Jeebus! The Cato Institute was co-founded by the notorious Charles Koch and is a right-wing champion of “free markets” with a long history of propagandizing against things like climate science and promoting climate change skepticism, and of course against any form of government regulation of anything. The Fraser Institute has the same kind of sordid history. IOW, both are historically habitual liars dedicated to promoting conservative and free-market types of libertarian policies.
Another source of information cited for the US freedom ranking is Freedom House, which may be more even-handed but here the trouble is that the vast majority of its funding comes from the US State Department. All these sources are so US-biased and free-enterprise biased and so indifferent to actual social conditions that it’s a wonder that they don’t rate the US as #1 in their perverted rankings!
Overall, we rate the Cato Institute Right-Center Biased. While Cato’s economic and environmental positions are strongly right, they also hold liberal positions on immigration and social liberty issues. On the whole, this places them Right-Center as we weigh economic theory more heavily in the overall score. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and recognizing the consensus of science.**
and the cite
Overall, we rate Freedom House Right-Center Biased based on pro-military positions and consistent support for the US. Government, which leans right-center in policy. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record.
So yes, Cato is ONE of the orgs that publish my cite, but my cite uses Freedom House, and the Media bias and fact check rates Cato and Freedom house about the same.
None of which, IMHO, is as important to the context of this discussion as the fact that it’s a two-year lagging indicator … however credible or incredible it might otherwise be.
Considering the turnover in POTUS administrations during that time frame … pffft. It’s a meaningless number.
I’ll check back in a year and see how they score things since the dawn of Trump 2.0
Yeah, they’re about the same – both inveterate liars on behalf of right-wing ideology. And you’re defending them? Seriously?
Let’s look at what Cato has to say about climate change as an example, because it’s something I can comment on first-hand. Here’s an article published recently by Travis Fisher, who is the director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute. It describes a podcast he participated in recently with Dan Crenshaw, a Republican Congressman from Texas.
The article is titled “Some Inconvenient Truths for Climate Radicals” which should be a red flag before you even get into it that you’re about to wade waist-deep into bullshit. And here are just the first couple of paragraphs:
I pointed out how climate science—especially in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s technical chapters—is full of uncertainties and caveats, while the summaries and headlines strip out all nuance. For example, climate sensitivity estimates still span a wide range after decades of modeling. At the same time, we absolutely should acknowledge that human activity has climate impacts.
We also discussed the realities that most people never hear about, such as the dramatic decline in climate-related deaths due to energy abundance and adaptation.
Wow! “Caveats and uncertainties”? Science always has uncertainties, but there are no uncertainties on the fundamental consensus on anthropogenic climate change and its overall impacts.
He gives as example of “uncertainty” the fact the climate sensitivity is defined as a range rather than a specific number. This is true but the example is hugely misleading because (a) climate sensitivity is dependent on hundreds of different variables and necessarily cannot be pinned down over the long term, and (b) equilibrium climate sensitivity – the primary metric – defines an equilibrium temperature after doubling of CO2, which can take hundreds of years to stabilize. To claim that defining this as a range rather than a fixed number is an example of “uncertainty” in climate science is just total unmitigated bullshit.
The second paragraph is even more galling in the boldness of its lie, where he says there’s been a “dramatic decline in climate-related deaths”. He says this is something that “most people never hear about”. Yeah, they never hear about it because it’s a fucking lie:
From the World Health Organization and Health Policy Watch:
Climate change drives hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, primarily through extreme heat exposure, air pollution, and vector-borne diseases. Research indicates that over a third of global heat-related deaths are directly attributable to human-induced warming, while broader health risks continue to surge. Heat exposure accounts for an estimated 546,000 deaths annually in recent decade data. Climate change Climate Change Is Here, And It's Killing Millions - Health Policy Watch
That’s globally. But maybe Fisher is talking about just the US and coyly neglecting tell us. Nope – still a bald-faced lie:
Just as another data point, I showed why I wouldn’t trust the Cato Institute as far as I could throw them, but Freedom House is another matter. Frankly they’re historically less radical than the likes of Cato, Heritage, and the other right-wing propagandizers, though still right-leaning. But the problem was always that the vast majority of their funding came from the US government – mostly the State Department, some from USAID. That they would be promoting the USA as the Best Thing Ever is unsurprising.
But the devastation wrought by the current Trump regime now introduces a new problem. Freedom House has faced massive funding cuts and has been forced to lay off large numbers of staff. They’ve had to divert what remains of their private general funds away from independent research projects (like the annual Freedom in the World report) to try to cover operational expenses. IOW, like many government-funded entities under the current regime, they’re struggling to survive and no longer have the resources to conduct proper independent research.
I didnt use Cato, Cato is simply one of several publishers of my source- World Population review.
The cite I used (I did not use Cato) is-
These sources have minimal bias and use very few loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appealing to emotion or stereotypes). The reporting is factual and usually sourced. These are the most credible media sources. See all Least Biased sources.
Overall, we rate the World Population Review as least biased based on providing data with minimal bias. We also rate them as Mostly Factual rather than High due to the occasional use of poor sources.
