I want to pick off a couple, though, and share my thoughts on them here.

First… as to changes in the social fabric that have occurred over the last, say, 50 years. Two things are inevitable. 1 – That technological advances will continue to reshape the social unit from which our families, neighborhoods, communities, and so on are formed; and 2 – That we will exercise our uniquely human ability to discriminate (prioritize / choose) in selecting how much or little those innovations will extend or limit our freedom. Sometimes we will be wrong, and regret our choices.

As regards the media, it is also technology which has upended the old media stranglehold on public information… the web and user generated content (such as we are creating and sharing right here). I for one am not in the least concerned about our ability to ride this storm of chaos (enormous volumes of low-quality, user generated content and the shuttering of old, typically print, media outlets) in order to move on to an even more powerful, expansive, and empowering era with more choice and restored quality. Our uniquely human capacity to discriminate signal from noise will demand that we develop in this direction.

Finally, at least for now, let me disagree with your statement about whose fault it is that we are in this mess. It is our fault as individuals that we have arrived here — we are the ones who made the choices that led to the formation of today’s activist federal government. We embraced the notion that government is here to redistribute income in order to rectify injustices, not to guarantee the rights of fully free and equal individuals to naturally address those wrongs. IMHO, this is the schism over the role of government which is being played out in today’s polarized political crucible.

First, reflecting on the timeline you referenced, we’ve seen divorce rates greatly increase, moms start jobs then careers, weekly hours worked for salaried employees increase by over 50%, average take-home-pay flatten, while our schools cut programs and gradually became advance daycare centers.

During this same period, we’ve seen the epic rise of tabloid journalism that would make the likes of Cronkite and Murrow boil with rage. There’s less and less reason to trust our media, which, according to the founding fathers was supposed to be the cornerstone of the democracy.

Some would say we had excuses to be cowards – or to at least behave like victims, anyway.

As well, our food went from something we could 100% trust, to something that actually helped to create diseases and harmful conditions like hypertension, diabetes, etc., etc.

The result? The former stronghold known as the family is in tatters. Where in the middle of the last century, the family was a reasonably reliable incubator of respect, judgment, civility, and community pride, it today has often become a part-time event, fighting for quality time with work, increased stresses, negative/salacious media, and less and less energy to keep up with it all.

Moreover, we’ve slowly begun to have less and less PERSPECTIVE to first trust then fulfill the type of solid vision you outline in your final paragraph, “I believe that our most courageous act would be to create a nation built upon the foundation of such strong local communities, filled with such dedicated and courageous leaders, that we would feel shame — not pride — in a large and activist central government.” Why? because neither our schools or our fast-paced, demanding lives, or our knee jerk news media foster an environment of critical thinking. And, facing all the pressure from the lifestyle and life decisions we made, we just buy in.

So, if SOMEONE is to blame, and it cant be you, and it DEFINITELY can’t be me, then it MUST BE the government, right? They’re the ones who should be fixing all of this, right? I mean, why do we put them in office in the first place?(Its an interesting question that your article certainly touches upon.)

Yet, today we live in a world democratized in consumer-generated content, and I have to wonder, will we show our courage? Will we use these enormously powerful tools finally given to us to autonomously and responsibly create better lives. Or will we just laugh at the next TwitPic by Ashton Kutcher and complain about it all?

The good news, is that there are many folks who have turned their courage into inspiration for others to follow. They have shown us how to live “off the grid”, in remarkably self-sufficient ways. They have used their vision and skills to win donations, votes, consumers, what have you, from a broad reaching set of geographies and demographics in ways that would be feasibly (if not out right) impossible just a few years ago. They have created winning plans for ideally-integrated communities.

They have killed their TV sets.

Optimistically, I hope that our young country is in its teenage years, struggling with how to fit it while at the same time yearning for a life that follows a much more rewarding dream.

As we see the rise of thoughtful blogs, such as yours, and the empowering ideas they generate, maybe we each are doing much more than the tabloid media, isolated school bureaucracies, micro-managing corporations, etc., give us credit for. Maybe, we are each already strong leaders of our communities, exemplars of respect, judgment, civility, and community pride. Maybe it doesn’t feel real until somebody reports on it, however.

In the fifty years since the Pill was introduced, effectively crushing the hold religion had on culture, we’ve seen major industries crumble to a shell of their former selves, handing over control to the individual. Music, movies, finances, education, entertainment, publishing have all ceded turf against an Internet-connected laptop. I believe there is a day coming very soon, perhaps in this decade and certainly not long after, when the last of the bloated, power-hoarding industries will shrink into a tiny version of itself. Then, how much desire will there be to blame the government for our problems. How many options will we have to exercise our courage?