We're Number One

On June 4, 2009 Barck Obama gave a major speech from Cairo, his first to the International Community, which was met with overwhelming approval by his audience. He had been president for a little over 4 months and his health care plans had yet to become public. This was the first chance for Republicans, who had been frothing at the mouth since his election, to strike. They criticized him for being too friendly to foreigners, to whom he happened to be speaking, and worst of all, never once mentioning “American exceptionalism.” My reaction was that virtually telling the rest of the world how much better your country is than theirs is not a way to win friends and influence people.

On the business of American exceptionalism, if we’re judged solely by our barons of finance and the system that allows them to operate as they do, we are a Third World nation dressed in First World clothing. In terms of equality of income, on a list of forty one nations we rank thirty eighth. Not surprisingly our poverty rating is in the same vicinity.

Educationally we’re low on the totem pole of industrialized nations in spite of the fact that we rank second in per capita expenditures. Why are we getting less for our buck? We are experiencing an ideological fight started by those who believe the world was created a few thousand years ago in a week. They demand that these notions be taught in science classes as alternative to what we know of our world. As I see it the integrity an entire educational system reflecting this kind of thinking is suspect. And why is college tuition so expensive that so many students enter adulthood heavily in debt. The institutions involved are subsidized by the government to the extent that donations are tax deductable. Have any serious colleges gone out of business lately? The last I heard they were still singing the fight song at good ol’ Oral Roberts.

We have the world’s highest per capita medical expenses and yet we are well down the list in life expectancy and other pertinent categories. The role of insurance companies has been discussed at length. But the fact that our doctors, not general practitioners but specialists, are paid considerably more than those in other nations has not. There is clearly price fixing in our medical profession, which is as it should be in my opinion. Price should not be a consideration in selecting a doctor. But should the medical profession have the only voice in fixing prices? I think not.   

Still the United States, by virtue of its education and research, was at the world’s cutting edge in the technology of the 20th Century, useful stuff like science, medicine, transportation and communication. We also helped out big in World War II.  But American exceptionalism has become a thing of the past. The appropriate question now concerns what we’ve done lately.