How would you react in the following situation? First, a little background is in order..
After being invited to a posh dinner party in New York City, you arrive at the appointed day and time fashionably late. As the guest list consists of highly successful people from all over the world, you, of course, have dressed to the nines. As you were leaving the house, a member of your family, who has made a sport out of criticizing your attire, actually stated the following words just prior to your departure, "You have never looked better."
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Upon entering a dining room fit for kings, you are shown to your table. Seven others, who have already been seated, appear as if they had fallen out the classic American novel The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In a word, you are looking at what is called 'the upper crust' of society.
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As drinks are being served, one of the members at your table suggests that each person make a short introduction to break the ice. "Good idea," you think to yourself. For some reason, however, you have been singled out to make the first introduction. Now instead of "good idea," you are thinking "Why me?" You are nervous. Nevertheless, your introduction is over in no time at all.
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You quickly analyze your performance. You are fairly sure you got your name right and correctly identified yourself as a person from Toronto, Canada. Good enough.
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The other introductions proceed along the same routine lines - fairly close to name, rank and serial number - as a captured soldier would reveal to the enemy. Notably, everyone at the table is from a different country.
The last person to confess his identity is someone you will never forget.
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His introduction certainly started off well-enough, "Hello. My name is Joe Smith. I'm an attorney at Brown, Selig & Roberts - a firm specializing in corporate law." Nothing unusual there. It was how he ended his personal spiel that was unusual. "I have a wife and two beautiful kids, and what else can I say? Oh, I'm from Washington, DC - which of course is the capital of the greatest nation on earth."
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An uncomfortable pause ensued. He was kidding, right? The two people sitting next to you certainly thought so. They let out an indecorous chortle. At that very moment, Joe asked. "What's so funny?" An endless pause of astonishment poured over the table. After what seemed an eternity, fragmented small talk finally arose among the dinner guests to fill the awkward vacuum. "The greatest nation on earth," you kept thinking in the back of your mind, "Do Americans actually believe that?"
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In fact, a recent official survey (Gallup Poll) indicates that no fewer than 80% of Americans do believe their country to be the greatest nation on earth. In intellectual and foreign policy circles, this thinking is known as American exceptionalism. It is an interesting and thought-provoking idea. It is also exceptionally wrong.
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American Greatness
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This is not to suggest that the United States is devoid of greatness. Tens of millions of people around the world are lined up hoping to enter the country to study, work and live at any given moment. Why? First and foremost, America is the first truly international nation based on thirteen words that changed the world forever - "We hold that these truths are self-evident, That all men are created equal." That statement, which was written into the American Declaration of Independence (1776) by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), has withstood the test of time by having been successfully reinterpreted to include women, African-Americans and others originally left out of the revolution. Regardless of race, class, gender and level of wealth, each and every person, theoretically speaking, is equal in the eyes of the law and to the rest of society. When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have A Dream" speech on 28 August 1963, he argued for civil rights by appealing to Jefferson's Declaration, and thankfully, his dream has come true to a large extent. Secondly, American greatness can be found in its other founding document - The Constitution of the United States. After an entire summer of meetings in Philadelphia in 1787 and subsequent deliberation in individual states, delegates established the framework to allow citizens the right of free speech, the right to assemble and a right to a trial by due process of law. In short, individuals had rights, and the state existed to serve the citizens - not the other way around. This was revolutionary greatness.
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Think of how many ruling classes of nation-states deny women equal status, persecute minority ethnic groups and treat their citizens as pawns to aggrandize their own power. In many of those countries, citizens do not have a democratic tradition or a founding document to combat tyranny. Any attempt to devise such a republican form of government is immediately quashed by the ruling elite. Remember Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China in 1989 or Iran in 2009? Jefferson's other immortal phrase "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" as a right to given to each person is also an idea of true greatness. Why? It is humane. It is tolerant, and it is hopeful. When the United States has placed human rights at the cornerstone of its domestic and foreign policies (i.e. Civil Rights legislation, labor laws, helping to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan), it has achieved moments and periods of greatness.
