We Used to Be a Great Country Can We Not Be Great Again

No pol will acknowledge that the United States is no longer number i. But other nations exercise a lot of things improve -- and we need to learn from them.

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Foreign observers used to chuckle at that very distinctly American political rhetoric of exceptionalism -- the assertions of our God-granted preeminence and predestination. But beneath that laughter, there was unremarkably grudging respect, and even green-eyed for a country whose citizens were so fix to express such national pride.

At present such language it is ofttimes openly derided. Let's face it, even with all the bug in Europe, and everywhere, the American lantern is not as brightly inviting equally it used to be. And I don't mean merely literally inviting, as in inviting to immigrants -- though that in itself is a huge problem, 1 that contributes to the full general perception of a country endmost itself inward.

When Americans travel abroad, they are often surprised at how well other countries do the things nosotros used to recollect America does best. In fact, ane reason so many American businesses still lead the world is because they benchmark the competition and emulate best practices. But suggest to an American politician that we should endeavour to learn from other countries, and he will look at you similar you are from Mars. It is somehow unpatriotic even to raise such comparisons.

Imagine if a politician were to say, "French republic has a meliorate health care system than we do." I tin can almost guarantee that pol would endure electoral defeat -- even though the argument, in about objective respects, is true. The U.S. is, for too many, the only state that matters; experiences anywhere else are irrelevant. Remember, we have many members of Congress who avowal they have no passport.

At a fourth dimension when many trend lines in the U.South. point to relative decline in this regard, one actually brings hope: More than and more than young Americans go abroad for some of their education. Last year, about a quarter 1000000 studied in another state; a decade ago, the number was about half that. Value will come up non merely from greater global consciousness, merely from the directly experience that many nations simply practice many things far better than we do.

New statistical evidence of this appears almost weekly. When information technology comes to educatee performance in mathematics, we are now 25th among the 34 advanced economies, and backside many developing countries also. In college attendance, our previous preeminence has long faded; we are at present 9th in percent of younger workers with two-yr or four-year degrees, and 12th in college graduation rate. In health, nosotros are 37th in infant mortality and equally low in life expectancy. In environmental performance, we are 61st. In the percentage of people beneath the poverty line, we are 21st. Fifty-fifty when it comes to the "pursuit of happiness," enshrined in our Declaration of Independence equally ane of the noble goals of authorities, our citizens are just the 15th most satisfied with their lives.

But many of our political leaders, rather than asking what we can learn from the countries that have surpassed us in diverse ways, choose instead to win applause with unqualified boasts of our inherent greatness. They imply that the answers to our problems are to be found not merely by endmost our borders to immigrants but to foreign ideas equally well.

The countries that are making great strides follow quite a different path. Some of them are autocracies. Their leaders want to know which countries practise the best chore education simple education or loftier school science, and how; which countries all-time prepare their people for tomorrow'due south jobs, and how; which countries best protect consumers while maintaining business vitality, and how; which countries all-time reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, and how. They benchmark against the leaders--just like the strongest American businesses do.

Sadly, and shockingly given where the U.S. used to stand in most rankings, few of the best practices strange leaders want to emulate are any longer in the U.S.

Young Americans who meet this country from different shores can't help but conclude that something is awry in a political culture that denies what they patently see elsewhere: health care systems that provide improve outcomes at lower cost and for everyone; better airports, faster trains, more all-encompassing urban public transportation--and fifty-fifty, amazingly, improve highways; more than up mobility (yes, the American dream is now more real in many other countries than information technology is here); more sustainable energy policies; elections that piece of work more than quickly and inexpensively, with more than rational discourse and greater citizen participation. The listing is long.

These young Americans unremarkably render with an openness nigh the globe that many of their parents lack. No less patriotic than when they left, they see how curiosity about other ways to practice things can only make us a stronger country. They were taught, as we were all taught, that the U.Due south. was built to greatness on ideas borrowed by the residue of the world and improved here. That is what we must practise once more.

Consider some of the things that take fueled that American lantern of attraction for more than two centuries. Perhaps more than annihilation else, it has been the American Dream: the universal desire of all parents that their children volition lead lives meliorate than their own. This dream was given an American name, and not just in American dictionaries. Simply that dream is dying. And it tin't be resuscitated if talented people sit down on the political sidelines or don't nourish the game at all.

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, just 17 percent of Americans believe our national authorities possesses the consent of the governed. These numbers may not seem shocking, because they've been low for so long. But not always. In 1964, Pew found 77 percent of Americans expected their authorities to do "the right thing" most of the time.

So the American people call up our democracy doesn't work. Only there are also many objective signs that it's failing. 1 is that Americans don't vote as much as citizens of nigh other countries, including developing countries. In 2010, only 37.5 percent voted in Congressional elections. At that place are signs that young people are voting less than they used to. Why? As Rock the Vote found in a 2010 poll, it is very uncomplicated: Because they think information technology doesn't affair who wins, that no existent change is possible. They think the ability of special interests is simply besides peachy. And they are correct.

