The video is like a caricature of how conservatives think the left sees America — except it isn’t a caricature; it’s real. It’s a straw man come to life.
The fact is, all the freedom and progress those other countries enjoy today wouldn’t be possible without the United States. As evidence we’re just OK, the video cites statistics showing that other developed countries, such as Luxembourg, Sweden and Norway, have lower poverty rates or better education and health care outcomes than we do. As for our “kick-ass democracy,†the Times says, it’s not that big a deal because “a lot of countries have freedoms.â€
Put aside for a moment all the misleading data the video uses to show America isn’t so great. The reason that “a lot of countries have freedoms†today is because our Founding Fathers pioneered the principle of popular sovereignty, where governments answer to the people. At the time of our founding, the rest of the world was ruled by monarchs. Our founders established the first country in human history that was built not only on blood and soil, but on an idea — the idea of human liberty.
Today, 4.1 billion people live in democracies. (Of those who don’t, four out of five live in China.) The unprecedented expansion of liberty has produced unprecedented prosperity.
Last September, the Brookings Institution reported that “for the first time since agriculture-based civilization began 10,000 years ago, the majority of humankind . . . some 3.8 billion people, live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered ‘middle class’ or ‘rich.’ â€
United States isn’t simply the greatest nation on Earth; we are indispensable. Without us, the world would be mired in the darkness of totalitarianism rather than the light of liberty.