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.
有一個謎團延續已久：美國帶領西方在冷戰中書寫了民族國家史上最大的戰略勝利，并在世界大部分地區成功樹立民主制度，為何卻在最近15年左右的時間里，成為一個在公共政策領域愚蠢之極的國家？美國設計的自殺性政策，令它的敵人望塵莫及：將5000萬就業崗位外包，而又吸納2000萬沒有技術能力的外國人；為了中東的“國家建設”，派美國人去流血犧牲，并且浪費2萬億美元；用數萬億美元毫無價值的房地產支持債務荼毒世界，而這些債務還被華爾街陷入癱瘓的大佬們評為“投資級”。危及歐元區的輕率之舉，相比之下反倒顯得理智了。