"A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!" - Nietzsche
One conviction that seems to have virtually full consensus in this country is American Exceptionalism: the idea that the United States is the greatest country on Earth. Even when the opposite is professed, and whether it be due to overweening pride or puerile vanity, it is almost always revealed in some way that Americans believe themselves to be constituents of the greatest country on Earth, and that a paternalistic approach to the rest of the world is the best one. What is more, this concept is taken by the vast majority of Americans as given: no reasons need be provided, no evidence is necessary to back up such claims. But in any worldview that purports to be ‘reality based’, scientific method demands that reasons be given. So I am asking for them. Why is America the greatest country on Earth?
Can this even be determined to be true through experience? A scientific approach to such a problem would be to inhabit every single country on Earth for a meaningful period of time, learning the languages and customs of each, and then to compare without bias the results: only then could Americans make a reasonable claim to the superiority of their nation. Such a task would be virtually impossible (crede experto!). An unbiased approach is obviously absurd because wherever we go, we take ourselves with us. However, we do have at our disposal the results of many scientific studies to attempt via comparison of statistics what cannot be compared through actual experience. And the results are not very promising for the U.S.A.
One obvious metric is material wealth, and in this sense America is truly the greatest country on Earth. But what sort of metric is that, and what does it say about America?
The wealthiest person in modern world history was John D. Rockefeller. Does this attribute, however, make him the greatest person on Earth? Really? Greater, because of material wealth, than Mohandas Gandhi? Than Martin Luther King Jr.? Than Jesus Christ? Than William Shakespeare? Than Albert Einstein? Than Friedrich Nietzsche? Than Karl Marx? Than Henry David Thoreau? Than Diogenes the Cynic? Than Vincent Van Gogh? (You will note that most, if not all of these illustrious individuals lived at least a good part of their life in poverty and misery, and found success either despite earlier failures or posthumously). Although the ability to generate material wealth is arguably a notable one, no one could sensibly argue that it is the most important of human abilities and talents.
Another metric is military might, or as the late, great George Carlin put it, "We can bomb the sh** outta your country!". Insofar as what human beings are ("menschlich, alle zu menschlich"), military prowess belongs among its talents, but insofar as what human beings aspire to it has no place whatsoever. If violence and rapine are to be commended then certainly America qualifies as being in the winner’s circle for the title of "The Greatest Nation on Earth".
But what about other metrics; human rights, for example? While perhaps not on the level of a Saudi Arabia or a North Korea, such comparisons are meaningless when we are looking for el numero uno. Just this past week Uruguay, a poor South American nation whose dominant religion is Catholicism, chose to allow gays to enter the military openly. No DADT. Meanwhile, in the United States, a West Point graduate and Arabic translator was dismissed from the military because of his open homosexuality. Gay marriage is recognized in a number of nations, but not in the United States.
The United States now has the highest prison population in the world. Over one in every one hundred adults is in jail or prison, more than 2.3 million human beings. One in nine African-American males ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. Many of these incarcerations are for non-violent offenses. The death penalty is legal in many states, and the justice system is far from egalitarian. More people die from gun violence in the U.S. than in any other politically stable nation on Earth.
Insofar as health care goes, very few will argue that the U.S. private system is superior. The U.S. is ranked #37 by the World Health Organization. America is the only industrialized nation that does not have some form of a public health care system. Infant mortality rates are high when compared to similar nations, and life expectancy is lower. Teen pregnancy rates are also the highest in the world.
On education, while the U.S. boasts the greatest number of accredited universities, higher education is a crippling expense, and public school education leaves most Americans ill-prepared and ignorant, despite its soaring costs.
The largest polluter in the world is the U.S., with the greatest offending organization being the Department of Defense. The U.S. refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. While China has exceeded the U.S. in total carbon emissions, per capita emissions are still the highest in America, and much of the reason that China is such a polluter is because it is the chief manufacturing base for U.S. consumers.
American Exceptionalism represents a twofold danger:
Primarily, such hubris and lack of self-examination were key components in the downfall of past empires including Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Spain, and Great Britain. The British Empire is the most recent and poignant example. Jingoism was literally invented by the British, and the expression, "wogs begin at Calais" aptly sums up much of what caused the eventual overreach and subsequent decline of the "empire upon which the sun never sets".
The second danger lies in a simple fact of human psychology: that thinking bad means making bad. The Aristoi of Ancient Greece, having conquered and subjugated the autochthonous inhabitants of the Greek peninsula, came to regard the people they suppressed as wretched and bad, and this feeling intensified over time. This point demonstrates that it is oppression, subjugation and slavery that make bad, wretched and unhappy people, and not the other way round, as is often believed by the oppressors and conquerors. By America regarding the rest of the world as lesser, in contradistinction to its greatness, it thus creates the ressentisment that inevitably results in violence and terror. America responds to such violence with more violence, and the loop fails to be broken. In its search for more security, the United States creates even more "blowback".
Thus, the solution to the problem of how America is viewed by the rest of the world will not be solved by smooth, corporate PR, nor by increased ‘security’ measures, but by the realization on behalf of all Americans that as Americans we are all from someplace else, that we are all human beings, and that this inextricable web of mutuality is only maintained through empathy, consensus, and inclusiveness. The cosmopolitan must replace the metropolitan in our discourse with other nations and peoples.
Doubtless there are many things that America can claim as merits, but it is not our place as Americans to trumpet these merits while so many flaws are in dire need of repairs – it offends good taste to do so. A great deal of self-examination, reflection, and self-overcoming are in order. If we prove up to such a task, then perhaps we will honestly be able to claim the title of "The Greatest Nation on Earth."