@Anonymous wrote:
Meh. The contemporary US citizen is among the most privileged, pampered, minuscule percentage of humans that ever walked the planet in all of history.
Privileged? Perhaps. The average American certainly has more
opportunity to excel than most people in the world.
Pampered? I would say not. Americans work very hard for the standard of living this nation has achieved. Somehow most of western Europe has close to our standard of living, yet gets six weeks of vacation a year.
Minuscule? The population of America today is around 300 million people--I'd hardly call that minuscule. A minority perhaps, but then again any nation--even China--contains less than 50% of the world's population, and is thus a minority.
What is more instructive is to consider
why America became the world's most powerful and prosperous society. The popular answer in some circles is divine ordination or sheer luck, to which I say, "Hogwash!" America is what is it because of:
1) Limited government, with a Constitution and Bill of Rights, using a republican form of government with a strong democratic underpinning;
2) Private ownership of property and at least most means of production;
3) A spiritual code that emphasizes the value of labor, fair play, and personal and corporate morality;
4) A world-class educational system accessible to all citizens; and
5) A currency backed by metal, and thus resistant to prolonged periods of inflation and devaluation through fiat money, speculation, and deficit spending.
Note that we don't have all of these in America anymore: #5 is gone, and the rest are getting pretty shaky in places. And as they go, so goes America.