America seems like a second rate power

This column appeared in USA Today. It would be easy to dismiss this guy, but he's no liberal (read, "anti-American") whiner - he runs a business magazine. Provocative stuff. Below is just an excerpt.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/10/from-afar-ameri.html

Hints of our diminished state can be seen in our paranoia, our swooning U.S. dollar and our untidy airports.

From afar, America resembles a 2nd-rate power
By Alan M. Webber

A not-so-funny thing happened last month while I was on a business trip to Austria and Sweden: My country started to resemble a second-rate power. I saw it in three different places — at an international conference at the Benedictine Abbey at Melk in Austria, at a quiet public square in Stockholm and at the Los Angeles International Airport, when I got home.

At the Austria gathering, the Waldzell Institute held its annual meeting aimed at the spiritual development of society. The theme on the stage with the Dalai Lama was legacy, but the conversation among participants during breaks turned to America. The questions came not as accusations, but as laments: "What's the matter with your country?"

The Europeans who come to this conference are worldly people who track what's happening globally with an impartial eye. To them, China's growth and dynamism is the most compelling story of the 21st century. "Dynamism" was the sort of word people once used when talking about the United States. Now, they watch us like rubberneckers driving past a car wreck. "You used to be such a great country," they say. "Not even a country. What happened to the great idea that once defined America?"