We live in a golden age in the greatest country in history. Never have so many human beings been so prosperous, so protected, so privileged and so free.
Our government, much maligned, is remarkably effective. Justice prevails. Opportunities for advancement are unprecedented. Countless millions of foreigners long to come here.
And we, the people, seem determined to shatter what we have been given.
My gravest concern isn’t Islamist terrorism or China’s ambitions. It’s that we, in the thrall of demagogues in both political parties, may precipitate catastrophe.
We do not need anyone to “make America great again.” This country is great right now. Could it be improved? Of course. But neither the activist left nor right offers practical steps to do so. Socialism doesn’t work.
Insults are no substitute for policies. We’ve succumbed to a culture of cheap complaint, rather than of civic responsibility.
Left and right, we’ve become a people of destructive entitlement claims, of imagined wrongs and of political fringes that debase democracy.
Politicians pound us with the fiction that our middle class is doomed unless we elect Candidate X. Well, I’ve lived long enough, and read enough history, to know that we in the middle never had it so good.
We’ve never had better health care, wider opportunities, greater access to education at each stage of life or more leisure choices. Older Americans, especially, should take stock and recall how little we all had 50 years ago — and we still had it better than the rest of the world.
Economic cycles are inevitable and inflict temporary dismay, but look at home sales (and prices), at booming auto sales, at how much stuff even the “poor” possess. When you can have a smartphone and flatscreen TV and still qualify for government assistance, we’ve redefined “poverty” up several notches.
Instead of appreciating that, we complain. When the cow refused to give milk, our ancestors blamed the Devil. Today, we blame the government, portraying it as a bureaucratic Satan.
Political hustlers from both ends of the spectrum, rather than doing the hard work of solving problems, blame our government for all our ills, the left for it doing too little, the right for it doing too much.
Well, I’m grateful — enormously so — for the government we have. Life has taught me to revere our laws and respect law enforcement (Cops’ lives matter!). I know we can’t endure without a strong military (the largest part of our government).
I don’t want to be an investor, however small, without the Securities and Exchange Commission watching over the markets. I’m grateful for the Food and Drug Administration ensuring the safety of my dinner.
Having grown up in the horribly polluted anthracite region of Pennsylvania, I’m thankful to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In my experience, even those who rail most fiercely against our government would howl if their Social Security payments were late.
A core problem is that we fail to discriminate between the institutional government and presidential administrations (of which we’ve now had 23 squalid years). We no longer understand how our system of government works, or even its checks and balances (legislating was meant to be slow and difficult).
I blame both extremes. On the left, teachers’ unions and their political guardians have ravaged K-12 education, gutting civics courses and bastardizing what few history classes remain. As a result, we not only don’t know the cost of our freedoms, but we no longer grasp democracy’s essence: compromise. Nobody gets everything. And no angry minority gets to ram its intolerant agenda down everybody’s throat.
Do we have problems in this peerless country? Of course, we do. We always will. Because our nation’s composed of human beings. And human beings are imperfect. But our government isn’t made up of malevolent gremlins. It’s made up of us.
I treasure our laws. I value those who serve. I am grateful for the opportunities this nation has granted to me and my family. I’m proud to pay my taxes. And I am grateful every single day.
Don’t destroy this golden age. Refine the gold.
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