America is stuck playing defense
What future awaits a superpower when it forfeits 'competence' as a core virtue?
Among many other newsworthy events filling the airwaves last week, one of the biggest announcements came from the U.S. Census Bureau: for the first time on record, the share of people who identify as ‘white’ fell below 60%. For anyone who has been paying attention to demographic trends over the past four decades, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Still, there is little doubt that these figures are relevant, as they will be used to redraw the nation’s political maps, especially in states and counties where the shift was more dramatic.
What really struck me, however, was the celebratory tone in which the findings were presented across the media landscape (particularly on left-leaning cable news), with analysts and commentators regurgitating mantras such as ‘diversity is our strength’ and ‘the more diversity, the better’. That is obviously nonsense. Any curious person who bothers to take a look around the world will realize that diversity by itself does not determine a nation’s success or wellbeing, and the same applies to the U.S.. As Thomas Sowell observed, “it has not been our diversity, but our ability to overcome the problems inherent in diversity, and to act together as Americans, that has been our strength” (a.k.a. e pluribus unum). And in the words of Eric Liu, “America can make Chinese Americans but China can’t make Americans Chinese”.
So what does a strong America look like? In order to answer that, let’s first consider a few key indicators, and see how the country is currently doing.
EDUCATION: The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial study of the world’s education systems carried out by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It assesses 15-year-olds from 79 countries in math, science and reading. Here is the latest ranking.
HEALTHCARE: The U.S. placed last in healthcare among the world’s 11 richest countries, despite spending by far the most. “If health care were an Olympic sport, the U.S. might not qualify in a competition with other high-income nations”, said Eric Schneider, lead author behind the report and senior vice-president for policy and research at the Commonwealth Fund.
LIFE SATISFACTION: The United Nations has already published its ninth World Happiness Report. Highlights below. Full report available here.
SOCIAL PROGRESS: Overall, the U.S. ranked #28 in the 2020 Social Progress Index (squeezed between Greece and Singapore). Scores below highlight its relative strengths and relative weaknesses compared to fifteen peer countries with a similar GDP per capita, across three dimensions - Basic Human Needs (U.S. ranked #34), Foundations of Wellbeing (U.S. ranked #37), and Opportunity (U.S. ranked #14). Elements are marked with a blue dot where the country performs comparatively well, a red dot where it performs relatively poorly, and a yellow dot where its performance is average for its peer group. Elements marked with a blue ring are areas where the country slightly over-performs while areas where the country slightly under-performs are marked with a red ring.
INCOME INEQUALITY: Income is defined as household disposable income in a particular year. It consists of earnings, self-employment and capital income and public cash transfers; income taxes and social security contributions paid by households are deducted. The chart below ranks all OECD countries according to the ratio of the average income of the 20% richest to the 20% poorest.
My intention is not to depress you with these statistics (though they are somewhat depressing). Rather, I wish to point out that there is a lot of real work to be done, yet our attention seems to be mostly elsewhere. OK, a massive infrastructure bill has just been passed by the Senate. Yes, investment in R&D is slightly picking up. And few people would suggest that America doesn’t remain a force to be reckoned with. All things considered, we still have it pretty good here, relative to many other societies. But the undeniable reality is that the country is lagging in dynamism, lagging in wisdom, and lagging in global leadership. Needless to say, having a tragically long and costly war end with a swift takeover by the Taliban must raise some very serious questions about our military and geopolitical effectiveness.
In this context, I am increasingly concerned about a hideous trend that seems to be creeping into the politics and culture of this country, namely what appears to be a widespread lack of appreciation - even a growing disdain - for competence. The fact that we elected a pathologically narcissistic entertainer with zero public service experience to the highest office of the free world should have been a clear wake-up call in 2016. But four years later, Joe Biden himself picked a vice-president on the basis of how many points she could score on the intersectionality scale, seemingly without anticipating what a potential headache this could create for the party once 2024 comes around.
More worryingly, though, the massive current permeating various sectors of daily life seeks, on one hand, to trivialize Martin Luther King’s dream, and on the other, dismantle key principles of meritocracy, such as individual skills, freedom of choice and civil debate. The gospel of diversity-for-the-sake-of-diversity, bundled with a renewed fixation on demographic quotas, “affinity groups” and “white privilege”, is choking the nation’s ability to think, let alone think BIG. Hence, aptitude tests are oppressive. Biology is a social construct. The scientific method is racist. And feedback is harmful. We must ask ourselves what such twisted logic might do to a country ethos that is largely built on innovation.
This reminds me of something Jonathan Haidt wrote a few years ago:
“Diversity is inherently divisive; it takes work to reap its benefits. […] the most valuable kind of diversity of all is also the most divisive: viewpoint diversity. Without generosity of spirit and a dash of humility, the diversity project - indeed, the American project - is doomed to fail.”
So what happens now? The nation has an important choice to make: either succumbing to self-defeating and toxic identity politics, or reclaiming ‘competence’ as one of its core virtues, and rising to the challenges of the 21st century. We the people must decide whether to keep playing defense on the global stage, or lead the way. As one team.
To end on a positive note, I want to share one of my favorite clips from Coach Carter, a 2005 film based on the true story of a high school basketball coach who goes out of his way to make his pupils put their education before sports. While facing an uphill battle with the school and the community, he benches his undefeated team due to poor academic performance.
In the film, Ken Carter asks his players what their greatest fear is, and one of them recites a passage from Marianne Williamson’s book, “A Return To Love”.