We hear it all the time. The terrorists hate America because we’re the best country in the world. They hate our freedom, they hate us because we’re just that friggin’ awesome. That’s why they come after us so much. Policy, our actions elsewhere in the world, no. Terrorists simply hate America for being Number 1.

So that got me thinking, are we really?

Now I love this place. I speak the language, I know a couple of the people, I live here. America’s great, and it’s my home. But I’ve got my questions about it’s Numero Uno status. Take a look, for example, at our continuing resistance to evolution being treated as fact. I knew the ol’ US of A was hesitant to accept evolution, but our status in the world is a little pathetic.

A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.

31st out of 32 in willingness to accept evolution. That’s absolutely pathetic. Why has it been this way? Simply put, the religious right. Because evolution is called “the theory of evolution”, then they use the colloquial definition of theory that makes it sound like it has no basis in reality and is just something someone thought up. Thus, it’s not “fact” and is considered on par with creationism or its incestuous child Intelligent Design.

There was an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit that showed a few Creationists, types I’ve met myself over the years. One of them stated: “Because evolution is not proven, it should be taught alongside creationism.” Because the evolutionary theory is, really, incapable of being called law without the use of a time machine, that means completely baseless concepts should be taught as equally valid?

People can be religious all they want, but to try and base science or law around it is just ludicrous. I’d like to see someone legislate based on a story out of Greek mythology, or a president say he goes to war because Jupiter came to him in a dream.

Moving along, let’s take a look at general intelligence. John Stossel wrote “stupid in school” which is a good primer for the hows and whys of why we’re slipping.

The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.

Wasted money, the inability to fire teachers, the fact that the public school you live near is your only choice all contribute to this. But I’m not a fan of these kinds of things, so let’s take a look at hard data, coming from the TIMSS for math and the PIRLS for literacy. First the TIMSS, which is a PDF so I can’t directly quote.

The result you’ll find is that in 4th grade the US ranks 8th in mathematical ability. Nothing to be ashamed of. 8th grade? Down to 14th. It seems to bolster Stossel’s claim that the longer we stay in school, the dumber we get.

Over to the PIRLS, which offers a popup window ranking for your viewing pleasure. Over there with 2001 numbers on 4th graders we find that the US averages 8th place for literacy and information. No matter which study you look at: we’re doing well but we’re not the most advanced.

I don’t even think I need to bring up that we’re the most out of shape country in the world. Though I’ve heard Australia recently surpassed us.

How about general stuff? The UN Human Development Index is an interesting way to look up that little guy. It’s a number that pulls from a large number of sources (literacy, poverty, life expectancey, etc). Maybe the US isn’t the best at any one thing, surely we’re the best over all, right? Take a look.

1. Norway (=)
2. Iceland (↑ 5)
3. Australia (=)
4. Luxembourg (↑ 11)
5. Canada (↑ 1)
6. Sweden (↓ 4)
7. Switzerland (↑ 4)
8. Ireland (↑ 2)
9. Belgium (↓ 3)
10. United States (↓ 2)

We’re roundin’ out the top 10 and actually dropped a few spots. Norway’s topping and even Iceland who hopped up five spots was ahead last time (7th to 8th). You can take a look at any of the factors lower down. 48th in life expectancy, middle of the road on AIDS/HIV prevalence. We’ve got 12% of the population living under the poverty line which is fairly bad when you consider that the poverty line is under $10,000 a year for one person, barely over $13,000 for a two-person household. Then realize that if you make minimum wage, you won’t even earn the poverty threshold. 33rd in unemployment.

How sad is that? If you live in America and earn minimum wage, you won’t make enough to even match the poverty threshold. And yet the republicans refuse to raise it. Wouldn’t you think that the bare minimum pay should, logically, get you to just not be in poverty?

But we are, undeniably, the world’s foremost superpower. Why’s that? We’re not the smartest, we don’t live the longest, make the most money, our citizens aren’t living the best lives. What is it? We’ve got the most powerful military. To quote Dennis Leary, we have the bombs.

And that’s kinda scary. We can annihilate any nation we want, we’re working hard to do all we can to beef up the military so we can fight the terrists, but efforts to actually improve the lives of the citizens seems to fall by the wayside. We SHOULD be number one, dammit. I don’t like living in the national equivalent of Moe from Calvin and Hobbes.

All of this brings me to my conclusion, if I can wrap this all up and throw in a take-home message. The republicans don’t care about our schools. They don’t care about the quality of our citizen’s lives. They care about authoritarian control and turning the USA into a military state. While money gets poured into the Iraq War, it’s pulled from giving money to college students and the No Child Left Behind crap ends up making students dumber by depriving them of education in other subjects.

Unsurprisingly, the US ranks 1st or second across the board for military expenditure, number of nukes, and number of troops.

So this November, think about what you want America to be. I’d like to be able to say we do have the best and brightest, but it doesn’t look like we do. We’re supposed to be on top of the world due to the quality of our country, not because we’re the most intimidating. It seems like the redcoats prefer the latter. I like the former.

