Here's presidential candidate Ron Paul on CNN responding to a follow-up question to one of the more controversial moments from last week's debate, when Wolf Blitzer asked him if he would let a hypothetical patient without health insurance die:

"All I know is if you look at history and if you compare good medical care and you compare famine, the countries that are more socialistic have more famines," Paul told CNN's T.J. Holmes. "If you look at Africa, they don't have any free market systems and property rights and they have famines and no medical care. So the freer the system, the better the health care."

This is, to put it mildly, something of a non-sequitur. He was asked about healthcare mandates and replied with an answer about food shortages.

In any case, there's an argument to be made about the difficulty centrally planned economies have in responding to famines, but it seems pretty out of touch with the current state of affairs in East Africa. There are a lot of words to describe the political situation in famine-wracked Somalia, but socialist ain't one of them. The country hasn't had a functioning government since 1991.  

Hat tip: Chris Blattman

Indian Hindu devotees prepare to immerse an idol of the elephant-headed Hindu God Ganesh into the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad on September 11, 2011. Hindu devotees bring home and offer prayers in temporary temples built for idols of Lord Ganesha in order to invoke his blessings for wisdom and prosperity during the ten-day Ganesha Festival, culminating with the immersion of the idols in bodies of water, including the ocean.

Today's American decline story is a piece that ran recently on sister-site Slate by Eliot Spitzer on how "How the decline of American men's tennis can explain global economics." State your case, Mr. Governor:

For those of us who came of age watching Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe do battle, followed by years-long domination by Pete Sampras, something is missing at this Open, something, unfortunately, that we have gotten used to over the past several years: a legitimate American men's challenger. The field is dominated so totally by the grace of Roger Federer, the power of Rafael Nadal, and the flawless execution of Novak Djokovic, that it's easy to forget that it has been eight years since an American man-Andy Roddick at the 2003 U.S. Open-has won a Grand Slam tournament. Indeed, the only American among the top 10 men's seeds this year is No. 8 Mardy Fish. The next American man-Andy Roddick-is seeded 21^st.

I can't help but see men's tennis as a metaphor for America's long-term struggles. Twenty years ago, the U.S. was the undisputed superpower. The Berlin Wall had fallen. Our economy was the symbol of capitalism ascendant over all other ideologies. President Reagan had restored Morning in America. And the U.S. dominated the men's tennis circuit.

Twenty years ago, four American men graced the top 10: Jim Courier, Ivan Lendl (who got a green card in 1987), Sampras, and Andre Agassi. And McEnroe still survived at No. 17. In the entire '90s, American men won an amazing six U.S. Open championships and an even more amazing seven Wimbledon titles. We were at the top of our game.

So what does this mean? As a tennis player, I hope the lesson is: If we regain our stature in the tennis pantheon, our position in global affairs will return.

The piece was written before the U.S. Open, and the final results … sort of … bore out his conclusion. There were two American men in the top eight, Andy Roddick and John Isner, but both were knocked out in the quarterfinals. And of course, Serbia's Novak Djokovic went on to defeat Spain Rafael Nadal in the final.

Verdict: 2 (See yesterday's post for the scoring system.)

I was pretty skeptical of this one, thinking that Spitzer seemed to be cherry-picking data. Looking at the full world Top 100, there nine American men. That's puts the U.S. at second behind Spain -- which has 14, including two in the top 10 -- and slightly ahead of France, which has eight.

That doesn't seem so bad, until you look back to 1991 when there were 19 Americans on the top 100. As Spitzer notes, this was something of a golden age for men's tennis. But look back to 1973 -- the year the ATP rankings began -- and there were 24 American men in the top 100.

You might think, given the prominence of Serena Williams, that things are better for the USA over on the women's side. But only seven American women are currently ranked in the top 100, compared with 14 Russians.

Maybe Spitzer does have a point. The reason this doesn't get a 1 is that, unlike Olympic medals, tennis isn't a very accurate proxy for superpower competition. Spain and Serbia aren't exactly rising powers in the real world. India and China aren't really major factors in tennis yet, though there are an increasing number of Chinese players in the women's top 100, including, No. 5 ranked Li Na.

Maybe the world is a flat court after all.

Over the past six months, Syria has erupted into chaos. As protesters took to the streets to demand the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian army and police responded with deadly force: The United Nations now estimates 2,600 people have perished in the violence.

