Is America the greatest Country anymore? Or do you agree with Will?

Anglo-scot said:

Ok. Lots to chew over. I've never compared US patriotism with European fascism. I don't think Brits are inclined to think this way, though I have to speak for myself. I've never seen it anyway.

Brits tend not to blame other countries either for their problems, though more recently concern has risen over the level of immigration. There is also a big section of the population who disagree with membership of the EU, or at least the power of the EU (I am in this group) because of the impact on our home-grown democracy.

Though British Conservatives would think differently, I have to disagree with your assessment of the US's role in preserving world peace. With its dropping of A-bombs in Japan in 1945, amassing of nuclear weapons, invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, and Cold War posturing the USA has proved itself to be more of an enemy of world peace than a friend since WW2. I think that the American position on world events is closely aligned with the protection of its commercial interests, which is bolstered by a Messianic belief in its own righteousness. Britain's contribution as a key ally has been no less dismal. I don't have a problem with individual Americans - just American politics, as it affects the rest of the world.

On culture, I like country music (unusually for an Englishman), many US sitcoms, a lot of classic US rock music, and some Hollywood films. However, gratuitous violence in Hollywood films is now really bad and I am careful what I watch. Rap music and heavy metal and their associated cultures are disturbing. And generally, the dominance of US culture across the world is often not good for the healthy development and preservation of local cultures. On the other hand, its widespread nature has given us common cultural references which bridge nations at a certain level. So American culture is a mixed bag for me.

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The point was that generally, when Europeans view American patriotism with fear and skepticism, it comes from viewing patriotism in a wider sense through the lens of European historical experience, which includes the relatively recent fascist history of Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.

You equate patriotism with nationalism, and nationalism with violence, as that has been your experience on your continent. My point was not to in any way claim that Europeans are still fascists or that Britain has this problem, I only meant to show that your view of American patriotism may be skewed since you're looking at it through the tinted lens of your history, culture, and experiences which do not exactly correlate with ours.

As for the US' role in preserving world peace, let's pursue a thought experiment: Say the United States dropped off the face of the earth following WW2 and the rest of the world were exactly in tact as it was in 1949. We'll continue to assume that the allies won the war, just for fun.

The Soviet Union would surely have been the world's only superpower for at least 40 years following the war. Logically, Germany would never have been divided in to east and west, and all of Germany would have fallen under the Soviet sphere. NATO would never have existed. The only existing military power in Europe would have been Britain, not strong enough by herself to withstand Soviet influence, and certainly not strong enough to encroach on the USSR's influence of continental Europe.

As such, most of Europe, with Britain as the possible exception, would have been communist, with nations like France, Germany, and Italy being much like today's Eastern European nations.

China would never have opened trade with the West, and it's modern capitalist/communist mix would most likely be purely communist. Japan, a mess after WW2, would never have been rebuilt in to the robust economy it has today. A war between Japan and China would have been likely.

Israel would have fallen to its neighbors, and, in addition to the 6 million Jews that died during the holocaust, several million more would have died in Israel in the years following.

Lacking the grain exported by the USA and lacking any robust economic development in Europe (as a result of Soviet communism), many in third world nations would starve.

Man would never have walked on the moon.

A series of important inventions would never have occurred, or would have occurred later, since they were invented in America.

ObamacareFail said:

The biggest single source of funding for Islamic terrorism is oil wealth. The fact that the majority of that funding does not come from American customers does not matter to me. The fact that any amount comes from profits of fuel sold to Americans does matter to me. As long as he maintain any dependence at all on Mideast oil, at least a small portion of what you pay at the gas pumps is in fact funding Islamic terrorism. North America producing all of it's it's own oil would have a major effect. It would produce a glut that would force OPEC prices downward.

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Since most ME wealth is ultimately sourced to oil then yes, oil money funds terrorism. But most terrorist funding (except for ISIS) comes from established wealth -- the fruit of decades of oil exports. Nothing done now, to produce or not produce, or to purchase or not purchase, would have any appreciable effect.

