The surest indicator of a great nation is represented not by the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists, but by the general welfare of its people.

Essay topics:

The surest indicator of a great nation is represented not by the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists, but by the general welfare of its people.

The statement that the surest indicator for a nation’s greatness is the general welfare of its people and not the achievements of its artists, scientists or rulers is problematic in two aspects. First, it doesn’t define what ‘general welfare’ is. Second, it assumes that the individual achievements have little to do with ‘general welfare’ – when, in fact, they have everything to do with it.

At a first blush, the statement may seem to have some considerable merit. The overriding imperative, after all, in any democratic state is to enhance the general welfare of its citizenry. Still the argument fails to provide a clear litmus test to measure that. When someone talks about promoting ‘general welfare’, the following aims come to the mind: public safety and health, individual autonomy and freedom, security against military invasion, and the overall comfort – that is, a high standard of living. Curiously, it is a nation’s scientists, artists and political leaders (or so-called ‘rulers’) who through their achievements bring these aims to fruition. Hence, to evaluate a nation’s greatness, one must examine the contribution of individual achievements promoting the above listed aims.

Few would disagree that many scientific achievements promote general welfare of people. Advances in health sciences have enhanced the physical well being, life-span and the comfort of the citizens. Technological advancements have enabled people to travel to more and more distant places with greater speed and accuracy; made the abodes and other buildings safer; to connect with people from all walks of life; to learn about the world from a desktop and so on. Artistic achievements are also crucial for a healthy psychological well-being of a nation. Advances in arts provide inspirations, lifts spirits, incites creativity and imagination spurring people onto greater individual accomplishments. Yet the achievements of scientists and artists, in integral, do not suffice for a nation’s general welfare. In order to survive, let alone be great, a nation must be able to defend its borders and live peacefully with other countries. Military and diplomatic achievements of political leaders, thus, provide an integral contribution to the welfare of their citizens.

Despite the evidence that achievements of the sorts listed above, in aggregate, promote the general of people, one must not hastily assume that individual achievements are enough for a nation to be great. Once having secured safety and security of the citizens, political leaders must not exploit or oppress them. People should also embrace and learn to appreciate artistic achievements. They must also learn to use, rather misuse or abuse technological advancements. Of particular concern are the many ways in which scientific and technological achievements have diminished the quality of people and hence, impeded the ‘general welfare’. It is though ‘scientific achievements’ that chemicals have penetrated into food, water and air, thereby increasing the variety and incidences of cancer; that the existence of homo sapiens is jeopardized by the threat of nuclear warfare; that the green house gases which are depleting ozone layer and heating the earth’s atmosphere have threatened the civilization itself and so on.

Therefore, in the attempt to assert that general welfare of people – not the achievements of scientists, artists or rules – makes a nation great, the author misses the point that general welfare itself is the end product of those individual achievements. Besides, the benefits of the achievements of the scientists, artists and political leaders are not confined to a particular nation. People around the world tend to benefit from them. Accordingly, these achievements help the whole world, not just a nation, to grow into its greatness.

Votes
Average: 6.6 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 189, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Still,
...e the general welfare of its citizenry. Still the argument fails to provide a clear l...
^^^^^
Line 17, column 540, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...t a nation, to grow into its greatness.
^^^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, besides, but, first, hence, if, may, second, so, still, therefore, thus, well, after all, in fact

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.5258426966 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.4196629213 64% => OK
Conjunction : 29.0 14.8657303371 195% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 11.3162921348 150% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 33.0505617978 100% => OK
Preposition: 82.0 58.6224719101 140% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 12.9106741573 85% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3347.0 2235.4752809 150% => OK
No of words: 593.0 442.535393258 134% => OK
Chars per words: 5.64418212479 5.05705443957 112% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.93473315629 4.55969084622 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.26989407875 2.79657885939 117% => OK
Unique words: 296.0 215.323595506 137% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.49915682968 0.4932671777 101% => OK
syllable_count: 1047.6 704.065955056 149% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59117977528 113% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 6.24550561798 160% => OK
Article: 8.0 4.99550561798 160% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 3.10617977528 64% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.77640449438 113% => OK
Preposition: 14.0 4.38483146067 319% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 20.2370786517 133% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 23.0359550562 91% => OK
Sentence length SD: 76.9737453681 60.3974514979 127% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.962962963 118.986275619 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.962962963 23.4991977007 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.2962962963 5.21951772744 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 7.80617977528 26% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 10.2758426966 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 5.13820224719 78% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.83258426966 166% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.303003481659 0.243740707755 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0907847133592 0.0831039109588 109% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.108232851777 0.0758088955206 143% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.199546000712 0.150359130593 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0786367568357 0.0667264976115 118% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.1 14.1392134831 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 33.24 48.8420337079 68% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.92365168539 141% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.1743820225 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.43 12.1639044944 127% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.99 8.38706741573 107% => OK
difficult_words: 162.0 100.480337079 161% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 11.8971910112 92% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.2143820225 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.7820224719 93% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.