National Review Online's Victor Davis Hanson provides six succinct sources of that anger and each will elicit an "Amen!" from you. Your need to read them.
May I suggest a seventh source?
We Americans remain, heart and soul, enthusiastic heirs to the classical liberal tradition. That is, we think our society ought, in the main, to be organized such that it maximizes individual liberty and minimizes government, always the principal threat to that liberty. And this is so despite our undeniable and uncountable hypocrisies and departures from that creed. Insofar as we remain classical liberals, we want simply, and mostly, to be left alone. We resent it deeply when we are forced to rouse ourselves to act to restrain threats to that liberty, and most especially so when we believe that threat comes chiefly from our own government. Eternal vigilance may indeed be the price of liberty, but, as a rule, we would rather not pay it. Instead, we believe, naively perhaps, that liberty is the natural condition and challenges to it the exception. In the best of circumstances, that challenge is an ongoing nuisance. But in the worst, as they are now, it is a source of considerable anger.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
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