Our Nation of Hand Wringing Hamlets
This piece by Victor Davis Hanson, is entitled the "Can't Do Society." With a name like that, it should come as no surprise that it is a heavy indictment of the society in which it is speaking, unfortunately, that society is ours.
Hanson rather bluntly asserts many (not all) Americans today are similar to little, vacilating Hamlets that, like Shakespeare's famous character, can't make up their mind. In our case, its how to deal with energy: after all we could have drilled long ago in ANWR and off shore and helped alleviate current price pressures as well as started building new nuclear plants to shift from coal used for energy plants. We didn't do it because we found excuses for inaction.
Today, nations like China and India don't find excuses, they simply do. This is what Americans used to do themselves, but in our relative (and often absolute) comfort, we have forgotten how we used to do the very things that made us great.
Its a fairly searing, and, sadly, largely accurate assesment of where we are. I hope that the younger generations now coming to power realize this and reembrace the "can doism" of the past.
Hamlet may be a great figure of literature, but he should be no one's role model.
Hanson rather bluntly asserts many (not all) Americans today are similar to little, vacilating Hamlets that, like Shakespeare's famous character, can't make up their mind. In our case, its how to deal with energy: after all we could have drilled long ago in ANWR and off shore and helped alleviate current price pressures as well as started building new nuclear plants to shift from coal used for energy plants. We didn't do it because we found excuses for inaction.
Today, nations like China and India don't find excuses, they simply do. This is what Americans used to do themselves, but in our relative (and often absolute) comfort, we have forgotten how we used to do the very things that made us great.
Its a fairly searing, and, sadly, largely accurate assesment of where we are. I hope that the younger generations now coming to power realize this and reembrace the "can doism" of the past.
Hamlet may be a great figure of literature, but he should be no one's role model.
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