Well said, sir! Remember Kipling's "White Man's Burden"? If one takes it in the context of the time (by which I mean one should ignore the racist language), one can see that Kipling was being a 'sunset poet' for England, that it was his way of "passing the torch" from England to America when it came to world leadership. For the past few years, I've come to think that maybe it's time that we here in America find a 'sunset poet' of our own (and I've hubris enough to submit
my own entry for the title). We were on top for almost a century, but because we had the best of everything, we sat on our laurels and have allowed other nations to pass us up when it comes to standards of living and education, all the while never dreaming that we could ever be surpassed. What's more, we don't realize that when it comes to world leadership, we have not even come close to the centuries of influence that England (and Rome before her) held - we are too blinded by our own national hubris.
Who will next assume the mantle of world leadership? China might - they're very smart and they've got more political will than we do - but I suspect that they've got a great deal of internal problems that they've got to address first. My money is on the EEC instead.