Too Late for Teenage Suicide

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/opinion/07douthat.html

Mr. Douthat,

I am sorry I missed the opportunity to comment online. ..

But, as a Montanan, having read the responses your article (Montana possibly joining Oregon and Washington in "legalizing" assisted suicide) generated – I suspect, from fellow members of the PIG (er... I mean "Baby Boom") generation, of which I am an angry (punk rock era),  non-breeding, non-profligate member -- I am compelled to commentary.

Your phrase "fiscal suicide" is exactly right!  And we non-breeding, non-profligate survivors (so far) of this current crooks and idiots phase of American socio-political-economic life know too well this country committed to fiscal suicide a very long time ago (my best guess being 1971 – Nixon’s abandonment of Bretton Woods’ “gold standard” or  perhaps its collective, yawning [non] response to the ‘74 oil embargo and Jimmy Carter’s “Malaise” speech).   At any rate, fiscal suicide seems undoubtedly the fate of  America as most of us know and love it.  I suspect those of us over 40 and under 300 pounds know this:  Ron Paul knows it.  Bill Maher knows it.  You know it.  I know it.  Unfortunately, a huge, aging, diabetic swath of “Keep government out of my Social Security and Medicare!” America does not know (or refuses to admit) it.

So the question is: what can be done, if anything, to render (fiscal) suicide as painless as possible?  For myself, I find I am essentially a burgeoning communist/anarchist/survivalist:  and when the  Mad Max age ensues, I suspect I will be in Montana, armed, off the grid, on (relatively) fresh water and basically as self-contained/sustaining as possible…

But I wonder where the conservative “pundit class” expects to be in ten or twenty years?  After all, democracy and unregulated capitalism cannot coexist forever – Marx (unbounded genius) was absolutely correct about this.  As proof I submit: The United States of America.  QED!

And whether you admit it or not, Mr. Douthat – so do you.