10 GREAT THINGS
-What to love about the United States.-
By Dinesh D Souza
(National Review Online)
America is under attack as never before - not only from
terrorists, but from people who provide a justification for
terrorism. Islamic fundamentalists declare America the Great
Satan. Europeans rail against American capitalism and American
culture. South American activists denounce the United States
for "neo-colonialism" and oppression.
Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if
Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But
in this country itself, there are those who blame America for
most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many
fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for
continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right,
traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential
figures say that America has become so decadent that we
are "slouching towards Gomorrah."
If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed.
And who can dispute some of their particulars? This country did
have a history of slavery and racism continues to exist. There
is much in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the
critics are wrong about America, because they are missing the
big picture. In their indignation over the sins of America, they
ignore what is unique and good about American civilization.
As an immigrant who has chosen to become an American citizen, I
feel especially qualified to say what is special about America.
Having grown up in a different society - in my case, Bombay,
India - I am not only able to identify aspects of America that
are invisible to the natives, but I am acutely conscious of the
daily blessings that I enjoy in America. Here, then, is my list
of the ten great things about America.
*America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy.*
Rich people live well everywhere. But what distinguishes America
is that it provides an impressively high standard of living for
the "common man." We now live in a country where construction
workers regularly pay $4 for a nonfat latte, where maids drive
nice cars, and where plumbers take their families on vacation to
Europe.
Indeed newcomers to the United States are struck by the
amenities enjoyed by "poor" people in the United States. This
fact was dramatized in the 1980s when CBS television broadcast a
documentary, People Like Us, which was intended to show the
miseries of the poor during an ongoing recession. The Soviet
Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to
embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of
former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary
people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans
have TV sets, microwave ovens, and cars. They arrived at the
same perception that I witnessed in an acquaintance of mine from
Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United
States. I asked him, "Why are you so eager to come to America?"
He replied, "I really want to live in a country where the poor
people are fat."
*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. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of an
Indian army officer, become a leading venture capitalist, the
shaper of the technology industry, and a billionaire to boot.
Admittedly tycoons are not typical, but no country has created a
better ladder than America for people to ascend from modest
circumstances to success.
*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.
*America has achieved greater social equality than any other
society.* True, there are large inequalities of income and
wealth in America. In purely economic terms, Europe is more
egalitarian. But Americans are socially more equal than any
other people, and this is unaffected by economic disparities.
Tocqueville noticed this egalitarianism a century and a half
ago, but it is if anything more prevalent today. For all his
riches, Bill Gates could not approach the typical American and
say, "Here's a $100 bill. I'll give it to you if you kiss my
feet." Most likely the person would tell Gates to go to hell!
The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but
he isn't in any fundamental sense better than anyone else.
*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 unnerving.
*In America the destiny of the young is not given to them but
created by them.* Not long ago, I asked myself, "What would my
life have been like if I had never come to the United States?"
If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole
life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would
undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and
socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a
medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I
would have socialized entirely within my ethic community. I
would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in
advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my
father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny
would to a large degree have been given to me.
In America, I have seen my life take a radically different
course. In college I became interested in literature and
politics, and I resolved to make a career as a writer. I married
a woman whose ancestry is English, French, Scotch-Irish, German,
and American Indian. In my twenties I found myself working as a
policy analyst in the White House, even though I was not an
American citizen. No other country, I am sure, would have
permitted a foreigner to work in its inner citadel of
government.
In most countries in the world, your fate and your identity are
handed to you; in America, you determine them for yourself.
America is a country where you get to write the script of your
own life. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper, and you are
the artist. This notion of being the architect of your own
destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the
worldwide appeal of America. Young people especially find
irresistible the prospect of authoring the narrative of their
own lives.
*America has gone further than any other society in establishing
equality of rights.* There is nothing distinctively American
about slavery or bigotry. Slavery has existed in virtually every
culture, and xenophobia, prejudice, and discrimination are
worldwide phenomena. Western civilization is the only
civilization to mount a principled campaign against slavery; no
country expended more treasure and blood to get rid of slavery
than the United States. While racism remains a problem in
America, this country has made strenuous efforts to eradicate
discrimination, even to the extent of enacting policies that
give legal preference in university admissions, jobs, and
government contracts to members of minority groups. Such
policies remain controversial, but the point is that it is
extremely unlikely that a racist society would have permitted
such policies in the first place. And surely African Americans
like Jesse Jackson are vastly better off living in America than
they would be if they were to live in, say, Ethiopia or Somalia.
