Like most Americans, you probably didn’t notice or care that the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team was trounced by Mexico 5-0 in the finals of the CONCACAF Gold Cup at Giants Stadium Sunday afternoon. Though you proudly claim to be a globalist in perspective, this insulting defeat probably affects you less than, say, the death of pop star loon Michael Jackson.

But soccer is not just a game. It is THE game that every nation plays and seeks to dominate. And for this reason, it has profound policy implications.

As the Obama administration steers the U.S. back onto a multilateral footing, and as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton shores up relations with emerging market allies given short shrift during the Iraq obsession of the last eight years, it behooves those of us who signed onto this new agenda to also look beyond our own parochial pursuits.

Because if America is to re-emerge from its 30-year decline – the implosion of former Dow Jones giant, GM, perfectly parallels the wider national slide in intelligence, ingenuity, and cultural literacy – a majority of its citizens must become a lot smarter, self-sufficient, and worldly.

This starts, for me, with something very simple for every American to grasp: soccer. If we could, for a moment, turn our attention away from home-grown entertainments, such as baseball, football, NASCAR, or mind-numbing Hollywood gossip, the latest missing white teen hoo-ha, or “American Idol” idiocy, and focus, instead, on this graceful, surprisingly subtle world game, we might get the ball rolling on other fronts.

As I have found, once one opens the mind to soccer, one seeks to learn of other nations’ players. This, by turn, engenders an appreciation of other nations' mores, culture, and, for the extra curious, language, government, and history. My goal is not to turn Americans into soccer geeks, though anything that improves America’s woeful attendance at world soccer matches would be an improvement, but, instead, to get each of us to stop lazily putting American pop culture, politics, and sports at the forefront of our thoughts, media, and daily discourse (that is, in that minority of time when we aren’t thinking of our vainglorious selves).

Sadly, the U.S. Soccer Federation is not helping this noble effort. Instead, it tackled at the knees the recent upsurge in U.S. soccer mania following our world-shocking upset of top-ranked Spain in the Confederations Cup held earlier this summer in South Africa. Instead of fostering continuity in performance and fan support, the U.S. Soccer Federation allowed U.S. Coach Bradley to dismiss all the stars from that historic Confederations Cup performance, so that second tier American players could get a chance to play on the world stage. Thus, throughout this year’s Gold Cup, which determines the best team of the Caribbean, Central America, and North America (with three small South American nation states thrown into the mix), we fielded a second rate squad.

Consequently, yesterday when were demolished by the joyfully creative and swift “futbol” players of our corrupt, drug-smuggling, human trafficking, if otherwise lovable, neighbor to our south, it took the image of U.S. soccer down several notches. But it didn’t need to be this way. We could have put U.S. soccer stars like Landon Donovan, Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, and Jozy Altidore on the field, but we didn’t try. We could have negotiated an agreement with these players’ professional teams, but we didn’t bother. Why? Because the goal wasn’t excellence or winning. The goal was giving everyone a chance.

A few years back, the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team consistently lost in international competitions, until the U.S. woke up and recruited, properly trained, and negotiated the rights to American NBA stars. It took these spoiled American players awhile to figure out the nuances of the international game, and that being a big hulking dunk machine was an insufficient skill set at the world level (you actually had to know how to hit a jump shot and pass the ball). But when our players did figure the game out, and swallowed their egos, and played as a team, they won.

That sort of tenacity and teamwork was the hallmark of the U.S. National Soccer team’s surprising result in South Africa. Like many Americans, I looked forward to the USA building on their signature style of play when it came to the Gold Cup. But the U.S. Soccer Federation didn’t get the memo that national team games matter, especially when you are trying to build a fan base for the sport. In fact, in the decades-long effort to grow the popularity of soccer in America, these international matches matter far more than games in the MLS (Major League Soccer), whose quality of play pales by comparison. Besides, MLS features players from all over the world. Only in games against other nations do we get to see the true quality of U.S. soccer. And only when U.S. players are exclusively playing can we exhibit that uniquely American grit, courage, and competitive zeal that has served us so well in every other sport.

