The Greatest Country In The World!

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I just sat through what we call Freshman Convocation here, in my school; it is where we welcome the new students, and pump them up for the rest of the semester.  Our featured speaker was an alumnus who recently won a seat in Congress.  He described how he regularly meets people from other schools, and travels around the world (for the business of various committees he's on), and he attested to the fact that ours was just as good a school as any Ivy League school (which I'm willing to believe), and that The US is the greatest country in the world.

In some ways I have to agree to the latter sentiment as well.  I have met people in the US who are among the most broadminded, the best informed, the most flexible, the most willing to consider new ideas, the most culturally aware, the most generous, and most loyal.  Sometimes I'm tempted to believe that these people are just attracted to me because I am, of course, the greatest guy who ever lived.  But I quickly come back to earth; I realize that these people live here in the US either because they were born here, or came here because this country provided the greatest opportunities for the sorts of things they wanted to do.  An outstanding teacher can find a place to teach here; an outstanding athlete can pursue his craft; an outstanding artist can find a patron here.  Let's face it; there are a lot of people with a lot of money, who want to encourage a lot of the right things.

To an American who has emerged from a blue-collar background to become a US Attorney, and then win a seat in Congress, obviously there is no place like home.  But let's look at why this is ---or has been, until recently--- such an amazing place.

There are tremendous natural resources.

There has been great wealth, which meant that at one time anyone could get a sponsor or a financier to build a better mousetrap.  Today, there is greater wealth in the hands of some than there has ever been, and a few individuals have the ability to fund all sorts of creative schemes.  However, keeping possession of a large fortune is clearly becoming very difficult.  There are no books about How To Keep On Being A Billionaire Once You Become One.  There are Bernie Madoffs behind every shrub.  Your very assistants are probably waiting to bilk you out of your filthy lucre.  The only recognizable hostile party is the Federal Government in the shape of the IRS, which wants you to pay more tax than any of your friends seem to be paying.  (Your immediate family probably has an insatiable appetite for expensive necessities, and they probably find it very easy to confirm your suspicion about the evil intentions of the IRS.)

The wealthy class, however, is hard to herd.  It is amazing that the Republicans have succeeded in regimenting them so effectively for so long; at the present, they seem to be eying each other with deep suspicion.  As I have written before, the Tea Party and the mainstream old guard Republicans find it hard to agree on almost anything.  When the Republican majority meets on Capitol Hill, all they can agree upon are: NO TAXES, and AMERICA IS THE GREATEST NATION IN THE WORLD.  They cannot agree, I am sure, that it is precisely the taxes that make this country great.

What has also made this country great is the incredibly hard work of a few very unpopular people: FDR, who managed to establish common-sense social programs that were the envy of the rest of the world (until a whole pile of other countries found how to do the same job a lot better), Ralph Nader, who alerted a generation to the need for health and safety controls in a number of areas; Martin Luther King, who (reluctantly, we now know,) took up the fight against racial discrimination, so that black folk could have a stake in the society in which they lived, but is secretly despised today by many conservative bigots and not a few black racial extremists; Bill Clinton, who worked for and signed the Family Medical Leave Act; the much-hated State House of California that led the way to pollution control across the country.  I'm sure you can think of a half-dozen more individuals whom your friends love to hate, who made this a better society for all of us.

Those who fought for a better America are cheerfully reviled by the people at large.  So how can we claim that this is such a wonderful place to live, if the cost of improving things for your fellow-countrymen is to be cursed for years?  Each of us thinks of those who (privately, I suppose,) express disgust at the names of some of these patriots, as misguided.  So if this country is the greatest in the world, it is populated by a majority of misguided citizens.  It is great despite the majority of Americans, and not because of them.