America’s racist!!! One would think, if America is to considered a racist country, we’d want to know the definition of the word. And who better to get that definition from but a giant of the anti-racist movement, Ibram X. Kendi, the author ofHow to Be an Antiracist. Here’s Mr. Kendi’s definition of racism: "I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas…"Apparently Dr. Kendi missed that day in kindergarten where the teacher said “You cannot use the word you’re trying to define in the definition of that same word.”
In an effort to help Mr. Kendi and others understand the words they’re using, below is a slightly more coherent definition of racism:
Racist: One who believes that one “race” (in this context, members of the human race differentiated by the color of their skin) is genetically superior to another. Often the holder of this opinion believes themselves to be amongst the superior race. (For a bit more on this, click here to read my first ever blogpost: Racism: America's Original Sin.)
The point of the above is that if one seeks to use a word to describe something, it helps to use the language properly, something Mr. Kendi apparently has trouble doing.
America is racist! That statement is fundamentally illogical. A country cannot be racist. It can be landlocked, beautiful or on the equator, but it can’t be racist. Its people can be however. Indeed, Americans can be racist, and no doubt there are some among us who are. But how many Americans actually are racists? It’s impossible to know, but we do know that there are whites who are racists and believe in white superiority just as there are blacks who are racists and believe in black superiority. But in the context of the “America is racist” trope, it’s only the white racists who count. So how many are there? Are they increasing in numbers?
It’s hard to tell, but to the degree that Americans are part of the KKK, which is historically a group that counts racist anti-black ideas as one of its bedrock principles, perhaps not quite as many as the left would like us to think.
In the 1920’s at its apogee, the KKK had anywhere from 3 to 8 million members. At the time the American population was approximately 110 million. That would mean that somewhere in the ballpark of 5% of the American population would have been members of the Klan. Included in that group were doctors, lawyers, politicians and even a future Supreme Court Justice.
Today however, the number of Americans who are part of the Klan is estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000. With our larger population that works out to be .000015% of our population as members of the Klan. Were the number 5% as in 1920 there would be 15 million Klan members in the US today. But there’s not. In fact there’s been a reduction of 99.99% of members of the premier racist organization in American history.
Another way of looking at potential racists in America is people who actually commit “hate crimes” where racism is their probable motivation. According to the FBI data states that in 2019 there were 6,406 “hate crimes” in the US where the offender is known – and approximately 2,000 more where they don’t know the offender. These crimes include Murder – 19 offenders and 51 victims, Aggravated Assault – 1,094 / 1,158, Simple Assault – 2,030 / 2,023, Intimidation – 1,640/ 2,206, Burglary – 64 / 129 and various other crimes. Of those “hate crimes” the number of white perpetrators was 3,365 or 52% of the total while the number of black perpetrators was 1,532 or 24% of the total. Whites make up 62% of the American population but only 52% of the “hate crime” offenders while blacks make up 12.6% of the American population but 24% of the “hate crime” offenders…
Finally, one would expect that racists believe that their race (color) is very important to their image of themselves as that’s necessary in order to think of someone of a different color is somehow below them. Pew Research did a survey asking that very question and the results were: 5% of whites thought whiteness was very important and an additional 10% thought it was somewhat important for a total of 15% of whites thinking that their whiteness was important to their image of themselves. For blacks the corresponding numbers about how important blackness was to their self image were 52% & 22% for a total of 74% of blacks thinking that their blackness is important to their image of themselves.
It’s certain that none of these measures is a perfect correlation with the number of racist white people in the United States, but it’s clear that if white Americans were the racist bigots Democrats keep suggesting they are, proof of that would likely show up in one of these datasets. But they don’t.
Nonetheless, we’re told by Democrats, BLM, Antifa and college professors like Dr. Kendi that America is a racist country. What they really mean is that white Americans are racists, and that they have built a systemically racist nation in which black Americans are subjugated and lack opportunities.
Clearly the former is simply not accurate, nor is the latter. If America was a nation of racism incarnate we’d likely not have had a black president, we’d likely not pour billions of dollars a year into the pockets of black entertainers nor put them on the pedestals or jerseys or wall posters. It’s unlikely that 8% of American millionaires would be black nor that the last two federal holidays created would have been centered on black history.
