On the eve of our nation’s 237th birthday, it is likely that we are going to hear time and time again from many sources how great our country is, and how we are the best country on the planet.
We all grew up being taught that the United States of America is the best country in the world, but for some reason, thinking back on those occasions, I can’t for the life of me recall being told exactly what we were the best at.
I suppose that we are certainly number one with our Military. Of course, this is 
subjective and depends on what measures you might use to define the word “best” There are countries with more people in their army than ours (China), but I suppose if you use the measure of which country is likely to win in a conflict, most people would put the USA at the top of the list.
How about measuring some important things like literacy (7th), or math (27th), or science (22nd) or infant mortality (34th). The actual rankings on these things vary depending on the source you use, for example, the United Nations ranks the USA at #34 in infant mortality, but the CIA fact book ranks us at #49. Whichever way you look at it, how can we be #1 when we rank behind countries like Cuba, Cyprus, Croatia, Brunei, New Caledonia and Italy in infant mortality?
The USA is ranked #38 in life expectancy, behind such lovely places as Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, the UK, or Iceland. How can we claim we are number one when our citizens don’t even live as long as 37 other countries ahead of us?
Yet, in most circles I attend, mentioning that we are anything less than number one at anything is to bring into question your patriotism. The plain and simple fact is that in anything other than being a bully, the United States is simply no longer the best.
I made a statement the other day that U.S. Health Care might be number one if you could afford to pay for the best. The World Health Organization ranks us as #37 with regards to quality of care, but we are indeed ranked #1 when it comes to expenditure per capita. The WHO data available is from 2000, so it is out of date, but we weren’t #1 even back in 2000?
I’m not saying that we need to be number one to be a good place to live. There are lots of wonderful places to live and raise a family that aren’t number one at anything I’ve listed. But, you also don’t hear anyone from those places beating their chest with proclamations of any kind, and I suspect that living in those places that don’t insist on maintaining a false sense of “bestness” is actually healthier.
Throughout our world history, everyone who was “number one” has eventually slid off the top of the mountain to make way for a new King of the Hill. It happened to the Aztecs and the Romans, the French and the British and the Spanish.
We would be very naive to believe that it won’t happen to us. There are 1.3 billion chinese people and over 1 billion on the Indian sub-continent. Americans make up less than 5% of the world in population, yet we are the number one consumers of the worlds resources. Sooner or later some of those billions on the other side of the planet are going to want their share of the worlds resources, and we Americans are going to have to learn to live more frugally.
It’s already known that America is increasingly full of brown people. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are a dying breed in the United States, much to the chagrin of a whole cadre of narrow-minded people around the country. It is what it is, and we must learn to adjust. There are many areas of the USA today where Caucasians are a minority, and life goes on, and the residents of those areas are just as much “American” as anyone in rural Iowa or Minnesota.
You’ve heard the aphorism “the only thing sure in life is death and taxes”. Well, we need to modify that one to: “the only thing sure in life is death, taxes and change.”
The United States is still a fine country, and with few exceptions, a great place to be from. There is no reason that admitting that we aren’t what we used to be should also be considered unpatriotic.