Like many entrepreneurs, I find other people's pessimism exasperating. Even worse are the smug doomsayers who sneer that optimism is a delusion of the feeble-minded.

As usual, the pessimists are wrong, particularly when they moan about the fallen stature of the United States of America. True, our reputation is tarnished internationally and we face numerous difficult challenges at home, but our blessings are also numerous. Among those blessings is our national optimism. We have proven time after time that this optimism is grounded in reality, that people who believe in liberty, self-governance and collective problem solving can overcome great obstacles. It was optimists who fought for civil rights. It was optimists who build roads and schools and bridges during the Great Depression. It was optimists who fought against fascism in Europe and the Pacific.

Today, it is audacious optimists creating the LincVolt electric car, bringing food and medicine to the needy, and continuing the eternal struggle for peace and justice.

In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about a great tide of optimism that swelled among young people in the American west during the 1960s, only to collapse amid assassinations, college massacres and political corruption:

You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle-that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The wave did roll back. But the ideals of that time were not lost. I regret that Dr. Thompson did not live to see what I see today, an incoming administration that does not consider  "idealism" a pejorative term.

America has always been a land of second chances, a place where people could start anew. We don't exactly get a clean slate in 2009, but we have a lot going for us. A recent Peggy Noonan column in the Wall Street Journal included this succinct expression of the rationale behind my optimism:

This is a good time to remember who we are, or rather just a few small facts of who we are. We are the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, the leading industrial power of the world, and the wealthiest nation in the world. "There's a lot of ruin in a nation," said Adam Smith. There's a lot of ruin in a great economy, too. We are the oldest continuing democracy in the world, operating, since March 4, 1789, under a vibrant and enduring constitution that was formed by geniuses and is revered, still, coast to coast. We don't make refugees, we admit them. When the rich of the world get sick, they come here to be treated, and when their children come of age, they send them here to our universities. We have a supple political system open to reform, and a wildly diverse culture that has moments of stress but plenty of give.

The point is not to say rah-rah, paint our faces blue and bray "We're No. 1." The point is that while terrible challenges face us...we are building from an extraordinary, brilliant and enduring base.

She's absolutely right. We've still got a heck of a lot going for us. So snap out of it, pessimists. Speak up, optimists. There's work to be done and we are the people to do it. Let's strike some sparks.