"A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II."

There are the words of New York Times pundit, Thomas Friedman, writing yesterday about America's decline in a world of emerging technology and science titans: India, China, Korea, Singapore. Friedman sounded the clarion call for a era of nation building -rebuilding the United States.