Thanks for your response, MA, as always, you seem to cut right to the heart of the matter, even when you claim you are just throwing out a few disconnected ideas.

"The next question is, where do we have these discussions? We must talk about it."

That hits the nail, and this country is now having this discussion. And it is long overdue. It has been postponed and obfuscated, and transformed into other irrelevant debates on non-existent issues. Every attempt has been made to substitute another dialogue for it, one that is rigged for an inevitable outcome.

For too long we have been told that our best times were in the past, and that we were on the verge of a long period of moral decline that had to be stopped at all costs. The truth is that we now have the means and the will to make this country a more perfect union, and that any objective assessment of the past reveals a deeply flawed history, but one that has always been improving itself and heading inevitably and unnerringly to the spot where we stand now, and that things will continue to get better from here on.

We face enormous problems, some of our own making, others the result of villainy and criminality, others just the inevitable inertia and friction of history. Our success is not guaranteed, and it will probably not be perfect or complete in any event. There will inevitably be setbacks and blind alleys. But I am confident for the future. I have lived long enough to see a substantial portion of our history, and I have no doubt in my mind that things are better now than they have ever been. I only have to compare my own life with that of my parents, and what I know of the lives of my grandparents.