ROGER SIMON: America The Broken. “America is broken and it’s no consolation that the rest of the world is broken along with it. I had to laugh when I stumbled, while web surfing, on a 2007 United Nations ranking for Ireland — whose debt rating has just been slashed to junk — as the fifth best country to live in. If it is, we’re all in a heap of trouble. For America is still Reagan’s shining light on the hill for everyone, like it or not. We are the daddy. We are the grown-up holding the world together. Everyone knows it even whey they lie about it or bemoan it. Only the grown-up is hurting now too. And the world is badly wounded because of it. It is against this background that we watch with particular dismay, maybe closer to horror, the budget debate in Washington.”