The Fund for Peace provides a diverting assessment of national sustainability. No, not sustainability as in how much organic granola they consume (wait, isn't all granola carbon-based?) The 2010 Failed States Index ranks nations for political stability.
The usual suspects make the "top" of the list: Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe. Not to be a pessimist, but after years of U.S. military intervention, Afghanistan and Iraq rank 6th and 7th, just slightly worse off politically than Haiti at 11th.
The U.S. isn't doing too badly... although "not too bad" shouldn't be good enough for devotees of exceptionalism. We rank 158th out of 177 nations scored—that's 20th least failed, or 20th most stable. Here's how we rank on each category measured by the Failed States Index (and I'll flip the numbers here, so smaller numbers mean more stability):
Social Indicators
- I-1. Mounting Demographic Pressures: 14th
- I-2. Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally Displaced Persons creating Complex Humanitarian Emergencies: 43rd
- I-3. Legacy of Vengeance-Seeking Group Grievance or Group Paranoia: 18th
- I-4. Chronic and Sustained Human Flight: 1st! (folks just don't bail on America!)
Economic Indicators
- I-5. Uneven Economic Development along Group Lines: 37th
- I-6. Sharp and/or Severe Economic Decline: 23rd
Political Indicators
- I-7. Criminalization and/or Delegitimization of the State: 21st
- I-8. Progressive Deterioration of Public Services: 22nd
- I-9. Suspension or Arbitrary Application of the Rule of Law and Widespread Violation of Human Rights: 37th (particularly embarrassing for the home of the Bill of Rights)
- I-10. Security Apparatus Operates as a "State Within a State": 16th
- I-11. Rise of Factionalized Elites: 29th (Koch brothers are hurting this score)
- I-12. Intervention of Other States or External Political Actors: 5th
The most stable nations in the world: Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Our gentle socialist Canadian neighbors tie for 11th with the pot-smoking Dutch.
Try this in your granola, bro: The United States of North America should buy Greenland (it is gray on the map), the wholly-owned subsidiary of Denmark.
It was announced that nine countries acknowledge the pending death of religion at a recent meeting of the American Physical Society in Dallas. The article in appeared in BBC News:
"The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction."
Note this fascinating correlation with your post.
Six in the top ten, eight in the top 12... I'd love to see numbers in that model for all countries....
In my opinion, all organized religions constitute cults.
I'm always leery of correlations, especially eyeball correlations. Someone find me stats on levels of organized religion by nations and I'll run it through Polystat against this failed state ranking. But taking the top slices of two statistical runs and going, "huh, what a coincidence" is probably just that... coincidence. Using "correlation" requires a much higher threshold of scrutiny.
The LDS sect is so much more than a cult, Stan; it is a cradle to grave social contract generating billions in white political clout. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmunds%E2%80%93Tucker_Act