Peter Grimm said:

The point was that generally, when Europeans view American patriotism with fear and skepticism, it comes from viewing patriotism in a wider sense through the lens of European historical experience, which includes the relatively recent fascist history of Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.

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No, I don't recognise that at all. No one I know compares modern US nationalism with European nationalism of a century ago.

You equate patriotism with nationalism

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Please define to me the difference between patriotism and nationalism.

...and nationalism with violence, as that has been your experience on your continent. My point was not to in any way claim that Europeans are still fascists or that Britain has this problem, I only meant to show that your view of American patriotism may be skewed since you're looking at it through the tinted lens of your history, culture, and experiences which do not exactly correlate with ours.

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When you have a history of positive experiences of nationalism to balance against negative European experiences of nationalism, then we can talk further.

Ahlevah said:

I think Will McAvoy's (Jeff Daniels') monologue is a little too idealized, as if one day the U.S. "stood for something" but then the next day it didn't. Even when the U.S. with its allies defeated the Axis Powers we had black soldiers and airmen coming home facing Jim Crow. For example, in a story I read earlier this year about two Tuskegee Airmen who died on the same day I ran across this tidbit:



Ironic, isn't it? These men selflessly went to war in Europe to fight for freedom while they couldn't use a public restroom meant for "whites only" in the Jim Crow South of their own country. No welcome wagon for them.

So then I'm left to ponder: Was America great because it "stood for something," or was America great because it had people who felt it was still worth dying for even as they were denied the full benefit of the freedoms it offered to its white citizens? I'd say the latter is closer to the truth.

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I believe the former. Once on understands that all men are fallible or as the bible says "all have fallen short", we no longer look to the imperfect neighbor as a guidepost. We instead look to the ideals and principals that we can agree make a great society and then strive for that. We "stood for something", because we had common values, even if we were imperfect in applying them.

Now however I'm not so sure that we have common values anymore. There has been a decline in religious instruction, a decline in civic education, a decline in history, geography, philosophy, and logic in education. These disciplines shape values. On the other hand there has been more social and cultural education, which is fine, but has led to cultural relativism which weakens common values.

Anglo-scot said:

On Nobel Prizes, if the issue arises as to which country has won the most, then it's fair enough to quote the stats and leave it at that. But there's no need to induce that this is evidence of the USA's "greatness". Let non-Americans pay you that compliment, if they choose.

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Why? If a statement is true, what difference does it make who utters it? Of course, reasonable people can agree or disagree on what criteria to use, but to say that there are no objective criteria one could come up with to induce some measure of a nation's "greatness," depending on how one defines that term, is beyond ludicrous. If I had to come up with a definition, it would revolve somewhere around a nation's impact on world history, culture, politics, and scientific achievement, to name a few. But if one assumes that nations, as such, can't be ranked or there are no such objective criteria, then you're basically saying they've all contributed equally to these areas of human endeavor. It reminds me of the idea that when kids participate in sports in grammar school they should all receive trophies just for showing up so that we don't damage their little, underdeveloped psyches.

Anglo-scot said:

If you rejigged the results table pro rata according to the world's population or GDP, perhaps both our countries would be well down the list.

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No doubt it would affect the results, but then having a large economy or a large population is no guarantee of human achievement. For example, China has a population of 1.3 billion and the world's second-largest economy and is the recipient of 12 Nobels. It's never received an award for medicine, chemistry, or economics, and its last award, for literature, was recieved in 2012. On the other hand, China ranks highly at sending its brightest overseas to study, and also does a great job, through various systems of espionage and "joint venture" arrangements, stealing the ideas of others.

Anglo-scot said:

If you excluded European emigres, then perhaps the USA would again fall down the list. Jewish people could claim that their race is the greatest if you looked at the ethnic origin of the winners. In any event, there's just no point trying to use these kind of stats to make a point about the USA being the "greatest". If you do, then expect others to keep kicking your country in the proverbials until it learns a little humility.

