This excerpt is one of my favorite things ever written. I can't read it without thinking immediately of our current situation, and then almost as instantly, that of the American colonists just prior to the Revolution. Two lines always stick out to me - the one where he he wishes that they could have "understood they had nothing left to lose" and then, "We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."

As you say, I think this is the direction we're quickly heading and I think we'll make the same mistakes they did. The horrible thing is, the entire history of our nation's founding should be an example to do differently.

Just before the battles of Lexington and Concord, John Adams wrote an anonymous letter to the Boston Gazette explaining why the colonists had to resist Great Britain. He said,

"They can hardly be loosers, if unsuccessful: because if they live, they can but be slaves, after an unfortunate effort, and slaves they would have been, if they had not resisted. So that nothing is lost. If they die, they cannot be said to lose, for death is better than slavery. If they succeed, their gains are immense. They preserve their liberties." - John Adams, January 23, 1775.

If we want something to boast about as Americans, if we want some basis for our national pride, it should be that we love liberty more than the people of any other country. If we're willing just to give that up, I don't know what we are, but we aren't Americans anymore, and as Solzhenitsyn (or Sam Adams!) would say, we'll deserve whatever happens afterward.

"If therefore a people will not be free; if they have not virtue enough to maintain their liberty against a presumptuous invader, they deserve no pity, and are to be treated with contempt and ignominy." - Samuel Adams, October 14, 1771.