America's Taking A Beating

I've never prided myself on being all that patriotic - I know the Pledge of Allegiance and will badly sing the Star Spangled Banner during sporting events, graduations, and firework shows.

But America seems to be under attack as never before — not only from terrorists, but from it's own citizens.

Despite the flood of immigrants trying to get here, there have always been anti-Americanism from other countries.

Islamic fundamentalists declare America the great evil. Europeans rail against American capitalism and culture. South American activists denounce the United States for "neo-colonialism" and oppression.

Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem, but in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. Granted, thanks to our military activities we have not shown our best side over the past few years.

Recently I read a post by David Lebovitz touting the annoyances, deficits, and seemingly reluctant list of attributes of living in the United States versus Europe. Amusing as it was, it still held that pompous air of "those Americans - how gauche" attitude that unfortunately is not rare.

I am always amazed at the people who feel free to degrade and insult the country where they personally have made a small fortune, the country that's economic structure provided them a marketplace to sell their wares to those "gauche Americans" in the first place - of course they only do this after they made their money and then ran to Europe to spend it.

However, there are reasons why America is a great country, despite it's lack of millennium old buildings and free prescription medicine. I've recently been reminded of these attributes and thought I'd share.

America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary individual. Rich people live well everywhere. But what distinguishes America is that it provides an impressively high standard of living for the "average individual". We now live in a country where construction workers regularly pay $4 for a nonfat latte, where maids drive new cars, and where maintenance men take their families on vacation to Europe. For the most part, America's poor have TV sets, microwave ovens, and cars. Compare that to the underprivileged in other countries.

America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country, including the countries of Europe. America is the only country that has created a population of "self-made tycoons." Only in America could Pierre Omidyar, whose parents are Iranian and who grew up in Paris, have started a company like eBay. Admittedly tycoons are not typical, but no country has created a better ladder than America for people to ascend from modest circumstances to success. It is the "American" dream after all.

Work and trade are respectable in America, which is not true elsewhere. Historically most cultures have despised the merchant and the laborer, regarding the former as vile and corrupt and the latter as degraded and vulgar. Some cultures, such as that of ancient Greece and medieval Islam, even held that it is better to acquire things through plunder than through trade or contract labor. But the American founders altered this moral hierarchy. They established a society in which the life of the businessman, and of the people who worked for him, would be a noble calling.

In the American view, there is nothing vile or degraded about serving your customers either as a CEO or as a waiter. The ordinary life of production and supporting a family is more highly valued in the United States than in any other country. Indeed America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter "sir," as if he were a knight.

People live longer, fuller lives in America. Although protesters rail against the American version of technological capitalism at trade meetings around the world, in reality the American system has given citizens many more years of life, and the means to live more intensely and actively. In 1900, the life expectancy in America was around 50 years; today, it is more than 75 years. Advances in medicine and agriculture are mainly responsible for the change. This extension of the life-span means more years to enjoy life, more free time to devote to a good cause, and more occasions to do things with the grandchildren.

In many countries, people who are old seem to have nothing to do. They just wait to die. In America the old are incredibly vigorous, and people in their seventies pursue the pleasures of life, including remarriage and sexual gratification, with a zeal that I find intimidating at times.

Okay, stepping down from the soap box now. My feet hurt and my throat is dry.

Toodles.