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How far do you want to go back? If you want, we can go back to the Norman Invasion and just include among British achievers descendants of loincloth-clad sheep farmers. As far as the Jews are concerned, we're talking about countries, not religions or people of different ethnic stock. What I can say is the U.S., through a system organized to allow freedom of thought and open inquiry, provided the environment for people of every background imaginable to advance the society. I mean, there are still a lot of Jews in Russia, but the country has only 28 Nobels to its credit. If it had been up to Soviet authorities, Boris Pasternak's novel, Doctor Zhivago, never would have made it out of the country.

Anglo-scot said:

I agree that colonisation was and is wrong and that Britain should never have done it. However, I don't claim that my country has ever been the "best" or "greatest" by any objective standard, which I am astonished to see that some Americans really do believe about their country.

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But then America is in fact the greatest country on the planet. No brag....just fact.

Anglo-scot said:

America's cockiness is just as dangerous as that of Britain's of the past, perhaps more, because of sheer devastating firepower. You'll never find me harking back to the greatness of Britain's colonial past - though many Britons sadly still do. The Americans were right to insist that Britain relinquish the empire after WW2, but are wrong to copy this mentality, as though it was their turn. The chickens have long been coming to roost as a result.

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What colonies does America hold?

Andalublue said:

No, I don't recognise that at all. No one I know compares modern US nationalism with European nationalism of a century ago.
Please define to me the difference between patriotism and nationalism.

When you have a history of positive experiences of nationalism to balance against negative European experiences of nationalism, then we can talk further.

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Patriotism is, generally speaking, individualized cultural attachment to one's homeland or an individual's devotion to one's country, based on a variety of reasons. A soldier's family is patriotic. Folks rooting for the USA to win a gold metal in the Olympics are being patriotic. It's simply pride in one's country. It can be based on a number of factors.

Nationalism is a generalized belief in adherence to a set of shared national ideals, and, unlike patriotism, gives more importance to unity by way of a cultural background, including language and heritage.

Fascism is a political belief based on nationalism that not only espouses unity by way of nation or cultural background, but adds the element of considering the national identity in question to be superior to other national identities and, ergo, holding other national identities to be inferior to it's own.

European fascism of the 1930's and 40's placed the blame for the woes of the nation in question (Germany, Italy, etc) directly on other nationalities (Jews, Gypsies, French, Brits) and used this as justification to commit violence against them.

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I can put it in to football terms, so that we're not getting too academic.

A patriot is the equivalent of a fan who cheers on a particular team. He goes to work, he goes to the pub, watches the match, and cheers for his team.

A nationalist is the equivalent of the fan who knows all the chants, knows the names of all the bench players and coaches, wears the team jersey, paints his face, and he believes the casual fan at the pub is not a REAL fan because he doesn't wear the colors and do the chants. The team is part of his identity.

A fascist is the equivalent of the nationalist fan, except he fervently believes his team is better than any other team.

A fascist in the 30's European style blames the fans of the opposing team for his own team's loss, and proceeds to start a fight in the stands over it.

ObamacareFail said:

Agreed with the exception of your claim that almost none of the first world's transportation fuel money goes to terrorists. Perhaps the following will help:

Fueling Terror

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That'll just be dismissed as another advocacy group. But that's a fine institute staffed with fellows that tower above the critics of it. Its president is Robert McFarlane, former National Security Advisor to Ronald Reagan, the Director is the CKO and senior researcher for the institute for counter terrorism. Its senior fellows are PHD's in everything from foreign relations to physics and energy. Its advisors include international energy consultants, the former CIA director Samuel Wolsey, the deputy commander of the US/European Command, and SF's from the Brookings Institute, to name but a few!

Peter Grimm said:

Patriotism is, generally speaking, individualized cultural attachment to one's homeland or an individual's devotion to one's country, based on a variety of reasons. A soldier's family is patriotic. Folks rooting for the USA to win a gold metal in the Olympics are being patriotic. It's simply pride in one's country. It can be based on a number of factors.

Nationalism is a generalized belief in adherence to a set of shared national ideals, and, unlike patriotism, gives more importance to unity by way of a cultural background, including language and heritage.

Fascism is a political belief based on nationalism that not only espouses unity by way of nation or cultural background, but adds the element of considering the national identity in question to be superior to other national identities and, ergo, holding other national identities to be inferior to it's own.