If you’d really like to know what is going on, Google “How many racists are there in the United States”. It’s unlikely you’ll get an even a remotely accurate answer – or logical attempt to come up with one – within the first half dozen pages. What you will get however are countless studies and articles and statistics demonstrating that America is “systemically racist”, rife with “structural racism”, that race relations are getting worse and polls proving that Donald Trump caused a rise in “white nationalism” and “hate groups”. Virtually everything you find will be support for the left’s lie that America is a racist country: disparity, unequal, disadvantage, etc.
Despite the dearth of data demonstrating that America is made up of actual racists, and indeed extraordinary proof to the contrary, the left persists. The president of the United States stated that white supremacists are the “most lethal threat” to the country, the Attorney General claims white supremacists are the biggest domestic terror threat and the Pentagon is teaching soldiers about Critical Race Theory. This is the equivalent of standing in the middle of a desert and pretending you’re drowning. You’re not, and engaging your fellow lost souls to fight that battle will only make them more vulnerable to real threats like scorpions, snakes and dying of thirst. By proffering the fiction that America is racist Kendi, the Democrats and their comrades are leading the country into an inferno from which escape, in one piece and as one people is highly unlikely.
Never tell a leftist they hate America. They will correct you every time. They don’t hate America they’ll tell you,
they just want to improve it. They just
want to help make it better. They just
want America to live up to her ideals.
No, it’s not America per se that they hate, but rather the
things that made America so spectacular in the first place. Free enterprise. Limited government. Federalism. Separation of
Powers. Individual freedom.
But, while they don’t hate America, it is, according to
them, racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnocentric, intolerant and more. In
addition, the Constitution is an outdated document written by old racist white
guys and needs to be reimagined.
So, OK, sure, I’ll buy that leftists don’t technically hate
America. And apparently they don’t, because even when they have Hollywood or
Silicon Valley or Wall Street type money and could live anywhere in the world…
big surprise, they never actually leave!
When I tell leftists that America is the greatest nation
that’s ever existed it seems to send them over some sort of cliff. They often
get angry and look at me as if I just told them I the earth is flat. But the funny thing is, when I ask what
nation is better or empire was better… crickets. They immediately launch into a polemic about
how America is racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnocentric etc. It’s ripe with
inequality, inequity and is run by rich white men. And not to be forgotten, its Constitution is
an outdated document written by old white racist guys and as such, shouldn’t
control our lives today.
Then I suggest that even if it were the case that America was
the hellscape they suggest, where should we go to escape it? Again, crickets.
Despite the fact that the leftist snowflakes can’t point to
a single place on earth or in history that is or was superior to the United
States, that had a more successful combination of prosperity and freedom than
the US, they most certainly have an endless supply of ways to improve it:
Bans on hate speech, which they define as anything that hurts anyone’s feelings.
Defund the police.
Pack the Supreme Court.
Disband the INS.
$15 minimum wage.
Demonize the Founding Fathers.
Eliminate the Electoral College.
Cancel anyone who ever uttered an opinion that doesn’t comport with the currently favored position on any given subject.
Eliminate academic requirements and standardized testing for entrance into college.
Universal healthcare
Free college tuition
Green energy mandates and subsidies
Eliminate fossil fuels
Repeal the Second Amendment
Eliminate capitalism.
Eliminate the binary gender construct
Make the Pentagon the bleeding edge for social experiments
Tax the rich
Forgive student debt
Mandate vaccinations
And the list goes on, and on, and on. It literally never
stops.Griswold v. Connecticut begat Roe
vs. Wade which begat partial birth abortion.Gay rights turned into civil unions turned into gay marriage.Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act
turned into coerced lax lending standards which turned into the housing
crash.And the Americans with
Disabilities Act started out as compassion for the handicapped and mutated into
a vehicle for extortion of small businesses by a cabal of pernicious lawyers. Removing
the Confederate Battle Flag from state flags led to pulling down statues of
Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas to cancelling Dr. Seuss & Aunt Jemima.
