Nav at Checks with Chart:
…a British officer told me something interesting about Americans, and it was echoed by others from around the world. He told me how America is incredibly harsh when evaluating itself. It started as a conversation about the exercise we were in, and how the staff group seemed to take forever to put a plan together because it was “never good enough” and could always be improved. But it translated into a discussion about American politics, and how our society is harsher on itself then it is on the rest of the world.
2 Responses to “”
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February 8th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Within reasonable limits, we *should* hold ourselves to a higher standard — but context is everything.
February 8th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
It is good for a country, as for an organization or individual, to reflect on its failures as well as its successes. It is not so good when the country/organzation/individual focuses obsessively on its failures while ignoring its successes.
I suspect that many of the Americans who are most critical of the USA are very non-self-critical when it comes to their own lives and job activities. See C S Lewis for an analysis of this phenomenon:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2003_03_01_photoncourier_archive.html#90746525