Land of the Free
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Labels: freedom, liberty, opportunity, propaganda
posted by Shan-ul-Hai @ 12:01 PM
5 Comments
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
About Me
- Name: Shan-ul-Hai
- Location: Columbia, MO, United States
I am a man without a country, but I am an optimist. I come from a religious background, but I am a pragmatist. I love to write, but I am a scientist (by training). Here you will find my perspective on the US, Pakistan, the Middle East, and the rest of the world. To learn more about me as a person, visit my personal blog at http://shanulhai.blogspot.com/
5 Comments:
Is America "slipping" or is everyone else just catching up?
I don't think America can sustain its pace of economic growth over the past century into the next century, whereas other countries may be able to achieve that sort of growth.
I view this as more of a "the world is flat" phenomenon that is here to stay rather than an ominous portent of the "destruction of everything America stands for."
If you look at the study I was referring to with the "destruction of everything..." comment, you'll see that freedom of the press (and, to some extent, democracy) in the US has deteriorated substantially over the last few years (not just that other countries are catching up).
In terms of other measures (economic and personal freedom), as I mentioned, the US is still a leader and that's why I choose to be here.
Perhaps it has deteriorated but this may have a lot to do with the current administration. I do not think we will continue to elect more George Bush clones with no regard for the constitution into public office.
I think there are a lot of reasons why it's deteriorated. If you look at the link in the blog post, the US's "press freedom rating" has been getting worse every year since the first survey in 2002. We re-elected Bush in 2004, and although he has a low approval rating now, it is not unlikely that we will elect a similar leader in McCain (he may be different with socioeconomic issues, but not with these sorts of things).
The point is that if we're not aware of these problems, we can't solve them. We may be able to step away from Bush for a term or two, but the general American attitude is what will prevail in the future... before we start pointing fingers at our leaders, we need to figure out why we continue to vote for leaders who promise war and the destruction of civil liberties (i.e. Bush in 2004, and probably McCain in 2008).
Well, no one goes on campaign saying, "Hey, if you vote for me, I'm gonna torture people, wiretap phones, appoint judges based as much on their political viewpoint as on their judicial acumen, waste as much money as possible, veto as many bills as possible...." I think things were exponentially worse in Bush's second term than in his first term. Hindsight is always 20/20.
I am pretty sure that Mccain would not have invaded Iraq. And there would definitely be no torture under him, as that has been a strong criticism by him of Bush.
People are frankly fed up with a lot of what is going on and that's why you see record numbers of voters, especially people like college students, minorities, etc.
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