At exactly what point will America cease to be the racist
sexist hellhole that the left tells us it is?Must the military perfectly
reflect the hue and sex of America itself?Must corporate executives be promoted based on their socioeconomic
heritage?What else needs to be
reflective of the demographics of the American populace?How about the NBA & the NFL? Black men
make up 74% of the NBA and 70% of the NFL.Do we fire 90% of them to hire more white men and women of every
race?Would that make the games more
competitive, more exciting?Probably
not.Or how about nurses? 93% of nurses
are women.Should 40% of them be fired
in order to hire men to make the industry reflective of the rest of the
country? Would that make healthcare better or patients happier and safer? Unlikely.And this could go on endlessly for every area
of the economy: Ditch diggers.Sanitation
workers.Teachers.Barbers.Rap artists. Surgeons. Lawyers.
The bottom line is the left knows how to do one thing well,
and that is destroy what someone else built.We’ve seen that play out across America time and again.From the burnt husks of Detroit and
Washington that rotted for decades following the riots of the 1960’s to turning
once great American cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles into giant
homeless camps strewn with needles and feces to the economic devastation wrought
in cities like Minneapolis and Portland and Seattle from a year of “mostly
peaceful protests”.When the left comes
to power in successful cities the march to a real hellscape begins.And it’s not just cities.The left broke the Boy Scouts, they destroyed
the NFL as a truly national form of entertainment, they’ve ruined Disney and
Marvel and they are in the process of destroying women’s sports. Dennis Prager
often says “The Left destroys everything it touches” and he’s right.The left has never built a nation millions of
people risk their lives to enter.The
left has never built a society where freedom of thought, speech and the press
have thrived.The left has never built an
economic juggernaut founded on free markets or anything else.
The left can do nothing more than take advantage of the
freedom and prosperity that others have created and throw stones at it for its
imperfections.Voltaire was prescient
when he observed “Perfect is the enemy of the good”.America is no doubt imperfect.It is flawed and sometimes unfair and often
inequitable… but mankind is all of his creations are.The reality is, the United States is by far
the greatest nation God has seen fit to grace man with and while it will
continue to be imperfect until the end of days, it is nothing like the racist,
fascist hellscape the left makes it out to be.But of course none of that matters because for the left, building
something great is never a necessity, in fact, it’s never even a
consideration.Why bother trying to build
anything when it’s so much easier to throw stones at those who are too busy actually
building things to notice they’re being targeted for their imperfections by
those who don’t have the courage to try.
I’m not sure what the textbook definition of hate of county
might be, but everything the left does and says most certainly looks like it.There’s an old saying: “If it looks like a
duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” Replace
duck with hate and you have America’s left:too cowardly risk doing anything but more than willing to demonize those
who aren’t.
Back in 2008 when Barack Obama was running for the presidency I was virulently opposed to his candidacy. I was not a huge fan of John McCain, but given the two I voted for McCain. McCain was a war hero by any stretch. Not only did he fight for his country and survive five long years in the Hanoi Hilton, but when given the opportunity to leave before others who’d been there longer because the North Vietnamese wanted to curry favor with his father, he refused. I disagreed with much of what McCain did as a Senator, but I knew he had America’s best interests at heart, something I never felt Barack Obama did. When Romney ran my reservations about him were similar to those about McCain, but once again I voted GOP.
I disagreed with Barack Obama on almost everything over the course of his eight years. From Obamacare to DACA to GM to DADT to virtually everything having to do with race relations. I disagreed with his trading for Beau Burgdahl, his pardon of Chelsea Manning and his commutation of the sentence of FLAN terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera. I disagreed with his signing the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran deal and his servile posture towards China for their designs on the South China Sea, among other things. I disagreed with his policies on housing, on education and on energy. Essentially, there was nothing I agreed with Barack Obama on. He could have been Chinese or Italian or Jewish or Klingon… I didn’t care, I thought everything he was doing was simply wrong.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2008… I apparently had magically transformed into a racist. Who knew? With the rise of the Tea Party movement, I, along with anyone who disagreed with the first black President of the United States was branded a racist. Somehow, because Barack Obama was black, my fundamental differences with “mainstream” Democrat policies made me a racist. Nevermind that I would have disagreed with the exact same policies had they been proffered by Joe Biden or John Kerry or Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton or anyone else. No, suddenly it’s wasn’t my opinions or my actions that made me a racist, but simply the fact that I opposed the policies of a black president. Unimportant is the fact that I believe the smartest man in America and one of the most admirable human beings I’m familiar with is Thomas Sowell, a black man. Unimportant is the fact that I think Justice Thomas is easily one of the most brilliant men ever to sit on the Supreme Court. Unimportant is the fact that one of the most respected men in my life personally was a black man. I disagreed with Barack Obama’s policies and therefore I was a racist…
If that sounds strange, it should. Because words actually mean things. When they stop meaning things then we lose our foundation for a coherent society. And that is exactly what is going on today with the Democrat party. Disagree on policy? You’re a racist. Support Donald Trump? You’re a cultist. Assert election fraud? Suddenly you’re a terrorist.