[tags]united states, america, republicans, democrats, education, life expectancy, united nations[/tags]

We hear it all the time. The terrorists hate America because we’re the best country in the world. They hate our freedom, they hate us because we’re just that friggin’ awesome. That’s why they come after us so much. Policy, our actions elsewhere in the world, no. Terrorists simply hate America for being Number 1.

So that got me thinking, are we really?

Now I love this place. I speak the language, I know a couple of the people, I live here. America’s great, and it’s my home. But I’ve got my questions about it’s Numero Uno status. Take a look, for example, at our continuing resistance to evolution being treated as fact. I knew the ol’ US of A was hesitant to accept evolution, but our status in the world is a little pathetic.

A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.

31st out of 32 in willingness to accept evolution. That’s absolutely pathetic. Why has it been this way? Simply put, the religious right. Because evolution is called “the theory of evolution”, then they use the colloquial definition of theory that makes it sound like it has no basis in reality and is just something someone thought up. Thus, it’s not “fact” and is considered on par with creationism or its incestuous child Intelligent Design.

There was an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit that showed a few Creationists, types I’ve met myself over the years. One of them stated: “Because evolution is not proven, it should be taught alongside creationism.” Because the evolutionary theory is, really, incapable of being called law without the use of a time machine, that means completely baseless concepts should be taught as equally valid?

People can be religious all they want, but to try and base science or law around it is just ludicrous. I’d like to see someone legislate based on a story out of Greek mythology, or a president say he goes to war because Jupiter came to him in a dream.

Moving along, let’s take a look at general intelligence. John Stossel wrote “stupid in school” which is a good primer for the hows and whys of why we’re slipping.

The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.

Wasted money, the inability to fire teachers, the fact that the public school you live near is your only choice all contribute to this. But I’m not a fan of these kinds of things, so let’s take a look at hard data, coming from the TIMSS for math and the PIRLS for literacy. First the TIMSS, which is a PDF so I can’t directly quote.

The result you’ll find is that in 4th grade the US ranks 8th in mathematical ability. Nothing to be ashamed of. 8th grade? Down to 14th. It seems to bolster Stossel’s claim that the longer we stay in school, the dumber we get.

Over to the PIRLS, which offers a popup window ranking for your viewing pleasure. Over there with 2001 numbers on 4th graders we find that the US averages 8th place for literacy and information. No matter which study you look at: we’re doing well but we’re not the most advanced.

I don’t even think I need to bring up that we’re the most out of shape country in the world. Though I’ve heard Australia recently surpassed us.

How about general stuff? The UN Human Development Index is an interesting way to look up that little guy. It’s a number that pulls from a large number of sources (literacy, poverty, life expectancey, etc). Maybe the US isn’t the best at any one thing, surely we’re the best over all, right? Take a look.

1. Norway (=)
2. Iceland (↑ 5)
3. Australia (=)
4. Luxembourg (↑ 11)
5. Canada (↑ 1)
6. Sweden (↓ 4)
7. Switzerland (↑ 4)
8. Ireland (↑ 2)
9. Belgium (↓ 3)
10. United States (↓ 2)

We’re roundin’ out the top 10 and actually dropped a few spots. Norway’s topping and even Iceland who hopped up five spots was ahead last time (7th to 8th). You can take a look at any of the factors lower down. 48th in life expectancy, middle of the road on AIDS/HIV prevalence. We’ve got 12% of the population living under the poverty line which is fairly bad when you consider that the poverty line is under $10,000 a year for one person, barely over $13,000 for a two-person household. Then realize that if you make minimum wage, you won’t even earn the poverty threshold. 33rd in unemployment.

How sad is that? If you live in America and earn minimum wage, you won’t make enough to even match the poverty threshold. And yet the republicans refuse to raise it. Wouldn’t you think that the bare minimum pay should, logically, get you to just not be in poverty?

But we are, undeniably, the world’s foremost superpower. Why’s that? We’re not the smartest, we don’t live the longest, make the most money, our citizens aren’t living the best lives. What is it? We’ve got the most powerful military. To quote Dennis Leary, we have the bombs.

And that’s kinda scary. We can annihilate any nation we want, we’re working hard to do all we can to beef up the military so we can fight the terrists, but efforts to actually improve the lives of the citizens seems to fall by the wayside. We SHOULD be number one, dammit. I don’t like living in the national equivalent of Moe from Calvin and Hobbes.

All of this brings me to my conclusion, if I can wrap this all up and throw in a take-home message. The republicans don’t care about our schools. They don’t care about the quality of our citizen’s lives. They care about authoritarian control and turning the USA into a military state. While money gets poured into the Iraq War, it’s pulled from giving money to college students and the No Child Left Behind crap ends up making students dumber by depriving them of education in other subjects.

Unsurprisingly, the US ranks 1st or second across the board for military expenditure, number of nukes, and number of troops.

So this November, think about what you want America to be. I’d like to be able to say we do have the best and brightest, but it doesn’t look like we do. We’re supposed to be on top of the world due to the quality of our country, not because we’re the most intimidating. It seems like the redcoats prefer the latter. I like the former.

[tags]united states, america, republicans, democrats, education, life expectancy, united nations[/tags]