Washington Post: Things have never been better?
Jennifer Rubin, opinion writer at the Washington Post

“…[W]ealth creation alone does not automatically result in healthier and richer people around the globe. It takes both public efforts such as George W. Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, which has saved millions of lives, and private efforts such as those of the Gates Foundation, which invests in ‘vaccines to prevent infectious diseases — including HIV, polio, and malaria — and support(s) the development of integrated health solutions for family planning, nutrition, and maternal and child health.’ Small-L liberalism that helps produce wealth … and values in support of human dignity underwrite the phenomenal advances we see. We should be wary of demagogues who would dismantle or severely hinder the economic system that creates such prosperity … or who trash U.S. global leadership and small-D democratic values … Perhaps if more people understood the historic gains made in just this past generation, they’d be less inclined to tear down the architecture that produced such progress” (5/24).