There are two undisputed facts regarding the recent so-called debt limit crisis.
The first is that raising the country’s debt limit has been a routine occurrence for almost 100 years and has been approved by Congresses and Presidents of all political stripes without fanfare or dissent.
The second is that had Congress approved raising the debt limit six weeks or so ago in the usual routine fashion, life would have gone on as always. The credit downgrade by Standard and Poor and subsequent gyrations in the world financial markets never would have happened. But the political terrorists of the far right, embodied by the so called Tea Partiers, have only one design, and that is to cause as much chaos as possible without regard to the consequences, even if it means destroying the country itself, which is the definition of a terrorist. They are anti-everything, including anti-American.
We have written many times in the past, both before 9/11 and after, that the lessons of history teach us that great nations decay from within. Further, far more than any threat from some random, foreign terrorist organizations whose leaders live in caves and deserts, we have more to fear from home grown special interest groups and extremists whose sole mission is to destroy our way of life.
We never have been more pessimistic about the future of our country. For the first time in our lifetime we cannot say for sure what our country is or what it stands for.