Despite all our present problems and challenges, aggravated by so many daunting divisions, how awed, thrilled, and grateful our Founding Fathers would be to see just how extraordinarily well our republic has done over the last quarter-millennium. They were not sure if we could even survive as a nation at all, and we have certainly suffered through many terrible trials of economic depression, political and social upheaval, wars, world wars, a Cold War, and even a War Between the States.
Yet, guided by our religious faith, the American Declaration of Independence, and our U.S. Constitution, we have not only survived but thrived more than any country in history, dominating the world today like no nation ever before. We are just four percent of the world’s people, but we have a gigantic impact on the rest of this planet. Economically, though we are but one of not quite 200 nations, we make up about a fourth of the world’s economy. Most U.S. dollars are abroad; in fact, about 30 nations and colonies use it as official currency. The rest of the world hopes our economy does well because we are their top export market.
The notion that the world’s second economic power, China, will soon economically surpass us is absurd. As of 2026, China has about 450 airports. But, with less than one-fourth her population, the U.S. has 19,700. With not quite 42,000 airports on the whole planet, that means almost half are American. The U.S. per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2024 was a little under $67,000; in China, just over $13,000. Even our poorest state, Mississippi, has a higher GDP than the United Kingdom, France, Italy, or Spain. In fact, most Americans are in the top one percent of the world’s income-earners.
Politically, no country has remotely our pull. No major United Nations operation occurs without our leadership. Indeed, we can even successfully defy the U.N., like we did earlier this year with military operations in Venezuela and Iran. Militarily, we are the most powerful nation by far. We spend more money on defense than the total GDP of most of the rest of the world combined. We spend more each year just on our 17 intelligence agencies than every other nation spends on its entire military, except for Russia and China. But add up the defense budgets of Russia and China, and ours is more than double the total – way more. China has two aircraft carriers, but we have 11 – you do the math. Both of theirs are diesel. Ours are all nuclear.
A huge global influence we have is our popular culture which has long been our top dollar export: movies, TV programs, the internet, music, Coca-Cola, blue jeans, fast food, etc. In 1986, the French Marxist, Regis Debray, predicted we would win the Cold War because “There is more power in rock music, videos, blue jeans, fast food, news networks, and TV satellites than in the entire Red Army.” Indeed, in 1998 former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was reduced to being a pitchman for Pizza Hut. Chinese children crave a McDonald’s Monster Burger (a double cheeseburger). When one of my sweet Xiaoyan’s little cousins was asked why he liked it so much, he replied, “It’s delicious!” And who caters many Chinese weddings? KFC. But our ideas remain our greatest influence: freedom, equality, democracy, private property, justice, and altruism. As Lady Margaret Thatcher understood, “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” While our West European allies continue to restrict their citizens’ most basic speech rights, Americans still enjoy more free expression than any people in history because, like our Founding Fathers and the brave patriots who won our nation’s liberty, we know that all our rights come from God, and our Constitution guarantees that our government must respect and protect them. As Senator Robert Kennedy noted, we Americans are the descendants of the greatest political revolutionaries in history because, as the British-American Christopher Hitchens observed, the American Revolution is the only one that still inspires.
No other nation has created a society where everyone enjoys so many rights – and equally. By far the safest country in which to be any kind of minority is America where minority rights are guaranteed to equal those of any majority because our Constitution protects the individual rights of all U.S. citizens – equally. Even a homeless man’s vote counts equally to that of a multi-billionaire or a president.
No other nation has as strong a system of courts as America where judges are sworn to uphold every part of the Constitution, no matter how unpopular it may be at the moment. No other land’s Founding Fathers did as much as ours to constitutionally guarantee that everyone accused of a crime would get maximum due process to try to prevent any innocent person from going to jail. Plus our private property rights are constitutionally guaranteed to better protect our freedoms and the opportunity to succeed.
No nation has a tradition of altruism that can remotely rival ours. We helped save the world from tyranny by liberating “a suffering humanity” in not one but two world wars and then during a Cold War and right up to the present day. Nor has any nation given so much military, economic, technological, and philanthropic help to the rest of the world. Our nation’s Judeo-Christian commitment to the sacred value of every child of God was beautifully shown yet again in April of this year when we deployed 155 aircraft to rescue a single American military officer who had to eject from his plane over enemy-occupied Iran.
And no country’s citizens have the democratic might of Americans to determine our destiny via elections at the national, state, and local levels. We are so committed to democracy that voters not only get to choose between the various political party nominees for each elective office, but we even get to pick all the nominees of our chosen party. No wonder folks all over the world not allowed to vote in any election will vote with their feet to come to America, “the New Jerusalem,” “the New Promised Land,” that “shining city on a hill.” From 1620 to 1858, 388,000 black Africans were brought to the present-day U.S. on slave ships. But, just since 2000, 3.2 million black African immigrants have freely chosen to move here because, as a Nigerian told me, America “is the closest to a perfect country” due to all its great opportunities. In fact, the average median home income of Nigerian-Americans is over $5,000 higher than the average American’s. This is just one of the very many reasons why immigration involving America is all one way.
With all our bountiful blessings, we should recall how the Book of Luke instructs that “For those unto much has been given, much is required.” Sir Winston Churchill, the prime minister who led the United Kingdom to victory over Hitler in WWII, echoed this when he proclaimed that “The price of greatness is responsibility.” Precisely because we Americans live in the most free, democratic, rich, powerful, and blessed nation in history, we must use our might wisely, justly, and always morally, here and abroad.
Of course, despite all our liberty, government still has a huge impact on almost every aspect of our lives. Our elected public officials decide how much freedom we have regarding speech, the press, religion, assembly, protests, guns, birth control, abortion, homosexual rights, speed limits, smoking, alcohol, marijuana and other drugs, immigration, and on and on. Government makes and enforces the laws – and decides which laws will be enforced the most.
Look at just the enormous economic impact of government on all our lives via taxes, government jobs, government contracts, regulations, spending, interest rates, loans, education, and thousands of other public policies.
→ Continue reading: A Quarter Millennium of American Greatness
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