Rome fell. Greece fell. Italy, German, the British Empires all eventually burned out or faded away. It's bound to happen to America too. That isn't a threat and it's not a psychotic rant, it's just acceptance of historical fact. I hope to God it won't happen for hundreds of years, but right now it doesn't seem far off.

I suppose that's how people felt during the Great Depression.

Look at what's happening with the Sotomayor issue: The actual people making decisions refuse to comment on her or her abilities yet the pundits and the hosts (you know the usual suspects, Limbaugh, Hannity, et. al.) feel it is their appointed duty to take each and every one of her flaws, hold it up in front of a magnifying glass and put it out there as a reason not to let her be a Supreme Justice.

Never mind the fact that she has more experience than anyone nominated for the position in the last 100 years. Never mind the fact that many of her decisions have an eye towards pragmatism rather than elitism, activism or idealism.

And isn't it funny that we're throwing around all these isms like any of them matter in this post-modern world where so many things from our music to our TV shows to our movies to our art resist labels? Maybe that's why people so want to label things in the political world so readily. Nothing else fits into black-and-whites anymore. Everything else is gray, why should we let our political world be so?