Thank you. Seriously, thank you. I did watch the video and I couldn't really argue with what he said, though I still have no clue as to where he stands on the issue or what he thinks went wrong. I do want for all to be able to say they live in the best place for them and that they love it wherever it is. That is a great thing. If all seven billion people on Earth looked for the same thing as the ideal, some place is going to be really crowded.
So for me, the United States is the greatest country because I don't want to live anywhere else. I couldn't answer the poll because 'greatest' means so many different things to everybody.
At the same time, I have already lived a long life and have a lot more of it behind me than I can expect to be ahead. And I can remember when just about everybody, black, white, brown, other, saw this as the land of opportunity and possibilities and we weren't afraid of much of anything. I can remember when we expected good old fashioned American hard work, ingenuity, and resourcefulness to solve our problems and did not expect or want the government to do much about that. For me, that was a much better time in America.
I do think we Americans lost some of our greatness when we exchanged a live and let live attitude for so much judgmentalism, blame, partisanship, and expectation for others to provide what we want. Such has always existed, but it was very limited 50-60 years ago. I think we lost a lot of greatness when so many started giving the responsibility to government to order society instead of doing that ourselves and, IMO, that is when we started losing so much ground in all those stats he rattled off in that video whether he got them exactly right or not. He was speaking extemporaneously so can be forgiven if he got some of the numbers wrong. He is right that we have lost a lot of ground.
But I still don't want to live anywhere else.