The quoted material from US News & World Report’s ranking of states in the Feb. 9 editorial characterized the whole United States as “a nation whose economy was founded on slavery.” Never mind the fur-trapping and trading regions of the Lewis and Clark Trail, the shipping centers, fishing villages, yeomen farmers, and mills of the northeast.

USNWR lectures about racial and gender disparity as if we were making no progress in these areas. Such hyperbole reflects a worldview unfortunately infecting too many. It sees America conceived in original sin from which there is no salvation. It implies that the free-market U.S. system, because of its origin, can never be right and therefore should be replaced — with what, socialism?

Self-hating Americans pushing these views delight in vilifying the southern states to ease their own pangs of guilt. USNWR consistently ranks highest those states with the most heterogeneous populations, and downgrade the states with the most mixed populations, especially the deep south. For 2017 their No. 1 was Massachusetts who somehow didn’t make the top five for 2018. Their five “best” states now are arguably the “whitest”: Iowa, Utah, Minnesota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire.

We may be able to learn from the way such states do things, but we cannot become them, nor should we want to. Louisiana has issues corresponding to the seven categories USNWR weighs: health care, education, crime and corrections, infrastructure, opportunity, economy, and government. But by and large we in Louisiana have become an inclusive people who love each other across the board and are dedicated to the improvement of our home. As for quality of life, a great many Louisiana residents of all descriptions would dispute the notion that Louisiana is not a great place and culture in which to live and rear children.

Various publications put out these kinds of rankings every year, and their results are all over the place. If such finger-wagging screeds are meant to win hearts and inspire improvement, they are using the wrong approach. If they are only meant to put us down, they are doing just fine.

King Alexander

Lake Charles