Most Americans are justly proud of their country, but some, primarily those on the Left, are not. They are fond of comparing America’s treatment of various segments of our society to conditions that would exist in an ideal world. Obviously, by this measure, we fail.
That’s their point—they have rigged the game so as to make the U.S. look bad. Why? So they can rush to save us. They are convinced of the superiority of their political agenda, and insist that if they take command, or if their policies are implemented by like-minded radicals, there will be liberty and justice for all.
What a joke. Every country that has ever adopted the politics of the Left has ended in poverty and oppression. A much more realistic way of judging America is to compare us to other countries around the globe, both historically and today.
To that end, the policy staff of the Catholic League chose to examine the status of religious liberty, the status of racial and ethnic minorities, and the status of women that existed in 1776 and that exists today. The result was a short summary comparing conditions in the USA to that of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Eurasia (Russia), Europe and Asia.
The never-never land approach favored by the Left has its roots in the Enlightenment. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was common to compare current conditions to the ideal. This conclusion is contrived and ordained: of course current conditions are found wanting. Today, left-wing professors use the blackboard to describe their utopian vision of how people should be treated, and then they can do what they delight in doing—showing how we failed.
We didn’t fail—they did. They failed their students by comparing America today to some fairy-land of perfection. That is not realistic. What is realistic is to do a cross-cultural analysis of social conditions, past and present.
To read our scorecard on this subject, click here.
