Originally written in 2021
Hey kiddos:
You know, until the recent turbulent events, I really haven’t thought much about why I love America.
I mean it’s kind of like marrying a fantastic woman. You’re head over heels while you’re dating and you’re on cloud nine immediately after you get married. Then these little monsters come along...yeah you guys.....and eat up all your time and money!!
And then you start to take that sensational person for granted. She is still phenomenal. But in the soup of dealing with raising knuckleheads and managing a career, you forget to stop and appreciate her.
Then a few disasters happen along the way and bring you back to appreciating what you have, instead of worrying about what you don’t have. Then you look up and realize you have gold right under your own roof.
Which is analogous to my relationship with my country. Only when threatened with losing her, do I stop to realize just how fantastic she is.
And America has been fantastic during my lifetime. Stores overflowing with food, great schools, great universities, good jobs, no fighting in the streets, no wars fought on our own soil. It’s easy to start taking her for granted. (like that great woman I married) But when things start to go sideways, then you gotta step back and be thankful for what you’ve got. And remember what’s great about her. And when you do that, you start to get amazed. You start to have an attitude of gratitude.
You know your mom is great. So I won’t go there. But let me tell you why your country is great.
Consider the Blues of BB King and Muddy Waters; the Soul of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles; the Country Western of Johnny Cash and Patsey Cline; the Gospel of Mahalia Jackson and Andre Crouche; and the rock of the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen?
What about the folk music of The Mamas and the Papas? How about the swing of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin? Find me another country where this happens? Where else are music styles literally invented from scratch and produce jazz like Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, or John Coltrane? Or ragtime with Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin?
Answer: Nowhere else on earth!!
Where else can you, at the push of a button, watch a Tom Brady, a Michael Jordan, a Sugar Ray Leonard, or a Mike Tyson? What other country develops a Tiger Woods and an Arnold Palmer? A Billie Jean King and Serena Williams? A Steve Prefontaine and a Wayne Gretzky? And of course perhaps the greatest sports rivalry of all time: “Muhammed Ali vs. Smokin’ Joe Frazier”.
Answer: Nowhere else on earth!!
Consider the geographic beauty. Where else can I find a Bryce National Park and a Grand Canyon? A Yosemite National Park and the Avenue of the Giants? (the mighty Redwoods & Seqoias) The majesty of the Rocky Mountains and the 120 degree heat of the Mojave Desert and Death Valley? And I haven’t even mentioned Alaska! Wow.....
Or how about the Snake River Canyon and the mighty Columbia River? The Mississippi Delta and The Great Lakes? (did you know that over 20% of the world’s freshwater is stored in the Great Lakes?) Bounded on the west by the magnificent Pacific and the east by the spectacular Atlantic Oceans.
Then there are the cities. In a word, wow. I am just stunned at the majesty of our unbelievable cities. The unbelievable architecture of New York City, and the sensational history of Philadelphia. Remember seeing the Chrysler and the Empire State Buildings on our trip to the Big Apple? Remember that trip to San Francisco and seeing both the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridges? Or the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in NYC? (2nd tallest bridge in the world with towers the size of a 70 story building)
But it’s not just the large cities. I absolutely love the homey, small town feel of a Yreka, California, Wesson, Mississippi, and Cedar City, Utah. I find the cities large and small in America to be populated by amazing, and loving people.
And speaking of the people, that’s the best part about the country.
I love how Bostonians can’t seem to enunciate the letter “r”, and how folks from New Jersey speak at 5,000 words per minute. I get a kick out of talking to my southern friends from the deep south with the “twang”, or the other parts of the south who have the “drawl”. When I travel from Mississippi to New Jersey, I have learned to go from “slo-mo” speech to machine gun fire speech. Then there is travelling to Minnesota and learning that there is no difference between a “bag” and a “Bayg”. And of course there is California and the infamous Valley Girl speak......We all speak English. At least ostensibly......
When I was bussed into a white school district, I remember having to explain to my white classmates that a “flo” is what you walk on, a “do” is what you open to enter into a room, “po” is when you don’t have any money, a “sto” that’s where you buy things, and a “ho” well, that’s a very bad girl!! :)
Then there are the dams like the Grand Coulee in Washington State (7th largest dam by power generation in the world) and the Hoover Dam on the Nevada/Arizona border. To see them in person is a jaw-dropping experience.
The United States is so large that it’s the 3rd biggest country in the world, spanning 7 time zones, and 3,000 miles across east to west. But it’s so small that I can fly from Los Angeles to NYC, go to a sports bar, and wind up in a friendly argument with a Hispanic guy, and a White guy on whether the Celtics or the Lakers are the best sports franchise in history! Where else can that happen?
And as I’ve traveled to 46 of the fifty states, I can’t help notice the tremendous architecture that belie her Judeo-Christian foundations. There is the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, The Trinity Church in Boston, The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento, and the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC.
As you drive across the country the landscape is littered with the detritus of her moral roots. It seems you can’t drive more than 5 miles in any American city without coming across a Catholic, Methodist, Church of Christ, Mormon, Episcopalian, Baptist, Adventist, Lutheran, Quaker, Adventists, Amish, a synagogue, or a Pentecostal church. And of course, that list is not all inclusive. Not even close.