European fascism of the 1930's and 40's placed the blame for the woes of the nation in question (Germany, Italy, etc) directly on other nationalities (Jews, Gypsies, French, Brits) and used this as justification to commit violence against them.

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I can put it in to football terms, so that we're not getting too academic.

A patriot is the equivalent of a fan who cheers on a particular team. He goes to work, he goes to the pub, watches the match, and cheers for his team.

A nationalist is the equivalent of the fan who knows all the chants, knows the names of all the bench players and coaches, wears the team jersey, paints his face, and he believes the casual fan at the pub is not a REAL fan because he doesn't wear the colors and do the chants. The team is part of his identity.

A fascist is the equivalent of the nationalist fan, except he fervently believes his team is better than any other team.

A fascist in the 30's European style blames the fans of the opposing team for his own team's loss, and proceeds to start a fight in the stands over it.

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That's a very good attempt at distinguishing differences. Fair play to you!

I don't agree, but top respect!

LeoVlaming said:

I see we are maintaining a truly intellectual level of discourse.

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I notice you have withdrawn from this discussion. Any reason for having given up?

Peter Grimm said:

We did save you during both world wars and, while we may puff our chests out annoyingly and we might overstate our relative contribution to the European front (similarly, many Europeans completely forget that WW2 had a pacific theatre in which the USA fought almost exclusively in addition to our assistance in Europe)....one cannot escape the fact that the United States did ride in on its white steed to your rescue....and keep in mind we were not directly attacked like the Russians were, we just showed up in the nick of time with the sole purpose of rescuing your ass. Had we not done so, the Germans would likely have succeeded in pressing west toward Britain.

Now, the U.S. Has been compensated for this, as this was the rise of America as a global superpower, replacing Great Britain. However, history is what it is.

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Britain had defeated any plans for Operation Sealion by the end of September 1940: 11 months before you came off the fence. So, the US did not 'ride in to your rescue', but contributed much once aroused. Had the UK conceded, as it could have, in August 1940, the US would have had nothing to support, and a whole continent to suppress, since it would have been very much on its own. Without the UK's resistance, Europe would have been lost to the Nazis. Without US support, Europe would have been lost to the Nazis. Are you still going to claim that the US won WWII alone?

johndylan1 said:

We instead look to the ideals and principals that we can agree make a great society and then strive for that. We "stood for something", because we had common values, even if we were imperfect in applying them.

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Again, I'd say that's an idealized view of American history, although there is some validity to your statement. Yes, we had common cultural values that, regardless of social or economic status, served in one sense as the glue that held the society together and permitted it to prosper. Charles Murray, in his book Coming Apart, did a reasonably good job outlining some of these values and how they've evolved over the last few decades. And overall I'd say the world has benefited from there having been a United States of America.

Nonetheless, I have a hard time reconciling my feeling that the U.S. has some significant moral and ethical baggage against the idea that we can hold ourselves up as some sort of moral beacon. For example, how can anyone claim that we "stood for freedom" when we annihilated American Indians and stole their lands, enslaved blacks, manufactured a war against Spain so we could join the imperialist club, dropped nuclear weapons on innocent children, etc. To say that we were "imperfect" seems a bit underwhelming when placed in these contexts.

Peter Grimm said:

I
We helped end Apartheid in South Africa. We helped bring down the Berlin Wall. .

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I'll refrain from making a snide comment here and will just say that I'm curious about your logic , care to expand?

I am not sure America was ever the greatest nation on Earth...

Peter Grimm said:

We did save you during both world wars and, while we may puff our chests out annoyingly and we might overstate our relative contribution to the European front (similarly, many Europeans completely forget that WW2 had a pacific theatre in which the USA fought almost exclusively in addition to our assistance in Europe)....one cannot escape the fact that the United States did ride in on its white steed to your rescue....and keep in mind we were not directly attacked like the Russians were, we just showed up in the nick of time with the sole purpose of rescuing your ass. Had we not done so, the Germans would likely have succeeded in pressing west toward Britain.

Now, the U.S. Has been compensated for this, as this was the rise of America as a global superpower, replacing Great Britain. However, history is what it is.

