The Big Picture

Sometimes you get so buried in details that you forget to take a look at the ‘big picture.’ Victor Davis Hanson provides a reminder of that view in his essay The American 21st Century

a nation’s health is not gauged by bouts of recession and self-doubt, but by its time-honored political, economic, military and social foundations. A temporarily ill-seeming America is nevertheless still growing, stable, multiethnic, transparent, individualistic, self-critical and meritocratic; almost all of its apparently healthy rivals in fact are not.

The tendency is to see all the faults where you are and all the benefits everywhere else. A proper perspective can be a good idea.