Let freedom of speech ring

Every few years, there’s a clip from an HBO Show, “The Newsroom,” that goes viral as a supposedly damning indictment of America’s decline on the world stage.

“America is not the greatest country in the world anymore,” declares Jeff Daniels’ character: a pompous news anchor who breaks the mold by being ever-so-slightly anti-American.

“Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom,” Daniels states, before listing various rankings in which America is behind its international comrades, such as literacy, math, science, life expectancy, infant mortality, median household income, labor force, and exports.

“We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies,” he adds.

Mic drop! Cased closed! Fatality! Unless, of course, you live in reality.

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Does the United States have problems? Of course, because the United States is a creation of flawed beings. But that’s hardly a unique American trait. What is a unique American trait, however, is that those who created it understood and embraced the flawed nature of humanity, and built a country that not only values individual freedom over all else, but protects it against the inevitability of human nature.

And free speech is the ultimate example.

You can read the rest of my latest column on the Washington Examiner website.