Our "World Number" at Risk

Writing at American Greatness, Christopher Roach surveys modern America and finds much about which to be sad. His base in Florida gives him a neighborly look at many third world countries. He sees many signs our great land is losing first world status and becoming a third world country.

So, what are the characteristics of a first world country, in the author's view?

• First world status comes from various political, social, and economic achievements. One of the more salient is low corruption.
• Low levels of corruption foster another distinct feature of America’s first world status: the dominance of the private sector and high degrees of entrepreneurialism.
• Another feature of American life has been low levels of crime and disorder.
• Political normality, compromise, and restraint are other features of first world societies.
• The American people were not just an assembly of economic units with nothing in common. They were a people.

And what are the characteristics of a third world country, again in Roach's view?

• The endemic corruption of the Third World both reflects and reinforces an extreme tribalism, which elevates the extended family above the public as a whole.
• Elections and parties reflect these ethnic divisions, and a winner-take-all spirit prevails.
• To the extent there is a private sector in the Third World, it is intertwined with and dependent on the political one.
• A related feature of the Third World is failing infrastructure.
• Yet another notable feature of the Third World is poverty, lawlessness, and disorder.
• A final feature of the Third World, now familiar at home, is high stakes politics.

Roach describes all of the foregoing, with examples of how we're becoming more like a third world country. And he concludes with this view of modern America.

This is not Norman Rockwell’s America. Indeed, it’s not even the America one might remember growing up in the 1980s and ’90s. It’s changed for the worse.

More important, the rules required to survive and thrive are quite different from those of the recent past. As in Venezuela or Iraq, politics and life are becoming “winner take all.” It’s important to know when compromise is not possible. And, under these circumstances, it pays to be a winner.

There are certainly substantial swathes of our nation where his description is increasingly accurate. His article is not fun, but it does point to our increasing national dysfunction, our inability to get done what needs doing.