Taking Stock of America: What's Right



We just had an election last week in the United States and this is a good time to take stock of our country. The famous hymn, America the Beautiful, includes this prayer, “America, may God shed His grace on thee.” He sure has.

In past decades Gallup has been conducting polls around the world. One question they ask: If you could move anywhere in the world where would it be? Last year, of the people they polled, 170 million said the United States of America. The Wall Street Journal analyzed data a few years ago and found that 20 million black Africans had applied for visas to the United States in the previous year. Why do tens of millions of people around the world want to move to the U.S.? Because America is a great place.

What’s great about America? Let me count the ways. Incidentally, almost everything I say below about America could be said of any nation in the Western world.

First, let’s not overlook something we take for granted. By almost every measure we are the richest nation in the history of the world. We provide an astonishingly rich material life for almost all our citizens. Someone will ask, what about the homeless? About one tenth of 1 percent of Americans are homeless. And this is not due to poverty but rather for spiritual and psychological reasons. American governments have spent billions on the homeless. When defectors from the old Soviet Union were given a tour of America they were often taken to an ordinary grocery store. For the Russians the offerings at your local Safeway were so lavish they thought they were being deceived. This grocery store was set up just to trick them. They didn’t realize that every American community has a grocery store like the one they were in. 

What about the hungry children we see on billboards? Last year the federal children’s assistant program alone spent $112 billion dollars to feed children, to say nothing of billions more in state and local spending. If a child is hungry it is not because there is a lack of willingness or ability on the part of our society to feed them.

We must give thanks for the technological innovations we enjoy. Many of us love the most recent gadgetry—iPhones, X-boxes and the like. But I am not talking fundamentally about them. I am talking about more important innovations. For example, electricity. The technology writer Robert Bryce says that in terms of human well-being we should divide the world into two eras. Before electricity and after electricity, because the electric grid has so radically altered the material quality of our lives. My mother was born in 1922. Her house in rural West Virginia was not wired for electricity until 1942 when she was a college student. I asked her once what were the major changes she noticed. She first mentioned an obvious one—the refrigerator. Food spoilation was nearly totally eliminated saving countless lives. But she mentioned something else I never would have thought of—the electric iron. Ironing clothes was made so much easier. Instead of swapping out flatirons on a hot stove the housewife had a continual source of heat for ironing her clothes. The biggest change in her life came from her Saturday morning chore. For years she would trim the wicks and clean the globes on all the kerosene lamps in the house, a job that took hours. Now all she had to do was flip a switch.

Have any of you had the opportunity to enjoy air conditioning? It was invented by an upstate New Yorker named Willis Carrier a little over a hundred years ago. 100% of the world’s AC is generated by electricity. Thanks be to God and Willis Carrier for this innovation.

And of course I could list a thousand other things that bless our lives as a result of technological innovation.

Second, I realize we are under attack but we have a high degree of religious freedom in America and in the West. I know a missionary in a foreign land who has had her school closed three times this year by the government because it opposes Christian schooling. So she keeps moving so she can operate before the government forces her to move again. 6 million American children are homeschooled and millions more attend private and Christian schools. We have an incredibly high degree of freedom to educate our children and that is one freedom that is expanding in spite of every effort of the Marxist Progressive elite to curtail it. 

In addition, we have a high degree of intellectual freedom including the freedom to innovate. Walter Russell Mead has pointed out that in the last 300 years virtually every new invention has come, first, from the U.S., and second, from England. Essentially all the rest come from the culturally Christian nations of Western Europe. I sat in the airport in Bangkok, Thailand, thinking about everything around me that had been invented by an American. The airplanes landing and taking off—the Wright brothers in 1903. The air conditioning—Willis Carrier, 1906. The escalator—Jesse Reno, 1892. Food safely refrigerated—Fred Wolf, 1913. And electricity itself had a number of developers from the famous like Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison.  But the most important person was the man who made it available to the masses, Samuel Insull, a little over a hundred years ago. All these developments came out of the free society of America, created by Christian culture, and blessing the entire world.

A third thing that is right about the U.S.: the deep Christian commitment of millions of Americans. I know there are a lot of fake and shallow Christians. But to the glory of God there are many who really love Christ and every day deepen their relationship with Him. A number of years ago Barna research did a survey of Christian practices. As I recall they had ten questions, things like do you read your Bible every day, do you attend church regularly, do you give to charity, do you serve your church and community? Questions like these. Barna bemoaned the fact that only seven percent of Americans could answer yes to all these questions. I saw it the other way around. 25 million Americans practice basic Christian disciplines. 25 million. What an incredible number. And I can tell you from my study of history that a tiny percentage of real Christians in a population are salt and light transforming the rest of country. We have lots of believers who are salt and light and they have an enormous impact on the rest of society.

Fourth, there is the immense power of the Christian church. The church is the only major institution in America not under the control of the Marxist, Progressive Left but it wields power greater than all the institutions arrayed against it. It is still largely influenced by real Christians; there is very little top-down control; most power is held at the congregational level; in a world that is hostile toward men the clergy is largely male. It is no wonder that young men are returning to church. The Marxist Progressive Left should have more power than they do, but Christian Americans, in their churches, families, and schools resist the Marxist takeover.

Fifth, we have a great deal of political freedom. We live under the rule of law; that is, American law is written, applies to all, and is enforced by our judicial system. We enjoy equal justice under the law more than any people who ever existed. For example, Black Americans have enormous legal protections that few other black or minority communities in the world—or the history of the world—enjoy. We just had a major election. The New York Times warned that a vote for Trump would be the end of democracy, but that’s just a foolish false prophecy that the Times specializes in. I’ll bet we have an election in 2026. And we will get a new president in 2028. I was in China after the 2016 election and the Chinese were astonished by it. Not that Trump won, they had no idea who Trump was. They couldn’t believe that you could actually have an election that would change the rulers at the top—something that none of them had ever experienced.

Sixth, we must be positive about the future of America because Christians are having children. We have a lot more than our secular counterparts. In fact, atheists and agnostics have the fewest kids. That means a generation from now the proportion of Christians will increase substantially. You will see this everywhere including the election booth. It is my speculation that the Left is currently at its high-water mark and its influence will shrink in coming years.

Seventh, the most positive development in the realm of public policy is education reform. Half the states in the U.S. have voucher programs. That is, parents can take the tax money spent on their kids and apply it to the school of their choice. Not all states include all children in their voucher program but about ten do. And the number is only going to grow. This will undermine the Left’s program of public-school indoctrination. Higher education is a vast wasteland in the humanities and social sciences but it is beginning to change. Reform is possible even here.

I have given you seven bright points of light; reasons to be hopeful about the future of America. Our greatest hope, of course, lies in the sovereignty of our God who has in the past made ours such a great country. Millions of believers are asking Him to continue to do so. I believe He will.

May our God bless you this day in a mighty way.

Robert Bryce, Why I’m Bullish on America: https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/five-reasons-to-be-bullish-on-the-united-states?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Millions want to move to America: https://news.gallup.com/poll/652748/desire-migrate-remains-record-high.aspx

Walter Russell Mead: America is a Beacon of Light; https://www.wsj.com/opinion/politicians-arent-what-make-america-great-e05c0083?mod=MorningEditorialReport&mod=djemMER_h

Coming to America was like winning the lottery: https://www.thefp.com/p/rigged-elections-putin-russia-tanya-lukyanova-trump-kamala?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email