gercekten konuyla alakali olduguna inandigim bakiretr bende sizi beklemekteyim

There is a clear correspondence between the loss of opportunity for so many people inside the United States, caused by a zero-sum game mentality at the top of the economy, and the demise of the United States in global politics (that is, the creation and growth of opportunity outside and possibly at the expense of the United States). A combination of economic "injustice" inside, if you will, global free-riding and misplaced protectionism in immigration policy.

It might be difficult to accept the thought that the US has been free-riding on global resources, especially when the country has invested so much into those resources (at least according to the dominant myth--consider Walt's last article). But consider the recent financial and economic crisis. Consider the role of Chinese resources, and that of all of Wall Street's useful idiots abroad (Iceland, Greece, etc). I don't care that Western Europe was under the American umbrella for decades--that is not a viable comparison because we're not supposed to expect symmetry here: free-riding was supposed to be for the small guys; American restraint was supposed to be the expression of American responsibility, which was the stabilization cost of America's superior power.

But I guess the temptations of power are always too great... Consider the loss of the gold-exchange standard: the US chose to abandon restraint and predictability for the sake of currency speculation... At first, the US was able to externalize the cost of debasing its currency just enough... But at one point, the delicate equilibrium had to either be abandoned or collapse... Well, the GE standard was abandoned... Now, other US privileges, ones that are harder to abandon, must simply collapse--and that is in part because American economic leaders have become too greedy while America's political leaders have become too boastful, drunk on their power...

A tragedy indeed... Human all too human perhaps!

FRIEDMAN and MANDELBAUM,

Thank you for arriving here! Rising optimism and a drive for something better IS the answer.

I fully agree (being someone who is guilty of this), that we can at times be too self critical of exceptionalism. While internal checks of global importance are necessary - so as not to become the pompous director, I find comfort in the fact that the United States does have the tools to lead the way.

Being exceptional should not be a curse, but rather a blessing that can be utilized for Greater Good. We need to be reminded that we can, and will, continue to house the creativity, ingenuity, innovation, and drive that it takes to maintain earned exceptionalism.

Resting on laurels is not an option.

Again, thank you for this discussion.

"To remain exceptional, America must respond effectively to its four great 21st-century challenges: the ones posed by globalization, the revolution in information technology, the country's huge and growing deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption. America does not now have in place the policies needed to master them."

Unfortunately, none of our political leaders are capable or willing to even discuss these points honestly. The argument over 'American Exceptionalism' is a sham and a real distraction from dealing with the real issues that you have mentioned above. Mitt Romney and his ilk may decry the fact that our collective belief in our own pre-eminence is shaken, Obama may qualify his own honest response to the question, but they all are no better than the football fan who brandishes a sign declaring "We're No. 1", ignoring the fact that it takes continued effort and commitment to the best effort to actually make that true over the entire season. We are a nation that could not eradicate slavery within our own nation for almost 400 years - and then grudgingly; we have displaced and killed off a substantial portion of the native population of the continent; we did not enfranchise half of our citizenry until the early 1900s; we still have a higher rate of poverty than many other advanced societies on the planet; and we have recently engaged in wars all over the globe which have proven costly and have no apparent rationale other than to occupy our large overblown military and keep the industry that supports it profitable.

Professor Walt - and others such as Andrew Bacevich (in 'The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism') have stated the case very well, that American Exceptionalism cannot be maintained by an appeal to jingoistic sentiments. To believe in American Exceptionalism, we do not have to ignore our own past failures or shortcomings as a people - we do certainly have to own up to them and begin seriously to strive to be better each day and each year of our collective national existence. And that takes more political will and honesty than we have shown in the last 5 or 6 decades. It really takes much more than simply patting ourselves on the back, congratulating ourselves on our past successes, and declaring we are the best, as well. It would be nice if our political candidates had the vision to be honest with us about what we have been, and what we might be.

Hacks.

Ah, did I get the wrong one? Yea, but the name so fits the article. Once again we have Machtmeister Friedman off on how the US should shoulder up all these wannados....well, he should read history, the US has always been screwed up. Today is nothing new and we will pull through. A note on his knowing....and knowing. After one of his conferences I went up for a book signing. He had been talking about his visit to Iran and the coming youth revolution (that never came). I spent some time in Iran and I asked him about Takt Jamschid, the most famous street in Tehran. Blank look from him...and then I realized that what we have here is...a paper tiger...oh well, he tries. And imagining how America should posture sells books.

