Hang on Lou, 

You said the FCC has deleted cw from ham radio. Let's be careful; the
FCC has only deleted the testing requirement. Remember that cw is
legal on ***any*** Amateur allocation with the exception of the
60-meter channels. 

While I agree with you in principle on the deletion of the
requirement, I'm not convinced that it will of necessity lead to the
mode being used less as a matter of course, Sure, learning the code
isn't always easy, especially in the beginning, but there will always
be those who are happy to learn a skill for its own sake, whether it
was hard or not, and will value the skill just as much whether tested
on it or not. These are probably mostly the same people who would use
it anyway...how many have I seen that say they want the requirement to
stay, yet don't use code themsleves and only learned it because they
had to and couldn't copy any of it now? 

Anyway, there's a school of thought that suggests that code activity
will in fact increase, and I've heard anecdotally that in at least
some countries where the code requirement was eliminated, morse
activity is actually increasing, contrary to the common school of
thought. 

Again, I say that we will either make or break ourselves. Not the FCC,
not the testing requirements. Us. It's a hobby. People who get
involved will do so for their own reasons, but at least some of those
reasons have to do with a pursuit of knowledge. Throw the baby out
with the bathwater? I really don't know.