One nation, under illusionNeal Gabler, The Boston Globe: The hoariest and most oft-repeated cliche in American politics may be that America is the greatest country in the world. Every politician, Democrat and Republican, seems duty bound to pander to this idea of American exceptionalism, and woe unto him who hints otherwise. This country is 'the last, best hope of mankind,' or the 'shining city on the hill,' or the 'great social experiment.'... In the end, government has inspired Americans for more than Americans have inspired their government. They are too busy boasting...
By what standard is one nation any greater than any other nation?... We have, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the 'highest inequality and poverty rate' in the world, outside of Mexico and Turkey, and things are getting worse. Nothing to boast of there... Our standard of living as measured by the Human Development Index of the United Nations ranks us only 15th in the world... We rank 13th in the affordability of [higher] education, and we are 11th in the percentage of the 25 to 34 population with a high school diploma and 22nd in science education... We actually rank 37th in the quality of our health care. And we are still the only industrialized country in the world without a national health care system...
The point of all this isn't that American doesn't have a lot to be proud of... The point is that just about every other country has a lot to be proud of... None of this would make much difference if the self-congratulation were just harmless bragging. But there are consequences. A country that believes it is the greatest in the world is also less likely to be constrained by that world. One could argue that the Iraq war was a direct result of a sense of national infallibility. So was our willingness to torture, our reluctance to admit our mistakes in Afghanistan, our culpability in the global recession, and our foot-dragging on global warming. Such a nation is also less likely to introspect or to strive for true greatness because it believes its greatness has already arrived...
It seems eons ago when Bobby Kennedy, a politician who didn't like to stroke even his own supporters, actually scolded a rally for booing Lyndon Johnson because, Kennedy said, Johnson couldn't have done what he did in Vietnam if he didn't have the American people, including Kennedy's audience, as his facilitators.
We aren't going to hear that sort of honesty from political leaders any more because the American people are too thin-skinned and arrogant to tolerate it. Arrogance in an individual is unbecoming. It is no more becoming for a nation. The Greeks understood that the gods punished mortals for their hubris -- for feeling that they were godlike. They knew that overweening pride preceded a fall. One suspects that nations are no more immune to punishment than individuals. A nation that brooks no criticism, a nation that feels it is always better than any other, a nation that has to be endlessly flattered and won't face the truth, a nation whose people think they possess some special moral exemption and wisdom, a nation without humility is a nation spoiling for calamity.
