14 Most Powerful Ideas of the Year

[Minor Axis]

14 Most Powerful Ideas of the Year- Atlantic Magazine.

No. 14 3/4- Reefer Sanity
No.14- It's Easy to Be Green.
No.13- Teachers are Fair Game.
No.12- The Rise of the Drones
No.11- Obama is No Liberal
No.10- The Triumph of Free Speech
No.9- The Catholic Church is Finished
No.8- Deficits Matter.
No.7- Information Wants To Be Paid For
No.6- The Kids Aren't All Right
No.5- Bonfires of the Knuckleheads
NO.4- The Power of No.
No.3- Boredom is Extinct
No.2- America is No.2.
No.1- The End of Men

I'm really starting to like the Atlantic. This article is thought provoking. I really like No.2- America is No.2. It all boils down to how you want to measure weath and how many in society have it. Read before you kneejerk comment. All of the short individual articles can be found on the link provided above.

America is No.2:

America is at its best when feeling confident—and when feeling challenged. From confidence comes the bearing that has most won friends for America through its century of global strength: calm-tempered, thick-skinned, slow to be riled on small matters, quick to offer others a hand. The outlook is personified in film by Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart; in diplomacy by George Marshall; and in politics, according to their respective supporters, by presidents as different as Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. From an awareness of challenge comes a determination to continually reinvent the American model and re-earn America’s prominence, rather than just coasting on its endowment, spoiled-brat style. The threat of falling behind or falling short powered the post-Sputnik race to the moon in the 1960s as well as the reinvigoration of the American tech industry in the years after Japan posed a challenge.
“We’re No. 1—and have to keep deserving it” has been both an attractive and a useful attitude for America. The current rise of “We’re No. 2” thinking threatens to be the reverse. It can highlight the resentful and self-pitying side of our character, while sapping the will to make changes that are clearly within the country’s reach.
The famous Pew poll last year, in which 44 percent of Americans said that the world’s “leading economic power” was China, said less about economic realities—hundreds of millions subsist on China’s farms, where heating and indoor plumbing are luxuries—than about America’s downcast self-image. As more people prosper around the world, power of all sorts will be more dispersed—which a Marshall, an Ike, a Reagan would view as motivation to keep trying rather than to give up.

No. 14 3/4 Reefer Sanity:

You may not have noticed, but the movement to legalize marijuana is quietly picking up steam across the country. This fall, as many as half a dozen states could consider ballot initiatives allowing medical patients, and others, to smoke pot. Voters in California, which has already legalized marijuana use for the sick, will consider a referendum legalizing it for any adult. Polls show that nearly 60 percent of Californians favor the initiative, which is cannily being sold as a way to raise tax revenues for a state crippled by a massive budget deficit. The ease with which pro-pot measures are being approved suggests that more could be on the way: medicinal marijuana has so far been legalized in 14 states and the District of Columbia.