Was America Ever Great? | Evaluating the “Greatness” of the United States
Slavery, Indian Removal Act, child labor, sexism, Japanese internment camps, segregation, Vietnam War, Watergate, etc…
How can someone possibly argue that the United States was ever “great”?!
And then on top of that the United States has the highest prison rates, suffers from de facto segregation, lags behind the developed world in education, and is trillions of dollars in debt!
How can anyone argue that America is “great”?!
What does it even mean to be “great”?
Is a “great” nation one that has the most money or happiest people or longest lifespans or biggest military or smallest CO2 footprint?
For me, the greatest nations are those that do the most amount of good for the most amount of people.
Therefore let’s turn our attention to humanity as a whole.
Statistically humanity has never been more free, healthy, happy, safe, and rich. Fact. This means whenever you watch the news reporting on North Korea, mass shootings, protests, or ebola one must put it into context.
This then begs the question, what one nation is most responsible for the way the world is today?
And again the answer is clear: The United States of America.
Without the United States, the world with all its problems, would be drastically different and likely worse.
As humans we have remarkably short-memories. If George W. Bush walked into a cafe I’m sure a lot of people would confuse him with Will Ferrell.
And as much as we overlook the past we drastically overestimate the durability of freedom and the present moment.
Most humans over the course of history were in one form or another — slaves. Freedom is an aberration.
And society may very well return to this historical norm sooner than we think if we don’t pay proper respect to the values that got us here.
And as terrible as we are at remembering the past, we are also terrible at predicting the future. The very week Donald Trump was elected the most powerful man in the world experts were giving him nearly a 0% chance of winning.
By gaining an appreciation for the fragility of freedom and our fortunate for this era we should therefore gain an appreciation for the greatness of the United States.
Why is it so important to celebrate the United States on this Independence Day?
It’s because the U.S. is fundamentally a collection of ideas.
Ideas such as separation of powers, representative democracy, constitutionalism, federalism, human rights, and equality before the law (at least in theory).
Ideas that we take for granted because most of the world has adopted them too, but ideas are only as useful as the number of humans willing to adopt them.
There are a lot of young people in particular who wish to burn the U.S. flag and constitution because they see these things as symbols of racism and oppression.
And in some ways they’re right.
But they wouldn’t just be burning the concepts and history they disagree with, but with the concepts and history that has allowed them to burn the flag and the constitution in the first place without being crucified, impaled, hanged, or knelt down and shot in the back of the head.
“Humans are plastic.” — Seth Godin
We are plastic in the sense that at a young age we are very malleable and then as we age we harden into place.
You and I have been shaped in such a way to value freedom and human rights. We believe so strongly in these things as to see them as non-debatable.
But they are debatable!
I can’t stress this enough.
Nazi’s were humans.
Soviets were humans.
MS-13 are humans.
Must I recount the atrocities these humans have committed?
Humans with normal functioning brains can be bred to be absolute angels or sheer devils.
This is the power and malleability of the human mind and it’s why culture matters.
It’s a human who may cuddle a child to sleep while reading a bedtime story for the 3rd time in a row despite having to wake up early for work the following day.
And it’s a human who may shoot that child in the back of the head because the child questioned the validity of the bedtime story.
The world has come so close in living memory to being ruled by demons.
And the PRIMARY reason why our better angels prevailed is because of the United States of America.
Hitler held out in WW2 for as long as he did, even when his generals said the war was lost, because he hoped German scientists would finally unlock the mystery of the atomic bomb.
Just imagine a world where the Nazi’s got the nuke first?!
You gay? Dead.
You jewish? Dead.
You loud-mouthed? Dead.
You non-german? Dead or enslaved.
If the U.S. didn’t enter WW2 and specifically focus on Nazi Germany, despite Japan being the one that attacked us at Pearl Harbor, then most historians would agree Germany would’ve likely gotten the nuke (U.S.S.R. got it in 1949 and U.S. got it in 1945) because Nazi Germany’s military technology was far more advanced than the Soviet Union and even the United States.
The U.S. was like Superman flying in at the last moment to save the falling girl from the burning building.
John F. Kennedy once said, “Power reveals.”
After WW2, when the world was in rumble what did the United States do? The U.S. could have easily conquered the globe. No one would have had the capability to halt the U.S. military industrial complex with its doomsday weapon.
But instead of enslaving the world as every previous empire sought to do, the United States lent and gave money to numerous nations so that they may rebuild and not fall to the tyranny of communism.
And eventually communism was defeated too, and therefore with the rise of democracy and capitalism the world has never seen such a high standard of living.
But the world isn’t as great as it is just because the U.S. stopped the bad guys, but also because it created good things.
So many things you enjoy in your life, no matter where you live, was invented by an American or an American immigrant.
In the end, I’m not looking for a red carpet to be rolled out to me simply because I’m an American.
I want a red carpet rolled out to me because of who I am as a person!
The United States, much like humans, is self-interested and often short-sighted, but on this Independence Day may we take a break from pointing out her flaws and celebrate her blessings.
May we put her past into context by focusing on what she’s done for humanity as a whole.
And may we see that regardless of where we are from, we all have a little America in us. May we celebrate that America together.
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