So Things Are Not So Bad. . . Right?

I feel cheerful and I am afraid to admit it.

I learned a very big lesson fifteen years ago when speaking to a Christian group: cheerfulness does not sell. When I pointed out (then) that we had a decade before the battle for traditional Christian morality was lost forever, most groups would listen and line up for questions. When I pointed out that we were also making moral progress in other areas and life was getting better, people got mad.

Jesus is Lord and Satan is damned and in trouble here on planet Earth.

This year in politics the disease of gloom has spread to both parties. To listen to the Democrats, we are governed by robber barons and the Republican front runner wants to make America great again. We have problems. I think our President and current Congress have been (on the whole) ineffective. In fact, I get down right depressed until I look around or look back at our history.

Let’s start with our economy. Maybe everything will go to hell tomorrow (as people have been warning since I was a boy), but my home state of West Virginia is richer than all but four European countries. It is wealthier than the United Kingdom: West Virginia. Thirty-seven states are richer than every nation in Europe. We are a leading manufacturing country, a leading energy producer, and a major agricultural power.

We dominate global media. This can be bad, but it is also good. Our media introduces new ideas, including liberty, to nations that would not know it otherwise.

Our military is unmatched. There is no doubt that we could defeat the entire world if we decided to do so. For example, we have nineteen aircraft carriers more than the rest of the world combined and our carriers are state of the art. China? Not so much.

We are presently investigating the front runner for the Democratic nomination. Few other countries in the world would allow such an insider to be investigated. Our elections are mostly free and fair. Our courts are free of bribery and all persons are given a basic defense. When the “worst” American politicians (the fringe!) are Donald J. Trump and Bernie Sanders we are in good shape.

Take a look at the fringe in Italy, Russia, or France.

Religious freedom is unmatched in the United States of America. We are eroding this right, but even at the worst this is the best place in the world to be a Christian. Orthodox Christians are dying in Syria and building a new school in the United States. Though we have embraced a right to vice in marriage, we still allow dissent from the popular view and the Republican nominee for President of the United States will favor marriage.

This is also the best place in the world to be a religious minority or to have no religion whatsoever. Atheists are not going to prison. Religious minority groups, including Islam, can win elections to our federal government.

Racism remains a major problem in the United States and we have to keep working. Still there are few countries in human history with greater success in forming  a multi-cultural, multi-racial society.

My point is not to deny problems, but to caution that extremism is not necessary. Things are not so bad. We don’t need revolution, we need revival. The United States of America has a problem with decadence in sexuality, we are going quite mad on gender. Yet we used to legally segregate drinking fountains by race. If we can avoid imposing decadence by law on all Americans, truth will out. Male and female are encoded into human and American culture and the madness will pass without government imposition.

Nothing is perfect: ever. Let’s not get anxious and destroy a good thing. Let’s be prudent, trust God, work for justice, and make the nation better. I love my nation . . . her wrongs to right . . .but also see her virtues.  We are deeply flawed, but then so is everyone. Where would you go if not here?

Maybe it is not fashionable to say this right now: but I am proud to be an American.