Democrats have taken to defining their political opponents not only as the enemy, but they are using the English language as a tool to literally destroy the United States. Racist actually means something. According to Webster, it means this: A belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. That is a pretty specific definition, and it’s one that likely very few Americans actually believe and act on. There are indeed racists among us, but until 2008 racism was a tiny problem in America. Hate crimes had plummeted over the 20th century to become almost nonexistent by the dawn of the new millennia. Then came 2008, 2016 and finally 2020.
From “The police acted stupidly” to Kaepernick to Ferguson, America took a giant step backward in race relations during the presidency of Barack Obama… but the worst was yet to come. Donald Trump added an entirely different element to the storm. He’s a guy who seems to have no filter and often insulted delicate snowflakes with language that often sounded more like what you’d hear in a locker room or on the factory floor of a steel mill rather than on a dais at the UN. But more than his words, it was his ideas that were abhorrent to Democrats and establishment Republicans alike: Get the government out of people’s lives. Reduce government power! Allow citizens to be free and keep more of their own money. Stop endless wars. Those words are Kryptonite to career government apparatchiks, contractors and the universe of sycophantic lobbyist and media pilot fish that swim around them and feast on their scraps.
And so today we find that Democrats, having fraudulently eliminated the single biggest threat to the leviathan of government power in a century, have decided to eliminate all potential for a resurrection of any such threats. Not only is the left seeking to bar Donald Trump from ever running again, they are seeking to demonize and ostracize his supporters… fully half the population of the United States. How? Language. You’re labeled a racist or a terrorist or a fascist on social media, where friends, friends of friends and potential employers can see. (That should help you getting your next job.) Most pernicious of all is the assertion that Trump supporters are “terrorists”. The terrorist designation used to be reserved for people who blow up planes, kill innocent people in discos or set fire to churches or synagogues.
Today however that is no longer the case. Simply stating that you believe the Democrats stole the 2020 election is sufficient to get you labeled as such. Stating you support Donald Trump is sufficient. And voicing support for Congress to investigate anomalies in the election is apparently sufficient.
This wouldn’t be a catastrophic problem if it was limited to social media because you can always leave the platforms or try and build another… but, being designated a terrorist and landing on a government watchlist has enormous consequences for actual people, from the inability to fly to risking the custody of your children to your ability to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights.
Make no mistake, that is exactly where we are headed and exactly what they want. Democrats discussed throwing out of Congress members who supported the president in his calls for a review of the election. They’ve talked about making lists of his supporters and even “reprogramming” white supremacists, which is what all Trump supporters apparently are. And based on this fiction of widespread “white supremacism” the Biden administration is “standing down” the American military in order for commanders to address “extremism” in its ranks… So essentially one political party is seeking to eliminate all supporters of their opposition from within the ranks of the military – despite soldiers taking an oath to uphold the Constitution, not a man or party – so that should they call on the military to support their purges, they will face less resistance from soldiers who understand the Posse Comitatus Act and who might be adverse to raising their weapons against law abiding American citizens. The Democrats are essentially using the fiction of Trump supporters being terrorists to craft the military into a Praetorian Guard for use against the American people when and if necessary. Anyone with a familiarity with the Roman Empire understands why that might not be conducive to a free society.
