No, Ed, the workers in those plants whose jobs were shipped offshore and who lost their jobs and benefits from the Great Recession were casualties of marketing and fiscal mismanagement They didn't fail in their obligations to their employers. Employers reneged on their social and fiduciary responsibilities.

You must have a memory longer than mine if you can remember a capitalist society in the United States, Canada or anywhere else in the western world. There was a time when our societies were bloody in tooth and claw with money crushing any dissent, union-busting, lynching, power accruing to everyone but citizens and the electorate held in contempt and derision.

None of that occurred within living memory, Ed. Today we lived in a mixed economy of private and public enterprise as mutually dependant on each other as Siamese twins where citizens demand closer adherence to their constitutional rights. Call it socialism, nanny state, whatever you like but the US today is an expression of the will of the people through their legislatures.

Americans made, deliberately and consciously and democratically, conservatives and liberals together, the most powerful country on earth, generous and violent and empathetic, of surpassing church attendance with a belief, American critics have observed, "of a right, even a divine right, to kill others to purge the earth of evil."

Some members' Misfire sentiments---they're not representative of the great majority of Americans---sometimes make me wonder if the core faith of the United States can be found in the Gospels. But reality always emerges and, to answer your question above, it's apparent to me the God of love and tolerance is alive and well in America.

Last edited by King Brown; 08/15/13 11:02 PM.