I don't remember if I used this anecdote before, but I want to make a different point anyway.

In Peggy Noonan's book "Patriotic Grace," where she pleads for more understanding between the two sides in our American debate, she mentions something she read about something Ted Kennedy said to some family members at a dinner in the last few years of his life.

"I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age," he said. "Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart."

I find myself thinking the same thing when I think of my own children and my granddaughter. The world Pauline and Virgile will face in 30-35 years and the one Maddie will face 60 years from now will be a very different world from the one I grew up in.

[caption id="attachment_821" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Maddie and Pauline"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Pauline.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-821" title="Pauline" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Pauline-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>[/caption]

I do think my children are well positioned for success. Both of them got good educations and made good reputations for themselves at their schools, and both have careers in the Foreign Service that are not likely to disappear via outsourcing.

But I wouldn't want to be 30 or 26 right now, and the thought of being 2 and at the beginning of my life in 2011 is all but incomprehensible to me. That said, my children have a much better chance to succeed in this brave new world than I would have, because they are better people than I am.

That doesn't mean I don't worry for them.

It does mean I'm glad neither of them is stationed in Egypt right now.