I trace the failure of the U.S. Soccer Federation to seize this point to a broader thought pattern in American culture at large: “good enough” is indeed good enough. The prevailing credo in our country is this: not only don’t we need to put our best effort forward every time we step on a playing field, but neither do we need to show the same commitment every day we show up for work, for school, for our kids and spouses.

You can witness this prevailing perspective in the NBA (where many players don’t put in full-throttled effort until the fourth quarter), in Major League Baseball (where many players try to get an advantage not by working harder, but through performance enhancing drugs). You see this in all areas of American commerce. Has the quality of the customer service you receive at FedEx, on your commuter train, on the subway, on the bus, at the DMV, at hospitals, from phone companies, cable companies, insurance companies, car companies, the airlines, the folks who frisk you at the airport, gone up or down over the last thirty years? I know the answer. You know the answer.

Are most service personnel at chain bookstores, whole foods supermarkets, at K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target, and other retail outlets even remotely knowledgeable about the products they sell? The answer is too obvious to mention. It’s not just that many service personnel are ignorant, they are not even CURIOUS to be knowledgeable. Many don’t care to know what they don’t know unless forced to do so. While there is a desire to punch the clock, and exit the workplace as soon as possible, there is a palpable lack of desire to be the best.

More and more we are satisfied with the sizzle, not the steak, camaraderie in the workplace, not quality; how an employee feels, instead of how an employee performs. Yes, there are exceptions. There are a few American companies that consistently deliver a stellar product or service right down to the granular level of detail at a reasonable price. I will review these stalwarts of excellence at another time. But these companies are the exception, not the rule. As a rule on the American playing field – from education to business to governance – a feel-good mediocrity triumphs.

And there is a clear reason for this: We Are Spoiled. Not spoiled by the so-called “greatest generation,” who were, as a group, grossly incurious on a range of social issues. We’ve been spoiled because, until now, the rest of the world, even with our large number of culturally and scientifically illiterate citizens, posed no threat to our economic dominance. They allowed us to coast because they were either structurally un-prepared to compete (Asia) or had built a nanny state so huge and pernicious that they stifled almost all desire to compete (Europe).

But when the Japanese started to make more durable, fuel-efficient automobiles than American companies in the 1970s, this should have been a wakeup call. But it wasn’t. When the OPEC Oil Embargo hit our nation in 1973, we should have immediately launched a man-on-the-moon effort to free ourselves from foreign energy dependence. But we didn’t. When India and China started producing better trained engineers willing to work longer, harder, and at lower wages, and when U.S. companies started exporting software and programming jobs to these countries, we should have been stirred to action. But we weren’t. And now that emerging market countries are proving more resilient to the downturn than our own, we should be triply alarmed by the gargantuan size of our deficit, and increasing depreciation in our currency. But, of course, we aren’t.

We are so high on the hog, with such a capacious national tolerance for mediocrity, sloppiness, and error, and such largesse of capital and natural resources, it may take us awhile to face the discordant music. Unfortunately, when we finally do, it will be too late.

Do you think for a moment that there will not be repercussions for our stratospheric high school dropout rate? Should not the parents of these failures bear some of the blame for this result? Should not the students themselves bear some of the blame too?

I’ve taught and coached in the South Bronx, where over 60% of men do not graduate high school. Let me tell you from direct experience: this embarrassing result is not because of a shortage of concern, good teachers, strong principals, quality facilities, or because of poverty, race, or single parent households. It’s because of a lack of desire. The sons and daughters of Chinese and Indian immigrants living in nearby Queens, who arrived in this country as disadvantaged as their South Bronx counterparts, facing hurdles of culture, discrimination, and language, manage to move into the top echelons of grade school, high school and university. Why the huge disparity between students in the South Bronx and the equally challenged immigrant children in Queens? Desire. Because the Queens' parents and children universally and passionately desire academic excellence, that excellence becomes their reality.