Supplementing all of the machinations within the government is the takeover of the town square, Vis-Ã -vis the blocking of Trump and his supporters from social media platforms, banking or even being tracked. And with the cancel culture seeking to keep Trump supporters out of colleges, jobs, and the quashing of publishing contracts you have the modern equivalent of book burning. What’s more, the authors, readers and supporters of such unapproved content will be figuratively stoned in the public square until they surrender their minds to the majority.
And so here we are, in February 2021, two weeks after Joe Biden and the Democrats took total control of Washington and on the eve of an Impeachment trial so unconstitutional it would be laughable if it were not so indicative of what it foretells for freedom. The goal of the Democrats is to eviscerate any opposition and that starts with the man who inspired 75 million Americans to seek to Make America Great Again.
Regardless of the outcome of the Impeachment trial, the die has been cast, and it is indeed dark. The Democrats seek complete control of the American government, unlimited authority over every aspect of American life and most of all, total domination of the American people. They will of course use their traditional tools of regulation and taxation, but it’s not enough. They have new tools: name calling, book burning, intellectual fascism and focusing of the military on domestic enemies. Those policies didn’t end particularly well in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, and I wouldn’t expect them to end well here either.
Adolph Hitler said: “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” That line may never have been as true as it is today.
What is that lie? It comes in many flavors: America is racist. Donald Trump is racist. Trump supporters are racists. Republicans are racists. You might notice a theme here. Now repeat the above and exchange the word racist for fascist...
None of those things are true. But truth doesn’t matter. Why? Because truth is not the objective, power is. In 2020 America, if you disagree with the left on anything from abortion to immigration to tax cuts to global warming you are an enemy who must be destroyed. And the primary weapons of choice are the slurs of racist and fascist.
And the beauty of it is that no proof beyond the assertion is necessary. Before he became president Donald Trump lived most of his life in front of cameras in the most media obsessed city on the planet. Morning shows, talk shows, radio shows, news shows, press conferences, grand openings, the Apprentice… you name it and Trump was there. As we all know, Donald Trump basically can’t keep his mouth shut, yet for the first 67 years of his life this man who never met a camera or microphone he could resist somehow kept the secret of his virulent racism a secret.
Then, once he became president he did such racist things as fund Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) at a level no president ever had, label the KKK as a terrorist organization, signed into law sentencing reform that had been called for by black leaders for decades, pardon the late boxer Jack Johnson and the very much alive Alice Johnson. He also supported “opportunity zones”, pushed for school choice, both of which disproportionately benefit minorities, and at the same time created an economy that brought about the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded. But he’s a racist.
The proof Donald Trump is a fascist is equally strong. He arrests and jails any reporter who dares to question him. He uses the CIA and FBI to spy on anyone who disagrees with him. He imprisons judges who rule against his policies. He trains the military on people who are peacefully protesting his policies. Clearly Donald Trump is a fascist.
To understand how accurate Hitler’s words are look no farther than a Newsweek piece from July: Half of Americans Think Trump Is Racist and an Additional 13 Percent Are Unsure. That is simply staggering, and the reason is simple: In excess of 90% of the media coverage of Donald Trump is negative. “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Add to that the manipulation by Facebook, Google and Twitter and you get us to where we are today with an election that was not only stolen, but with 1/2 the population thinking that a flawed but good man is racist and a fascist...
The above is only a symptom of the real problem however. The real target is not Donald Trump per se, but rather the half the population who support him, and the truth is they hated us long before Donald Trump came onto the political stage, most clearly seen when we were called racists and Nazis for opposing Barack Obama in 2008.
Democrats and their comrades get away with it because they know we respect the rule of law. In 2008 when we lost to Barack Obama we didn’t riot. We peacefully protested and went to the voting booth. In 2010 we went to the polls and the Democrats lost 64 seats in the House and we finally turned the Senate red in 2014.
That is what conservatives and Republicans generally do. We don’t riot when we don’t get our way. Even when we’re cheated, as happened in 1960 with Nixon, 2004 with Dino Rossi and 2008 with Norm Coleman, we don’t try to burn the country down because we respect the rule of law.
