为什么美国认为他们是世界上最好的国家？ [美国媒体]

Why does America think they're the best country in the world?

为什么美国认为他们是世界上最好的国家？

Shannon Taurua, studied at Massey University
  


Because it’s what Americans are taught from a yung age. Despite being a wealthy nation, barely half of Americans hold a passport, so many are unable to see what the rest of the world is like.

因为这是美国人从小就接受的教育。尽管美国是一个富裕的国家，但只有一半的美国人持有护照，所以许多人看不到世界上其他国家的情况。

The US wouldn’t even make the top 10 for mine. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Canada are all better countries.

美国甚至连我的前10名也排不到。瑞典，挪威，丹麦，芬兰，澳大利亚，新西兰，德国，瑞士，加拿大都是更好的国家。

Anonymous
There are over 300 million people in the U.S. - there is no one shared opinion among them - on any topic including the country and how great or not great it is. Admittedly there are some loud lovers of the U.S. but there are some well-travelled people who know something more about the world. For just one example, there are many people on Quora who yearn for a single-payer healthcare system - as every other modern, industrialized county has.?
American - the U.S. - is a country - it's geography and politics - 'it' doesn't think. People in it do and they don't all think alike on any one matter.

在美国有超过3亿人——他们之间没有任何共同的想法——包括国家多伟大和它是否伟大的话题在内。诚然，有一些人大声说他/她爱美国，但也有一些见多识广的人，他们对世界了解得更多。举个简单的例子，有很多人在Quora上渴望拥有一个其他现代化工业所国家拥有的那种单方付费的医疗保健系统。美国——美利坚合众国——是一个地理和政治概念上的国家————“它不认为它内部生活的人民应该在任何事情上做或不做他们不喜欢的事。

Chaimaa Boukabouy, good at using Google.

In 1776, when America announced its independence as a nation, it was composed of thirteen colonies surrounded by hostile powers.?

1776，当美国宣布独立为国家时，它由十三个被敌对势力包围的殖民地组成。

Today, the United States is a country of fifty states covering a vast continent. Its military forces are the most powerful in the world. Its economy produces almost a quarter of the world's wealth. The American people are among the most hard-working, affluent, and generous in the world.

今天，美国是一个由五十个州组成的国家，覆盖着广阔的大陆。它的军事力量是世界上最强大的。它的经济几乎占世界财富的四分之一。美国包含了世界上最勤劳、最富裕、最慷慨的人民。

Every nation derives meaning and purpose from some unifying quality—an ethnic character, a common religion, a shared history. The United States is different. America was founded at a particular time, by a particular people, on the basis of particular principles about man, liberty, and constitutional government.?

一个民族从某种统一的品质中获得意义和目的—共同的性格、共同的宗教、共同的历史。
美国是不同的。基于人、自由和宪政的特殊原则，美国被一群特定的人成立于特定的历史时期。

The American Revolution drew on old ideas. The United States is the product of Western civilization, shaped by Judeo-Christian culture and the political liberties inherited from Great Britain.

美国革命借鉴了旧观念。它是西方文明的产物，其基督教-犹太教文化与政治自由继承自大不列颠。
Ernest W. Adams

Growing up in the richest, most powerful nation in the world and one of the ones with the largest population creates a very distorted perspective on the world. It's like being the child of a billionaire or of the president of the United States. You really have no baseline from which to judge what “normal” is.

在世界上最富有、最强大的国家中长大，人口也是最多的国家之一，导致他们对世界产生了极为扭曲的看法。它就像是一个美国总统或亿万富翁的孩子。你真的没什么基准来判断“常识”是什么。

Americans have come to believe that the United States?is?the best at everything because throughout the late 20th century either it really was, or it did not know about areas in which it was not.

美国人开始相信美国在每个领域都是世界上最好的国家，因为在纵观整个二十世纪末，它要么确实是（最好的），要么就是不了解这个领域的状况。

So when you point out that the United State's infant mortality rate is absurdly high for the richest country on the planet, it doesn't compute. If you're a liberal, you get angry and become activist.

所以，当你指出美国的婴儿死亡率对于这个星球上最富有的国家来说是荒谬的，这是不计算的。如果你是一个自由主义者，你会变得愤怒并成为积极分子。

How could we have screwed up so badly as to not be the best at keeping babies alive? If you're a conservative, you dismiss the data as biased

我们怎么能把事情搞得这么糟，不让孩子活下来呢？如果你是保守派，你会把这些数据视为偏见。

(a liberal conspiracy to justify taking your tax money to treat babies… probably foreign illegal brown crack babies at that!)

（这是一个自由主义的阴谋，请拿出证据证明应该用我们的税款去治疗婴儿……他们可能是国外非法的有色婴儿！）

or accurate but irrelevant (it's more important to have the best nuclear weapons than the healthiest babies).

这些数据可能精确，但不相干。（拥有最好的核武器比最健康的婴儿更重要）。