#In defense of America: ‘Not a failed experiment, but an always improving one’

Winston Churchill noted in 1947 that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried.” And what of the world’s oldest democracy, the United States of America? Still the worst country on earth — except for all of the others.

Thirty-five years of hard-left campus indoctrination has now permeated the media and the leadership of our cultural institutions to create a huge intellectual constituency for contempt of America. All over the land, we’re told that we either have failed to live up to our ideals or that our ideals themselves are wicked. Maybe slavery was even a central purpose of our founding rather than being antithetical to our ideals. Maybe there’s been very little progress since the Civil Rights era.

That’s all nonsense. In fact, the northeastern states were the birthplace of anti-slavery movements and the first ban on slavery anywhere in the world went into effect in Vermont, in 1777. The Constitution was, as Martin Luther King Jr. astutely noted, a “promissory note” that would eventually pay off with freedom for black America. Economic and social advancement for black Americans is not a myth. The Economic Policy Institute found that the difference in high school graduation rates between whites and blacks fell from 27 percent in 1962 to 5 percent in 2004. Last fall, the rate of black and Hispanic unemployment hit an all-time low. Since 1980, the percentage of black adults with college degrees has tripled. Life expectancy of white Americans exceeded that of black Americans by more than seven years as of 1970; that gap has been cut in half, to three and a half years. The percentage of black Americans earning more than $75,000 more than doubled (adjusting for inflation) between 1970 and 2014, according to Harvard professor William Julius Wilson, who studies upward mobility among black Americans.

Yet the progressive class that runs the media ignores all of this progress because the media’s business model is to sell ads off catastrophe. Nobody watches CNN on a slow news day, which is why CNN is always telling us things are falling apart. If a genuine horror takes place, such as the death of George Floyd, there is no effort whatsoever to remind us how statistically rare such incidents may be. Of all black homicide victims last year, only 0.2 percent of them were unarmed victims of police. In Chicago last year there were 492 homicides and only three of them involved police. Yet we’re told (by Chinese state propaganda, Al Jazeera, famous US professors and progressive columnists) that America is a failed state or a failed experiment.

If so, it’s odd that we remain by far the preferred destination for immigrants. The US is home to some 44 million foreign-born people, by far the most of any country. The ever-changing nature of who we are is accompanied by ever-changing attitudes. Demanding change and progress is like demanding that the sun rise every morning. It’s already happening. It’s always been happening.

Cross-racial tolerance has grown steadily over the years as Americans continue to embrace our differences more than ever. As recently as 1995, only 48 percent of Americans backed interracial marriage; now that kind of relationship enjoys near-unanimous support. America is gradually desegregating too. In 2000, the average white resident in America’s 100 biggest cities lived in a neighborhood that was 79 percent white; by 2015 that figure was down to 72 percent. Support for same-sex marriage has doubled, to 61 percent, in just 15 years. As recently as 1989, 57 percent of Americans thought homosexual acts should be illegal — not just wrong but actually against the law. That figure is now 26 percent and falling steadily. Opposition to gay relationships is literally dying out. America started out as an experiment in religious tolerance such as the world had never seen and it continues to grow more and more tolerant of more and more kinds of differences. One researcher points to online dating as an innovation that notably inspires people to reach out across religious and racial boundaries.

To believe that America’s defining ideal was racism, that it is a failed state or even that it is currently more bitterly divided than it has ever been requires blinding yourself to all evidence to the contrary. To claim that America is defined by its flaws would be like saying that the Beatles were the band that gave us “Revolution 9” and “Mr. Moonlight.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was born in Somalia and has lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Netherlands, and is married to the Scotland-born Niall Ferguson, noted this week on Twitter: “What the media also do not tell you is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist.” The American way is a combination of order, freedom and pluralism that remains the envy of the world.

And it always has been, since this country’s birth. In the United Kingdom, two out of every five men over 21 couldn’t vote until 1918. France didn’t allow women to vote until 1944. Canada excluded Japanese Canadians and Chinese Canadians from the voting booth until after World War II. Indigenous peoples didn’t have full voting rights in all Canadian provincial elections until 1969. Those who wish President Trump would be more racially sensitive have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of knowing that swoony progressive dreamboat Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, has worn blackface so many times he can’t even remember them all.

If you think there are ethnic and racial tensions in the US and wish we could be more like those happy little Nordic countries, consider that in Denmark, where the population is 87 percent Danish, a right-wing government has passed more than 100 laws targeting immigration including banning the burqa in 2018, confiscating cash and valuables from incoming refugees, officially designating 29 areas as “ghettos” and doubling penalties for crimes committed in those areas, as if to single out the immigrants and ethnic minorities who live there. Imagine President Trump designating Harlem a “ghetto” and proposing doubled prison sentences for crimes committed on 125th Street as opposed to 124th Street and you’re imagining something that has very little chance of being enacted. Yet this is the policy in Denmark.

America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you.

 – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

As bad as the riots were, they were nowhere near the worst civil disturbances in the history of the country; we simply choose to forget how much worse things have been. Americans may snipe at each other on social media but it’s nothing compared to the actual live shooting at each other in the Civil War. Just to take one small, brief sideshow of that American vs. American dispute: About 120 people were killed right here, in New York City, during the Draft Riots of 1863. The Rodney King riots of 1992 left 63 dead — more than double those killed by the past month’s unrest.

Should we be disturbed by the sickening deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery? Yes, but in both cases justice is being served. Would the perpetrators have gotten away with these acts if they hadn’t been filmed? Perhaps, but we are fortunate that we live in an era when citizen-gathered evidence can enhance justice. It’s a better time when police are held more and more accountable for unlawful acts, as body cameras become more widespread and records of bad behavior become accessible to the public. The underlying dilemma isn’t an American problem but a human one; questions about how to create meaningful oversight for those in positions of power — who will watch the watchmen? — date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans.

With police, as with politicians, people’s opinions change when you drill down to the people they actually know. Voters may say they’re skeptical of police as an institution but when you rephrase the question to ask how their local police are doing, the story changes. A 2016 Gallup poll found 56 percent support the police in general (roughly where it’s been every year since 2005) but 93 percent said they had “a great deal” (76 percent) or “some” (17 percent) respect for police in their community. Even when it comes to this hotly contested subject, Americans can agree on lots of things. For instance, far from defunding the police, as the America-haters would have it, we want more cops, with proper oversight. Some good things may come from the civil disturbances that have roiled America, such as reform of asset-forfeiture policies, less protection for misbehaving cops and a rethink of qualified immunity for police. There is no reason our policing can’t be made more responsive to citizen concerns, nor should good cops have anything to fear.

The takeaway from the disturbances should be incremental changes that make things better for everyone. Last week progressives had themselves a hearty LOL at conservatives for not supporting looting, arson and mayhem: Didn’t right-wingers love the Boston Tea Party? Well, yes, because we thought it was time for a revolutionary overthrow of the existing, undemocratic order in America. Today we need a reminder, not a revolt: Our system may always have room for improvement but it’s still the model for everyone else. Even at our worst, we’re still the best.

Kyle Smith is critic-at-large at National Review.