It is foolish to believe an intense war involving China and the U.S. would be confined to the Taiwan Strait and end with Taiwan’s loss. In the scenario, missiles hit regional U.S. bases — meaning Japan, South Korea, Guam, perhaps Australia, Singapore and Hawaii.

Once we celebrated and encouraged success. Now we subsidize mediocrity and failure. We are then surprised we are getting more of the latter and less of the former. Do your homework. Don’t be manipulated by the language used by politicians and TV ads promising free stuff.