What do 75 million Americans do if they discover that despite playing by the rules they’ve been duped again, this time on the single most important election of their lifetimes, with the future of the Republic literally hanging in the balance? They are told by the same media who spent four years pushing the fiction of Russian collusion that they should simply shut up and accept defeat, regardless of the myriad examples of voter fraud, both big and small.
Lincoln said “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” He was referring to the issue of slavery, but the line might also well apply here today. When fully half the American population loses confidence in the integrity of the election process upon which the nation is governed, loses confidence in the media - both traditional and social - who have been lying to them for years about fictional election tampering, and come to believe that their political opponents will use everything from rioting to mayhem to outright theft to gain control of the government, what should they do? What is their motivation to continue to participate in a process where the game is rigged? What is their motivation to continue to engage in a system where one side believes the Constitution is but a barrier to be subverted rather than the rulebook by which the nation is governed? What is their motivation to be constrained by a Constitution which their opponents disregard at every turn as they seek to undermine the very rights it was written to protect? What is their motivation to engage in a process legally when they know that their opponents seek to bastardize that very process to accumulate more power and eviscerate the very ideas upon which the nation was founded?
I don’t have the answer and I’ve no idea where we are on a spectrum of anarchy vs. tyranny, but I’m certain that the closer Democrats push the United States towards tyranny the closer we get to a point where liberty loving Americans look for other means to protect the God given rights the Constitution was written to guarantee. What that looks like, I’ve no idea, but Carl von Clausewitz once said “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” That’s something to keep in mind as the Democrats continue their march to eviscerate our Constitution and destroy the country that has given so much to so many for so long. I don't believe that freedom will go quietly into that good night...
This past summer there were a lot of American flags ripped,
walked on and set on fire around the country.Protesters pulled down statues, looted stores and set buildings on fire
across the country.They claim that
America is racist.They claim Donald
Trump is a fascist.They suggest
Capitalism is a cancer and must be replaced.And the Constitution, as it has been a tool of oppression since its
writing, must be eliminated.
To listen to protesters speak, the United States is a
cesspool of racism and oppression where only the rich thrive.
Maybe they’re right.Maybe America is nothing but one large work camp where citizens are
oppressed by their overlords where they have no freedoms and experience a
quality of life that is something out of Dickens. Maybe…
If that’s true, it should be easy to spot.Below are a variety of tables listing measures
of life ranked by country.The sources
for each set of data is different but most evaluate between 180 & 210
countries, depending on how that term is defined.
So what do the data say about this fascist, oppressive American
country? Well, as a journalist might say... lets's go to the data.
How about we start off with the basics… Life
Expectancy.Below is a table of selected
countries for life expectancy.The world
average is 72.6 and the United States comes in at 78.9, putting it solidly in
the top 25%.That’s not terrible.
Then of course there’s earning a living.Below is a table with the average incomes
around the world and the United States comes in at #5, with not a single
country above the United States having more people than the city of New York. That
matters of course because like herding cat, having a country where people are
spread out over vast areas, have extraordinarily different backgrounds and
heritages it’s far more difficult to get everyone on the same page in terms of
what works to achieve prosperity.America has done that.
And of course everyone talks about GDP, the sum of all of
the goods and services a nation produces. Below is a table of the 15 nations
with the largest GDPs in the world.The
United States, with 5% of the planet’s population produces 24% of the world’s
economic output:
Another way of looking at this is GDP on a per capita
basis.Here too none of the nations
above the United States has a population above that of New York.Again, none of the other countries on this
list comes close to being similar to the United States in terms of size and
diversity of our population, and with only Australia being similar when
compared to geographic footprint.
Of course it’s not all about income, it’s about what you can
do with that income.Below is a table showing
the top 20 countries (out of 101) based on the cost of living which measures
what one can actually purchase with the money they earn.And the United States comes in at 4.
Most of us work for a living and sometimes things work out
well and we accumulate significant assets, making us millionaires!Sadly, I’m not one of them, but there are a
LOT of millionaires in the United States.As a matter of fact, the United States, which again is 5% of the world’s
population, is the home of fully 40% of the world’s millionaires:
Millionaires: (in thousands)
1
United
States
18,614
2
China
4,447
3
Japan
3,025
4
United
Kingdom
2,460
5
Germany
2,187
6
France
2,071
7
Italy
1,496
8
Canada
1,322
9
Australia
1,180
10
Spain
979
11
Netherlands
832
12
Switzerland
810
13
India
759
14
South
Korea
741
15
Taiwan
528
And not only that, the number of millionaires as a
percentage of the population is higher in the United States than any nation on
the planet other than Switzerland… but in our defense, Switzerland has really
good chocolate.
