Dispatches form the wingnut-O-sphere – Time to give up America?

A winger of the Hardcore of Variety weighs in on the President's State of the Union speech:

When the applause had died down and the softly glowing screen of the teleprompter faded to black, the echoes of the Leninist cadences of Obama's State of the Union address, "We must out-educate, out-compete, and out-innovate the rest of the world", "We have broken the back of the recession" and "We can't win the future with a government of the past" suggest that we are now living in a land without history.

[…]

Soviet leaders rinsed their mouths with talk like this to assure their citizens that the future was moving forward on schedule. Now Obama is spitting their mouthwash out all over the country.

But don't worry, comrades. We're winning the future. History is on our side.. This is not a State of the Union address. It's a State of the Soviet Union address.

~ Right Wing Blogger Daniel Greenfield

I suspect this fellow should have written “Alternative History” instead. So let’s unpack this. Why should taxpayers invest in their Nation’s future. Some folks are against it, like fella’ quoted above. However them folks have seemed to have forgotten this Nation’s history.

America is a nation that was built through public-private investments in infrastructure.

America and her taxpayers and public servants built the internet this way. It's the internet that gives this fella' the opportunity to share his thoughts with the multitudes instead of the small number of folks finding their way into his parents’ basement. The government invested in information technology and private industry took it up and look where we are today. There are millionaires, yes, and there’s wealth, yes, and there is a new form of communication for all to enjoy. Yet some folks would tell you that this ain’t no good.

Here’s another example. The interstate highways made it possible for folks to move out from the crowded cities and into the countryside. With a car and the highway under your wheels and with a tank of heavily subsidized gasoline, folks are able to realize tremendous amount of freedom. The government built ‘em and then private industry produced the products that folks enjoy today. While maybe the gasoline shouldn’t be subsidized so heavily, try taking away folks’ freedom and their cars and see what happens. Nope the interstate highway system was a good thing. And don't let fella's telling you we can't do big things again.

There are a lot more examples. America built the Panama Canal, opening lanes commerce up for development. Before that, we had the intercontinental railway and before the railway it was the Erie Canal. Each was financed through public private funding measures and each lead to tremendous economic growth. I’d hate to think what the American South would look like today without public investment of the past decades. Mississippi, for instance, would likely still look like the third world nation today that it was before the public investment in infrastructure, education and health care.

Nope, investment in the Nation’s future worked in previous centuries and I reckon that public investment in Country’s future ain’t necessarily a bad thing for the 21^st Century.

But what is a bad thing is the number of folks that keep telling people not to dream big. I just get tired of hearing how the Nation is in decline; that America can’t do this and she can’t do that; that things ain’t gonna get any better and that your children can’t have a life as good as yours. I got no place for such talk. Now I know that some folk just ain’t ever gonna cott’n to anything touched by the government, but them folk just don’t seem to understand American History. But maybe we can fix this by investing a little more in education. It is worth a try.