I know we're in the midst of an extended presidential campaign, which means talking about how bad things are so we can choose the candidate who can best fix all our terrible problems. But can we pause occasionally to remember that we live in the most advanced country in the history of the world, with unlimited opportunities and lives that get better and better all the time?
"American capitalism is derided for its superficial banality, yet it has unleashed profound, convulsive social change," he writes. "Condemned as mindless materialism, it has burst loose a flood tide of spiritual yearning. The civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminism, the fitness and health-care boom and the opening of the gay closet, the withering of censorship and the rise of a 'creative class' of 'knowledge workers' -- all are the progeny of widespread prosperity."
Relative freedom and the astounding prosperity it yielded have created one of the most humane societies in history -- the opposite of what the opponents of economic freedom predicted.
OK, back to your whining.