The names of her great cities and several states are a testament to her Judeo-Christian roots. St. Louis (St. Louis IX of France), San Francisco (St. Francis of Assissi), Corpus Christi (Body of Christ), Pennsylvania (William Penn), Los Angeles (The Angels), Philadelphia (Brotherly Love), and Sacramento (The Sacraments).
There are literally hundreds of small towns with names that have biblical origins like Bethany, Bethlehem, Salem, Jericho, Lebanon, Damascus, Providence, Maryland, Annapolis, St. Petersburg, Memphis, and Canaan.
My guess is that 90% of her private universities have religious origins like the University of Notre Dame, Loyola Marymount University, Depaul University, Baylor University, Pepperdine University, Brigham Young University and Gonzaga University to name a few.
Many of her great hospitals have religious names or origins. Consider:
UMPC Presbyterian & Shadyside in Pittsburgh.
Bares-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston
Baylor University in Dallas
Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee
Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Illinois
Christ Hospital in Cincinnati
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland
In my local area, hospitals with names like St. Joseph’s, Emmanuel, St. Vincent’s and Seventh Day Adventists are all within a 30 minute drive!
Even the names of the nation’s great charitable organizations communicate morality. The “Salvation” Army, The YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), Lutheran Services in America, and The Red Cross. (can it get any more obvious than a “red” cross!)
Then there are the references to the first Americans. Most Americans don’t know that Seattle was named after Chief Seattle, leader of the Duwamish Indian Tribe. Sports teams and school mascots remind us of that history. (Utes, Seminoles, Warriors, Choctaws, Apaches, and Aztecs) Of course there is a move afoot to erase their memory from history by eliminating these mascot names. I do not believe this is wise.
And then there are the legendary entrepreneurs and scientists whose endeavors have made our lives infinitely more comfortable. Many companies boast their names.
Consider Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Henry Ford, Jack Northrop, Howard Hughes, Robert Sears, Aaron Montgomery Ward, Charles Pfizer, George Merck, Will Kellogg, Walt Disney and William Dillard. If you say just the last name, everyone thinks of the corporation. But if you add the first name, you recognize that these corporations began their existence in the mind of a single individual.
And you realize that that individual’s desire to get what they wanted helped millions to get what they needed. (ah, the brilliance of Adam Smith!!)
Even our “evil” robber baron businessman are phenomenal. Andrew Carnegie gave away his entire fortune to create the public library system we currently enjoy. He also went on to help Booker T. Washington launch the Tuskegee Institute leading to the development of the Historically Black University System. (I bet they don’t teach THAT!!)
Then there is John Rockefeller’s assistance in building the University of Chicago and developing vaccines against yellow fever and meningitis. Not to be outdone there’s Jean Paul Getty and his funding of art.
Then there are stories like Abe Saperstein, a Jewish businessman who founded the Harlem Globetrotters. Mr. Saperstein founded an all black basketball team in the middle of the Great Depression. Perhaps the two most maligned races in the country coming together to form what would become one of the best marketeers of racial unity ever created. All during the middle of the Great Depression.
Courtesy of a Jewish businessman, the world got Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal. Really, you can’t make this up!!
I appreciate the fact that although America is the wealthiest country in the world, it is also the most generous country in the world giving away around 3% of its net income annually. More than any other country in the world.
America also boasts the highest net migration of any country in the world at over 4 million per year. If you are ever wondering about a country’s desirability, just look at the direction of its immigration. People vote with their feet. That tells you all you need to know.
So just what is the formula to create a country that drove its own life expectancy from 48 years of age in 1900 to its current 79 years of age? (her existence almost certainly was the primary mover in driving world life expectancy from 30 years of age to 72 years of age in that same time period)
What is the formula to produce a country willing fight a civil war over slavery and lose of 300,00 of her citizens to end the practice? Slavery has been in existence for over 6,000 years. Judeo-Christian Great Britain and the United States are the only two countries in history to ever lift a finger to stop it. And while they did put a giant dent in the practice, it continues on in the following countries: India (8 million), China (3.86 million), Pakistan (3.19 million), North Korea (2.64 million), Nigeria (1.39 million), Iran (1.29 million), Indonesia (1.22 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1 million), Russia (794,000) and the Philippines (784,000).
What is the formula that produced all the aforementioned greatness?
I’ve ruminated on the answer to this question for quite some time. And I think there are three key ingredients to the formula. They are as follows:
a) A moral code based on Judeo-Christian Principles (Biblical)
b) A system of Smithian Free Market Economics (Adam Smith)
c) A Jeffersonian Constitutional Republic (Thomas Jefferson)
Kiddos, I think that’s the formula. If you remove any one of those three ingredients, I believe she will implode. Tinker with them, yes. Improve each ingredient, by all means. But if you eliminate any one of them or all of them, recent history tells us the results will be catastrophic.
Russia, Germany, China, North Vietnam, and Cambodia, all eliminated each of these ingredients within the last 100 years. The results? Over 200 million lives lost to civil wars, international wars, and mass starvation.
I am reminded of GK Chesterton’s famous adage: “Don’t ever take down a fence until you know the reason it was put up”.
Peace Out....
Dad
