Recently a friend introduced to me the quote “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” a saying that means not to throw out the good with the bad. This is something I’ve seen happening all over the place. Whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, different companies or influencers. Pretty much if you can imagine a group then they’ve likely done this. All that said, it’s part of human nature to focus and remember the negative events in life rather than the positive. That is what this article aims to help correct. After all, if we never acknowledge any of the good in America, then how can we at the same time claim to want to save it? If something has completely lost its virtue, then where lies the desire to fix it? That is what I am here to do, show that America, though flawed, and engulfed in a global pandemic, is still a beacon of hope, one that’s influence should not be abandoned lightly.
Take the crime rate for example, despite the fact that there is more crime now than say a century ago, the amount of violent crime per person has actually dropped significantly. In the last 30 years, the rate of crime has dropped by 331.1 or in other words in 1990, it was 729.6 per hundred thousand and in 2020 it was 398.5 per hundred thousand. It is true that some years jumped upwards, but when considering things like this, it’s important to note how it gradually dropped down to where it is today.
Moreover, this isn’t the only thing that has dramatically improved in the USA, take the poverty rate as an example. While the pandemic has certainly given the world a hit to its economy, we can’t forget that 2019 had the lowest poverty rate on record. And even with the pandemic, the estimated poverty rate is far lower than it was when the records first began being kept.
With all this to consider, it’s important to acknowledge both the good and the bad of the world, otherwise, we’ll simply be left letting evil simmer and stir with the good, or we’ll be throwing babies out with the bathwater.
