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Our next generation: are things getting better or worse?

Business is booming these days for anyone who even hints at having a third eye of insight into the future. Everyone wants to know where we are headed and what to expect. Are things getting better, are they getting worse and what about our next generation? What will they inherit? What are we leaving behind for them?

In keeping with the true American spirit of eternal optimism, things are decidedly getting better. How could they not be? This is America after all. Certainly we are tempted to get bogged down by recent events: there's plenty of bad news to go around, but bad news has always been around. There may have been a time in our history when a single, defining moment could have sealed our doom as a nation, or spelled out the fate of our next generation, but consider what we have endured only to rebound stronger, more resilient than ever.

Our nation was born out of a war that many no doubt thought would doom the American dream at the outset. Things could not have looked worse until Washington's troops defeated the British in 1781 at Yorktown.

What do you suppose people were thinking about the odds of a positive future for our next generation when, in 1814 the British burnt the White House to the ground during the War of 1812? We rebuilt the White House as it stands today.

The year of 1861 must have had a foreboding note for the next generation with the beginning of the Civil War. How could it not when, in a single day of conflict in 1862 at the battle of Antietam, the next generation was practically wiped out with the loss of 25,000 men killed, wounded or missing.

With the dreary pall of death hanging over our nation in 1865, the outlook for our next generation could not have been good when one of America's greatest, if not the greatest, presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was shot down in cold blood.

Things could not have looked good in 1918 with the outbreak of an influenza pandemic that affected 25% of the US population; killing half a million citizens by some estimates. To make matters seem even worse, this coming on the heels of America's entry into WW1 in 1917. Were things getting better or worse for the children of that brief period? Optimism won the day regardless of an avalanche of bad news.

October 28, 1929 saw the catastrophic and devastating end of an unprecedented period of optimistic prosperity and industrial-technological progress with the single blow of Black Monday. The crash of Wall Street

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