There is an IMF paper entitled "Irrational Exuberance in US Housing Markets: Were Evangelicals Left Behind"?
The proportion of "evangelicals" in the population, correlates negatively with the severity of housing bubbles and crashes circa 2007.
I recommend Dennis P Hollinger: "Individualism and Social Ethics: An Evangelical Syncretism".
It will only become clearer as time goes on, that those parts of America that the "liberals" most like to sneer at, will remain the most prosperous, because they are truer to the ideal of "America". The most leftwing "liberal" States and cities are the ones in decline and that decline is speeding up.
One does not even have to be a Christian fundamentalist with "blind faith", to see this. It is observable fact. It is especially ironic that sophisticated secular liberals insist on belief in what is observable untruth - at least conservative fundamentals only regard "faith" as applicable to UNSEEN things, not things that any fool can see in the concrete world, to be not so.

Identifying problems is very useful, but in this instance America has been on the decline certainly since President Reagan or before. The myth of American Exceptionalism is real, for our decline has been rapid. Our democracy, our domestic and foreign policies have been a major impediment to a greater and better America. Our two political parties have failed substantially in war and peace, something the authors seem to gloss over.

Pandering was President Reagan's greatest political skill. My sister, a teacher, visited the Soviet Union in 1979 and came back saying the country was very poor and its economic system was a failure. Even she could see the threat was exaggerated to promote the infamous military-industrial-congressional complex. Of course we need a military, but excessive expenditures and wars will eventually be the demise of this country.

Unfortunately, choosing the best leaders by the status quo in institutional power has been disastrous. The Best and Brightest by David Halberstram hit the nail on the head and American leaders have continued making the same mistakes for several generations.

The young people in Occupy Wall Street now know the substantial deficiencies of American political leadership. George W. Bush, 43, with his optional wars has hastened considerably America's decline.

Is America worthy of a reflective patriotism that doesn't mindlessly assert, "My country, right or wrong," but rather examines the criticisms of America and finds them wanting? As an immigrant who has chosen to become an American citizen, I believe that it is. Having studied the criticisms of America with care, my conclusion is that the critics have a narrow and distorted understanding of America. They exaggerate American faults, and they ignore what is good and even great about America.

The immigrant is in a good position to evaluate American society because he is able to apply a comparative perspective. Having grown up in a different society-in my case, Mumbai, India-I am able to identify aspects of America that are invisible to people who have always lived here. As a "person of color," I am competent to address such questions as what it is like to be a nonwhite person in America, what this country owes its minority citizens, and whether immigrants can expect to be granted full membership in this society. While I take seriously the issues raised by the critics of America, I have also developed an understanding of what makes America great, and I have seen the greatness of America reflected in my life. Unlike many of America's homegrown dissidents, I am also acutely conscious of the daily blessings that I enjoy in America.

Here, then, is my list of what makes America great.

1,America's Good Life

America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy. Rich people live well everywhere, but what distinguishes America is that it provides a remarkably high standard of living for the "common man." A country is not judged by how it treats its most affluent citizens but by how it treats the average citizen.

2,Equality

Critics of America allege that the history of the United States is defined by a series of crimes-slavery, genocide-visited upon African-Americans and American Indians. Even today, they say, America is a racist society. The critics demand apologies for these historical offenses and seek financial reparations for minorities and African-Americans. But the truth is that America has gone further than any society in establishing equality of rights.

3,The Pursuit of Happiness

America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country. In much of the world, even today, if your father is a bricklayer, you become a bricklayer. Most societies offer limited opportunities for and little chance of true social mobility. Even in Europe, social mobility is relatively restricted. When you meet a rich person, chances are that person comes from a wealthy family. This is not to say that ordinary citizens cannot rise up and become successful in France and Germany, but such cases are atypical. Much more typical is the condescending attitude of the European "old rich" toward the self-made person, who is viewed as a bit of a vulgar interloper. In Europe, as in the rest of the world, the preferred path to wealth is through inheritance.

