Are We Really the Greatest Country in the World?

Before you chant it, read the scoreboard.

I love this country. Start there, because everything after this is going to sound like criticism, and it is not.

Here is what I cannot stand right now. A president at a microphone, telling the world that half of us, the Democrats, are communists. An administration that treats human beings like a commodity and treats science like an afterthought. I watched Trump on the Fourth of July tell a crowd that we are the greatest country in the world. I sat with that line. I asked myself whether it is true. And if it is true, I wanted to know who it is true for.

Ask most people whether America is the greatest country on earth and you get a slogan instead of an answer. We just are. That line ends the conversation instead of starting it. And it has always struck me as close to the least patriotic thing a person can say, because it asks nothing of the country it claims to love.

So let me do the un-American-sounding thing. Let me actually check.

Start with the word itself. If greatest means free, we are not alone in the room. Canada is free. So are Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, and Belgium (yes, that Belgium). Out of nearly two hundred countries, dozens run on the same liberties we do. Ours is not the only lamp burning. Admitting that is the entry fee for an honest conversation.

If greatest means winning every category worth measuring, the record is mixed. Read it plainly. Do not shout it.

Where we lead, we lead by a mile. We have the largest economy on earth, first in total output with no close second. We rank third among all nations in median household income, behind only Luxembourg and Norway. We are the second-largest exporter in the world. We have produced more Nobel laureates than any country in history. And we outspend everyone on defense. In 2025, we spent more than the next six countries combined. This is not a nation that lost its footing everywhere.

Now turn the page.

Our fifteen-year-olds landed around 26th in the world in math on the most recent international assessment. We do better than our reputation in reading, closer to 6th. We have climbed to roughly 10th in science. Take the credit where we earned it.

Then come the numbers that are actually about human beings. American life expectancy hit a record 79 years in 2024, and it still sits near the bottom of the wealthy world. We run about three and a half years behind the average of comparable rich nations, roughly 30th out of the 38 industrialized OECD countries. More of our babies die before their first birthday than in almost any other developed nation. We rank 32nd out of 38. We spend more on health care per person than anyone alive, and we get shorter lives in return.

Then comes the one that should stop a self-governing people cold. We imprison more of our own citizens, per capita, than any democracy on earth. Every free country on the planet locks up a smaller share of its own people than we do. The land of the free jails the most.

Sit with the shape of that. This is a country that leads the world in what it can build, buy, and deter, and trails its own peers in the two things a free country exists to protect. Whether its people stay alive. And whether they stay free. First in firepower. Behind in living. Behind in liberty. We wrote those words into our founding documents, so that last gap should sting the most. It is not an accident of geography or luck. It is a series of choices. And choices can be made differently.

Which brings me to the wound we keep reopening ourselves. A country doesn’t fall behind by accident; it falls behind while its leaders point at each other instead of at the problem. For years the president and the movement around him have run division as a governing strategy, sorting Americans into loyal and disloyal, real and fake, every single day. It isn’t an excess; it’s the product. The rallies, the nicknames, the enemies-lists dressed up as policy all run on one fuel: convince half the country that the other half is the threat, and you never have to answer for the scoreboard. A republic can survive disagreement. It cannot survive a permanent campaign to make its citizens hate one another.

And here’s another thing. Watch where the contempt gets aimed, because it tells you what a person actually fears. This administration saves its ugliest language not for adversaries abroad but for the institutions built to check it at home. Judges who rule against it are smeared and threatened with impeachment. Reporters who ask ordinary questions are branded enemies of the people, and their newsrooms are sued, investigated, and threatened with their licenses for the offense of publishing. The Constitution itself is treated as an inconvenience to mock rather than an oath to keep. Is any of this really great?

It matters what the world thinks. American influence never rested only on tanks and treasure; it rested on a reputation, that our word held, our institutions were stable, and we treated allies as partners rather than marks. That reputation has thinned. When a president bullies friends, flatters strongmen, muses about annexing neighbors, and treats alliances as protection rackets, the world adjusts. Allied publics that once expressed broad confidence in American leadership now report some of the lowest numbers on record, hedging quietly and building around us instead of with us. Respect is reciprocal, and the country a leader represents pays that bill long after he is gone.

Which leaves the hardest question, and it isn’t about him. It’s about us. Just read the record: a man convicted on thirty-four felony counts, and found liable by a civil jury for sexually abusing a woman, a finding every court, up to the Supreme Court, has let stand. A man who has steered attention, favor, and public money toward himself, his family, and the billionaires who bought their seat at the table, while ordinary Americans are told to be grateful for the crumbs. None of it was hidden; it was on the record before a single ballot was cast. And enough of us chose it anyway. That is not a fact about his character. It is a fact about ours. A country can claim greatness only as long as it stays honest about its choices, and this was a choice. So before we reach for the old slogan again: what does it say about us that we did?

I like what “The Boss” had to say about all of this in a recent interview:

While I can’t speak for Bruce, although I do believe he feels the same way, please hear me on this. Everything I just laid out is an act of loyalty. Greatness in a republic was never something you inherit. It is a standard you meet or miss in a given year, measured against your own promises. The Constitution never guaranteed we would be the greatest. It handed us the tools to become worthy of the claim, and it left the work to us.

That is the part the slogan skips. A country that is actually confident in its greatness can look at its own scoreboard without flinching, name the categories where it is losing, and go win them back. A country that can only chant is telling on itself.

We can be a great country. We have been, in every place where we decided to be. Where we funded the hard, unglamorous work. Where we treated knowledge as an asset instead of an insult. Where we measured ourselves against our peers abroad instead of against each other at home.

Greatest is not a birthright. It is not a bumper sticker. Greatest is a verb. You do it, or you do not.

Mitch Jackson, Esq.

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