Are We Asking The Wrong Question?

by admin | July 3, 2015 10:27 am

The opening scene of the first episode of “Newsroom” has stuck with me since I first saw it a couple of years ago. Jeff Daniels portrays news anchor Will McAvoy, the star of the Atlantis television network. McAvoy is seated at a panel discussion in a university auditorium. A student asks the panel, “What makes America the greatest country in the world?”

Others on the panel respond with the usual patter about freedom and the American way, while McAvoy tries to avoid answering the question. But the moderator keeps pressuring him to respond, and he finally does. It is a tough scene to watch. McAvoy profanely eviscerates both the student and his fellow panel members after replying, “It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor. That’s my answer.”

And he proceeds to enumerate why he thinks so. Rather than rely on fictional television, I decided to search online. Mark Rice is chair of American Studies at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, and maintains a site called Ranking America. Here is what he found:

We do rank first in a number of categories. At $619 billion, the United States spends more on defense than the next eight countries combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which measures annual military spending. China ranks second, far behind this country with defense expenditures of $171.4 billion.

So, is America the greatest country in the world? Clearly, we lag behind others in a number of key categories, if that is how one measures which country is the greatest. I cannot think of any other country where I would rather live, but that is probably true of most folks both here and in, say, Ecuador. (By the way, that country is a favored destination of American retirees looking for a nice climate and low cost of living.) It is a sure bet that citizens of France or New Zealand do not consider the United States to be the greatest country in the world. Mexico may be a different story.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Instead of candidates all mouthing the same platitudes about this being the greatest country, we should ask what could be done to make this a better country for all of its citizens. How can we become a nation where people are not gunned down in church or at the movie theater, where one in five children do not live in poverty, and we do not incarcerate more people than China with four times the population?

The Fourth of July might be a good time to ask those questions.

Source URL: https://garyborders.com/pages/are-we-asking-the-wrong-question/