Punishing success

Listening to the rhetoric this campaign season, and looking at polls that say people feel the country is heading in the wrong direction or that a deep recession or another Great Depression is right around the corner, one gets the feeling that our national confidence isn't high.

The criticism heaped on a high school team that won 91-0 - even after pulling their starters and laying off their hapless opponents - may have a connection. Is our Gross Domestic Self Esteem Index low because we are afraid to succeed?

Our pursuit of terrorists turned into a nation-building exercise rather than a kill-people-and-break-things mission. The candidate who will likely win the White House has a campaign predicated on the idea that America as it is currently constituted is set up to ensure failure for certain classes of people. And when he gets in, his tax policy will punish anyone making over $200,000 per year.

America has, from its founding, been suspicious of power. It seems we are equally suspicious of ourselves.