On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:55:39 -0400, "Richard Setters"
wrote:

Well, maybe that's because the "common man" doesn't see any benefits as a
result of science...

Then that just points to the gross ignorance and lack of reasoning
skills of the "common man", because the benefits of science pretty
obviously outweigh any negatives.

Is education declining, or is the family crumbling because people no longer
have the backbone to stay in their marriages, raise their kids with morals
and standards, and both parents are working 12 hour+ days?

Personally, I think that moral standards in general are much higher
now than they have been in the last hundred years or more. The ability
of people to easily get out of marriages is a big step forward, and
has produced healthier families. I do think people are generally
poorer at some aspects of raising children. Many commit a form of
abuse by taking kids to church, and too many fail to get involved in
their education. Those are certainly difficult problems.

To start a ":recovery" is going to first require much more "made in the USA"
products once again, which will mean cutting ties with China, etc, building
families with a firm foundation rooted in love and caring environments, and
ousting the current, corrupt political systems.

That's not going to happen unless we radically change the laws that
govern how corporations operate.

Bring God back into the schools, along with the flag salute.

Both of these are a big part of the problem, certainly not part of any
solution. Remove gods completely from society, and change the idea of
what patriotism really means. But I don't see those things happening.
They have already happened in most of the developed world, of course,
which is why most other countries are doing much better than the U.S.