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This is wrong on so many levels... we showed up in the end of WWI after the Allies had already turned the tide of the war and in WWII the British had already turned the Nazis back in Africa, their navy had stopped the German Navy ending forever any thought of invading Britain and the Russians handled the Eastern Front almost 99% on their own.

These types of questions are subjective on every level. To some America is an ideal, to others a system, to me it's a land that has people on it and a government, but mostly its a place. In regards to the land that is America, I think that on balance we are the greatest place on earth due to the variety of our landscapes, the fact we have preserved as much of it as we have, and the fact that we have greater access and freedom on that land (from a recreational perspective) than you will find just about anywhere else on earth. That is what is important to me personally and that is why I rank us as a great nation. I think that is the one area where we just totally kick ass as compared to the majority of other countries.

SouthernDemocrat said:

These types of questions are subjective on every level. To some America is an ideal, to others a system, to me it's a land that has people on it and a government, but mostly its a place. In regards to the land that is America, I think that on balance we are the greatest place on earth due to the variety of our landscapes, the fact we have preserved as much of it as we have, and the fact that we have greater access and freedom on that land (from a recreational perspective) than you will find just about anywhere else on earth. That is what is important to me personally and that is why I rank us as a great nation. I think that is the one area where we just totally kick ass as compared to the majority of other countries.

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A great nation? Yes... I just find it great for white men for most of its existence. Other nations had their **** together far before the USA. New Zealand, Australia, The U.K., for example.

It's still great in various ways.

But (and this may be just me, although I think not) it has plenty of great flaws too.

Problem being, we don't pay attention to the real flaws, preferring to focus on tiny problems we think will be easy to fix.

And by "we", I mean the people in charge, in the main.


Edit: I think one of the greatest things any country could posses would be an ability to self-examine. Not sure we have that in the USA, if we ever did.

Bodhisattva said:

A great nation? Yes... I just find it great for white men for most of its existence. Other nations had their **** together far before the USA. New Zealand, Australia, The U.K., for example.

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Australia didn't end its form of Jim Crow for aboriginals until after we did. Hell half the problems we are dealing with the in world today can be traced back to the actions of the British empire.

That all said as I stated earlier, to me America is a land more than it is an ideal, so when I compare America to other nations, I compare America the place to other places.

SouthernDemocrat said:

Australia didn't end its form of Jim Crow for aboriginals until after we did. Hell half the problems we are dealing with the in world today can be traced back to the actions of the British empire.

That all said as I stated earlier, to me America is a land more than it is an ideal, so when I compare America to other nations, I compare America the place to other places.

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Good point. The USA is geographically the greatest in the world, that is for sure.

Bodhisattva said:

Good point. The USA is geographically the greatest in the world, that is for sure.

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Ultimately what is a country other than its land and how good of a job it does preserving it and ensuring its citizenry access to it? When people found a country, that is usually what they are looking for, great land.

SouthernDemocrat said:

Ultimately what is a country other than its land and how good of a job it does preserving it and ensuring its citizenry access to it? When people found a country, that is usually what they are looking for, great land.

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In some areas, especially large cities (and the associated large buildings) it is less about land and more about access to services on whatever small area you reside in/on.

It's the heart of a thriving global empire so yes, it's the best place.

-Western Europe and Japan come in a close 2nd and 3rd yet I still believe the US among whites is the best nation to be in. Among non-whites no, the non-white US is a hellhole (as with anywhere in the world).

-If I were to consider living anywhere else if I had all the money in the world it'd be Sweden, Norway, Germany or Japan. Nothing else would even be considered ever.

The Mark said:

In some areas, especially large cities (and the associated large buildings) it is less about land and more about access to services on whatever small area you reside in/on.

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Yeah but still, what do you take pride in? Usually its the land. Public lands as in our vast National Parks and Forests are called our greatest idea. It is the one thing that we have undeniably done a better job at than any other country on earth. Regardless of whether you live in the city or in a rural area, you can strap a pack on, hit the trail in our hundreds of millions of acres of protected wildernesses and enjoy near perfect freedom. There are very few other places on earth that you can do that.