Of course things are far from perfect in the United States. Examples of the
negatives are the related problems of guns, crime, drugs and the size of the prison
population. Also, inequality is greater than we would like. Our system of primary and
secondary education is poor. After the last election, we no longer have a claim to special
expertise in electoral democracy. Nevertheless, the main negative I see for the US now,
paradoxically, is something quite different: We fail to realize that we have rarely had it
so good overall.