@Bob Long, @swanny swan & co: You may want to leave the echo-chamber you are in. The US, as reported by the US, is 121st in maternal deaths and 174th in child birth rates. ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html ) The CIA uses their own reporting services and uses the same standards the world over (and yes, I do trust the CIA on this more than some random pro-US guy on the Internet). I also happen to know that cancer survival rates in the US are measured at 5 years, not 10 years like in Europe, artificially inflating your numbers. It's hard to keep up with Europe when in the US you need a 6-figure income to treat cancer for any length of time. Since most of your population can't afford insurance, they just die of cancer, no matter how good your health care would have been had they been able to afford it.

As to education, the numbers are based on the same international test done to participating schools, so you have nothing to boast about - you are at about Turkey's level, last I checked, and well below world leaders. And that is not even taking into account your broad swab of home-schooled and bible-schooled population who skips science and biology subjects because they disagree with their religion.

Finally, I have to say that a country that can't even manage to have electricity in its own capital city shouldn't be boasting about how great they are.

Grey Wolf

Oh, and I should add: "religious liberty" is not that great in the US if you are not a main line protestant christian. Muslims are not having an easy time exercising their right to freedom of religion. Neither are those religions that believe that gays are perfectly fine people and that God is fine with them marrying (several of the more liberal christian protestant sects would love to marry gays, but aren't allowed... so much for freedom of religion in the US, right there).

Grey Wolf

TimC: Again, I ask you: how is the US the greatest country. Now. As in, today. You answered with a history lesson on how late Norway came to the party. Irrelevant. I do not doubt that the US was the greatest country by a number of objective and subjective measures 100 years ago, or 60 years ago. But since then you as a country have slept on your laurels, and the world has passed you by while your politicians scared you into removing many of your liberties. For example: the police can tap your phone, and your car without a judicial order. You submit yourself to intrusive searches at public places that are uncalled for and useless. Your teachers are allowed to teach religion instead of science in public schools. Etc.

supagold: No, I am not from an anglophone country. Again, just because the US education is so poor that few of you can speak fluently a second language (and vanishingly few a third) that doesn't mean the rest of the world can't, either. This kind of assumption shows just how far up on your high horse you US people are.

Tim C: You are not the only country with freedom of expression or grand ideals in their constitution. Given how far you have fallen from those ideals (personal liberties being my personal favourite), I fail to see how either of those in any way bolster your case that Amierica is better than, say, Norway where they have the exact same ideals and are much better when measured against them.

Grey Wolf

Bah, nowhere near as impressive a deduction as what Andrew Sullivan readers weekly manage to do.