This Noble Land Read Free

fluctuations in currency.
    But I am not so sure that the nation as a whole suffers too much from these fluctuations. I have watched explosive inflation in Germany and Brazil, and in a more limited sense in Japan, where I used to get 640 yen to one dollar, while now the rate is less than 100 to one. Nations, which coin and distribute their own money, can absorb such fluctuations, and I have begun to think that a sovereign nation cannot go bankrupt. The land is still there, so also are the people and the industries, and Japan and Germany have proved to the world that a nation can suffer brutal inflation and come roaring back much stronger than it was before. It is quite possible that the same might happen in America within twenty or thirty years.
    But, of course, when such inflation strikes, it is the middle class of the population that suffers the most, and the lower and upper classes seem to survive with minimal damage. Since I am a member of the middle class, I shy away from those nations that cannot guarantee the stability of their currency.
    3. Does the nation have a political system that ensures peaceful transitions of power from liberal to conservative and vice versa?
    One of the glories of American and British government is the orderly way in which such transfers of power occur. In the United States we have an election on a Tuesday and by eleven o’clock that night the entire nation knows and accepts the fact that a new political power is now in charge. In nations like Italy and Israel,with their proliferation of fragmented political parties, sometimes no one knows who won an election for the two or three weeks required to sort out the electoral mess.
    A concerned friend in Israel told me: ‘We hold the election today and count the votes, without any conclusive result. So the real election begins tomorrow when the multiple various parties jockey for position. More often than you might think, some fringe fanatical party that won only three seats is able to dictate which of the major parties will take over, and then the entire nation is held at the mercy of those three votes. For God’s sake, Mr. Michener, never allow proportional representation to gain a foothold in your country. That way lies disaster.’
    From watching many such elections in Europe, I have grown to deplore proportional representation and the nurturing of marginal parties. They lead to indecision, make clear-cut programs practically impossible, and prevent society from initiating a bold change in direction under a clear winner who has been given a mandate to govern. The volatile nature of third-party movements like the Ross Perot phenomenon of 1992 makes us susceptible to the worst abuses of pluralism and proportionalism.
    I appreciate the system in New Zealand, where liberals and conservatives alternate with surprising frequency. At the start of any campaign in which one party is likely to oust the other, this is one of the first pledges made and honored: ‘We will preserve every good law our opponents have passed. What we’ll do is administer them more effectively.’ And power changes hands amicably, the hallmark of an effective political system.
    I am aware that frequently in American history the brilliant philosophers of some third party have championed sensible improvements in government, improvements that the two major parties have been wise enough to appropriate. Opening the eyes and hearts of the major parties might be the acceptable role ofthe third party. I can live with such a system, provided that the third party is not awarded an assured portion of the electoral vote.
    4. Does the nation provide its citizens, especially the young, with adequate health services?
    The events in the United States in recent years have shown how volatile this issue is and how far we are from a reasonable solution (I shall discuss this essential factor more fully later). In the meantime we are the world’s only major nation without a health system that