Land of the Free
By 
Shan-ul-Hai •
April 1, 2008
We hear a lot of propaganda aimed at convincing the American people that Arabs are evil, the war is justified, and America is the best thing that ever happened to the world. Some people believe it all, and some people (i.e. the people who are probably reading this) believe none of it… but did you ever think that just some of it might be true?
All other things aside, the slogans “Land of the Free” and “Land of Opportunity” really do describe two of America’s very unique traits. We often take these facts for granted, but the amount of freedom and opportunity available to the American population is unmatched in the rest of the world. Here, we can speak out for what we believe in (although recently, we’re been losing that privilege). Here, you can be whatever you want to be if you set your mind to it. After you hear those things a million times, you tend to take them for granted… but this is the only country where it’s true.
In most countries (even in Europe), the average person does not believe they can be anything they want to be. If you’re born under a tin roof in Indonesia, you’ll probably die under a tin roof in Indonesia. If you speak out against the King in the Middle East, you’ll be detained. If you openly practice Buddhism in Tibet, you’ll be suppressed by the Chinese. If you try to leave your poor village in Pakistan to go to college, you’ll starve before anybody gives you a scholarship/loan. And that’s why the US became the world’s foremost economic and scientific power (I mentioned yesterday how we became the world’s foremost military power).
Recently, more countries have started granting more liberties and have attempted to produce more opportunities. In the process, Germany and Japan have risen as intellectual powers, while London’s financial sector is bringing economic prowess to the UK. Although the US is still leading the world, the rest of these countries are taking our strengths - our belief in freedom and our endearment of the old rags-to-riches story - and implementing them into their own policy. They’ll slowly start to chip away at our status as the world’s best country for scientific discovery and economic advancement… but it will make the world a better place.
Interesting note: the indices that measure democracy and freedom of the press both report that the US is no longer a leader in these two issues (we’ve been dropping quickly in the last few years). If we don’t fix this, we’ll destroy everything we stand for and, eventually, we’ll also lose our place as a leader in liberty and opportunity. The way to fix a declining democracy with fading freedoms is to be aware of the problem… if we know what’s going on and we follow these indices, we can prevent ourselves from slipping.
According to all of the studies that I linked above, the next big thing is Australia… but that is a topic for a future post.
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Is America “slipping” or is everyone else just catching up?
I don’t think America can sustain its pace of economic growth over the past century into the next century, whereas other countries may be able to achieve that sort of growth.
I view this as more of a “the world is flat” phenomenon that is here to stay rather than an ominous portent of the “destruction of everything America stands for.”
If you look at the study I was referring to with the “destruction of everything…” comment, you’ll see that freedom of the press (and, to some extent, democracy) in the US has deteriorated substantially over the last few years (not just that other countries are catching up).
In terms of other measures (economic and personal freedom), as I mentioned, the US is still a leader and that’s why I choose to be here.
Perhaps it has deteriorated but this may have a lot to do with the current administration. I do not think we will continue to elect more George Bush clones with no regard for the constitution into public office.
I think there are a lot of reasons why it’s deteriorated. If you look at the link in the blog post, the US’s “press freedom rating” has been getting worse every year since the first survey in 2002. We re-elected Bush in 2004, and although he has a low approval rating now, it is not unlikely that we will elect a similar leader in McCain (he may be different with socioeconomic issues, but not with these sorts of things).
The point is that if we’re not aware of these problems, we can’t solve them. We may be able to step away from Bush for a term or two, but the general American attitude is what will prevail in the future… before we start pointing fingers at our leaders, we need to figure out why we continue to vote for leaders who promise war and the destruction of civil liberties (i.e. Bush in 2004, and probably McCain in 2008).
Well, no one goes on campaign saying, “Hey, if you vote for me, I’m gonna torture people, wiretap phones, appoint judges based as much on their political viewpoint as on their judicial acumen, waste as much money as possible, veto as many bills as possible….” I think things were exponentially worse in Bush’s second term than in his first term. Hindsight is always 20/20.
I am pretty sure that Mccain would not have invaded Iraq. And there would definitely be no torture under him, as that has been a strong criticism by him of Bush.
People are frankly fed up with a lot of what is going on and that’s why you see record numbers of voters, especially people like college students, minorities, etc.