And here's Gene Healy saying, "Oh, it wasn't that bad..."
As P.J. O'Rourke once put it, if you think there was some golden age in the past you'd rather live in, "let me say one word: 'dentistry.' "
The fact is, a lot of good things happened in the 2000s, and, typically, the bounties of the era were provided by private enterprise, not the machinations of government do-gooders. The Internet put the means of production in the hands of the workers, leading to a dynamic do-it-yourself culture in which bloggers compete with established columnists, bands without a record contract can hit it big, and anyone with a digital camera can get his 15 minutes on YouTube.
History comes in cycles. The Aughties resemble a milder version of the '60s, a decade that began with high trust in government (as happened after 9/11) and ended with Americans relearning the old lessons about federal incompetence and the limits to American power.
The last ten years have been a heck of a ride. And this weekend, we get to start a whole new decade! I hope we manage to do more with it than we did with the last one, but I'm not waiting for everyone else to do it. I'm going to make the most of the next ten years.
The time for waiting is over. The time for action is now.
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