The Greatest Nation?

I, for one, have heard just about enough from people who think that our nation is the greatest. Don’t get me wrong. I love my country. I was born here, and I’ve never visited any other countries, even Canada and Mexico. It’s hard for me to mentally grasp a society where the United States isn’t the center of the universe. I’ve seen the stars and stripes flown so many times, I sometimes forget that it’s not the planet’s flag, just my little nook.

And to be fair, our influence does span the globe. American companies have established presences in literally every nation, and very conspicuously. Try finding a city anywhere on the globe where you can’t buy a Coke. As an American, you can feel at home travelling abroad in Europe or Asia. The hotel clerks all speak English, there’s a McDonald’s or a Pizza Hut in most cities, and the American dollar holds up well while travelling abroad.

But the uber-patriots among us insist that we are the greatest nation. True, we are a great nation, but the greatest? I wonder. Here are some statistics complied in recent years which lend suspicion to the claim:

• USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9 (#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
• USA Ranking on Healthcare Quality Index: #37 (#1 France and #2 Italy)- World Health Organization 2003
  USA Ranking of Student Reading Ability: #12 (#1 Finland and #2 South Korea)- OECD PISA 2003
• USA Ranking of Student Problem Solving Ability: #26 (#1 South Korea and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003
• USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: #19 (#1 Finland and #2 Japan)- OECD PISA 2003
• USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability: # 24 (#1 Hong Kong and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003
• USA Position on Timeline of Gay Rights Progress: # 6 (1997) (#1 Sweden 1987 and #2 Norway 1993)- Vexen
• USA Ranking on Women's Rights Scale: #17 (#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- World Economic Forum Report
• USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: #29 (#1 Japan and #2 Hong Kong)- UN Human Development Report 2005
• USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: #17 (#1 Iceland and #2 Finland)- Transparency International 2005
• USA Ranking on Journalistic Press Freedom Index: #32 (#1 Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands tied)- Reporters Without Borders 2005
• USA Ranking on Quality of Life Survey: #13 (#1 Ireland and #2 Switzerland)- The Economist Magazine
• USA Ranking on Environmental Sustainability Index: #45 (#1 Finland and #2 Norway)- Yale University ESI 2005
• USA Ranking on Overall Currency Strength: #3 (US Dollar) (#1 UK pound sterling and #2 European Union euro)- FTSE 2006
• USA Ranking on Human Development Index (GDP, education, etc.): #10(#1 Norway and #2 Iceland)- UN Human Development Report 2005
• USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: #32 (#1 Sweden and #2 Finland)- Save the Children Report 2006

Now I’m not suggesting we all pack our bags and flee for the greener pastures of our European counterparts. I wouldn't want to be accused to doing the old "cut and run" just because things weren't going swimmingly here. What I am suggesting is this: if we truly believe that our nation has the capacity to be great, even the greatest nation on earth, we need to acknowledge these statistics and challenge ourselves.

When we look at the greats, whether they be sports heroes, explorers, inventors, businessmen, we don’t see people who coasted on previous successes. In many cases, the heroes of yesterday, the pioneers in their field, the household names we associate as benchmarks of quality and success were met early on by failure, often on a colossal scale. Edison and Einstein failed in their early efforts, and if they had accepted defeat our world would have suffered the loss of their many contributions. Some of our heroes started failing young and didn’t make good until much later in life. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Milton Hershey's first chocolate store went out of business because no one liked his candy. J. C. Penney was institutionalized - twice. One urban legend suggests that Walt Disney was fired as a young illustrator working for an advertisement company (his pink slip, where a reason for dismissal was called for, said "singular lack of artistic ability"). What makes them great in retrospect is not that they failed, but that they challenged themselves to rise above those failures.

As a nation we need to acknowledge that there is work to do. If we truly want the title of “greatest nation”, and to be able to quantify that claim, then we need to aspire to our potential. This is a radical notion, because it means switching from the “business as usual” approach of funding the military-industrial complex and turning our focus to health and education, to human rights and the environment.

If we devote ourselves to these causes as entirely as we have devoted ourselves to war over the last 65+ years, we will start seeing our names at the tops of some of those lists. Then we can call ourselves the greatest; not just for topping a list, but for not settling for good enough when excellence was within our grasp.