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.
有一个谜团延续已久：美国带领西方在冷战中书写了民族国家史上最大的战略胜利，并在世界大部分地区成功树立民主制度，为何却在最近15年左右的时间里，成为一个在公共政策领域愚蠢之极的国家？美国设计的自杀性政策，令它的敌人望尘莫及：将5000万就业岗位外包，而又吸纳2000万没有技术能力的外国人；为了中东的“国家建设”，派美国人去流血牺牲，并且浪费2万亿美元；用数万亿美元毫无价值的房地产支持债务荼毒世界，而这些债务还被华尔街陷入瘫痪的大佬们评为“投资级”。危及欧元区的轻率之举，相比之下反倒显得理智了。