If you're at all political and you’ve been on social media in the last four years, you’ve probably seen this widely shared clip from the HBO series, "The Newsroom," created by Aaron Sorkin and starring Jeff Daniels.
In the clip, disgruntled news anchor Will McAvoy (played by Daniels) goes on a long rant that purportedly demonstrates that the United States is, in fact, no longer the greatest country in the world. That this is the very first scene of the series and McAvoy later contradicts his central claim is rarely mentioned by those who share the clip—this context-dropping is relevant, and we’ll return to it later.
This video is typically treated as a debunking of the whole idea of American exceptionalism (as we’ll see later, this is not a message supported by the show, but that fact is often lost on those who share this clip). The implication, of course, is not just that the U.S. should change aspects of its system to improve its ranking. It is that Americans should not think of their country as anything special at all. This idea, if accepted, would have tremendous cultural and political impacts, which is why we must carefully examine it to see if it is, in fact, the case that America is not the greatest country in the world.
Is McAvoy’s central thesis correct? He’s right that the original question is loaded—it implies that everyone agrees that the U.S. is the world’s greatest country, which is certainly not the case. We must first ask whether America is the greatest country in the world. If we conclude that it is, we can then answer the original question: “what makes it so?”
What makes a country great? According to McAvoy, there are a variety of statistical measures that determine a country’s greatness. Since the U.S. does not lead in many seemingly important categories—literacy, math and science education, life expectancy, infant mortality, median household income, labor force and exports, he concludes that “there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world.”
Even if we accept that these are the correct measures to look at, the idea that the greatness of countries can be determined by these rankings alone is absurd. If you discount North Korea, which is probably lying about its literacy rate, and Guam, which is a U.S. territory, Estonia leads the world in literacy. Shanghai (listed separately from the rest of China) and Singapore lead the world in math and science education. Monaco has the highest life expectancy at birth and the lowest infant mortality rate. Luxembourg leads in median household income. And China has the largest labor force and the most exports.
While I’m sure Estonia, Singapore, Luxembourg and Monaco are perfectly nice places to live, their combined population of 7,540,679 (1/45th that of the U.S.) probably contributes to their ability to maintain a high standard of living. The idea of naming these small countries as among the greatest in the world when they do not substantially differ in these and other areas (like human rights) from larger, more influential countries is absurd on its face. China is an upcoming economic powerhouse, as reflected in its education, labor force and export numbers, but it fails miserably in other categories: its median household income of $6,180 is less than 1/7th of the U.S. and reflects the widespread poverty still present in that country, to say nothing of the human rights abuses prevalent there.
The truth is, no statistical measure or set of measures is likely to provide an accurate assessment of national greatness. For every country that is wealthy because of its innovative and hardworking population, there’s one that takes advantage of immense size or natural resource abundance to gain temporary wealth. For every country that is well-educated because of its quality schools and engaged parents and teachers, there’s a country like Cuba that is able to top it in literacy rate through an extensive program made possible by an all-reaching, oppressive government that stifles economic progress and human ambition.
The only objective way for us to determine a country’s greatness is by reference to its values. We ought to endorse as values human ambition, achievement and happiness. Ultimately, these things can only be enabled by a political system that allows people to be free to use their minds and make their own choices and, thus, their own achievements. People cannot think freely and cannot be happy when they face the constant threat of oppressive government force. It is no accident that the industrial revolution, which raised standards of living across the board, occurred just after western nations like the United States and Great Britain increased the freedom available to their population.
In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers discovered a simple truth: human happiness is only possible when people are free to plot their own course in life. These philosophers concluded that the best way to protect this freedom was to institute a system of individual rights. A right, in the original Enlightenment lexicon, is a license to take a certain action. It is not a guarantee to receive some material value, but a freedom to take the steps necessary to obtain it.
The Founding Fathers agreed. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” and that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The United States of America was the first country built on the idea of individual rights, and it is the only one to maintain that as its sole foundation to this day. Other countries include individual rights as a plank in their system of government, but only in the U.S. is it the whole platform. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are predominantly about guaranteeing individual rights.
