The red, white and blue are proud and noble people, but is that justified? With our continually declining academic, political, environmental and military standards, what do we as Americans really have to be proud of anymore? There is almost no fact to claim that we are the greatest country in the world.

Americans are known for many things, specifically their freedom. The USA likes to boast about being the land of the free where everyone is created equal, however, they only rank at number 10 for the most economically free countries. America is still behind on many key personal freedom issues; the legalization of marijuana, or marriage equality has been passed in many other nations like Canada, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Norway. Is love and marriage not a human right? The U.S. is lacking in these areas because we are not the most free.

Claiming in the constitution that everyone is created equal is obvious to most, but if that is so, why do women still make 77 cents to the man’s dollar?  Why do white men make an average of $12,000 a year more on average than black men? It seems America is still struggling with basic equality, according to the Washington Post.

Education is a huge problem in the United States; the U.S. is 60 in education expenditures which in laymen’s terms means the amount of GDP spent on education, which is only a measly 5.4 percent. The U.S is 7 in literacy, 27 in math, 22 in science, according to CIA.org, and these numbers are no where near number 1.You may be asking yourself, whether the U.S is the first at something?

The U.S leads the world in three categories, number of incarcerated citizens per capita, the number of religious adults and defense spending. Defense spending is important right? Wrong. The U.S. spends more than the next 26 countries behind them combined and 25 of those countries are allies of the United States. These are not exactly categories that are vital to striving as a nation.

The biggest problem with this is that America has all of the potential to be the greatest country in the world. Since World War II, America has had the biggest growing economy as well as the room for the biggest cultural advancements in the world, so what happened?

During the civil rights movement, America was divided because of differing views. After Vietnam, America was almost entirely split up. This caused obvious repercussions. After all of this fighting and disagreeing, America’s golden days were over.

This is not the end for the United States of America though; America has many resources and is doing a lot of things right like slowly helping fix social issues. With a strong leader, America could return to its former glory and become the greatest country in the world.