Back to the topic at hand. I think that to some extent it has to do with how vast in size the US is. That means that unless you live in certain urban centers (and not even all), you are not exposed to the outside world. That means that you never get to see, or experience what it is like to live in another country or really a significantly different culture (yes I am aware there are enclaves where you can).
I did not grow up in the US and therefore knew a lot about its failings. I also lived and traveled to a lot of different countries and although I was subject to a lot of the movies where US good and other countries not so much, I never felt that the US was particularly better than anywhere else. But whenever we visited, I did find that a lot of people in the US felt that, and it was especially true when I moved back and went to high school in a fairly rural area with kids my age that had never even left their state.
I pretty much agree with that. The problem with a “freedom index”, besides the obvious one that it can be radically affected by what you choose to measure, is that it’s an average that obfuscates important individual details.
To a Texas millionaire with the “freedom” to own 600 guns, all is great. To an impoverished family without adequate food or health care or a safe living environment, not so much. And certainly not to the American Black population facing social and legal injustices throughout much of American history.
Nor to all the young men conscripted to fight a pointless war in Vietnam. Nor to all the victims of McCarthyism and its tyrannical blacklisting. Nor to those convicted of nonviolent crimes who sometimes face sentences so long that they’re effectively life sentences, with all the emphasis on a satisfying retribution and none at all on rehabilitation. Nor to those now living under a corrupt regime verging on outright authoritarianism.
None of that sounds much like “freedom” or “greatness”.
And the USA mostly excels in the freedumb flavor of freedom. Enjoying the right to be mindlessly selfish and mindlessly racist and utterly ignorant and immature is the highest best expression of American Freedumb values.
And we’re F***ing good at it! Don’t disagree or we’ll shoot you! [/sarcasm].
I think that’s a lot of it. I didn’t really grow up thinking “the US is the best”, but i did grow up in one of those urban centers with a lot of contact with the world outside the US. I even visited Canada as a kid, and knew people who regularly visited England and France.
America today reminds me of what one of my fellow consultants said when we were both doing consulting work for a major bank. It was something like “they have so much money and such vast resources that if they could ever get their shit together, there’s almost no limit to what they could accomplish”. But they couldn’t and didn’t – their management was chronically incompetent and mired in internal squabbles and infighting, and much of their own staff was equally inept. Which is why they needed consultants!
The US could be an incredibly wondrous place with competent leadership, but that seems to be both politically and structurally impossible, and it’s not getting any better. Once the White House was almost a mythical Camelot where it might have been possible, today it’s a gilded shit-house with part of it torn down and the reflecting pool filled with slime – fitting symbolism.
In many ways the USA is – or at least, was – the greatest country in the world. Some of this is due to sheer size: the USA is #1 in GDP, #1 in military capability, #3 in population, and #4 in land area. As the world’s banker it has a privileged financial status. US companies have about the same market cap as the rest of the world combined.
The US has huge natural beauty (Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Niagara Falls, redwoods, etc.). It has the best medical care and best universities in the world – if you can afford them.
Per capita GDP is probably more relevant than absolute GDP, but USA does well in that category as well. Among largish countries, only Singapore, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland exceed the US in GDP per capita, with Denmark and Netherlands not far behind. (This is about the same with or without the PPP modification.)
For much of the 20th century the US was way ahead of the rest of the world. Good infrastructure, good jobs, good know-how, etc. Jingoistic pride was deserved, and instilled confidence which contributed to the greatness.
The USA helped spread democracy, and welcomed immigrants. How many movies (and dreams!) involve a newcomer staring in awe at the Statue of Liberty? The US was proud to help the rest of the world, with the Marshall Plan, and USAID, etc.
Yes. By many many measures the US did deserve to be called the Greatest Country Ever. It was inevitable that other countries would start to catch up; the only question is how quickly the US will lose its super-status.
But all the above may be irrelevant! “Best country” is probably meant to mean “best or happiest quality of life.” Happiness is very hard to measure but two things severely limit US happiness compared with other developed countries:
Millions of Americans require health care they cannot afford. These people are not happy. Childcare, parental leave and other social programs are generally inferior to those of other developed countries.
For many decades the US has had the worst income inequality among developed countries, and this is getting worse.
US scores poorly in life expectancy (#41, 79 yrs compared with Italy 83) and mothers dying in childbirth (#64 in 2020, 0.021% compared with Australia 0.003%). One can find “Happiness Indexes” but I won’t bother. There will be objections of bias, e.g. most Happiness Indexes do not factor in the joys of gun ownership.
Of course we should look to the future rather than the past or even the present. But there are other threads contending with that topic.
and 34th in Democracy (as of 2025. Falling rapidly as I type!)
Freedom is not the same as democracy; indeed for some purposes (exercising property rights, discrimination when choosing customers or employees) they are opposite.
I’m glad you specify that these are your criteria. I have my own eccentric criteria for where I want to live. And I’m sure you already know that many consider the the American obsession with guns to be peculiar, especially since hobbyist use is possible in many countries.
Right, especially post-Civil War and then during the great immigration wave there was a high degree of motivation to propagandize national patriotic unity and make “America” as understood by the established culture a virtual object of worship for the new generations. Though again this was not rare from countries engaged in self-nationbuilding. Just that it’s far more noticeable when it comes from the World Hegemon.