For those young men who willfully overcome the anti-intellectual hostility proffered by many of their South Bronx schoolmates, excellence becomes their reality too. Unfortunately, in this country we seek, first and foremost, to reach all kids, whether they desire to learn or not, instead of rescuing, challenging, and rewarding those who show hunger, ambition and potential; thereby raising the bar to their level instead of lowering the bar to the least ambitious of their peers.

This country’s fierce egalitarianism does a disservice to the hard-working elite, which generates most of the country’s excellence and honor. I know. I built from scratch a hugely successful debate program at the Eagle Academy for Young Men in the South Bronx. It was a small school. Less than 400 students in total. Yet every year I got 50 kids to try out for the debate team. But I never required anyone to stay. Only those who wanted to work, who wanted to be great, stayed. The rest were free to leave. The hardest working of the eight or so who remained committed enjoyed enormous rewards. One of my students received a four-year $140,000 scholarship to Brandeis University because of his debate prowess.

But the funding for the Eagle debate team, which reached the semifinals of the New York state debate championship in only its second year (beating teams from elite schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science along the way) dried up after the second year because the school’s after-school funders mandated that a disproportionately huge and unsustainable number of students be served, regardless of desire or ability. The onus was put on me to dumb down the curriculum in order to rally kids who clearly did not want to be there, instead of an expectation being put on the kids to be the very best they could possibly be. To not just graduate high school and go on to some kind of college, but to graduate with the highest possible honors and attend the very best possible college, and to participate in demanding extracurriculars that furthered their educational dreams.

As with our low standards in education and educational extracurriculars, do you not also think there will be serious consequences for our lack of bold action on the debilitating problem of illegal immigration? Do you honestly think we can continue to fund health care for the millions of American who are obese (accounting for 9.1% of health care costs), who engage in drug and alcohol abuse, who smoke, who refuse to exercise and eat even remotely right? Can we continue to enable overcompensating knuckleheads to buy Hummers, use up precious water supplies to build luxury golf resorts in the desert, or wantonly drive their polluting vehicles into the congested heart of cities like New York without paying some kind of fee? Can we continue to fund the lifestyles of these laggards? The answer is no.

A nation that put a primacy on achievement, on winning, on not only patching up problems, but also providing intelligent, efficient, environmentally conscious, and low-cost solutions to problems, would not tolerate such mediocrity. A nation that had pride in its past glories would develop a health care system that rewarded healthy lifestyles with dramatically lower premiums. A nation that knew its history, and believed in excellence, would not let driven, talented, stalwarts from inner city schools slip through the cracks, nor would it countenance such an egregiously high dropout rate. Because in such a nation whoever did not fulfill the minimum standard of an educated citizen (a high school diploma) would not get a license to drive. Period. No exceptions.

Unfortunately, in the current climate of unconditional compassion proffered by Mr. Obama and his team of bleeding heart rivals, such a push for excellence is being undercut by a misguided understanding of individual rights. In a true republic, an expansion of rights is tethered to an expansion of obligations. You want a right to health care? Then you have an obligation to maintain a healthy lifestyle (measured by objective metrics), so that you are not an excessive drain on public resources. You want the lowest possible taxes? Then you must learn to do for yourself what formerly the government did for you. You want a high-paying job? Then you must proactively educate yourself for the high-paying jobs of the 21st century. You want the government to bail out your car company? Then you must produce cars that help curb our addiction to foreign oil. You want less government regulation? Then you must empirically prove that you can regulate yourself.

With rights, come obligations. But such rhetoric doesn’t get you votes with a populace increasingly at odds with an ethic of self-discipline and excellence. After all, in the 2008 election, huge numbers of new voters, including large numbers of newly enfranchised felons and ex-cons, turned out for Barack Obama. Those voters will tolerate Mr. Obama’s occasional forays into the rhetoric of self-reliance, but at the end of the day they want their president, to borrow from Cuba Gooding, Jr. in "Jerry Maguire," to “show them the money.”

As we watch the debate over health care, one sob story after another comes to the fore from Obama voters. Men and women from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, shamelessly declaim, on national TV, that big bad insurance companies, hospitals, or the U.S. government let them down at their hour of greatest need. And as we hear these sob stories, no reporter dares to probe deeply into the choices made by each member of the boo-hoo contingent. After all, high ratings are achieved by catering to, not challenging, the boo-hoos. Oprah has made herself a billionaire from preaching to the victim class.

