Is America the Greatest Country?
A new series on HBO, The Newsroom, rose to fame as “the most honest three and a half minutes of television ever,” with a combined one million hits on YouTube. The three-minute video shows protagonist and anchorman, Jeff Daniels, sitting before an auditorium of young adults when asked to say why he thinks America is the best. Daniels then gives a speech about why he believes America isn’t the best based off of statistics in education, freedom, etc. He concludes by saying “The first step in solving any problem is to recognize there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.” The video makes you step back and take a second look at the country we live in and if it is really great and if not how do we fix it?
Daniels points out that if you look at the facts American isn’t the best in all of the categories like education. In the video, Daniels says that the U.S is ranked 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science. That statement isn’t too far from the truth, according to the U.S News the U.S is ranked as second for overall best education between every country. Based on the well-developed public education system, would consider attending university there and provides top-quality education America followed the United Kingdom for the second place.
I agree that America is not the best country anymore. The whole vision of the American Dream and moving to America for the opportunity is somewhat true and not true. Yes, the jobs in America can be much more valuable and of power for humans rather than in other countries. But other than opportunity, America is not the best in anything else. The United States will most likely not fix the problem because like you said, the individuals need to recognize there is a problem to fix it. Citizens are brain washed into thinking America is the best country, they do not see the downside of America or how much other countries around the World have developed.
ReplyDeleteWe hype up American as the best country to ignore the fact, it is not. Many prefer to go back the olden days but it was not better. It was worse. slavery and more ignorance, less education. We have only improved. The past is not better but, now with technology we see more of the negative truth. We are still ignorant and claim not to be. We are a country created on genocide and enslavement of one another ,lets start with being honest with our past ,so we can improve the future.
ReplyDeleteI agree also that America is not the best country and I think most of us think it is because that is what we want it to be but when you sit back and really think on it you ask yourself "is it really?" Yes we have freedom rights but there are other things I think America should work on if we wanna be the "best" but that's just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteTo add onto this, I feel like we as citizens only are told the good about American cause that's what most people want to hear. But there's way more bad things happening to America that we would ever know. We all need to know the bad about America so we can at least try and fix it with knowing what's happening, but since we are told a bare minimum there's not much our society can do knowing very little.
ReplyDeleteAmerica is not the best country because of how we treat our military and veterans. people in the military risk their lives and sometimes sacrifice their lives to protect this country but we treat them like garbage when they get home.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments on this post that America is not the best country in the world. Although, I do have some bias since I am from the Netherlands, but there are some areas America could definitely approve upon. For instance, before I even came to America, I had already known how most Americans believe they live in the best country in the world. That may have been true at some point in the past, but I believe the country has failed to keep up with the changing ways of the world. However, it is not easy for America to simply "fix" itself because many citizens of the country still believe that they live in the best country and there is no room for improvement.
ReplyDeleteI think that there are so many more countries that have it worse than we have it here in America; however, America is not the best country in the world. Many people are brainwashed in many different ways into believing that we are a "perfect" country, but there are so many things going wrong that people aren't realizing. We have the freedom, but there are problems that could be improved in America.
ReplyDeleteI agree that America is not perfect, but as a born American, I still believe we are the greatest country in the world. We have the freedom to be whoever we want to be, which many countries dont have. I think we have some downfalls in our country for sure, but we still our the greatest country in the world!
ReplyDeleteI think this an impossible statement to declare. It's vague and based entirely in opinion. In a lot of cases an opinion can be backed by facts and used to sway others, but the "greatest country" is exceptionally open ended, what would make a county great? that could completely vary from person to person, what is "great" can be based in SO many different things, there's no way to state a reply to this in any solid manner.
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