I Love My Country!

We are an amazing country. This afternoon I sat in Qdoba Mexican restaurant eating some really good and affordable guacamole and watching regular raggedy people roll by in expensive new cars and new clothes and living the way people in most of the rest of the world can only dream about. How can you hate the nation that gave us the fattest, most spoiled "proletariat" in the world. You know the 1% don't trouble me not one little bit. The economy is not a zero sum game. People who are doing well are not robbing from those poorer than themselves. In America, our working class business folk, entrepreneurs somehow have figured out how to make themselves wealthy while giving people things they want, employing people and making all of us able to do better as well. A rising tide lifts all boats as the saying goes. 

So how is it that so many people hate the very nation that made it possible for us all to live so well. When I see folks out on the streets walking around doing the things they want to do, I see people of all races, religions, education levels and economic circumstances. What I don't see a lot of are starving children and homeless folk except in cities where the left has offered lures to attract crowds of drug addicts and mentally ill folks (after closing mental health facilities that could help them and turning them loose on the streets). The homeless are a handy way to give this nation a black eye in the political wars, but only if you can bunch them up in third world looking ghettos so you can prove your point. But the truly poor are such a tiny minority of people - perhaps the smallest percentage of poor in the world, except in countries that America is propping up with billions in aid and trade imbalances. And in a lot of countries, what we call our "poor" would be middle and upper class folk (they have cars, plenty of food and television).

The folk Marx called the "proletariat" in his various manifestos were not the outliers in society like they are here. His proletariat were folks like you see in this street scene below. Regular raggedy folk whom Marx's devoted followers time and again made into a poor, colorless, downtrodden amorphous crowd of barely supported borderline poor that the dear leaders refer to as the "masses" or (if they are being honest in how they really feel) the "unwashed" masses.

America is a lovely place. Go out and see it some time. Ask yourself why your nation, that so many people who live here and know better, condemn and criticize.

 I love my country. I just flat out do.

© 2019 by Tom King

Which is the Greatest Nation in the World?

This question gets posed all the time by angry millenials and Democrats, armed with talking points hoping you'll say "America" so they can bury you in misinformation to prove how bad the USA is.  Usually, they can't give you a very satisfactory answer when you ask them which one is the greatest if not the United States. You'll likely get some mumbles about Sweden or Denmark, both of which are crumbling socialist economies - something progressives don't like to talk about. 

If by greatest, our questioner means “The nation that best suits my political opinions” then he has given us an impossible task because he demands an answer based on a private definition of greatness largely based on the worthless standard of his own feelings. If I base my answer on my feelings, my interloculator doubtless would take exception to my use of my own feelings as a measure of what he calls “greatness”. If, however, we are talking about objective statistical measures, then we need to specify the statistical measure by which we are to judge America’s greatness.

For instance:

GREATEST POPULATION - Not us, probably China

GREATEST ECONOMY - Neck and Neck with China with the U.S. probably the most flexible and resilient of the two. If China's economy collapsed, we'd be alright, but if the U.S. goes down, China goes down with us.

GREATEST MILITARY STRENGTH - U.S.A. without doubt. Nobody really wants to take us on head to head except the truly suicidal.

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT - In science, technology, medicine, invention, industry and innovation, the USA holds the high ground. The US leads in the aviation, medicine, space exploration, entertainment and communication technology, military power and economic dynamism. Everyone else is pretty much playing catch up because we either led the way or passed them up.
 
GREATEST CULTURE - I would say USA given we’ve pretty much appropriated the best bits of every culture in the world and melded them into a richly varied crazy quilt of traditions, beliefs, art, music, food and religion.

MOST ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT - Not us! The US Constitution deliberately created a system of checks and balances that prevents the government from being too organized or powerful. Organized government requires socialism, communism or an outright dictatorship.

BEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM - While certainly not free, if you are talking quality, it’s the USA. Leaders of world governments leave their own countries and come here to have work done on their hearts or brains. The best and brightest young people come here from all over the world to study medicine and stay here to work. That’s why there’s likely a 60% chance your doctor has a foreign accent if you live in the USA.

GREATEST FREEDOM - USA hands down. Our constitution is the model for every truly democratic nation in the world. We are the original. Pretty much everyone else is a copy.

