Nerdshit

If the country doesn’t change course fast, say goodbye to its scientific, technological and economic supremacy.

For a long time, Canadians have defined themselves as a negative: Not American. It’s a symptom of living in a pacifist middle-power with a weak national identity that borders on a cultural and military behemoth full of flag-waving patriots. Long before globalization became a buzzword, we drove American cars, wore American clothes, watched American movies and TV, worked for American companies and followed American sports. Canada has long been sort of America Lite. Even our football has one less down.

Better Humans

But over the past decade or so, and particularly the past four years, things have been changing dramatically. Canada, with its secular and liberal society, has watched its large neighbor turn inwards, find God and institute regressive policy after regressive policy while struggling to keep the world in line. Meanwhile, Canadians have begun defining themselves by the things that make this country great, such as multiculturalism and tolerance, while working towards progressive policies, such as legalized same-sex marriage and the decriminalization of marijuana. We’re going in opposite directions.

It’s with this newfound perspective that I see America after George W. Bush’s recent reelection. While there is much to admire about the country, and it certainly has greatness left, America is moving away from the rest of the free world on social and political issues that define life in the 21st century. This movement is causing the decline of scientific and technological innovation, and Bush in the pilot’s seat for the next four years threatens to hasten its decent.

Farewell creative class

According to economist Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, America owes its economic strength to one factor: Its openness to new ideas. This, says Florida, writing recently in Harvard Business Review, has allowed the country to attract the brightest people in the world and put their creative energies to use.

Florida?creator of the Gay Index, showing that cities most tolerant of homosexuality have the most high-tech industries?has created a “Global Creative-Class Index” to measure creative capital. The US doesn’t even rank in the top 10 for the percentage of workers in creative jobs. At number 11, it is now, says Florida, on the verge of losing the competitive edge of creativity.

The cause? According to Florida, it’s largely tighter borders restricting the entry of students and scientists and the subjection of federal research funding to ideological and religious tests. Meanwhile, countries such as Canada, Ireland and Australia are investing in research and development and higher education to attract the most creative minds.

Florida shows that there have been large drops in foreign-student applications to US universities and visas issued to knowledge workers, along with increased immigration to other countries. Tellingly, in three years, admission of foreign students to US universities has dropped 32% while international student enrollment elsewhere is increasing?it was up 15% in Canada from 2002 to 2003. Since, according to Florida’s theory, economic growth follows creativity, all this doesn’t bode well for America’s future.

Hello economic ruin

I submit that the current regime in the US will only make the problem worse. Besides overseeing an era of massive unemployment, unilateral military action against his country’s wishes and bankruptcy-inducing budgetary deficits, George W. Bush has been responsible for religiously influenced policy decisions, scientific politicization and attacks on civil liberties. With his reelection, Bush earned “political capital,” which he has explicitly planned to spend ripping the liberal from America’s liberal democracy. The world’s emigrants, including Americans, have responded by choosing other countries over the US, leading to a brain drain without an influx of replacement talent.

So it seems inevitable that America’s creativity decline will continue, at least for the next four years, and if Florida’s right?if economic growth follows creative talent?then it will seriously diminish America’s economic might. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that manufacturing jobs are going to overseas workers and robots, leaving the US with a growing unemployment problem and diminishing prospects of developing the next big job-creating thing.

All of this prompts speculation: Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the American empire? For so long, we’ve acted as though it were a permanent fixture of our Universe, as enduring as gravity. It’s hard for me to conceive of a world without it, and I imagine it’s the same for everyone else so affected by its presence?which is, pretty much, everyone on Earth. But increasing American xenophobia, conservatism and unilateralism combined with the rise of an explicitly multicultural European Union and the increasing liberalization of the rest of the free world suggest it is so.

Americans had an opportunity to change course, to send Bush and the world a message that his actions and opinions do not reflect those of the American people. Yet instead, hopes of America returning to former glory are sinking faster than the US greenback.