America the Greatest: How this nation is the most virtuous country in human history

Take a walk down any street in America. See the weeds growing up from abandoned factories. The twisting green shoots that speckle the landscape of the country. Focus on the noose hanging from the tree. Look at the rats and roaches in the apartments. Notice the homeless people in tents and the camps at the border. Peer at the mass shootings and the drug deals gone bad. Smell the meth labs emitting noxious fumes. Hear the opioid capsules spill and bottles sprawled out on the floor next to a lifeless body. Taste the smoke from the car wreck from an alcoholic that claims the lives of everyone but the drunkard. Peep the cyber hackers preparing to unsettle the fabric of the Internet. Feast your mind’s eye on the politicians who sneer and snicker and bicker at each other.

Now, look at the Silicon Valley executive that just founded a private school. Listen to the prodigy pianist play her first concerto. Consider the tycoon who just discovered more oil and natural gas. Peer at the Wall Street warrior who just closed a multi-billion-dollar deal. Taste the new sauce that a master chef has just concocted for his restaurant. Feel the new rows of corn that robots will harvest on a farm. Hear the drones overhead ready to make a delivery to someone's doorstep. Look at the father who takes care of his three young boys while still working. Set your sights on the policeman who just locked up a burglar who had been on the run for weeks. Envision the doctor who has just used CRISPR to save an infant from having tumors on her spine.

Take all of this in, because it is America. And in my opinion, despite the negatives first explored, which are all results of irrationality, unselfishness, and altruism, the following examples of positivity, the products of reason, individualism, and capitalism, far outweigh any ugliness of some of the people of the United States. It is the freest, most virtuous, most culturally significant country in human history. Since her inception, founding documents have always been about creating a “more perfect Union.” So they shriek, “What about the enslavement of Blacks?” What about the slaughter of indigenous people?” The answer to why America is still the most exemplary nation of all time is because of a word that the architects omitted from the text of the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”: property. Blacks received the stamp as property of their slave masters instead of being afforded the fullness thereof in regard to owning their own lives. Those rights should’ve been given to them at birth. Natives, who still occupy reservations, never completely experienced property rights. So, the slaves have been set free and some American Indians possess casinos. The rest live under dire conditions on those reservations deprived of property rights. But they represent just a few colors on the mosaic of America. The idea reverts back to the thought of a more perfect Union like the Founders failed to recognize that the beautiful mansion that is America was built on an unstable foundation, as Dr. Yaron Brook has said. It’s like they anticipated the thought of a nation that would sprout from their brains but sliced away at their bodies. Some stood as slave owners. But what society has never used slaves? So, you say that there’s a gross contradiction involved for some slave owners to construct a piece of writing that would set men free? While there is certainly a disconnect, the truth is that these men remained individuals of their time. In time, the slave trade would be obliterated by the money-making North versus the money-taking South. Once the nineteenth century ended, America still experienced Jim Crow which egregiously violated the rights of African Americans and others. But during this period, the United States experienced the most liberty. There was no Social Security. There was no Medicare and Medicaid. No welfare programs existed beyond mutual benefit societies which operated privately and volitionally. The absence of a federal income tax or Federal Reserve allowed a haven for industrialists and laymen alike to flourish.

Through the bloody twentieth century, America positioned herself as the sole superpower. And during this time, the rise of billionaires reached new heights. This is an indicator of the relative freedom that America once possessed. In the twenty-first century, the country has seen a diminishing light on the face of freedom. While there are thousands who would literally run to America to escape a vicious government that spits on rights, Americans flirt with notions of across the board nationalism and out and out socialism. But it is the most hated, battered, tossed about term that few can either define or defend properly: Capitalism. I’ll define and defend it here. It is a system of justice. It represents the mind as it promotes the idea that all property ought to be privately owned and individual rights respected completely. This is America’s guiding light behind Reason and Individualism. Without these first two, capitalism would be impossible. Where are all of the men and women who practice it? Nearly every American takes part in capitalism either consciously or not. That is because you can be a complete capitalist but you cannot be a total whatever other social system. That is what makes this country more than great. It is America the Greatest. Every setback that America has faced is because of the negation of these ideals. The United States, even as it slides downward in the realm of thought, still has a way to deliver to its citizens the ability to overcome the barriers that impede its progress. Like those negative examples above, they are the bleeding war wounds of America. The field dressing that ought to be applied to these lacerations remain the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

When there are literally channels devoted to cooking food and building and renovating houses, American people work smart and receive their deposits into their accounts and still feel guilty. They watch such shows and feel a gnawing sense that they are responsible for the plight of the less fortunate. It is an unearned guilt usually, because the hungry and the homeless ought not be a burden on anyone. If any individual seeks to care for them, they have every right to come to their aid. But most Americans still sense a creeping guilt. Why? because the evil of altruism is the shaky foundation to the mansion.

