Budget talks in Washington have reached an impasse, with the two sides dug in and not budging.\u00a0 I can’t comment on the respective merits of the Republican and Democratic positions<\/p>\n
But I do want to poke a little at one of the ideas that I think is framing the debate, and the public’s perception of it.\u00a0 That idea is that America has already pretty much gone to hell.<\/p>\n
Depending on who you ask, ours is a debt-ravaged, divided land filled with underachieving slackers, illegal immigrants and poor people who can’t get decent healthcare.<\/p>\n
The Chinese are more productive and competitive than we are.\u00a0 The Europeans are more civilized and more fair.\u00a0 And what about those Canadians?\u00a0 Why can’t we be that nice?<\/p>\n
A lot of us have accepted that classic French joke that America is the first society to proceed from barbarism to decadence without any intervening period of civilization.<\/p>\n
Even America-first conservatives have taken to looking overseas for their role-models, idolizing Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, adopting the ideas of the Austrian School of economists, and embracing the theories of Russian-born novelist Ayn Rand.<\/p>\n
This gloomy attitude, deepened by the recession, surely colors the current debt negotiations in Washington DC.<\/p>\n
A lot of politicians appear convinced that we have nothing to lose.\u00a0 America is on the brink, or maybe already in the toilet.\u00a0 If we’re a third world nation, why not act like one?<\/p>\n
If that means defaulting on our debt and pitching the planet into economic chaos, so what?\u00a0 If Greece can do it, why can’t we?<\/p>\n
The tragic joke of all this is that none of it is true.<\/p>\n
For one thing, America’s problems — real as they are — are currently being faced by every nation on earth.\u00a0 Countries from Europe to Asia to South America are all trying to figure out how to bring their national budgets back into line.<\/p>\n
They are all struggling with decaying infrastructure, with complicated questions of immigration, of civil liberties, and economic fairness.<\/p>\n
These struggles are serious, to be sure, but they’re nothing compared with the crises that America has overcome in the past.<\/p>\n
It’s also worth pointing out that America remains the world’s absolute, unquestioned sole superpower.\u00a0 And I’m not talking here about military might.<\/p>\n
Walk the streets of any European city and you will see the vast majority of people talking on and using handheld devices built by American companies, generally Apple or Motorola.<\/p>\n
You will see bookstores filled with American authors and cineplexes filled with American movies.\u00a0 Roads are busy with American cars.<\/p>\n
When I lived in Europe in the 1980s, it was controversial when a McDonald’s or Disney tried to move into a nation’s cultural space.\u00a0 Now, for better or worse, Big Macs, Colonel Sanders and Mickey Mouse are hard-wired into global culture.<\/p>\n
People across the planet get their coffee at Starbucks, their information from Google, and their social fix from Facebook.<\/p>\n
Europe’s pop music, its clothing styles and even its graffiti are dominated by American influences.<\/p>\n
It may also surprise you that America is still the world’s leading manufacturing nation, with an economy far more diverse and stable than that of China or Germany or Japan.<\/p>\n
Yes, it’s true that America is in a rough, ugly patch.\u00a0 Unemployment seems stuck around 9 percent.\u00a0 Some regions, and some groups — African Americans in particular — are in really dire straits.<\/p>\n
But when I go shopping or to a restaurant, I see crowds of people out and about.\u00a0 The streets are bustling.\u00a0 Entrepreneurs are opening new businesses, investing, moving forward.<\/p>\n
Finally, it’s clearly not true that politicians can’t work together to resolve this kind of train wreck.<\/p>\n
New York state — once written off as ungovernable — has faced down its own budget nightmare with a Democratic governor, a Democratic Assembly and a Republican state Senate.<\/p>\n
We haven’t defaulted, we haven’t seen a government shut-down and we haven’t seen the quality of life implode.<\/p>\n
But if the Federal government defaults on our debt and pitches the economy into a tailspin, all that might change.<\/p>\n
America’s century may truly and finally end, not because another nation transcended us, but because a handful of short-sighted politicians in Washington turned out the lights.<\/p>\n
So as we slouch toward the August 2nd deadline, here’s my message to Congress and the White House:<\/p>\n
For the next few days, put aside your labels — progressive, tea party, whatever — and remember that you are charged through your oath to the Constitution with the sacred task of governing the greatest nation on earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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