well Dave, I guess maybe we didn't actually lose our moral high ground to anyone. it's just another media/DNC buzzword to make us FEEL guilty. I guess you should declare the debate over.

I knew no one could answer that question. :-)

America lost the moral high ground at home when President Bush made the Faustian bargain of choosing Iraq over New Orleans after Katrina struck (per a recent op-ed article by Douglas Brinkley, who wrote "The Great Deluge," in the Washington Post.)

The morally correct thing to do would have been putting all overseas activities on hold, or at least keeping them to a minimum, in order to help Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi rebuild and repair their infrastructure until they and their communities were well on the road to recovery. However, this was not taken care of--instead, the Bush Administration went into denial, claiming that $110 billion, part of which had been allocated for temporary measures such as FEMA trailers, the rest of which is tied up in red tape, would be enough. When it is not.

One has to wonder how the Administration would have handled Katrina's aftermath had the storm hit a more affluent state, instead of Louisiana and Mississippi, which are the 2 poorest. I'd be willing to bet that President Bush would have found a way to cut through the bureaucracy like a hot knife through butter.

And I'd also bet that overseas observers of the American scene are not happy with what they see regarding Katrina's aftermath--not only governmental inaction but also the fact that coverage by the electronic media has been rare. It's as if the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi has been swept under the rug. The way America has treated her storm survivors is a national shame which has definitely cost America the moral high ground.

I don't think that the majority of the American people have lost their sense of morality and values. I think that a number of politicians have "misplaced" theirs in an unending quest for power and notoriety. In this greedy quest they have & will make deals with the devil, as it were, to grab for more.

I often wonder in this information age where technology has enabled some (not all) people to have instant access to nearly anything if we are in fact better off. I will turn 40 next month and can fondly recall days of my childhood where I could play outside without my parents fearing I would be abducted. In today's world it is the rarity not the norm for parents to have that same sense of safety.

For many generations of parents the hope and goal was always to give their children a better life than they had growing up. Somewhere along the way that has translated into MORE, MORE, MORE stuff. Now too many parents are working extreme hours and multiple jobs to give their kids all of this disposable stuff. The end result is that many (not all) kids rarely see their parents much less spend any significant amount of quality time with them. Who then is really raising this generation of children, instilling them with good & true morals and values? It is a tragic and viscious cycle that needs to be broken.

To Dave in Tennessee,

Surely you have seen the loss of America's GOODWILL, which in economics, can be viewed as an asset. However, this Bush administration used it and now it has become a liability. Certainly, you must understand that the opprobrium which is Iraq does not present the US very well if we have been seen as torturers, occupationists, extortioners, and the like. That lost GOODWILL doesn't serve us very well when civil war has been proclaimed by NBC, of all people, when your own government will not be so open. How can you claim there is any morality left when that same GOODWILL has been spent by the above depraved actions of a formerly prudent state. From my view, one has to look up from the devastating hole of depravity that Bush has dug for this nation because the only thing below is the opposite of HEAVEN!

I have a question that could be pondered. The democrats (& maybe the media) keep claiming America has lost the moral high ground. To whom did we lose it?