GREATEST FREEDOM OF SPEECH - USA bar none. Yakov Smirnoff once said, "In Russia we have freedom of speech. In America you have freedom AFTER speech."

GREATEST FREEDOM OF RELIGION - USA without question. Even people from oppressive religious countries come to the United States to practice their religion - even religions whose practitioners in their home countries chant "Death to America" have members of their faith freely practicing their religion here in America.

GREATEST OPPORTUNITY - In the USA, the rags to riches story is standard because it happens so often. The majority of our millionaires are first generation wealthy. You can start out in abject poverty and become a multi-millionaire or even a billionaire.

EQUALITY - Depends what you mean by equality. If you mean equality of opportunity, the U.S. wins hands down. If you mean equality or sameness of outcomes, you need to go to a nice communist country or one of those dictatorships with the two class system - the rich and the poor. Sharing of misery is the closest anyone gets to sameness of outcomes.

SAFETY - It’s been a long time in the USA since a marauding army has overrun a town or village, much less a fair-sized state and slaughtered people willy-nilly. If you check the actual murder rates (note that gun violence and actual murder rates are two different things), we're pretty safe in that way. Death by being murdered by your own government doesn't get counted as "murder".  Some nations with low rates of “gun deaths” have commensurately higher rates of death by bludgeoning, strangulation, arson, poisoning, rape, drowning, electrocution and stabbing. Killers will kill. They don’t stop simply because they don’t have guns and people without guns can’t defend themselves so the innocent tend to die more often because they can’t defend themselves.

Ask yourself which country you feel safest wandering around in? Me? I do my touristing in the USA. I’ve been out of the States twice and both times found myself in places where I felt threatened. Doesn’t happen much here in the USA except in cities run by Democrats.

The question that makes up the title of this blog entry is one of those that the self-flagellating precious snowflake generation likes to throw up in order to set you up. They have a cut and paste snowstorm of carefully manipulated facts and figures prepared, designed to make you look stupid for claiming the USA is the greatest nation in the world.

Well they’re wrong and I’m right. The United States is the greatest country in the world.

Just so you know.

© 2017 by Tom King

The Promises We Made - Remembering 9/11

There were two reactions that day in September - fear and anger. The fearful curled up and hid somewhere, hoping they would not be next. The angry stood up and did something, even if it was only to go outside and hang a flag out front of the house in defiance. I remember hanging my second flag (I already had one up), looking around the neighborhood in defiance and thinking, "Bring it on, wherever you are hiding. Here I stand!"

Maybe John Edwards was right. Maybe there are two Americas, but I doubt it was the two Americas he envisioned.  I think the two Americas are inhabited by the fearful and the brave. Like children on a playground, the fearful surrender and submit in hopes that the local bully won't hurt them much. The brave stand up to the bully and take a pounding if they have to, but they refuse to submit or surrender.  The cost of cowardice is far too high to pay and you will never cease to pay that price.  Its not just we who pay the cost either. It will be our children and our children's children who will pay the price if we are too fearful to stand up to the bullies of this world.

God placed us in this land to create a refuge for the bullied peoples of the world. He blessed it so that those refugees now live in the most prosperous, peaceful land in the world.  We didn't steal it our prosperity from others.  We dug deep, worked hard and held on against those same bullies and thugs who would follow us here to prey on us in this new land.  Our forefathers taught us to fight tyranny, to fight the bully boys of the world that our children might enjoy the blessings of liberty. We fought tyranny during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. We fought it again during the Civil War, and World War II. We owe our fathers and our children a toe to toe, knock down drag out fight like this world has never seen to preserve our sacred liberty in this generation.  There are those among us who would surrender our liberties to the very same thugs and bullies that generations of Americans fought so hard to free themselves from, mainly because they are too afraid to fight.  Dylan Thomas' famous poem says, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage against the dying of the light."  Good advice for this generation of Americans for we are in danger of slipping quietly into the long night of tyranny in exchange for bread and circuses and the illusion of peace and safety.

It is well on this anniversary to remember 9/11 and what can happen to us if we cease to be vigilant.  It is better that we remember the promises we made to ourselves and our posterity in the days after 9/11 when the horror of what was done to us was still fresh in our minds.

Tom King, Tyler, TX

* Image available at: http://concordville.org