But what the protest movement has lacked so far is a unified front that could express the Syrian opposition's vision for the country's future, and press for international action against the Assad regime. While Syria's historically fractious opposition groups have been unsuccessful in overcoming their differences, a new coalition has an opportunity to establish a united front. On Thursday, a group of 140 dissidents announced the establishment of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the first organized effort to challenge the ferocity of Assad's "killing machine." 

Foreign Policy exclusively obtained a document that lays out the SNC's structure, membership, and goals. It also received the SNC's "National Consensus Charter," which describes the principles that will guide the council's actions.

The first document says that the council is currently made up of 140 members. It provides the name of 71 members, but states that the rest have been kept secret "for security reasons." 60 percent of the SNC's membership resides inside Syria, while 40 percent lives abroad. A slim majority -- 52 percent -- of the council's membership is made up of representatives of the grassroots movements that have driven the recent protests, while the rest includes members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the Kurdish National Bloc, the Damascus Declaration group, and other prominent opposition figures. The SNC will be divided into eight main offices, including bureaus to undertake tasks such as media relations, policy planning, and legal affairs and human rights.

SNC's charter describes the formation of an anti-Assad umbrella coalition as "a pressing necessity and its absence is an offense against the revolution." It details three main principles: a unified effort to overthrow Assad's regime, the desire to maintain the peaceful nature of the revolution, and a national initiative to create a democratic state that respects the equality of Syria's diverse ethnic and religious groups. The council also asserted its aim to develop a roadmap for democratic change within Syria.

Ausama Monajed, a member of the newly created council and the executive director of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre, detailed what the council hopes to accomplish in a conversation with FP. 

Foreign Policy: What message do you want to send the Syrian people, and the rest of the international community?

Ausama Monajed: The Syrian National Council aims to present the reality of Syria to international media outlets and policy makers, to be able to have an impact on global policies by providing governments with the right information and analysis; to draft roadmaps for a just Syria; and to boost the morale of Syrian demonstrators by presenting them with a unified body that will support their activities.

FP: Why does the council oppose military and foreign intervention in Syria? 

AM: Syrians oppose military intervention because of the negative experience countries in the region have had. The council only reflects the demands of the Syrian street.

Assad's regime is built on self-interest, not on a minority, as perceived. Alawites [Assad's religious sect] are starting to peel away from the regime and many are starting to oppose it, realizing that Assad will flee, leaving them to deal with the aftermath of his sectarian actions. A coup is a possible scenario, a sudden collapse is also a possibility.

FP: What groups are represented in the council? How will the council, made up of so many voices, effectively form a united oppositional front to Assad?

AM: All Syrian groups. The differences in views of the council members are insignificant at this time, as all parties involved - or actually all Syrians -- agree on certain principles, such as that the Syrian revolution should remain peaceful, national unity is to be stressed and all sectarian or exceptionalist tendencies are to be extricated, while foreign military intervention will be rejected.

The charter added that all minorities and parties in Syria will have their rights guaranteed without any discrimination -- and that includes recognition of the Kurdish identity, and reaching a fair solution to Kurdish issues within the scope of national unity.

FP: Who will lead the council? Will the names of the council members still within Syria be released? Is there a formal list of the dissident members residing outside of Syria? Will more members be chosen in the near future?

AM: Leadership elections will take place in a few days. While the names of some of the members have been revealed, we did not reveal the rest of the names for security reasons.

FP: Ahmed Ramadan, a council member, has spoken of the possibility of a TV channel being launched to address the demands of the Syrian people. Is this true?

AM: Everything is possible.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

We actually kicked this off with David's post yesterday, but we're now making it official. In this regular Passport feature, we will be tracking signs of U.S. economic and political decline -- and the "rise of the rest," especially China. 

We don't intend this to be an excercise in schadenfreude -- we're Americans ourselves and don't wish any misfortune on the country -- but there does seem to be an emerging conventional wisdom on American decline in the foreign-policy media that's worth tracking. We'll also hopefully use the column to puncture a few bogus decline trend stories.

Each post, we'll choose a datapoint or article that purports to show a sign of American decline and rate it from 1 to 5. Here's the scoring system:

1: We're totally screwed. Start learning Mandarin.

2. Being a superpower was nice while it lasted.

3. Stay calm and carry on.

4. Decline, schmecline. We're gonna be just fine.

5. USA! USA! 

Today's sign of decline ... falling SAT scores:

Average scores on the college acceptance test, the SAT, fell across the nation this year, with the reading [comprehension] score for the high school class of 2011 falling three points to 497, the lowest on record, according to a report on Wednesday by the College Board, which administers the exams. 

