"What If There Was No America?"
The disintegration of language is not unrelated to the disintegration of culture.
Posted on 06/29/2003 5:25:25 PM PDT by RJCogburn
On July 4th we celebrate the establishment by our Founding Fathers of the United States of America. Since 1776 America has become the freest, richest country that the world has ever known. One way to appreciate just what a blessing this country is to each of us is to reflect upon what the world would be like if America had lost the Revolution, if there were no America.
What if armed minutemen had not fought so valiantly at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill? What if Washington’s volunteers had been summer soldiers and sunshine patriots who could not endure the bitter winter at Valley Forge? What if Jefferson had never penned the Declaration of Independence, or if his words had been lost in the face of a British victory?
The key to America is the idea of liberty articulated in the Declaration, that all men are created equal and endowed “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”
Without that ringing affirmation of individualism, perhaps many of the colonists -- in moral confusion -- would not have fought for their freedom. Without Jefferson’s crystallizing words the colonists might not have seen the future of opportunity that a victory would bring.
Without an American victory the political map of the world would have been sadly different. Perhaps the colonists in British America would have remained a few million confined to the eastern seaboard, with French, Spanish and Russian colonies occupying the rest of the continent. Without America, the subjects of the Great Powers of Europe might have wasted their time, energy and blood fighting in the New World the types of wars that plagued the Old World.
But instead, in the two centuries and two score years of its history, the United States expanded from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and three million colonists became 280 million proud citizens who constructed homes and towns; planted crops; raised cattle; mined gold, silver and copper; established trading posts and ports; and built railroads, steel mills, factories and great, gleaming cities.
Without America, there would be no global economic giant with fruitful farms to feed itself and the rest of the world; no Thomas Edison or General Electric to light our homes and cities; no Ford and General Motors to mass-produce cars to make every American mobile; no Wright brothers or Boeing to fill the skies with planes to carry hundreds of millions of travelers to the far corners of the country and the world; no Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Microsoft or Apple Computer to make instantaneous communications possible.
America’s economic success reflected its deeper, spiritual contribution to the rest of the world. Its philosophy of freedom and example of prosperity taught all individuals that they should expect nothing less than the personal autonomy to live their lives as they see fit and to pursue their personal dreams and material well-being without apology, with government to protect their freedom and to treat them with dignity rather than rule them like subjects.
Without America there would be no spirit of hope and optimism that contrasts with the pessimism and cynicism that besets even developed countries today. Without America there would have been no shining city on a hill, no land of opportunity to attract millions of immigrants -- individuals who were poor in wealth but rich in a desire to work hard and take risks to make the best of their lives. Without America there would have been no place to which those suffering political and religious persecution could flee. Rather than being free in America such individuals would have remained impoverished, frustrated and oppressed in their own lands.
Perhaps they would have tried to make revolutions in their own countries. But without America’s inspirational example, fighters for freedom might have faltered from the knowledge that the one attempt to establish a regime that recognized individual rights had failed. There would have been no Statue of Liberty welcoming to America all those who yearned to be free and stirring freedom-loving Chinese students to erect a similar sculpture in Tiananmen Square to declare their opposition to communist tyranny. Without America there would have been no military giant and arsenal of freedom to stand against the totalitarian regimes of the past century.
But fortunately, what was the dream of every moral and rational man and woman throughout history -- a land in which they could live their lives in liberty -- was established on Earth in the United States. Fortunately, each of us can strengthen and renew that land each day when we as individuals make the most of that blessed freedom and respect the equal freedom of others. Fortunately, there is an America.
Copyright, The Objectivist Center. For more information, please visit www.ObjectivistCenter.org.
Amen right back at you.
No internet porn.
And no internet.
And no inter.
"What If There Was No America?"
The disintegration of language is not unrelated to the disintegration of culture.
Examples:If I were working at Bloomingdales, I would have a 20% discount on my clothes.
If you were young again, you would have more hair.
If I were you, I would move to the mountains.
I'd watch out, if I was you.
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