The author smartly situates America's political challenges within the economic realities of Chinese and Russian developments, and also smartly reminds Americans to "walk the walk" values-wise, but he neglects to make the case for why the American value proposition is in fact competitive with the Russian and Chinese story lines. Various comments on the Guardian site chide him for being a rich white guy who doesn't acknowledge the poor and disenfranchised of the West. I think the piece is a good one as far as it goes, though Porter perhaps underestimates how non-obvious are the benefits of a liberal "democracy plus capitalism" to a vast and increasing population of quasi educated readers who get their info from the Internet. The West - not only the US - must do more to share the the empowering message of our ideology while overtly acknowledging that our political and economic elites do not do enough to ensure that those who need help in our societies get the support they need.