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It is well-known that the United States is the wealthiest nation, a leading innovator of technology and the only nation able to project military power across the globe. Despite its impressive achievements in promoting human rights, generating wealth and defending the world from tyranny (i.e the protection of Kosovo, the war against Al-Qaeda etc.), why then should Americans refrain from believing their country to be the greatest nation in the world?
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Reason One: Great Wealth Amid Great Poverty
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Have you ever been to Atlanta, Georgia? It is the largest city in the South. The people are friendly, and the Southern-fried food is delicious. Whatever you do, do not forget to try the peach cobbler - warmed up next to a scoop of cold, vanilla ice cream.
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As a transportation gateway, the city has attracted a host of Fortune 500 companies. If you drive around the city, you will inevitably come across at least one enclave of giant mansions where the well-to-do live. Their incomes are in the millions and the tens of millions (dollars). Their net worth is in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions. One look at the Olympic-size pool and the BBQ area, which is larger than a typical condominium, tells you in incorrect but home-style American English - "This ain't middle America." More than ninety percent of Atlanta's residents do not enjoy such a lifestyle, however. Most are middle-class with average incomes large enough to pay a mortgage on a small house and enjoy a reasonable vacation every few years. Yet, more and more people in Atlanta are now leading lives that resemble the ones of Alan and Andono Bryant.
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Alan is 47. Andono, his wife, is 44. Some years back, Alan, who was working two and three jobs as a cook to make ends meet, lost his one of his jobs. The problem? That was the job that gave him and his wife a health insurance plan. Andono, who had lost one of her jobs earlier, had a heart attack and required extensive medical treatment costing nearly $50,000. In the absence of insurance, they had to sell their house. Due to the poor real-estate market, they received only a small return on their investment.
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Today, Alan works as a cook at a Ruth Chris Steak House. This upscale restaurant charges $44 for its best steak and $7 for a potato. Alan makes $11 per hour - approximately one and a half rich man potatoes. Alan gets satisfaction by making a good meal for his customers - some of which live in one of those wealthy enclaves on the other side of town.
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They shop at a co-op. Essentially, it is a supermarket for the poor and anyone living on the economic margins of society. As they can buy groceries for a fraction of the cost of what Americans still in the middle-class pay, they consider themselves lucky. To a degree, they actually are lucky. Some people have no access to discounted food.
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There is an old expression in America, "You can't afford to get sick." The Bryants are living that reality. Yet, they are far from alone. Out of 310 million people, approximately 45 million Americans have limited or no health insurance. The same number of people live below the poverty line. Many live in homeless shelters or squalid rooms in dilapidated houses. Others live on the street. When you visit Washington, DC (the capital of the so-called greatest nation on earth), you will see its parks, its subway stations and its streets filled with the dispossessed. They are only blocks away from the White House and the same distance from Georgetown and Dupont Circle - two of the wealthiest areas of the city.
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Alan and Andono Bryant are African-American, yet it must be remembered that most of America's poor are white. At the same time, however, African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately poor compared to whites overall. The long hand of history in the form of structural racism still exists, and King's dream has not been fully realized - despite the fact that the current president is African-American.
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Can America claim to be the greatest nation on earth when 50 million people live in poverty and another 50-75 million people barely hang onto their middle-class status amid a nation with unprecedented wealth?
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Americans need to take a hard look in the mirror. People with individual liberty and no economic security are only half free.
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Reason Two: Guns Over Common Sense
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One year ago this month, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (b. 1970) was at a supermarket (not a co-op) visiting with some of her supporters. Shots rang out. In an instant, six people were either dead or dying. One of those killed was a nine year-old girl. Giffords was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital. After a series of operations, she somehow survived. Her assailant, Jared Lee Loughner, then 22 years-old, was placed under arrest.
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New Year 2012 is quite different from New Year 2011 for the surviving victims and their families. For the relatives of the six people gunned down, they lead lives of heartbreak. A father and a mother have lost their nine year-old girl forever. Imagine their pain. As for Giffords, she struggles to talk and has lost fifty-percent of her vision.
