It is an abiding mystery why the US, after leading the west to the greatest strategic victory in the history of the nation state in the cold war and the triumph of democracy in most of the world, has been for about 15 years, in public policy terms, an almost unrelievedly stupid country. America’s enemies could scarcely have devised a more suicidal programme than the one that was followed: outsourcing nearly 50m jobs while admitting 20m unskilled aliens; throwing American lives and $2tn after nation-building in the Middle East; and inundating the world with trillions of dollars of worthless real estate-backed debt, certified as investment-grade by the palsied lions of Wall Street. In comparison, even the hare-brained miscues that have endangered the eurozone seem Solomonic.
有一個(gè)謎團(tuán)延續(xù)已久：美國(guó)帶領(lǐng)西方在冷戰(zhàn)中書(shū)寫(xiě)了民族國(guó)家史上最大的戰(zhàn)略勝利，并在世界大部分地區(qū)成功樹(shù)立民主制度，為何卻在最近15年左右的時(shí)間里，成為一個(gè)在公共政策領(lǐng)域愚蠢之極的國(guó)家？美國(guó)設(shè)計(jì)的自殺性政策，令它的敵人望塵莫及：將5000萬(wàn)就業(yè)崗位外包，而又吸納2000萬(wàn)沒(méi)有技術(shù)能力的外國(guó)人；為了中東的“國(guó)家建設(shè)”，派美國(guó)人去流血犧牲，并且浪費(fèi)2萬(wàn)億美元；用數(shù)萬(wàn)億美元毫無(wú)價(jià)值的房地產(chǎn)支持債務(wù)荼毒世界，而這些債務(wù)還被華爾街陷入癱瘓的大佬們?cè)u(píng)為“投資級(jí)”。危及歐元區(qū)的輕率之舉，相比之下反倒顯得理智了。