Altruism has nothing to do with giving little kids teddy bears or handing out a coin to a beggar yearning for spare change. Altruism is a disease that is passed by way of nonthinking. Feeling is at the crux of this notion. Altruism concerns denigrating oneself to one’s neighbor or even an enemy. Americans hold this evil ideal along with selflessness and sacrifice as prime examples of morality. The disease infects every part of the body as rationality and egoism fight it. What Americans fail to recognize is that irony that the very ideal that they hold dear is draining the body of the nation.

Selfishness and pride are often, mistakenly, made the bandits in the realm of ideas. To be truly selfish means that an individual fully values his or her own life and doesn’t stomp on the necks of others in order to advance. Nor does such an individual allow others to trod on their own bodies. Pride is the result of possessing selfishness. It is the solution to the stagnant barnyard of current morality. America was built by and for selfish men and women. From its founding, the United States has been the guiding light for the world because of the endeavor to make money.

Making money is the hallmark of an American. The dollar is the symbol of the mind and involves the capacity to produce. So, it is my opinion that money, not family, friends, or even a pet is the most important thing in the world. It makes the aforementioned values possible. And in a country that produces so much, money is the wifi that keeps the Internet connections of trade going strong. Money permits the lowest level cashier to rise to supervisor to manager to franchise owner all based on the pursuit of more cash. But that all stems from the will to do so.

Free will is an individual’s choice to go through life. It is the opportunity to shape one’s life in the image that he or she chooses. America gives the individual this chance in the best way. America says that if you’ve got the decision to make your life better, let no one block you. Free will is not an endowment from the unknown and unknowable. It is life’s basic way of saying you can get up, get out, and get something or stay idle and achieve little or nothing.

America is the greatest country ever to exist not because of its people but because of its ideas. The thoughts that helped to solidify a vast continent rested upon the mind seeds that the Founding Fathers planted. With all of its contradictions and entanglements with other countries over its relatively brief history, America has prevailed as the premier country for all time. How did this happen? The rationality, productiveness, and pride that the Founders injected into the original documents still carry on to this day. Experiments, amendments, and other attempts at that more perfect Union have brought America to the pedestal of all countries for all time. America never needed to be made great again. It is, was, and always will be the greatest. Like an eighteen-year-old who has had bumps and bruises from past relationships but still manages to clean herself off and don a wedding dress in spite of all the trevails, America has married the above virtues of reason and individualism together to form a country of true greatness. It is because of these virtues that values spring. In order to safeguard such values, it is important to remember that the virtues must be intact for all of this to have taken place. Within the comparatively short timeframe that America has existed, she has made the best impact on the world by producing thousands of figures in business, the arts, and culture. It is not because of selfless sacrifice that these individuals have glided upon the worldstage. By possessing even a small amount of the virtues and not knowing that they were exhibiting them, exceptional Americans like Edison, Rockefeller, Lauder, Julian, Bezos, Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg have all enriched America with their exceptional talents.

It is because of businessmen and women in America that billions of people the world over can enjoy their lives even more. It is because of businesspeople that artists like Twain, Rand, Basquiat, Copeland, Patterson, Anderson, Sorkin, and Peele can hone their crafts and show their best performances to the world. The materialism that these figures create is all based on spiritualism. Without implying the unknown and unknowable, the spirit of a hustler is what is truly transparent. The hustler is someone who reaps the benefits of what is available before those who wait ever come on the scene. America was built for the hustler. The intransigent minds behind such creations as Walmart, Nike, and McDonald’s have shown their hustler mentality.

Military heroes like Sherman, Pershing, Patton and Salinas have all maintained their own livelihoods and have extended the freedoms to millions of American citizens. Despite whatever errors that these men and women have committed, it is important to know that they have fought selfishly to preserve the rights of the American people.

Whenever America was tested, she forged ahead on the strength of her own character and ability to evolve and adapt the environment to fit her needs. What makes America the greatest is her way of permitting anyone to generate a modest fortune up to profound wealth and all amounts in between. And it is because of those aged papers that are more than just the paper and ink involved. Those ideas hold up this country and allow Americans of all colors, creeds, and orientations to experience the joy of living even in (currently) a semi-free country. It’s semi-free because of the government’s stranglehold on business and in the private lives of individuals. Laws that should be in place to protect citizens become swallowed up by thousands of pages of legislation that impede the lives of Americans. In my proud opinion, I say that selfishness will save us. Moral ambition will be the defining virtue for this age. We can go from a country that is the greatest as a mumbling word to a direct and projected statement.

For America to continue to be the doorway for immigrants to thrive and those born here to flourish, it comes down to the fact that American greatness is tidal. Once one sector of the country does well, there is a flood of corresponding successes that occurs. It is imperative, if there is to always be an America, for its citizens to realize that the American Dream is supposed to come true once we wake up and do the work to sustain it. To necessitate this push for self-interest, it is proper for individuals to fight for their right to their own lives.