And there’s the rub. In our rush to appease the little guy, there is no one in politics or media left to question the little guy on how he got into his fix. As with the mortgage meltdown, as with education and health care. in our attempt to be fair, just and egalitarian, we end up giving a loose rope to those who would be best served by having to swim hard to get the rope. Sadly, the party with the most ideological credibility in this regard, has been a disaster in practice.

And so I am left to rant in a vacuum in the hope that the revolution required for this country to be truly great again will start at the grassroots level, with each of us fearlessly examining our daily patterns. Ask yourself these questions. What am I doing on a daily basis to dramatically increase my critical thinking and listening skills? Am I dramatically improving the health, stamina, and performance of my body? Am I dramatically improving the quality of my air, water, and land? Am I improving the quality of my nation’s media and culture? What am I doing to understand and celebrate other cultures? As a nation, we need to ask ourselves this question: are we in it to win, or are we in it to coast, light the bong, open the Zinfandel, and zone out?

Though we have rattled our sabers for eight years, we as Americans have grown soft, myopic, and lazy. As a result, we are unable to project power. Since WWII, we have coasted by on better technology, an array of natural resources and formidable military assets. But in the post-9/11 world of asymmetrical threats (a quiet diesel sub, a high-speed suicide boat, the assassin’s mace of infinite surprise) lean, mean Islamo-fascist regimes, successful totalitarian economic models, and our increasing inability to defend a far-flung empire, true strength is found in a nation’s citizens: how smart are they, how nimble, how worldly, how ambitious, how demanding of each other, how committed to excellence in all things. As the election and reelection of the roundly mediocre George W. Bush, and the popularity of benighted Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, both prove: when citizens lack critical thinking skills, they tend to elect, and then be bamboozled by, candidates with the same low threshold of intelligence. But they can also be bamboozled by those who posses the veneer of intelligence, but who lack the fortitude to tell the public the cold hard truth.

Seen in this light, it is possible that Mr. Obama and his supporters have it all wrong. It’s not that we are not doing enough to help every American, it’s that every American has not done enough to help themselves. From Wall Street to Main Street, the operating credo for several decades has been the same: what’s in it for me? No serious thought has been given to how my choices, my lifestyle, affect the commonweal.

Instead of handing out stimulus funds like Santa Claus (armies of consultants have sprung up to help the undeserving get their share of the loot), the government should be challenging each America to push for self-improvement and self-reliance, and increase our collective knowledge of existing resources and programs geared precisely towards these ends. Government should be engaged in performance-driven metrics of what works, and what doesn’t, and who is qualified and who isn’t. Yes, there are Americans who were disabled by genetic inheritance or in the service of our country, but these cases are not the norm. The norm is for perfectly able American citizens to ask the government to bail them out of every fix, regardless of their culpability.

But it’s not the job of government to be nice, generous and empathic. It’s the job of government to challenge citizens to be their best, and to marshal public dollars in the most efficient manner possible towards a manageable set of collective aims.

It is repeatedly written that many Americans are nervous about their jobs, homes, and credit card balances. But these are symptoms of a deeper problem. As any successful person can attest, anxiety is good. But we need to re-instill an anxiety of ends, not means. Each of us needs to be anxious about whether we have vigilantly striven with every fiber of our being to be the very best we can be.

If every American woke up every morning with a fierce determination towards self-discipline, self-improvement, self-awareness, personal accountability and excellence, we would not be facing many of our current ills.

But until each of us animates our lives with such a fierce and relentless desire, we will continue our inexorable slide, as individuals, as companies, and as a nation, towards second tier status. Because the world doesn't care whether we believe in winners and losers. It's just a fact. Empires come and go. Nations rise and fall. Whether we continue to enjoy the same opulence, freedom of choice, and respect completely depends on our individual choices. Government can't save us. Only we, acting in good faith, can save ourselves.