Confident, Hopeful, Wishful, or Fantasy

Forty years ago, this country appeared to be coming apart. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; rioting was everywhere. We were in the midst of a war from which there was no end in sight, and the causalities were huge. The Democratic convention of that year is best remembered as the event where the Chicago police went completely mad, injuring and arresting hundreds of innocent civilians. While one could easily come to the conclusion that we could never recover from those dark days, eventually we did, and the country eventually moved forward to a period of previously unknown prosperity.

Many today would agree that the problems confronting us are far more severe, and less amenable to repair than those of two generations ago. Some would say that we are at a point of near economic collapse. The housing market has collapsed, and millions have lost or will lose their homes. Many of our cherished civil liberties have been ripped from us. Between one-quarter, and one-third of the nation’s youth do not even graduate from high school. We face an unknown level of threat that nuclear, chemical, or biological Weapons of Mass Destruction may be deployed on American soil.

Thus this poll asks about your level of confidence that we can and will once more return to a conditions where most citizens of this country can live a comfortable life, enjoy the freedoms granted by the Constitution, and live free of the fear of mass destruction.

Choose among the following:

I am confident that the nation will recover from its current difficulties, in the foreseeable future.

I am hopeful, but not certain that we will recover

It’s my most profound wish, but I am not hopeful.

No way can we recover.

You can publish this poll on your blog or website. To embed a poll, just copy the code from this "Embed" box. Once you've copied the code, just paste it into your website or blog to embed it.