As a historian, I can state with complete confidence that all conjecture is irrelevant. When one looks at the United States 200 years ago, there was no indication at all that the nation would become as powerful as it is today. 200 years ago, the United States was still in the middle of the extremely foolish War of 1812, which it would have most assuredly lost had it not been for the fact that Britain was distracted with Napoleon.
I also disagree vehemently with Sailor Steve's allegation that all historians are propagandists and liars. Unfortunately, his argument is not without some merit due to previous definitions of history throughout the ages. Likewise, with negative revisionists twisting things for their own personal and political benefit, American liberal academia warping things to their own bizarre form of social engineering and the British school of Historiography bringing the Whigs vs Tories argument into everything, it is very easy to mistake history as being all lies all the time. I have been fighting very hard over the past decade to try and establish a new objectivism to the subject to dispel the hostility towards history. It is very difficult to make progress when the general public hates your guts on principle while fighting the legitimately biased sources. If anyone wants to see a blatant example of bias, read the works of James Stokesbury. However, such bad apples are not indicative of the whole of historical academia.
All of the other posts I am seeing are simply expressions of fears over the current crises of our age. The loss of privacy, overpopulation and growing concerns of government oppression are obviously dominant. However, the same thing occurred during the 1950's during the McCarthy era and the infamous Red Scare. America survived it. I am concerned, but not worried.
The only thing that I can suppose is that the United States will still be around in 200 years. Any other suppositions would be pure fantasy.
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