To the Editor:
I suppose it is problematic to try and pin down exactly who qualifies as elite in America. There are really so many method of measuring one's distance from the average. You could use wealth, power, athletic ability, educational achievement, name recognition or any host of other characteristics. Therefore, when offering a rebuttal to Zak Moore '09's column on Thursday ("Elitism, Not Intellectualism," Oct. 5), I will not try to go after his definitions. Instead, I will stick to one of his points in particular. Moore thinks that elites "will not concede that America is the greatest country in the world." My question is this: Why should they?
Personally, I wouldn't want to live in any other country in the world. Granted, I've only visited Canada and Great Britain (two weeks each) so I really have no idea what I'm talking about, but just to get my loyalty oath out of the way, I really would not want to live anywhere else. But that still doesn't answer my question: why should elites proclaim America as the greatest country on Earth? They shouldn't because there is no way to truly measure "greatness." How can we? Largest land mass? Russia. Most people? China. Most money spent on the military? We win. Most nuclear warheads? Russia again. Highest GDP? Us again. GDP per capita? Bermuda. Life expectancy? Japan's average is four years above our own. Largest military force? China has us beat. Lowest infant mortality rate? You guessed it, Singapore. Prevalence of HIV/AIDS? Germany's is one-sixth as low. Most oil? Saudi Arabia. Highest beer consumption per capita? Czech Republic.
All right, I'm being mildly facetious. I would not want to live in Saudi Arabia and I imagine most Americans would not either. But the point is that accurately measuring greatness is impossible. It all depends on the definition of the term, and that definition is circularly arrived at with a winner already in mind.
And that's not all. Hesitation at calling America the greatest country in the world is as equally grounded in the arrogance associated with that phrase as with the impracticality of its utterance. Viewing ourselves as the greatest country in the world makes us feel infallible and invincible and it makes us foolish. Such feelings of invincibility and infallibility have taken us to Vietnam, Iraq and Abu Ghraib. So, instead of just proclaiming ourselves the greatest country in the world, we should instead admit that such a distinction is earned, through hard work and humility, and with a decent respect for the opinions of the other 272 countries on the planet.
