Category: World

The Worst Nation in the World

Except for all the others.

Because I grew up in West Africa, I have a slightly different perspective than people who bemoan the terrible horrible no good very bad Western, and especially American, life. There may be many things wrong with America, but compared to much of the rest of the world, it’s a pretty good starting point.

In response to the entries in a New York Times’s slogan contest, Lileks has some pithy remarks:

You can picture the satisfied little grins on the authors’ faces; you can imagine the whole tableau – the computer (which most people in the world will never touch, let alone use, let alone own) the TV in the corner connected to a network that has channels catering to every taste, the iPod stocked with music hoovered up free of charge without consequence, the fridge stocked with food – the light comes on when you open the door, too, unless it’s burned out, and then you go to the store and get another one; they always have another one. The soft bed, the coffee machine, the well-fed pet, the vast panoply of free information and unfettered opinion flowing 24/7 from the internet. You can drink alcohol without being sentenced to death; you can be a girl alone in a room with a man without earning a public stoning; you can stand up in a room and argue for the candidate of your choice without being arrested; you stand in a society that allows for astonishing amounts of freedom, comfort and opportunity. But.

But. Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you’d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed. As your skinny unhappy friend said the other night: people are just too fat and happy. He bites his nails and plays WoW six hours a night, but he has a point. It doesn’t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form never quite seem to accomplish anything; it’s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they’re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they’re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don’t care that they’re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods?

Read the whole thing.

The Sky Isn’t Falling

A couple of articles in the past few days about the inevitable disintegration of American society into barbarism:

Both violent crime and property crime are at their lowest levels since 1973. Even lower in some places: New York City, it was reported a few days ago, is expected to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, the lowest number since the early 1960s. Contrast that with 1990, when New York recorded 2,245 homicides.

Teenage drug use has fallen by 23 percent since the 1990s, and by more than 50 percent for certain specific drugs, such as LSD and ecstasy.

Welfare? The US caseload has dropped a remarkable 60 percent since 1994 – as much as 90 percent in some states. Not only that, write Wehner and Levin, “but in the wake of the 1996 welfare-reform bill, overall poverty, child poverty, black child poverty, and child hunger have all decreased, while employment figures for single mothers have risen.”

As the title promises, the good news doesn’t end there. There is less abortion. A lower divorce rate. Higher educational scores. The high-school dropout rate, now less than 10 percent, is at a 30-year low. Teens are drinking less, smoking less, and having less sex.

A Thousand Words

Via the indefatigable Instapundit:

Michael Yon emails: “I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome. A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from ‘Chosen’ Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope. The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ the people were saying. One man said, ‘Thank you for peace.’ Another man, a Muslim, said ‘All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.’