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Originally Posted by The Demon
He didn't nearly bankrupt the country. He did put us in considerable debt but he spruced up military spending during the apex of the cold war. He also created 16 million jobs. I would say he's done more for our country than anyone other than maybe FDR and Clinton(if you discount his starting the subprime mortgage crisis).
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Maybe bankrupt was an overstatement. He did, as you say, run up massive debt and in my opinion he laid the road map for presidents to come. He showed that if you spend money on the right things, no matter how much money you spend, you can run up the debt all you want and nobody complains. Since then other presidents have found ways to spend money to "keep up safe" or "help the country". He really started the ball rolling.
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Franklin didn't envision planes flying into skyscrapers killing 3,000 people. I'm afraid that sometimes we have to look at the present and apply the laws that best serve our country.
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You are right, and I have often said we have to look at things from the past and then apply them to the future. I still would rather not have my government tapping phones with no warrants and doing whatever they please with no oversight. I know there is supposed to be oversight on these actions, but we are now learning that many of the warrantless wiretaps never have been retroactively taken before judge. So nobody knows who they were tapping or why and it seems nobody cares. Some people envision a safer country, I envision Huxley's Brace New World.
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That's because after Reagan, everyone was pretty much full of shit.
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I would say Reagan had his fair amount of being full of shit as well, he just pulled it off better than most.
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It's only going to get worse. Every decade, the new generation gets dumber and dumber. I think we hit our apex around the 50s, and it just started going downhill in the 60s. This generation is dumber than mine, mine is dumber than my parents', my parents' is dumber than their parents', etc.
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This I agree with. Two things come to mind. I saw a news story a few weeks ago that said around 40% of high school students nation wide graduate high school with the ability to read and write at less than a sixth grade level. That is pretty freaking sad. Add in that I have dubbed the current generation (those that are 12-22ish) the apathy generation. Many of them seem to not care about anything or anyone other than themselves and nobody seems to call them on their bullshit. A friend of mine is a cop and he had to go into the high school a few months ago to give a talk. While there a student was taken to the office and told the Vice Principle to fuck off. nothing happened. He was told not to use that language and his response was "kiss my ass". When I was in high school, had I said that I would have been suspended and/or given some serious detention. Nothing happened to this kid. My buddy asks why not and they VP told him it isn't worth the fight. I hold out hope that as they get older they will get more in touch with the world, but I'm afraid that won't happen. They don't care about anything and their kids are going to be real monsters.