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As a direct result of America's focus on research, since WWII American scientists have won more Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine then the rest of the world COMBINED. We create approximately 70% of all of the new drugs in the world. According to the U.K.'s Times Higher Education Survey, 14 of the top 25 Universities in the world are located in the U.S.
The U.S. gives more net development aid than any other country in the world, nearly twice as much as the next largest contributor. And whether one thinks we should give more as a percent of our GNP, there's no question the amount we give is a force for good.
And let's not forget the Marshall Plan.
This is not a chest thumping, "U>S>A>" chanting post. I'm not even saying that the U.S. has been the greatest country in the world. I'm only bringing up points most people don't consider, when they only consider America's military involvement. Most of the things we have to be proud of are rarely mentioned in the press.
Why does the number of Nobel prizes make a country good? Not few of them were won by immigrants anyway, if I am not mistaken.
Same goes for top universities. Why do Ivy League and similar universities make the US a good country?
Even development aid is not as simple as it seems. Americans tend to couple aid to religion, specifically conservative Christian sects, there is a lot of evangelizing going on. I remember the nasty stories of American organizations 'helping' in Asia after the tsunami. Some of them blackmailed Hindus and Buddhists into converting to Christianity if they wanted help. Some organizations even sued those survivors when they noticed they did not really convert.
Drugs are big business. Why do you think Phizer offers Viagra, but still has no cure for diseases in developing countries, which don't have the money to pay?
A lot of what the US seems to be doing for others, it actually does for itself. I am not singling out the US here, though, as the same applies to most Western countries.
It's a mixed bag. Of course things like the Marshall Plan really did wonders for much of the world.
On the other hand, we have so much blood on our hands for our dealings with dictatorships in Latin America. Batista, Trujillo, Pinochet, the Dirty War Videla junta in Argentina (though, to be fair, we were less involved in that), Central America in the 80s... We ranged from complicity to actively promoting and propping up some of these absolute villains- generally in the name of anti-Communism. Our focus on preventing Communism really put a negative spin on America across the globe with the negative repercussions of those regimes still playing out today.
It's a mixed bag. Of course things like the Marshall Plan really did wonders for much of the world.
On the other hand, we have so much blood on our hands for our dealings with dictatorships in Latin America. Batista, Trujillo, Pinochet, the Dirty War Videla junta in Argentina (though, to be fair, we were less involved in that), Central America in the 80s... We ranged from complicity to actively promoting and propping up some of these absolute villains- generally in the name of anti-Communism. Our focus on preventing Communism really put a negative spin on America across the globe with the negative repercussions of those regimes still playing out today.
That's true, but in general we were supporting the pro-west dictator over the pro-eastern bloc dictator.
If we weren't involved there would still be a dictator, but he would have been aligned with the soviet union. Which is somewhat of a mitigating factor.
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