Particularly important in this discussion is who those
millionaires are.The makeup of American
millionaires is below.Minorities,
making up 40% of the nation’s population, make up 24% of the millionaires.
And what’s equally important about achieving economic success is mobility into
America’s economic elite.Forbes, which
publishes its annual Forbes 400 chronicling the 400 richest Americans reports
that fully 70% of America’s richest individuals are self made while only 30%
inherited their fortunes.
American Millionaires By Race (and Population Race
Breakdown):
But of course not everyone will end up millionaires, but
opportunities exist nonetheless.Below
is a table that chronicles social mobility, which is roughly characterized as
the ability to move from one economic level to another.Of the approximately 180 countries in the
world this table looks at the 82 with the most measurable opportunities.The average of these 82 countries is 62.2,
and the United States comes in position of 27 with a mobility score of 70.4,
while Denmark is first with a score of 85.2 and Côte d’Ivoire is last with a
score of 34.5.A significant element of
this measure is education and healthcare, both of which drag down the United
States significantly thanks to excessive government intervention.
The reality of the fact that government intervention in
healthcare and education handicap the country is be demonstrated by the
following table that looks at the ease of doing business.This metric includes starting a business as
one of its measures, along with things like regulations, taxes, rule of law and
others.Starting a business is one of
the most effective ways in which one might improve their family’s economic
situation.To the degree that the United
States is ranked sixth out of 180 nations in terms of the ease of doing
business yet 27th in terms of social mobility suggests that that economic
opportunity is very real, while other measures hold the country back.
How about getting to work to run that business or make that
money – and hopefully have some fun too!Americans love to drive.As such,
the price of gas is a big deal.Below is
what people pay in different countries for gas.The world average is $3.80 and the US comes in at $2.15 per gallon while
in France they pay $5.94 and in Hong Kong they pay $8.49!
But it’s not just gas, but there’s buying a car and
maintaining it.Below is a table that
shows the percentage of annual salary it would take to buy a family car and
operate it for one year.These costs
include not only the car and its gas, but insurance and maintenance as well.
And where might an American drive?How about home!Below is a table showing the size of homes
for various countries around the world.The only nation where homes are bigger on average than in the United
States is Australia, but that should be expected as apparently all Australians
keep pet crocodiles!
It’s not just the freedom to drive around that American’s
like.For a nation that was founded on
the pursuit of freedom, freedom of all sorts is still important.Below are two tables, one measuring Economic
Freedom and the other Personal Freedom.
The freedoms in the following two tables in this analysis encompass
a variety of measures including these: Rule of Law / Security and Safety /
Movement / Religion / Association, Assembly, and Civil Society / Expression and
Information / Identity and Relationships / Size of Government / Legal System
and Property Rights.The numbers below
are the top nations of the total pool of 162 nations measured.
And of course the number one freedom someone can have is the
freedom of speech. Without the freedom to say what’s on your mind without fear
of retribution from the government is the strongest tool available for keeping
a government honest.Below is a table
demonstrating something that anyone paying attention this summer would
recognize, Americans have a level of free speech unfettered by government
authorities that is unprecedented in the world.
Another part of freedom is access to information, which is
increasingly delivered via the Internet.Below is a table that looks at the percent of the population with
Internet access for 214 countries.
While the United States may lag far behind on academic
success in primary education, our university system is the best in the world by
far.Below are the 15 best universities
in the world and the only two on the list that are not from the United States
are Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.
Then there is charity.The United States spends more money on charity than any other nation by
far.That is a function of both the
largest GDP as well as the percentage of giving.That is reflected in the table on the left
below.The table on the right measures a
more holistic giving approach that combines donations, volunteering and helping
strangers.Here the United States sits
at number two.
