Maggie's Farm

I'm not sure why that rant has gotten as much notoriety as it has. Because he says the US isn't the greatest country in the world?

We are, and most of the statistics he quoted are questionable. I say we are mainly because of a very vague and subjective point - would you prefer to live anywhere else?

I love Britain, lived there for a while during college. I've visited half a dozen countries (mostly in the Caribbean) that I'd love to move to (mostly because of the easy lifestyle and great diving). But when you talk about overall quality of life and balance of opportunity - the US wins hands down time and again.

So quote odd statistics like we're 186th in infant mortality, which isn't true, and even though the truth doesn't put us at the top, it also doesn't question WHY we're lower on the scale. Part of that is a result of how we treat human life - each one is worth saving. Here, efforts are made to save every child once it is born, thus each lost cause is counted as a mortality. Some countries don't include the lost causes, let alone try to keep them alive.

We may be lower than many other nations in math or science. This is a flaw, but not a devastating one. Math and science are often taught with rigid agendas elsewhere - curriculum which would fail here, because we favor creativity of thought and action. Richard Feynman once taught a class in Brazil and complained about their methods, saying they'd never amount to much in the field of Physics because they lacked flexibility and creativity.

The fact is, in the US we have people like a good friend of mine, who was a C student. He admits it. But he knew how to code. So he built a product, it worked, he executed a business plan, and eventually sold the product to CBS for a tidy sum of money. They still use it today, 13 years on. So we're a country of C students who know how to do things and execute.

I still believe in American Exceptionalism. I see it is eroding, slowly, but it's still there. We just haven't had an obvious challenge to our supremacy yet. It's coming. That day will arrive. Hopefully we will still be able to answer the call. I believe we will.