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His Episode 1 meltdown is factually very wrong


Technically, this was an Aaron Sorkin rant, but regardless of how one wants to look at it, it was at best hugely oversimplified and at worst, completely wrong:

For starters, all those countries that he mentions that "have freedom," actually do not have freedom as the U.S. has it. You do not have the free speech rights, privacy rights, press freedom (their governments regulate their media to ensure "fairness," which generally means that the media is all the same in opinion (i.e. unfair)), etc...in the likes of the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, etc...that you have in the United States. You do not have the right not to have act as a witness against yourself (right to remain silent) in those countries. And in none of them does one have the right to keep and bear arms---to the extent one has a privilege to keep arms in them, they do not have the right to bear them at all (i.e. use them in self-defense). So all of those countries pretty much deny a person the most fundamental of all natural rights, their right to self-defense. In addition, those countries also pretty much all have voter I.D. laws and have more restrictive abortion laws then the United States (which is a positive or a negative depending on your opinion of abortion I suppose).

He gets wrong both the statistics about infant mortality and life expectancy. The U.S. life expectancy rate is the highest in the world or among the highest in the world if you correct for car accidents and homicides. Car accidents and homicides reduce the life expectancy statistic, but they are wrong to include, because the statistic is generally used to gauge the quality of a country's healthcare, i.e. if it's lousy, the implication is that the healthcare system is lousy. So you don't include car accidents and homicides when measuring it. I would personally add a third element to it, which is that Americans are too fat in general as well, which probably also lowers it, due to all of the obesity-related diseases Americans suffer from as a result.

On infant mortality, that statistic is bad because the U.S. records an infant as being an infant from the moment of birth. Other countries record an infant as being an infant after twenty-four hours of birth. A lot of babies die within that 24 hours, so it gives the U.S. a worse rating than it would have it if measured infant life the same way other countries do.

He says the U.S. is third in median household income. Again though, this isn't the statistic you use. The main statistic one uses to gauge standard of living is per capita income, in which the U.S. is the highest, minus some countries with small populations like Luxembourg. Norway has a higher per capita income, but cost-of-living there is also significantly higher, they have a much smaller population, and 25% of their GDP is from oil exports.

On the education statistics, I'll grant him that, but that is the fault of the public education system which is controlled by liberals, the very people he is saying need to win. The public education system is most definitely not a product of conservatives.

Not sure what he means by "labor force" (of which America's is the world's most productive) but he is also wrong on exports. The United States as a country, was number one in exports for many years. It was exceeded recently by China, so as a country, it is now #2 in exports. However, it rates at #3 because the European Union is counted as a single exporter. But the EU is not a single country, so the statistic is a bit misleading (this is one of the oversimplifications).

I agree with him on the number of people who believe in angels (but that isn't necessarily a bad thing) and I agree with him on per capita incarcerated, but that is primarily due to gang violence, which itself is due to a variety of factors, but partially driven by policies that liberals, like him, demand, such as the welfare state policies that drove up poverty and crime in black neighborhoods.

On defense spending, yes, the U.S. does spend more than the other countries combined, but that is because those countries barely spend anything. The United States is the prime underwriter of global trade and global security. It is easy for those other allies of the U.S. to barely spend anything when they have been living under the protective umbrella provided by the U.S. for the past sixty-plus years. The U.S. accounts for 75% of NATO spending. The U.S. is who keeps the Strait of Hormuz, where about 25% of the global oil supply passes through, open. The U.S. is who keeps China at bay in that area of the world. It is who keeps Russia at bay regarding Western Europe. When France needed to airlift its troops into Mali, who did it call? The United States. To the extent that other countries' militaries do anything, they depend on the U.S. for things like aerial refueling, air transport, targeting capabilities, etc...as it is, the only other country in the world with any power projection capability is the United Kingdom, and even they would have trouble pulling off something like the Falklands again. They are struggling as it is to afford their two new aircraft carriers, without which they will become a second-rate naval power.

And then he says, "We sure used to be" regarding being a great country...REALLY? Because in those days, blacks, women, gays, etc...were all highly-oppressed. Industry polluted on a massive scale and workers were abused horribly. And we did things for "moral reasons?" To an extent, yes, but it also had a lot to do with national security. The U.S. effort in World War I and World War II in particular were about national security. Going to the Moon was all about national security. And about that, what's this about we "explored the universe"...? We still do! Probably more so now than in the past. We have much better telescopes now that let us see into deep space and we continue to send out space probes. We just recently had one reach Pluto for the first time, sending back pictures of Pluto for the first time in history. We have probes on Mars. We have a probe out in interstellar space even now, until it runs out of power. Sending humans into space is great, but lack of human space exploration doesn't mean we do not explore space.

Then he makes the classic liberal claim about "waging war on poor people" as opposed to "waging war on poverty." Well for one, there is a tremendous amount of evidence that the so-called "War on Poverty" essentially WAS a war on the poor, as it at best didn't fix poverty and at worst, only increased it in addition to crime. Two, the idea that the War on Poverty began for moral reasons is also very questionable. Many would argue that it was primarily done by the Democratic party at the time to get the blacks to vote for them (as many of the Democrats at the time were racists). The so-called "war on poor people" that he refers to is probably in reference to things like welfare reform, only welfare reform actually had great success and reduced poverty.

And contrary to his assertion, we still cultivate great artists and the world's greatest economy.

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