The only thing we have to fear...
I don't know why Europeans are so much better at change than we are ... For whatever reason, France -- no stranger to tradition -- could scrap its 350-year-old franc and embrace the euro while we can't even replace dollar bills with sturdier dollar coins.
Part of it is leadership vacuum -- our politicians continually run for re-election, and who wants to risk alienating the generous zinc industry by scrapping the penny? Americans resist change, not because we love the status quo, but because we're terrified that whatever comes next will be worse. That isn't a laudable national quality, but then we didn't invent timidity either. As Hamlet muses, we'd "rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."
And there is a definite cowardly feel to this moment in American history. Serious problems face us, yet the public howl is for inaction.
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