out. Yes, there will be more permanent idiocies spawned (a Dept of Additional Government Waste, perhaps), but insurmountable ones for America? We’ll see.

68 Mark: Excellent point re: religion. It is indeed an essential cultural strength that we possess in greater abundance in the US than does Europe. Children are perhaps only the manifestation of Faith, instead of the demographic feature I made them out to be, as with societal youth. Societies with many children are both young AND parental, and likely religious.