“What’s Great About America?”: Opinion About America Coursework

Reasons for America’s greatness

According to the line of argumentation, utilized by Stossel in his video What’s Great About America? America’s greatness accounts for the following:

1. The spirit of entrepreneurship. It is namely the fact that in America, for as long as they remain observant of the law, individualistically minded and industrious individuals are being a green light to go about attaining financial prosperity in just about any way they consider the most suitable, which had established objective preconditions for U.S. to become world’s richest country.
2. World’s strongest military. As of today, there is no army in the world that would be able to effectively challenge American army. After all, USS Ronald Reagan is alone capable of reducing just about any middle-sized country into a Stone Age, within the matter of half an hour. Nevertheless, it is not only America’s unchallenged military might that contributes to our country’s geopolitical greatness, but also the fact that, during the course of last fifty years, the objectives of America’s military operations had never been concerned with the occupation of independent countries per se.
3. Compassion. According to Stossel, Americans are very compassionate people, which in its turn, explains why they can be tricked into ‘helping the needy children of Africa’ with an apparent ease. This is also the reason why many white Americans (as shown in the video) seem to be willing to adopt children from the Third World, without giving a thought that by doing it they might be undermining country’s national integrity. Stossel also implies that it is due to considerations of compassion, which prompts American government to throw millions of dollars into the thin air, while providing financial assistance to ‘developing’ countries.
4. Racial tolerance. Even though Stossel does mention the fact that, as of today, the dynamics within American society are still being affected by an ongoing tension between representatives of different ethnic groups (as it is the case between Hispanics and Blacks, for example), he nevertheless expresses his belief in the eventual triumph of tolerance, as the conceptual foundation, upon which the integrity of American society is being firmly established. Apparently, Stossel does genuinely believe that ‘racial tolerance’ indeed sets America apart from the rest of world’s countries.
5. Freedom of speech. As it was pointed out by Stossel, America remains only the Western country where citizens’ right to exercise freedom of speech is being constitutionally guaranteed. This is exactly what differentiates America from the rest of Western countries – after all, even in such countries as Canada, Britain, France and Germany, one can be easily sentenced for as long as 3-5 years in jail for publically expressing his or her political opinions – this can classified as ‘uttering hate speech’. In America, however, this would be impossible – First Amendment guarantees citizens their right to say whatever they want to say, regardless of what self-appointed ‘experts on morality’ might think of it.

In What’s Great About America? Stossel does mention the fact that American society is often being criticized on the account of its ‘materialism’, ‘consumerism’ and the ‘lack of spirituality’. Nevertheless, this does not prevent America from continuing to attract potential immigrants from all over the world. The reason for this is simple – as it was rightly by implied by Stossel, the term ‘prosperity’ is synonymous to the term ‘spirituality’, because it is only rich and technologically advanced people, who may afford the luxury to explore their spiritual inclinations, in the first place; whereas, highly ‘spiritual’ but existentially primitive people in the Third World are being usually preoccupied with searching for eatable bugs and plants, throughout their lives.

Why do some people hate America

There is a number of reasons for many people in the world to hate America with passion. Let us mention few of them:

1. America’s greatest export-item is U.S. Dollar – the currency that does not reflect the value of any material assets, whatsoever. Ever since 1971, when Federal Reserve refused exchanging U.S. Dollars for gold, American currency had ceased being money, in classical sense of this word, and simply became tons and tons of green paper that is being traded for goods and services overseas.
2. America supports Israel – the only country in the world where racial apartheid enjoys the status of an officially endorsed policy and which is being known for its taste for breaking international law in most blatant manner.
3. America’s high ranking officials are well known for their hypocritical attitudes – while never ceasing to talk about the dangers of international terrorism, as such that is being concerned with killing of innocent civilians, they simultaneously refer to the killing of innocent civilians by American army, in such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan, as ‘collateral casualties’.
4. As it was revealed by WikiLeaks, America treats governmental officials from friendly countries as nothing but lowly puppets. In its turn, this exposes America’s pledge to protect democracy worldwide as such that has very little to do with country’s true geopolitical agenda.

Is America truly the world’s greatest country

It is quite impossible to disagree with Stossel’s argument that America should be thought of as world’s greatest country. Nevertheless, it has never been mentioned in the video that, as time goes by, America grows progressively weaker – just as it used to be the case with Roman Empire through 4^th-5^th centuries A.D. The reason for this is simple – just as it was the case with degenerate Romans, whose bellyful idling had deprived them of a will to protect their way of life, today’s descendants of those who had brought the light of civilization to the New World, had become spiritually weak and intellectually corrupted. While sensing this, the immigrants from the Third World grow increasingly arrogant, is social context of this world, while going as far as creating their own ‘societies’ within the body of a host society, instead of trying to integrate in it, as it was the case with European immigrants, during the course of 19^th and early 20^th centuries (the parallels with declining Roman Empire are just too obvious to be ignored). In its turn, this had led to creating a situation when nowadays, just about any continuous electrical blackout in one of America’s large cities, may very well result in instigating the ‘war of everybody against everybody’ on this city’s streets. One would only need to familiarize itself with what had happened in New Orleans, in the aftermath of 2005 hurricane Katrina, to realize the full validity of this statement. Therefore, we cannot agree with Stossel when he states that ‘interracial diversity’ represents America’s greatest strength. On the contrary – it is because, since late sixties, America had opened its doors to the immigrants from Third World (modern equivalent of what Romans used to refer to as ‘barbarians’), which explains why, as time passes by, many American cities begin to look like as the actual part of the Third World themselves. Given the fact that Omaba’s administration had embarked upon turning America into a Socialist state, which will eventually result in depriving Americans of their entrepreneurial spirit, this country’s future prospects cannot be referred to as overly bright.

References

Stossel, John “What’s Great About America?” Online Posting. YouTube, 2010. Web.