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After that high-profile case of gun violence, Americans have had a serious debate on gun control over the past year, right? Wrong. There has been little to no debate on gun control at all. Even Congresswoman Giffords, who supported the right to own firearms prior to her near-fatal experience, has not altered her stance on the issue.
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In the United States, it is possible to buy and own a gun with a little money and a background check. At gun shows in some states, a background check is not required before taking possession of a gun. Hence, can Jacob Lee Loughner be said to be solely responsible for the crime - or was he and the society that gave him free access to his gun responsible? If America had banned firearms in 2010, Loughner may not have been able to carry out his deadly attack. Six people would be alive, and Giffords would be able to form speech and see as well as she did on New Year's Day 2011.
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Americans need ask themselves the following question over and over: "Is my right to own a gun more precious than a human life?" If the answer is "No," then a movement to add a constitutional amendment to The Constitution nullifying the Second Amendment ('the right to bear arms') ought to begin immediately. As more than 10,000 Americans die in gun-related violence each year, there is no time to lose.
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Most of those gun-related deaths occur in areas of urban blight - far away from the more affluent sections (i.e. tourist areas). Hence, many of the poor have the worst of all worlds in having no hope, no meaningful education, no jobs and plenty of violence. More school shootings and gun-violence in middle-class America can also be expected as long as national gun-control remains off the political table.
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Can America claim to be the greatest nation on earth where it is easier to get a gun than a full-time job with health insurance?
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A Definition Of The Greatest Country In The World
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If America enacts gun-control measures and lifts nearly everyone up to middle-class status through a whirlwind of reform over the next twenty-years - and still remains democratic, the wealthiest country and retains the most powerful military, will it then be the greatest nation on earth?
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Even if America could somehow become a nation devoid of any suffering whatsoever and project its ideals perfectly across the globe, it would still not be greatest nation on earth for one simple reason. Objectively speaking, there is no such thing as a greatest nation on earth.
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Nations are artificial constructions. They are made up. To use an apt concept from scholar Benedict Anderson, they are imagined communities. Nations come and go. They are redefined across time and space. Today's France, for example, is quite dissimilar to the one of Louis XIV (1638-1715), and Prussia, which was born as a state in 1525, dissolved into Poland in 1947.
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There is only one sense in which we can speak of a greatest nation on earth. It is personally and individually. The greatest nation on earth - or perhaps 'country in the world' is a better phrase - is the one where you were born.
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It is the one that gave you a beautiful language and culture.
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The greatest country in the world is the one where your parents sacrificed for you to live out your dreams.
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It is the one where your son and daughter calls you 'Dad' or 'Mom.'
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The greatest country in the world is the one where your closest friends have watched you grow up, change as a person - and laugh when you laugh, and cry when you cry.
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It is also the one you where you have failed and succeeded through the trials of life. Your country is not only a physical boundary but a landscape of memory - that includes joy, sorrow and everything in between.
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Above all, the greatest country in the world is the one where you first discovered the timelessness of love, the endless beauty of compassion and the practice of tolerance and charity to all.
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That is the mark of true greatness.
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That is your country. That is every country.
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(Photo: An American mother plays with her daughter in a homeless shelter)
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Key Sources
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1. To read the CNN article about the Bryant family in Atlanta, please click onto the following link: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/08/us/income-gap-profile/index.html
2. To view the Gallup Poll with reference to American views of their own exceptionalism, please click onto the following link: http://www.gallup.com/poll/145358/americans-exceptional-doubt-obama.aspx
3. For statistics on gun-violence in America, please see the study by LCAV (Legal Community Against Violence) at the following link: http://www.lcav.org/statistics-polling/gun_violence_statistics.asp
4. To view an informative graph on poverty in America from the US Census Bureau, please click onto the following link: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2010/figure4.pdf
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The author is an American from a good and decent country - but not from 'the greatest nation on earth.'
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J Roquen