America, Count Your Blessings
By Steve Farrell (10/31/03)
Liberty Letters, Jefferson, Letter 2
Last week I was tuned into a national radio talk show that has a reputation for being straightforward.
A caller, who displayed himself at once as a racist and an anti-American, was asked by the host, “If things are as bad here as you say they are, then why aren’t you living over there?”
The man refused to answer. The host pressed. The man still refused to answer, while continuing to rant against America. The host pressed again. No response, more hate-filled ranting. The host finally hung up on the un-American bigot.
The answer that this mean-spirited, ungrateful man refused to admit to himself and to others was obvious. He lived here because things were better. He didn’t live elsewhere, because he wouldn’t dare. Once one has tasted of American liberty and prosperity, who wants to live anywhere else?
Sure, each of us have a list of gripes about the United States, some of them legitimate; but have we counted our blessings lately?
Thomas Jefferson, writing to Colonel Monroe, from Paris in June of 1785, noted:
“I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here; the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. It will make you adore your own country, its soil, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners. My God! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy. I confess I had no idea of it myself. While we shall see multiplied instances of Europeans going to live in America, I will venture to say, no man now living will ever see an instance of an American removing to settle in Europe, and continuing there. Come, then, and see the proofs of this, and on your return add your testimony to that of every thinking American, in order to satisfy our countrymen how much it is their interest to preserve, uninfected by contagion, those peculiarities in their governments and manners, to which they are indebted for those blessings.” (1)
Today, it is fashionable to speak of Europe as our model, or of the need for a socialist international utopia as our goal, when we really ought to be reflecting on how blessed we are to live here, how superior our political principles are, how important it is for us to understand how they once worked and may yet work if we study them, sustain them, promote them, and discover new applications for them, the sort of which will make life even better.
These things and others, we ought to do; and perhaps, do this one thing more, spend a few weeks, a few months, or a few years over in Europe, or Asia, or Africa, as Jefferson advised; then see how loud we sing “God Bless America.”
Footnote
1. Bergh, Albert Ellery, “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Volume V, p. 21.
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