At the close of the American Century, is America still number one?

That question was asked in an ABC News Special Report. Among the commentators featured was the Cato Institute's Tom Palmer.

Palmer, director of the Project on Civil Society at the Cato Institute and head of Cato University, the Cato Institute's educational program on libertarian thought, appeared in "Is America Number 1?" The program, hosted by ABC's John Stossel, examined what makes the United States different from the rest of the world. The report aired Sunday, September 19, from 9:00 - 10:00 p.m. ET. A transcript of the program is available online.

What accounts for the American success story? Surely it is the relative openness of the American economic, social, and political systems, in which new ideas and approaches can be tried out. The freedom to try new approaches implies the ability to succeed or to fail. A very revealing look at the importance of the freedom to fail is found in the book Failure and Progress: The Bright Side of the Dismal Science, by economists Dwight R. Lee and Richard B. McKenzie. It should come as no surprise that many of America’s greatest success stories have involved immigrants, who bring to the country new ideas and approaches, as demonstrated by Julian Simon in Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts and described by Stephen Moore in his short commentary, Americanizing the New Americans. Openness to the importation of goods is also important to the success of an economic and social system, as various authors demonstrate in Freedom to Trade: Refuting the New Protectionism, edited by Edward L. Hudgins, Cato’s director of regulatory studies. You can see how America compares to other countries in terms of an open economic system in Economic Freedom of the World: 1975-1995 by James D. Gwartney, Robert A. Lawson, and Walter E. Block. Not only do dynamic economies and social systems rest on a foundation of freedom and openness, but so too does the very enterprise of science, an enterprise that is under siege, as scientists Steven Milloy and Michael Gough make clear in Silencing Science. And mathematician Guy Calvert, in his study of gambling regulation Gambling America: Balancing the Risks of Gambling and Its Regulation, notes that risk taking and the taste for gambling may be part of what makes human society progressive, entrepreneurial, and dynamic, and that attempts to eliminate risk taking behavior may be futile.

But having an open society does not mean that everything is always up for grabs. In fact, what makes possible such an open and dynamic society is an underlying stable system of constitutionally limited government and the rule of law. The relationship of an open civil society to limited government is described by Cato president Ed Crane in Defending Civil Society and by Roger Pilon, director of Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies, in The Purpose and Limits of Government. Of course, one can always consult directly the founding documents of the American experiment in individual liberty and limited government, by means of Cato’s convenient pocket edition of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. (A short commentary on the significance of the Declaration of Independence to America today is provided by Edward L. Hudgins in Picnics and Politics: Celebrating the Fourth.) The historical background to the American heritage of limited government is described by Cato’s Tom G. Palmer in his essay from the Cato Handbook for Congress, Limited Government and the Rule of Law. The philosophy behind this view of the relationship between government and society is described by Cato executive president David Boaz in his book Libertarianism: A Primer.

Special for High School Students: Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics, a hilarious and deeply insightful book by Rolling Stone writer and Cato Institute H. L. Mencken Research Fellow P. J. O'Rourke, shows why some countries prosper and others languish in poverty. For high school students only, the Cato Institute has published and distributes at no charge a special abridged student edition. Others should contact their local bookstores or visit Laissez Faire Books. As Forbes magazine noted, "Adam Smith-like perceptiveness combined with a wicked wit makes for delightful, insightful reading . . .This book lets you laugh and learn at the same time."


| Cato Institute Home |