*America has found a solution to the problem of religious and
ethnic conflict that continues to divide and terrorize much of
the world.* Visitors to places like New York are amazed to see
the way in which Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish
Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, all seem
to work and live together in harmony. How is this possible when
these same groups are spearing each other and burning each
other's homes in so many places in the world?
The American answer is twofold. First, separate the spheres of
religion and government so that no religion is given official
preference but all are free to practice their faith as they
wish. Second, do not extend rights to racial or ethnic groups
but only to individuals; in this way, all are equal in the eyes
of the law, opportunity is open to anyone who can take advantage
of it, and everybody who embraces the American way of life
can "become American."
Of course there are exceptions to these core principles, even in
America. Racial preferences are one such exception, which
explains why they are controversial. But in general America is
the only country in the world that extends full membership to
outsiders. The typical American could come to India, live for 40
years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not "become
Indian." He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most
Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of
millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or
at least their children, have in a profound and full
sense "become American."
*America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of any great
power in world history.* Critics of the U.S. are likely to react
to this truth with sputtering outrage. They will point to
longstanding American support for a Latin or Middle Eastern
despot, or the unjust internment of the Japanese during World
War II, or America's reluctance to impose sanctions on South
Africa's apartheid regime. However one feels about these
particular cases, let us concede to the critics the point that
America is not always in the right.
What the critics leave out is the other side of the ledger.
Twice in the 20th century, the United States saved the world:
first from the Nazi threat, then from Soviet totalitarianism.
What would have been the world's fate if America had not
existed? After destroying Germany and Japan in World War II, the
U.S. proceeded to rebuild both countries, and today they are
American allies. Now we are doing the same thing in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Consider, too, how magnanimous the U.S. has been to
the former Soviet Union after its victory in the Cold War. For
the most part America is an abstaining superpower: It shows no
real interest in conquering and subjugating the rest of the
world. (Imagine how the Soviets would have acted if they had won
the Cold War.) On occasion the America intervenes to overthrow a
tyrannical regime or to halt massive human rights abuses in
another country, but it never stays to rule that country. In
Grenada, Haiti, and Bosnia, the U.S. got in and then it got out.
Moreover, when America does get into a war, as in Iraq, its
troops are supremely careful to avoid targeting civilians and to
minimize collateral damage. Even as America bombed the Taliban
infrastructure and hideouts, U.S. planes dropped rations of food
to avert hardship and starvation of Afghan civilians. What other
country does these things?
*America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous
nation on earth.* This point seems counter-intuitive, given the
amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice, and immorality in
America. Indeed some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their
regimes are morally superior to the United States because they
seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue, these
fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle than liberty.
Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society, freedom
will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes
the freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. But if
freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the
best. The millions of Americans who live decent, praiseworthy
lives desire our highest admiration because they have opted for
the good when the good is not the only available option. Even
amidst the temptations of a rich and free society, they have
remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster
because it is freely chosen.
By contrast, the societies that many Islamic fundamentalists
seek would eliminate the possibility of virtue. If the supply of
virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is
almost non-existent in an unfree society like Iran. The reason
is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the
woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no modesty in
this, because she is being compelled Compulsion cannot produce
virtue, it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue.
Thus a free society like America is not merely more prosperous,
more varied, more peaceful, and more tolerant - it is also
morally superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes
that America's enemies advocate.
"To make us love our country," Edmund Burke once said, "our
country ought to be lovely." Burke's point is that we should
love our country not just because it is ours, but also because
it is good. America is far from perfect, and there is lots of
room for improvement. In spite of its flaws, however, the
American life as it is lived today is the best life that our
world has to offer. Ultimately America is worthy of our love and
sacrifice because, more than any other society, it makes
possible the good life, and the life that is good.
