So, now we’re getting busy making America great. Good. Nice mission. But it’s time somebody besides Hillary Clinton made the point that when we set out to make America great we don’t exactly start at zero. A few questions, from an ordinary American to the world, illustrate that fragile and frequently overlooked little point.
For instance, what other country ever amassed as much power as America and abused it less? And what other country ever accumulated as much wealth as America and distributed it more fairly? What other country, after being surprise-attacked by a superpower and five days later having war declared upon it by yet another superpower, ever rallied and defeated both enemies and, instead of giving them the traditional rape-and-plunder, gave them both democracy and prosperity instead? Have you seen Germany and Japan lately? Cousin Guerney thinks America really lost World War II and they lied to us!
While conducting this lapidary examination of American greatness, let’s not forget to ask what other country ever, having conquered the two most menacing nations on earth and winning the war, thereupon wound up with less territory than it had before it was dragged into war? You haven’t forgotten, have you, that after expending horrendous amounts of blood and treasure in liberating them, we thereupon gave the Philippines their independence?
You don’t think it’s quite time yet to accord America ground-kissing gratitude for its greatness? Try this one. Can you name another country that had the nuclear weapon exclusively – all by itself – for four solid years (1945-1949)? And did America use its nuclear exclusivity to gobble up more of the earth’s surface or embrace a bullying foreign policy? Incredibly, emphatically No! Instead, we directed our energies to repairing the devastation caused by enemy aggression and Allied liberation.
What other nation ever owned up to an internal problem as egregious as slavery, Jim Crow and segregation, and overcame it without the need for outside force like blue-helmeted troops of the United Nations? Is there any parallel for America’s self-correction anywhere in the history of the world? I don’t think so.
America, along with other good-hearted nations, regularly chases fire engines around the world to help victims of earthquakes, civil war, pestilence, famine and disasters of any and all kinds.
What other country treats its prisoners of war better than it treats its own veterans? Amalgamated platoons of do-gooders and bleeding-hearts may drive conservatives like me nuts, but at the same time they make us proud. Our prisons may be too “country-club” for us hard-nosed law-and-order types, but that’s still one whole hell of a lot better than the unending disgrace of North Korea “releasing” an American college student sentenced to 15 years at hard labor – for the crime of stealing a Communist propaganda poster from a hotel! – and who died less than a week after his return to the USA brain-dead from all the relentless mistreatment.
The greatest compliment that can be paid to a country is not imitation – although America wins that derby, too! – but rather immigration! The entire world, it seems, is standing in line and often jumping the fence in hopes of achieving – through means foul or fair – the “right” to join the fortunate throng entitled to say, “I am an American.” In real-life, real-world measurement, every day is election day. And America wins by a landslide every single day! I wish we could admit them all, or at least thank them for the compliment as they’re humanely returned to their countries of origin.
Much of the world looks down upon America with the utmost envy. A large cohort, however, is honest enough to thank America for proving that a nation bound by law that governs by consent of the governed is really pretty great from the get-go.
There are other good countries in the world. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Israel – the roll call could go on and on. They are, however, mostly smaller nations unable to lift the world the way America does. How fortunate it is that the most powerful nation in the world is a democratic republic bound by law. Thomas Jefferson must have gotten up early that morning when he said, “Speak not to me of good men. Bind them down with the chains of the Constitution!”
America, indeed, exudes basic, fundamental, commonsensical goodness.
America is the land where the Christian grandfather in Philadelphia walks over to his daughter’s house on Christmas morning and finds his granddaughter playing joyously with her new toys.
“Did your friend Rachel next door get toys as nice as yours this Christmas?” the grandfather asked.
“Oh, no, Grandpa,” said she. “Rachel’s not Christmas. Rachel’s Hanukkah. And Rachel’s not Easter. Rachel’s Passover.”
And then the little girl’s face blossomed in a huge smile as she said, “But we’re both Fourth of July!”
Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact [email protected].
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