10 Great Things About America (Liberals, Pay Attention!)

In the aftermath of last September's terrorist attack, we've heard a great deal about "why they hate us" and about why America is so bad. We've endured lengthy lectures about America's history of slavery, about the defects of American foreign policy, about the materialism of American life, and about the excesses of American culture. In the view of many critics at home and abroad, America can do no right. This indictment, which undermines the patriotism of Americans, is based on a narrow and distorted understanding of America. It exaggerates America's faults and ignores what is good and even great about America.

As an immigrant who has chosen to become a U.S. citizen, I feel especially qualified to say what is special about this country. Having grown up in a different society - in my case, Mumbai, India - I am not only able to identify aspects of America that are invisible to people who have always lived here, but also acutely conscious of the daily blessings that I enjoy in America.

Rich people live well everywhere. But what distinguishes America is that it provides an incomparably 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 the 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 as I did when talking to 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."

2. 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.

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 work for him, would be a noble calling. In the American view, there is nothing vile or degrading 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.

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. Alexis de 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.

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 lifespan 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 70s pursue the pleasures of life, including remarriage and sexual gratification, with a zeal that I find unnerving.

6. In America, the destiny of the young is not given to them but is 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 ethnic 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 20s 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.

7. 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.

8. 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 around 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."

9. 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 with Afghanistan.

Consider, too, how magnanimous the U.S. has been to the former Soviet Union after the U.S. 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, 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 got out.

Moreover, when America does get into a war, it is supremely careful to avoid targeting civilians and to minimize collateral damage. Even as America bombed the Taliban infrastructure and hideouts, its planes dropped rations of food to avert hardship and starvation of Afghan civilians. What other country does these things?

10. America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation on earth.

This point seems counterintuitive, 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 option available. Even amidst the temptations of a rich and free society, they have chosen 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.

Dinesh D'Souza's latest book, "What's So Great About America," just hit the New York Times best seller list. He is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Saw this, thought I'd pass it along for comments.

Thanks for the post...There are so many great immigrant writers that I find on freerepublic...Valint...Baliysnov?...uhm, I can't remember how to spell his last name...I bet you know who I'm talking about...

The keen insight some of these writers bring from the repressed nations they come from reinforce my love of this country...

We all need to step back from our births here the USA, and look at our place in the world through a third person perspective...it's truly a blessing for us ALL to live here, but at times we can all be truly jaded at times...oh well,....HAPPY FOURTH ALL!

FMCDH

Excellent points, especially about America's fat poor people. Our poor, at their level of material affluence, would be upper middle class in most of the rest of the world. The average black income in America is about the same as the average Swedish income. In fact, in most of the world, the American poor's affluence would be above 95 percent of the rest of the population.

"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."

Some years back I worked for a pharmaceutical company for a while. One of the women there had a picture hanging on her wall of a group of animal rights protesters, with their signs of how cruel it was to do testing on animals and the like. Underneath the caption read, "Thanks to animal testing these people will be able to protest for 23.8 years longer."

I would have loved to gotten a copy of it.

I just saw the above article posted on another forum, too. D'Souza wasn't an immigrant in the old fashioned way. He didn't come here with nothing and then scrape his way to the top. He had help from Americans - specifically, he received a scholarship from a Rotary Club when he was just 17. Then he went on to Dartmouth. His family in India wasn't poor by India's standards, either.

D'Souza is not an immigrant I would hold up as an example. Now the people who came here in the early 1900's... who had nothing and then fought in two world wars for this country and then still had nothing... THEY were the ones worthy of admiration. D'Souza just got a free ride.

Twice in the 20th century, the United States saved the world: first from the Nazi threat, then from Soviet totalitarianism.

If you count the Cold War, then it's three times last century that we saved their butts.

D'Souza is not an immigrant I would hold up as an example.

He is every bit the example immigrant. Who cares that he was wealthy in India. All the more kudos to him; he had it "good" over there and still saw the light. How many people do you know who have come over here from some hellhole and can articulate to the commoner how awesome and important the freedom experiment is for the world?

Your right, actually, african americans, if they were a country to themselves, would be the 10th wealthiest nation in the world, ahead of even several european countries. It is true though that were are the only nation where someone can be poor and overweight (and I don't mean big boned or genetics), or poor and own a TV, stero, VCR, a car, a place to live, not worry about hunger, or even better only in america can one have an addiction to a substance or some kind of money sucking problem and still be able to not starve to death.

There's certainly no crime in being wealthy. But, if we're going to criticize people for coming here and receiving handouts and special favors, let's point out that D'Souza received his share. Again, his way here was paid by other Americans. On the other hand, many other immigrants came here without help, had nothing, and, even though they continued to have nothing, they still loved this country, some fighting and dying for it. If D'Souza hadn't received special favors, would he be so in love with the United States?

-Not a D'Souza Fan

What handouts? Rotary club stuff? That's private charity, right? Dartmouth financial aid? That's a private school, right? Get real, man. D'Souza is not at all like the leechy immigrants that are bitched about around here.

C'mon Tired, you are just being contrary. Who would you rather have at your party or in your foxhole--Clinton, Teddy, or D'Souza. This guy is a better American than most.

Why is it that poor people from other countries seem to show more love for this country then many of the people who's families have been here for generations or more then some european immigrants? I've noticed in college where african students showed more patriotism then the african american students, or the kids from central america showed more patriotism for america then the puerto rican kids? Asians and Indians seem to show me so much more of their appreciation to this great land of ours then african americans and many hispanics (not including mexicans), etc. Why is that?

"Our poor, at their level of material affluence, would be upper middle class in most of the rest of the world. The average black income in America is about the same as the average Swedish income. In fact, in most of the world, the American poor's affluence would be above 95 percent of the rest of the population."

I was wondering where you got your very interesting statistics?

C'mon Tired, you are just being contrary

I'm not a fan of D'Souza because, after receiving special treatment from Americans and becoming successful in the U.S. thanks to them, he then turns around and makes a career wagging his finger at everyone else, specifically black Americans. It's different when Walter Williams wags his finger because he CAN say something. But, D'Souza had everything handed to him; now he stands on his soapbox and thinks he's something special. Look, I can have my own personal opinion of the guy. After all, this is America. :-)

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