Yesterday I mentioned that I found Casey's comment that America has ceased to exist as false, for it never "existed" in the first place. Obviously America exists. But what Casey means is that the American Dream has ceased to exist. My point was that it never did exist. Sure some can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, but throughout most of the US's history, well...their boot straps were broken.
Rather than "reinvent the wheel," I thought I would point you to the blog of my friend and the beloved editor of the Prophecy Podcast. Pam Dewey has been blogging about the Myths of American History. Here's a link to the introduction to one of her blog series related to evaluating the American Dream, Painting a Rosy Past. Many other mythperceptions about American History, on a wide variety of topics, are linked from her Introductory page to her Meet MythAmerica blog.
This does not mean that you as an individual can't improve yourselves. Nor does it mean that you cannot prepare for the coming crisis. You can and should do both.