But it’s not just charity that demonstrates America’s
willingness to help, it’s the total social welfare spending.For whatever one’s views on such endeavors,
the United States is behind only France in social welfare spending.This measure includes things such as public
and private social expenditure, the effect of direct taxes (income tax and
social security contributions), indirect taxation of consumption on cash
benefits, as well as tax breaks for social purposes.
We are slight slackers however when it comes to spending on
video games.Americans come in number 3
behind Japan and South Korea on this important measure.
There is one last measure that must be looked at.That is Defense.The United States spends more on defense than
the next 10 countries combined.For some
that might sound problematic, but the reality is that American spending on
defense has allowed the world, particularly Europe to thrive.The second table below shows defense spending
as a percent of GDP.One of the reasons
that European nations are able to generate such extensive welfare spending programs
is that they have kept their defense spending low for decades while the United
States defense expenditures brought about the longest period of overall peace
in Europe in history.That spending may
not show up in happiness measures or salary measures, but it most certainly
shows up in the fact that both Europe and the United States remain bastions of
freedom, democracy and peace, and the carnage of a world war is a distant
memory we read about rather than something we all experienced firsthand. The
first table shows absolute defense spending and the second shows spending as a percentage
of GDP.
At the end of the day, this is piece is a chronicle of the
reality of America. America is indeed imperfect, no doubt for every table here
someone can find their own tables that paint a far darker picture using their
own sources.America does have
inequality, dysfunctional education and healthcare systems and too much
government regulation, but at the same time, Americans have done more with what
they have than any nation on earth.America offers economic opportunities on a wider scale (both geographic
and occupational) than any nation on earth. From Florida to New York to
California to Wyoming the opportunities are simply staggering from doctor to
scientist to graphic designer to business consultant to startup founder to
mechanic to plumber to Instagram model…
What many of the protesters don’t care about is the fact
that the United States Constitution guarantees Americans freedoms that people
in most of the world can only dream of and to the degree that others share some
of them, those freedoms are often at the mercy of political majorities.That includes minority opinions because
things that the majority agree with don’t generally need protection.
At the same time, the United States regularly receives more
immigrants from more places than any nation on earth and gives them opportunities
and freedoms most would or could not dream of at home.And it integrates immigrants at a pace that
no nation has in history.
While there are racial tensions in the United States as
there have been since its founding, in the last half century the country has
made extraordinary leaps which can be seen in both culture and economics, the
former can be seen on televisions, on sports shows and regularly on the radio
while the latter is demonstrated by the fact that 8% of American millionaires
are black, 8% are Asian and 7% are Hispanic.I’ve not found a source thus far, but one can imagine that those numbers
were far smaller during the 1950’s and 1960’s. But I can say that the story the Democrats and the media try and foist on us that America is indeed a bastion of racism is fiction. (https://imperfectamerica.blogspot.com/2020/06/data-shows-driving-while-black-meme-is.html)
For those who want to tear apart American culture because it’s
not what they like, denigrate American values because we’ve not achieved them
on their timetable, want to overthrow America’s capitalist system because they’d
prefer the “equality” promised by socialism or Communism, I’d ask, what place
in the world today, or in world history has a nation done a better job than
America of giving opportunity to its citizens, generating prosperity for its
citizens, protecting its citizens’ freedoms and at the same time helping drive
prosperity and peace around the world?If such a nation exists perhaps I’d certainly be interested in reading
about it.
Tomorrow there are two choices on the ballot.One candidate, a very flawed but passionate man,
understands that the United States is the greatest nation to ever grace the
face of this earth and sees his role as protecting that legacy and rolling back
government intervention to allow Americans of all stripes to address the
country’s shortcomings and achieve even greater success in the future.
The other also an imperfect man, but he sees the United
States as a highly flawed nation, he sees Americans of various identities as
victims and the Constitution as a roadblock to change rather than a guarantee of
freedom and a limit on government intervention on behalf of the majority.
If you like what you’ve seen in the streets of America over
the last six months and would like to see more of it, Joe Biden is your man and
the Democrats are your party.If however
you believe like Ronald Reagan that America’s best days are ahead of her and
that freedom and opportunity are the solutions to most of the problems we face,
Donald Trump is your man and the Republicans are your party.