In "The Newsroom" clip, McAvoy mocks the idea that the United States is great because of freedom, saying that the United States is hardly the only country to have freedom. But he misses the fundamental nature of America’s dedication to liberty. Only America has freedom at her root and at her core. Belgium is mostly free now (and is a virtuous country for that reason), but it has not always been that way. And Belgium has not codified freedom (in the consistent, Enlightenment sense of individual rights) as the central component of its system of government.
Obviously, the foundational documents of a country are important, but they are not the only measure of its greatness. After all, a country could have a founding document that endorses individual rights and a government that consistently deprives people of them. The role of individual rights in a country’s foundation is only one of two main measures of greatness The second is the extent to which the country’s government and population consistently upholds the value of liberty (and all that it implies).
The United States, more than any other country in the world, stands committed to the protection of freedom to this day. Though the government and the population, regrettably, have moved away from near-total acceptance of individual rights, America is still comparatively one of the freest countries in the world. For example, take the right of free speech, which the Founding Fathers found to be essential enough to merit a place in the First Amendment. Most relatively free, rights-respecting countries have limitations on free speech in the form of hate speech laws. Almost all the supposedly free countries McAvoy names have hate speech laws: Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Australia and Belgium all have such laws on the books, while the U.S. has none, and more Americans still oppose them than endorse them.
Most important, however, is the American attitude toward freedom and the independence and self-reliance it implies. The very existence of the term, “American spirit,” in the popular lexicon is proof-positive of a uniquely American sense of independence that does not exist to nearly the same degree in other countries. The American spirit is sufficient evidence to say that America is the greatest country in the world. A slightly lower literacy rate or median household income than other countries is not enough to counteract the fact that this country was founded on individual rights (and thus, human ambition and happiness), has stood as the world’s brightest beacon of these values for over 200 years and maintains a national spirit that embraces these values today. All the virtues of America are implied in the nature of the American spirit. It encapsulates them all.
“The American spirit” is the appropriate answer, “in one sentence or less,” to the question asked of McAvoy in the video.
To its credit, "The Newsroom" acknowledges this truth. Though it does not speak explicitly about the virtues of freedom and individual rights, it does acknowledge their natural implication. In the final episode of the first season, the girl who asked McAvoy what makes America the greatest country in the world applies for an internship at his news organization. When he asks her why, she says, “I know what a greater fool is, and I want to be one,”—referencing a label applied to McAvoy by a hostile magazine writer that refers to someone who is willing to take immense risks and improves the world in doing so.
The show thinks of a greater fool as someone who is ambitious and independent against all odds. While this is not a perfect description of the American spirit, it comes very close. McAvoy is considered a greater fool because he goes against convention to do what he thinks is right, using his own judgment even when the odds of failure are high because he wouldn’t be happy doing anything less. This is a slightly more fatalistic (but still essentially accurate) description of the American spirit. Both apply to people who use their own judgment and pursue their own happiness with a sense of independence and boundless ambition.
By telling McAvoy, “I know what a greater fool is, and I want to be one,” the “sorority girl” reveals that she carries the American spirit within her. The attitude of the greater fool is one that is far more common within America than outside of it precisely because of the cultural phenomenon of the American spirit. "The Newsroom" acknowledges this—a fellow anchor tells McAvoy that “this whole country was made by greater fools,” and when McAvoy hears the “sorority girl" tell him that she wants to be a greater fool, he realizes the importance of the American spirit in the country’s greatness, and changes his answer to the original question. After she follows his order to ask him the question again, he answers:
“You do.”
(This complete sequence can be seen in this clip).
Though its initial episode spawned a scene that is now frequently used to attack American exceptionalism, "The Newsroom" ultimately comes down on the other side of this issue. Though those who share the viral rant seem to be unaware of it or unwilling to acknowledge it, the show itself refutes this rant, striking a significant blow to the case that is made using the clip.
America is the greatest country in the world. What makes America the greatest country in the world? The American spirit. And even Will McAvoy, the new, unwitting poster boy for the opposition to American exceptionalism, acknowledges it.
