Goodbye, America! Why I'm leaving this country.

• Author: Ralston, Anthony

RECENTLY.. there were reports about Americans emigrating to Costa Rica because things are so bad in the U.S. Costa Rica is the only Central American country with an extensive democratic history, Still, there would have to be very special reasons, indeed, for an American to leave this great nation for Costa Rica.

The U.S. is a great country, isn't it? It must be, since politicians, journalists, and others keep telling everyone that it is. Not long ago, author Garrison Keillor wrote, "Elect the worst Congress you can find, and the system still won't break. America will still be a great country." He wrote this before the November, 1994, elections, the results of which will be a good test of his thesis. in any case, like all such flag-wavers, Keillor was careful not to define what he meant by "great." Nor did Peter Peterson, who declared in his book, Facing up, that the U.S. is the "greatest, richest, freest" country in the world.

Then, there is the School Board of Lake County, Fla., which thinks that American culture is superior to all others. In the words of one member of the board, "America is a cut above all the rest." The school board didn't mention what it meant by American "culture," which, to most of the world,. means pop music, fast food, and TV soap operas. Even New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, a consistent critic of the American scene, calls the U.S. "the most advanced society on earth."

What, then, might it mean for this or any country to be deemed "great"? Not, presumably, powerful. The U.S. assuredly is that; so was Nazi Germany. For a powerful country to be great, it must use that power for great purposes. World War 11 and Korea qualify, but were Vietnam, Somalia, Grenada, Panama, or Haiti great uses of power? Or has the U.S.'s failure to use its power in Bosnia been "great ... I When only "national interest," but neither humanity nor morality play a role in how a nation uses its power, greatness will elude that country.

Nor can greatness be defined by wealth. By some--but not all--measures, the U.S. still is the richest nation in the world. In Western culture, though, riches never have been synonymous with greatness. The Biblical dictum that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" applies to countries as well.

Are past exploits--history--what make a nation great? No, because greatness is a here-and-now quality. Has the U.S. contributed anything of great significance to the human condition in, say, the last quarter-century? I don't think so. Even the principled portion of American opposition to the former Soviet empire falls a long way short of greatness.

The essence of greatness in a nation must be defined not by concrete qualities such as power or wealth, but, rather, by more abstract qualities, such as freedom, justice, compassion, and human rights. Does the U.S. measure up as greatest--or even great--on these dimensions?

America surely is one of the freest nations in a world where democracy may be spreading, but the freedoms embodied in the U.S. Constitution remain in short supply. On the traditional freedoms--speech, press, and religion--america still ranks at the top of the class, although not markedly ahead of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and quite a few countries of Western Europe. The U.S. doesn't do so well on the other two (besides speech and religion) of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms--freedom from fear and want. Crime, particularly violent crime, is an issue that troubles most Americans. Although violent crime exists everywhere, it is overwhelmingly more present in the U.S. than in any other developed country. Americans, therefore, are much less free from fear of violence than citizens of any of the nations mentioned above. So long as its homicide rate is 10 or more times as great as that in any of these countries, Americans can not be free from this fear. Indeed, can a country be called free if citizens can not safely walk the streets of its cities at night? Even during the day, there are perils, as exemplified by the Oklahoma City bombing in April, 1995. That kind of violence is particularly fear-provoking since it can strike anyone at any time, no matter what precautions have been taken.

Measured by per capita wealth, the U.S. is the richest country in the world, although it is doubtful that this still will be true in 10 or 20 years. Judged by the percentage of its citizens who live in want, however, America is last on the list of developed countries. Moreover, the depth of the squalor in the urban ghettos and the number of homeless is matched by no other developed country. Economist Milton Friedman wrote recently that "what is now described as poverty would have been regarded as plenty" in the past. Clearly, he has not visited an American ghetto, such as in Chicago, where he lives, in a long time. Life in these ghettos is immeasurably more squalid and less safe than at any time this century. If freedom from want is part of a nation's freedom. the U.S. is far from the top.

"Justice for all," says the "Pledge of Allegiance," but this has been an empty boast in the U.S. for a long time. Nothing epitomizes this so well as the O.J. Simpson case. If, instead of being rich and famous, the accused killer of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman had been a poor black man, he would--given comparable evidence against him--be on death row already. Civil justice as well as criminal justice are more unequal in America than in any other developed nation. Not only is the U.S. the most litigious society that the world ever has seen, it is one in which a very different brand of civil justice is available to those who can pay for it, compared to those who can not. Just as justice delayed is justice denied, unequal justice means denial of justice for many, if not most, Americans. It is no accident that the legal profession is the butt of more jokes and more opprobrium than even used car salesmen.

Selfishness

Most Americans think they are a compassionate, generous people. Actor Paul Newman expressed this at the 1994 Academy Awards ceremony when he said, "Americans are the most generous people in the world." They probably are, if judged by the charitable contributions of rich people like Newman. They even may be so if judged by the contributions of middle-class Americans. Judged by the generosity of the two-thirds of prosperous Americans toward the one-third less fortunate, though, the U.S. is not just an ungenerous society, it is a selfish and, increasingly, mean-spirited one.

During the 1994 health care debate, Ross Perot wrote that the American health care system is "the best in the world." This is an astoundingly selfish claim. For very rich people like Perot who can afford to go anywhere and pay anything for the highesttech medicine and the best physicians, it may be the best in the world. Yet, by almost any quantitative measure--life expectancy, infant mortality, unnecessary surgery performed, child immunization rates--the American health care system is at or near the bottom among developed countries.

It's bad enough that only in the U.S. do millions of people have no health insurance and access to, at most, emergency health care. Worse is that American health care is the most inhumane in the developed world. In other nations...