issue 28

dedede1

    As is described in this issue, author believes that 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. In my point of view, what author says is not thoroughly correct and as far as I am concerned, the general welfare of its people is an indicator of a great nation as well as the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists because these things are highly connected.
    There is no doubt that the general welfare of its people is an indicator of a great nation because as people, what we want are happy lives and that are what a government should promise to us. If we have a close look at the third world countries, we can notice that their health care system, education system are very poor, their GDP also are very low. This fact means that large amount of their people are suffering from hunger and diseases so that a lot of their people don’t lead happy lives. A great nation is very much about the general welfare. Take the presidential campaign in the US as an example, almost every candidate stresses his or her policy on health care system, job issue, and economic problems. They focus on these problems because these are the factors affecting the general welfare and because they want the US still to be the greatest nation in the world.
     However, whether a nation is a great nation also depends on the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists. As we know, achievements of its rulers and achievements in art or in science require a good system to train good artists and scientists so that their artists and scientists can create a lot of fabulous arts and inventions. A nation needs to pay a large amount of money to build up such a system. Only a great, powerful nation can afford to build these systems to train artist and scientist. What’s more, the achievements in art and science could also make a nation better because the achievements in art and science can always benefit their people. For example, when an amazing painting was done by artist, this painting will bring tremendous happiness to publics. When cultivating machine was built by scientists, farmers can produce crops easier than before. The Tang Dynasty is a period when China is the most powerful country in the world. During The Tang Dynasty, a lot of famous poetry, paintings, farming inventions were created by a lot of extraordinary artists and scientists, because of these poetry and paintings, publics had a happier lives than before and because of these inventions, farmer produced much more crops than before.
        To sum up, there is no doubt that the general welfare of its people is an indicator of a great nation, but the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists could also be an indicator to tell whether a nation is great.
     words 497
感觉有点难写，没什么头绪。。。

竹林中人

其实你的想法是很不错的，没有头绪我觉得可能还是没有很具体地去写一个方面，并给出具体的例子。比如第三段里面，政治，科学等方面对人民福利的作用，可以很好地具体说下的，并举出对比的例子