America is a beacon of prosperity and wealth and we should not feel bad about it. 250 years on, we have raised the standard of living for all Americans, eradicated poverty to the point where leftists are demanding we raise the poverty index so more people can be classified as poor, and created a society that is so bountiful it strikes awe in international visitors. There is no denying that America is a rich nation and rich to the point where a good life is available at any income level. That's a huge deal.
Yet, despite the affluence, the absolute abundance of everything, we still have people within the United States who hate us, our system of government, and the capitalist economy that creates such plenty that Americans can live well even if you're not earning a ton of money. The new crop of communists, socialists, or whatever they want to be called to make their backwards cause more palatable to regular Americans, say that the existence of wealth itself is a problem.
They don't realize, or maybe they don't care, that a good and comfortable lifestyle is available to all of us. Sure, not all of us will have billions, but you don't need billions to lead a good life and the existence of billions does not diminish what is available to the rest of us. There is not a finite amount of money or excess—it's not pie.
When I go into the grocery store, and I don't even mean Whole Foods or Wegmans, though these are treasures to behold, I am struck again and again by the bounty available to us. I've never lived anywhere else. I've barely ever been to grocery stores in other countries, just once or twice in Italy or England, but the amount that is available to us in fresh produce, meats, cheeses (yes, even the Kraft Singles), different kinds of milk, cereals, grains, breads, I mean come on—the sheer amount of everything we have is insane.
Our streets are essentially safe, so much so that when people are attacked, robbed, murdered, or worse, we are horrified and the stories make front page news. We go to bed expecting that no one will break into our homes, that our cars will be where we left them, that our kids can walk to school or to the bus stop without fearing for their lives. We have clean water (I know about Flint, but for the most part it's clean), we have solid infrastructure (with the occasional bridge collapse in Minnesota or Maryland, I know).
And we have founding principles that recognize the freedom and liberty inherent in all human beings. We know that governments can squash rights but they can never truly take them away. We know that our rights come from God and that no man or organization can take them away. That's true of capitalist powers and it's true for socialist and communist powers. And vouchsafing those rights is the American project.
Those who seek to create animosity in most of us toward those who simply have more, that tries to use that anger to control us, to whip us up into a frenzy, and which tells us that so long as we can take wealth from those who have more of it our lives will be better—even if it ends up in us having less, too, has no interest in freedom or liberty. They would sooner squash individual rights for the good of the collective than recognize that our rights supersede their desire for control.
Somehow, these communists and socialists who are on the rise in America look at the wealth, prosperity, the fortune and plenty that we have in this nation and they perceive that something is wrong. They don't want that wealth for the wealthy and they don't want it for the rest of us, either. (They do want it for themselves, but we know that...) Their intent is to use the levers of power to dismantle the riches accumulated by the rich by convincing all the rest of us that it's not fair that others have so much more than we do.
But what they don't see is that we are rich in so much that it doesn't matter if some people have more because we have plenty ourselves. No one in America is oppressed into poverty. No one is prevented by government from excelling. Instead, our government provides free meals, education, housing, health care to those who don't earn enough to get those things on their own. And yes, that social safety net is a good thing, having schools that can recognize talent and provide the opportunity for talent and hard work to grow are also good.
Recognizing wealth, however, is not something that galvanizes supporters. So the communist socialist power-hungry haters tell everyone who is not a trillionaire that the trillionaires are evil and should be abolished, that their desiccated wealth should be spread out between all the rest of us so that each of us has like another $100 in our pockets. They bread animus, entitlement, jealousy. They make us all think things should be done for us, and not that we should do for others. It's an evil system of power-grabbing that relies on creating discontent.
And yeah, whatever, things aren't perfect, but perfection is not the metric. The bounty, the wealth, the good life at any income level, those are the metrics. We Americans cannot forget how much we have, how glorious our prosperity is, or how much the founding principles created the conditions for that fortune. We should look upon this land of milk and honey with gratitude, understanding that partaking of it is our privilege, and we should never think for a second that it could not all be destroyed by a few collectivists eager to play on that oldest of human failings, greed.
It’s up to us to recognize what we have, to cherish it, further it, share it. America is more than our nation but our way of life, and it’s the best one this world has to offer. In this 250th year of our creation, let’s remember how good we have it, and not hate ourselves for it or think for one second that another’s man’s wealth makes us poor.