Ane of the strongest indications of American autonomous dysfunction is pervasive and expanding poverty. It is not only its existence in the richest state on earth that is shameful, but its utter absence from political soapbox. Most of the poor don't vote; they have largely given up hope. And what national politician talks near poverty? Tin y'all proper noun any?

America is moving toward the kind of bifurcated order we used to deride in banana republics--rich getting richer in gated communities, while the poor abound poorer, barely seen in segregated urban ghettos and hidden rural decay. Over 20 million Americans live in extreme poverty. One in 50 Americans' just income is nutrient stamps. Add the poor and the near-poor--that is under $44K for a family of four--and you have more than 100 million people.

The richest country in the world at present has the highest rate of child poverty in the developed globe. The U.S. has gone from beingness relatively egalitarian to one of the most unequal countries in the world.

And mobility from the poor to the middle grade is not equally open to anyone of talent and ambition as it once was; demographers and sociologists all concur on this. Americans now have less upwardly mobility--and those built-in privileged accept less downward mobility--than in many of the formerly aloof countries our ancestors fled from.

These are just a few signs that American authorities is cleaved. And so why is it so broken? Permit's consider the affair of money. When I left for Oxford in 1974, the full spent past all candidates for Congress, House and Senate, was $77 million. In 2010, it was $i.8 billion. Members of Congress spend up to 70 percent of their time raising money; that is their job; they become fundraisers far more than they are legislators. In that aforementioned twelvemonth, three percentage of retiring Congressmen became lobbyists. Now it's 50 per centum of Senators, 42 percent of House members. Critics from the left and correct and middle alike call our political finance system 1 of "legalized bribery."

Add to the mix the result of the Supreme Court'southward conclusion in Citizens United, and the spread of unaccountable super PACs and bearding donors, and information technology can exist no surprise that public pessimism is at an all-fourth dimension high. Newt Gingrich'due south entrada was kept alive long after the people declared it dead past one billionaire gambling magnate. In any close election today, a unmarried individual, a lone crackpot fifty-fifty, can spend plenty to defeat someone. And worse, they do this mainly with negative ads. Negative ads piece of work--and they also turn off moderates and independents, further eroding conviction in authorities.

The media also are complicit in the dysfunction. Not merely has the kind of responsible journalism that once characterized much of the American press not yet found a new and a sustainable model of profitability, just political dysfunction is profitable for the irresponsible press -- the shock jocks and the vitriol slingers. Yes, the Internet, and blogs, can be wonderful alternatives, just they also facilitate prefiltered news and can spread outrageous falsehoods.

Our Constitution also contributes to the problems. The U.S. Constitution was ane of the great political accomplishments of all fourth dimension. Merely that doesn't mean all parts of it--specially the comprises dictated by parochial eighteen^thursday century concerns--remain great provisions for all time. Our checks and balances, our separation of powers, our federal/state divisions -- all these contribute to the sclerotic gridlock that characteristics U.Southward. government today. Naught important can become done.

Nosotros don't even discuss aspects of our governance that appear glaringly undemocratic from foreign shores. But one major example: California's 37 one thousand thousand people have the same representation every bit Wyoming'southward 560,000. That detail trouble is only going to get worse given U.S. demographic trends; the Senate could finish upwardly as democratically unrepresentative as was United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland'southward Firm of Lords before reform.

Add to the list that our presidents are elected past the electoral college and not popular vote. A result of that is that the presidential campaigns are seriously fought in a minority of usa. This is all crazy. This combination of our constitutional scheme and the role of money make action on most critical issues so difficult. Rich individual interests have many ways to block change. This is why health care reform was so modest in the kickoff place; that is why there was no public selection; that is why climate change legislation is now nearly impossible; that is why the U.S. is lonely in the globe in its inability to regulate guns; that is why basic fiscal reform can't be enacted.

Enough -- my point is not to depress. It is to express my my hope that as young Americans study and live away from their dwelling countries, they will give serious attention to what they see around them and appoint politically when they get abode. I am not suggesting that all of them should run for role or to choose piece of work in the public sector. Simply I am urging them to go as securely involved as they can.

For those who do go into politics, I hope they volition go with their eyes open and their values firm. For American politics today is ugly. In that location is besides much preening to the rich--and often to the ignorant, bigoted, and prejudiced--while there are few rewards for dedication to the dispossessed. Public governance needs extraordinary talent, reach, ambition, and problem-solving skills.

Much of the work the adjacent generation faces will be frustrating. Simply if they stick to information technology, the personal satisfaction they gain -- and the lantern of democracy they help to reignite -- will surely compensate for the pain and slog of getting there.

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Adjusted from a keynote address at the Global Scholars Symposium at Oxford in May. (The total text can exist found here.)

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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/to-make-america-great-again-we-need-to-leave-the-country/259653/

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