What has made America great?
The United States of America, is the country above all other countries, the last world superpower, beating out the former U.S.S.R. in 1991.
However, one must ask how we even became a superpower, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The answer is in the question: our power is “super”. Unlike any other modern country, we do not have a modern constitution. Instead, we have a constitution that was a product of the Enlightenment and her thinkers. Our constitution is the product of Hobbs, Voltaire, Locke, and Montesquieu, brilliant, out-of-the-box thinkers for their times. For example, the idea of a three-branch system of government was proposed by Montesquieu in one of his pamphlets.
Also, to cite Alexis de Tocqueville, we have the power of religion in our government, which in his foreign view was the backbone of America. For example, after one modern Chinese economist visited the U.S., he was asked by a friend what he thought of capitalism. The Chinese man noted that the only reason capitalism worked in the Western World was because of the virtues of religion. How can honesty and other ethical values prevail in capitalism without the fundamentals of religion?
Another fact behind our “greatness” is the “luckiness” we have had in the history of the world. We were blessed with leaders, like George Washington, in the beginning stages of our country, who had more honor and love for their new country than love for their egotistical hungers. We are blessed to have had the Industrial Revolution early in our history, a blessing we received by accident, a blessing so rare we started industrialized before continental Europe!
However, the last fact about American “greatness” is our ability to always have a strong sense of nationalism. This has led us into several successful wars in our history. It was only because of the love of liberty that a band of a few thousand rebels stood against the British army, first in 18th century and then the War of 1812. It was only because of the strong love of Union that we were able to survive the Civil War. It was not until the Spanish-American War than we took a new scope of nationalism, the scope of creating a international nationalism of liberty for all. Then, that war, comprised of our first international territories being taken, and then was the long descent from greatness.
At the end of WWII, we resulted as having the largest economy in the world, free from most of the destruction of WWII, but still producing millions of military products for our troops spreading the nationalism of liberty to all nations across the earth.
It is a fight we are still fighting today. We have the responsibility to uphold our ancestors and descendants, for our sake and theirs, by fighting day and night for the liberty of the world.
Sincerely,
R. Matthew Russell
