We are approaching that point.
While many cite Woodrow Wilson and FDR as the purveyors of the drug family which now grinds away at common sense and our ability to define reality (which exists independent of us), my fault line goes to a different turning point in our lifetimes.
1954. As James Carville has eloquently (yes, really) pointed out, without the government and the SCOTUS' Brown vs Board of Education decision segregation and racism would be the winners. Now we can prattle about state and local rights all we want, but there's a limit, and SCOTUS and IKE set it. And did right.
But it was an exception that government can do good for us all. Government can do good once in a while in certain EXCEPTIONAL circumstances. Now, as govt payrolls exceed those working in the private sector, government is the first place we look to solve any problem. And being human, those who once SERVED the people in the govt at lower wages in exchange for some security, have become RULERS. (Who do we think actually WROTE the vast bulk of those 2700 pages in the Health Bill?)
Today, however, a public EDUCATED that the government is here to take of us, and young minds who are not exposed to other ideas properly, hear instead, that rather than a vast improvement in the history of mankind, the document which founded this republic is "deeply flawed", by a man who promised fundamental change.
I personally find the temptation to set it on cruise control and simply step back away from striving INCREASING.
If we avert the fate of Taggart Transcontinental, and that United States governed by the idea that personal invention and effort is a tool of the many to cull when necessary by a society and government we look to FIRST to solve our difficulties, then perhaps it will be because people who believe in that flawed document, HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GO.
But I think of Scotty now, every single day.