RIP American Exceptionalism?

For months Roger Kimball was predicting a Romney landslide. Oops! In his piece today, he writes:

I fear that what an English friend just wrote me is true:

You just don’t care about being a Great Power any longer. That’s what this is about. The world should start sucking up the China instead now, as Americans have shown they’ve no appetite for world leadership any longer. You’ve had a century in the sun, and now you’ve decided to become Sweden instead of shouldering the burden. The 47% have won and you’re going to slip into social democracy and in 4 years time no-one — Christie, Rubio, Ryan — will be able to do anything about it.

          RIP American Exceptionalism

That might be overstating it just a bit but it's close. The thing about the Swedes, however, isn't completely true. They have no interest in leading the world. But at least they actually pay for their own social welfare state. They tax everybody to do it. Here, we put it on a credit card and ask the next generation to pay for it.

Republicans have been no better than Democrats to face up to the fiscal reality of unsustainable entitlement spending. And neither have the voters.

We are going to have to reform entitlements, which means future beneficiaries are going to get reduced. Or/and we are going to have have to raise taxes on people other than just the rich because what we soak them for won't begin to cover what has been promised.