4,The Ethics of Work

Capitalism gives America a this-worldly focus in which death and the afterlife recede from everyday view. The gaze of the people is shifted from heavenly aspirations to earthly progress. As such, work and trade have always been important and respectable in America. This "lowering of the sights" convinces many critics that American capitalism is a base, degraded system and that the energies that drive it are crass and immoral.

Historically, most cultures have despised the merchant and the laborer, regarding the former as vile and corrupt and the latter as degraded and vulgar. This attitude persists today in the Third World, and it is even commonplace in Europe. Oscar Wilde spoke for many Europeans when he commented that to have to scrub floors and empty garbage cans is depressing enough; to take pride in such things is absolutely appalling.

5,Religious Liberty

America has found a solution to religious and ethnic conflict. In many countries today, people from different faiths or tribes are engaged in bloody conflict: Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Hindus and Muslims, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, Hutu and Tutsi-the list of religious and ethnic combatants goes on and on. Even in countries where ethnic or religious differences do not lead to extreme violence, there is generally no framework for people to coexist harmoniously. In France and Germany, for example, nonwhite immigrants have proved largely indigestible. They form an alien underclass within Europe, and Europeans seem divided about whether to subjugate them or to expel them. One option that is not available to the nonwhite immigrants is to become full citizens. They cannot "become French" or "become German" because being French and German is a function of blood and birth. You become French by having French parents.

6,America's Virtue

America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation on earth. This point seems counterintuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice, and immorality in America. Islamic critics of America, such as the Egyptian philosopher Sayyid Qutb, argue that America has descended into what he terms jahiliyya-a condition of social chaos, moral diversity, sexual promiscuity, polytheism, unbelief, and idolatry that supposedly characterized the Bedouin tribes before the advent of Islam.

By defeating the terrorist threat posed by Islamic radicalism, we can protect the American way of life while once again redeeming humanity from a global menace. History will view America as a great gift to the world, a gift that Americans today must preserve and cherish.

They present in this interesting article the idea that "It is obvious what [America's] core competency is in the 21st century," but it doesn't seem all that obvious to them. The core competency seems to be a new style of financial manipulation that achieves great wealth for the manipulators and does it at the cost of just about everybody else. One clear evidence of the primacy of this skill was the craven ways that governments over the past decade have looked the other way as these grubs were wrecking the economy until it was impossible to ignore it any more. Then they vigorously set about doing as little as possible to restrain the malefactors.

The core strength of America is the strength and wisdom of its well-educated people. Recent polls suggest that most actively think their government is misleading and betraying them. Sounds much like Syria and Libya, wouldn't you agree?

But I guess the temptations of power are always too great... Consider the loss of the gold-exchange standard: the US chose to abandon restraint and predictability for the sake of currency speculation... At first, the US was able to externalize the cost of debasing its seslichat currency just enough... But at one point, the delicate equilibrium had to either be abandoned or collapse... Well, the GE standard was abandoned... Now, other US privileges, ones that are harder to abandon, must simply collapse--and that is in part because American economic leaders have become too greedy while America's political leaders have become too boastful, drunk on their power.

The country's vanishing industrial base, eroding educational system and decaying infrastructure, are decline contributors; as they are high unemployment, where 1 in 6 Americans is either needing work or underemployed. Meet Dean B., who, at the age of 35, was let go from his IT job in February 2009 and it is still jobless. Kimberly B. sold her arena on Craigslist to spend her family's power bills.

Huffington further explores the plight in the middle-class, citing fear as being a predominant emotion. Obliterated 401(k) s, dwindling pensions, prolific foreclosures, and hints of future Social Security collapse; feed the anxieties. Many now believe achieving middle-class is luck with the draw, similar to a prize over a scratch-off lottery ticket.

America's infrastructure is unraveling, Huffington declares, with insufficient remedial federal and statesomanabolic muscle maximizerfunding. Highways, electrical grids, waterways, railroads, and bridges, are a couple of the casualties. Water pipes, originally laid through the Civil War, are perilously operating.

Think August 2007, if the Interstate 35W steel truss bridge within the Mississippi River, in downtown Minneapolis collapsed; killing 13 people and injuring 145. Previous patchwork repairs proved insufficient.

The country's school method is anemic, in which the US ranks twenty-fifth in math and twenty-first in science among thirty western world; as ranked with the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. Last year, America's broadband connection ranked fifteenth among industrialized countries.