We have an enviable standard of living and we are generous to the needy and to our charities. We have a high standard of health care and we live by a solid rule of law. God gave this Country great beauty and a location which allows us to benefit from the giant to our west.

Why then do we engage in self-criticism. Precisely because our ideals are high, because we want the best for these Islands and for the future of our young people.

What we must beware of is the destructive message spread so often by those people who intrude personal crusades or a quest for celebrity on our daily lives.

In a small and very vulnerable place it is easy to spread propaganda which, repeated often enough, takes on a life of its own. Too often we begin to accept as reality things which are designed to delude us. This seems to be very true in today's politics when we are encouraged to believe that we are a put-upon, down trodeen people who lack both freedom and opportunity. Say it often enough and it becomes a kind of depression on the public.

The flippant phrase, "You've come a long way, Baby'', certainly applies to Bermuda. We have come a long way for an Island people with only three resources, the people themselves, the God given beauty and a great location.

Yet we are often told how bad we are. An outsider who listens to the naysayers would think we are destroying ourselves.

Far too often we are encouraged to dwell on the sins of the past which we all regret but which none of us can change. Our history has been one of successful survival and adaptation to the times. It has not always been pretty but that is the way with every country. There is only one solution and that is to get on, get about our lives and do our best to make today and tomorrow better.

We can only do that with a good deal of positive thinking. If we are to dispel the ignorance and prejudice we deplore, we have to use knowledge and tolerance and not ignorance and prejudice and we must do that within the law and without infringing on human rights.

Those people who would bury us with the sins of yesterday are not positive nor are they contributing to tomorrow. They often claim to be prophets but they are really proponents of their own gloom. Far too many of them are personal failures taking their revenge on "the system''. They suffer from the new "victim syndrome'' which says that as long as you can blame someone else, you can do as you please.