{"id":43785,"date":"2019-02-14T07:49:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T12:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43785"},"modified":"2019-02-14T07:49:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T12:49:14","slug":"im-not-breaking-up-with-america-this-valentines-day-and-neither-should-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43785","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Not Breaking Up with America This Valentine\u2019s Day, and Neither Should You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rutherford.org\/publications_resources\/john_whiteheads_commentary\/im_not_breaking_up_with_america_this_valentines_day_and_neither_should_you\">I\u2019m Not Breaking Up with America This Valentine\u2019s Day, and Neither Should You<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that [America is] the greatest country in the world. We\u2019re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies\u2026<\/p><p>\u201c[America] sure used to be [the greatest country in the world ]\u2026 We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world\u2019s greatest artists AND the world\u2019s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn\u2019t belittle it. It didn\u2019t make us feel inferior. We didn\u2019t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn\u2019t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed\u2026 by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.\u201d \u2015 Aaron Sorkin,\u00a0<em>The Newsroom<\/em>\u00a0(Episode 1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have managed to survive crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m Not Breaking Up with America This Valentine\u2019s Day, and Neither Should You \u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that [America is] the greatest country in the world. We\u2019re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6420,5723,827],"class_list":["post-43785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-john-whitehead","tag-rutherford-institute","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43786,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43785\/revisions\/43786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}