Gratitude on the Eve of America’s Birthday
We can sound the alarm about possible dangers while still acknowledging how LUCKY we are…
Creative Liberty, by Alex Grey
On the Fourth of July I will be making burgers, hanging with friends, and spending the day at the beach.
The central theme of everything I write about society and politics is gratitude:
Gratitude that we live in a country with a special identity, where freedom and personal autonomy are given almost spiritual priority
Gratitude that our history has involved our continual and difficult self-improvement, on a hundred different issues (racial justice, female empowerment, environmental protection, civil rights for minorities, etc.)
Gratitude that we live in a large and beautiful nation that stretches over a dozen different biomes and still has room for hundreds of millions more residents
Gratitude that we have vast untapped fossil fuel reserves, more productive agricultural land than almost any other, and more human capital than any country on Earth
Gratitude that we don’t have a truly catastrophic birth rate (an issue which is rarely discussed in today’s media because of the negative light that it casts upon our individualized and hedonistic society’s priorities)
Gratitude that we have a healthy mass of older and more rural Americans who act as an electoral and social brake upon the more extreme and ideological projects of our elites
Our cities still attract our youth and act as the engines of economic bounty. Our countryside serves as the receptacle for American values and for the organized social networks that truly make a country’s identity. We need both, and anyone who wants to dismiss or malign an entire half of the country isn’t a patriot. Every nation lives in a sea of hungry sharks, and it’s mostly because of the peace and prosperity lent by our geography and military campaigns and diplomatic efforts that we are able to forget this in the U.S. and to believe that radical institutional collapse won’t be exploited by our enemies.
Anyone who has studied comparative political economy knows that a nation’s natural resources and potential gifts are a very small part of its actual wealth and standard of living. Zimbabwe and Venezuela have abundances of mineral wealth, and Zimbabwe further has some of the richest agricultural land on the planet but government corruption and mismanagement (and in the case of Zimbabwe, a racist campaign against their domestic agriculture lobby) have negated almost all of those promises. Meanwhile, Singapore and Japan and South Korea have very little in the way of natural wealth, but have flourished by developing the skills of their citizens and adopting pro-market and pro-trade policies. The lesson to take away is that the greatest asset a country can have is a fair and limited government which allows citizens to develop their own potential. There is no amount of soil fertility or riverine transit or mineral wealth that will satisfy and negate an active and rapacious state. A state must be limited and centered around the wishes of its regular citizens and, despite its huge flaws and it’s missteps that is still mostly the case for America.
We have areas demanding improvement in this country: we’re generally obese, our families are weaker and more fractured than ever before, young people (and adults) are veritably addicted to smartphones, with all the attendant issues with mood and identity that that brings. None of these issues require the state though! Through role modeling and group goal-setting, every one of these problems has been identified and is being addressed. Many of our past challenges (ending chattel slavery, the establishment of public education, the protection of gay rights) required massive legislative action (or civil war). That’s not the case with these issues. These problems are social problems, more akin to cigarette smoking than Jim Crow.
We are in an enviable national position. If you read Peter Zeihan (who I greatly recommend) you’ll hear that the general anxiety about the rise of China is based on some easily-punctured illusions. China must import the vast majority of its food and fuel (unlike the U.S.). It has already gone over a demographic cliff - the worst in human history (unlike the U.S.). It doesn’t have control of its own geopolitical backyard or its near-coastal shipping lanes (unlike the U.S.). In the case of China, the looming disaster of a rapidly graying and enfeebling society actually make the country MORE dangerous to U.S. hegemony for the next 3-4 years, but the point is that China has serious problems which the U.S. is free from.
Indeed, America is both lucky and cursed: our problems are mostly problems of identity. Our issues mostly revolve around the growth of different narratives and different conceptions of our past and our future.
Let me be clear: The United States is a wonderful country. It’s wonderful for every group, every sex, every race, every class, every occupation, and every political identity. If there is some aspect of being an American that you find lacking you have nearly perfect freedom to change the minds of people around you.
This stance, that America is a wonderful place, is not a function of my political beliefs. It’s deeper than that, and to prove it I will make a claim: virtually everyone who has lived in the third world or spent a significant amount of time there will acknowledge the blessings of American life. The ONLY PEOPLE who will question and criticize and malign American life as it’s lived today (without any knowledge of history or of conditions around the world) are those who have only enjoyed American life. There are no immigrants from Bangladesh or defectors from North Korea or students from Nigeria or workers from Mexico who will levy the strident and unbridled criticism that you often hear on the Left. I’ve never encountered one.
That means that those criticisms are, themselves, artifacts of privilege. You don’t have to have travelled to Africa or South Asia to understand how wonderful our lives are here… jut listen to those who have. Listen to people who’ve spent time working or fighting abroad or those people who came to this country because of what it offered. Ask them what they think of the United States, and listen to their answers.
We’re lucky to live in a country rich with food security and arable land…
We’re lucky to live on a landmass surrounded by friends and global oceans, protecting us from the ruin of generations of global war
We’re lucky to live in the most diverse country on Earth, where no bureaucrat or ideologue can force populations to live according to their values, and with enough promise and vitality that 500 million would move here today, if they could.
Any bid to improve our country must rightly begin with an appreciation of everything it offers.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