The average writing score dropped two points, to 489, and the math score was down one point, to 514. 

Douglas McIntyre at AOL business makes the case: 

What these test scores suggest is that in general, Americans who enter the work force in the next one to five years will not be as well educated as many of their foreign counterparts. That spells bad news for America's ability to lead the world in science and other critical disciplines. With a workforce whose education and skills are in decline, the U.S. will struggle to hold its lead in the industries that are key to our economic future.

Verdict: 3. Falling test scores are obviously not a good sign. On the other hand, the fact that English scores, in particular, are falling can be attributed to increasing national diversity and the fact that parents from around the world still want to raise their kids in the United States. The New York Times reports that "27 percent of the nearly 1.65 million test-takers last year came from a home where English was not the only language, up from 19 percent a decade ago." And while average scores may be falling, the number of students receiving high scores on math -- about 700 -- have increased by 20 percent over the last five years. 

But any way you slice it, low income and minority students continue to lag behind. The numbers are nothing to be proud of. 

Feel free to nominate any American decline stories you see. (No Jersey Shore references please.) E-mail Joshua [dot] Keating [at] foreignpolicy.com. 

Earlier this week, I wrote about the case of two Zimbabwean generals who may face treason charges for comments about their superiors made in a confidential conversation with the U.S. ambassador, and whose names were subsequently revealed in last month's unredacted WikiLeaks dump. 

That case still seems to be pending, but there's been another troubling development in Ethiopia, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists: 

U.S. diplomatic cables disclosed last month by WikiLeaks cited an Ethiopian journalist by name and referred to his unnamed government source, forcing the journalist to flee the country after police interrogated him over the source's identity, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. It is the first instance CPJ has confirmed in which a citation in one of the cables has caused direct repercussions for a journalist.

On September 5 and 6, officials from Ethiopia's Government Communication Affairs Office (GCAO) summoned journalist Argaw Ashine to their offices in the capital, Addis Ababa, with his press accreditation, Ashine told CPJ on Tuesday. He was summoned because he had been cited in an October 26, 2009, cable from the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia regarding purported GCAO plans in 2009 to silence the now-defunct Addis Neger, then the country's leading independent newspaper, local journalists said.

On September 8, Ashine was summoned again, this time by police, who interrogated him and gave him 24 hours to either reveal the identity of his source at the GCAO office or face unspecified consequences, the journalist told CPJ. Ashine fled Ethiopia over the weekend. He has requested that his current location not be disclosed for safety reasons.

Given that a central tenet of WikiLeaks' model is protecting the identity of its sources, it seems pretty tough to defend the exposing of a journalist in an authoritarian country, even if it embarasses the U.S. government in the process. 

The Christian Science Monitor also reports (via the essential twitter source for all things WikiLeaks Trevor Timm) that, so far at least, Chinese sources named in the cable don't seem to be suffering consequences:

Two weeks after WikiLeaks posted unredacted versions of a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, revealing the names of American embassies’ local contacts around the world, there are no signs of repercussions for Chinese sources, according to people who have themselves been “outed.”

“Nothing has happened to me, yet, and I have not heard of anyone else getting into trouble,” says Wang Zhenyu, a Beijing lawyer who says he has often met U.S. diplomats to discuss the progress of legal reform in China and whose name was meant to have been “strictly protected” according to a cable that quotes him.

“I don’t think I’ll have any problem from the government, though some ordinary people do not understand," adds Wang Xiaodong, an outspoken nationalist ideologue with a large following on the Web, who also shared his insights with American diplomats, according to the leaked cables.

Update: Another piece from the Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon notes that while there have been no legal consequences, the response from China's nationalist internet has been furious: 

Some of China’s top academics and human rights activists are being attacked as “rats” and “spies” after their names were revealed as U.S. Embassy sources in the unredacted WikiLeaks cables that have now been posted online.

The release of the previously protected names has sparked an online witch-hunt by Chinese nationalist groups, with some advocating violence against those now known to have met with U.S. Embassy staff. “When the time comes, they should be arrested and killed,” reads one typical posting on a prominent neo-Maoist website.

The repercussions could indeed be dire in some circumstances, particularly for Tibetan and Uighur activists exposed as having passed information to Washington. In other cases – including some Communist Party officials named as “protected” or “strictly protected” sources – the fallout is more likely to be embarrassment or perhaps lost promotions.

We'll continue to track the fallout for the sources in the days ahead.