Will America Still Be Great in 100 years?

By William P. Summers
Director & VP
(Note: This is a personal opinion article by Mr. Summers)

According to the CIA's World Factbook, the USA ranks 151 (out of 213 countries total) on the GDP – Real Growth Rate country comparison chart. China's rank is 4.

Although our growth rate is dismal, we rank #2 on the GDP (Purchasing Power Parity) comparison chart. The European Union is #1 and China is #3.

There are many who believe that America's best years are behind us and that we, much like the Roman Empire, are declining from within. Do you agree?

One can make pointed arguments for or against.

In light of our most recent recession, the weakening of the US dollar, and our growing national debt; there's no doubt that all Americans can agree our economy needs to improve.

For us to get out of our current financial mess, I believe that America needs to remember what got us here and refocus on what made us great in the first place.

There was a time when America's economy was based on agriculture. The treasury wasn't full…and what little it contained wasn't being promised away to an electorate.

Welfare, both corporate and personal, didn't exist (certainly not as we know it today). Ten little words mattered: "If it is to be, it is up to me." If you got knocked down because of bad luck or bad decisions, you had to get up by yourself, dust yourself off, and try, try again. (If you didn't figure out how to do it yourself, you either hopefully married up, found a rich uncle, or withered and died. Either way, the government wasn't riding a white horse to your rescue.)

So how did America become a great nation? I believe the following factors contributed to America becoming great:

• Freedom – The right for each of us to choose our own path out of free will without the fear that government will redirect us and make life decisions for us. Freedom is an absence of government oppression.

• Justice – What we earn legally is ours to keep, fair and square.

• Opportunity – In America, the only thing holding us back is ourselves. We live in a land where being born poor isn't a life sentence for poverty.

• Responsibility – The concept that we are responsible for the outcome of our lives: success or failure… And that if we do fail, it is up to us to recover. It is not the responsibility of the government to rescue us. There is a distinct difference between rights and privileges. The US Declaration of Independence grants us the right to pursue happiness. It does not guaranty our happiness.

I lived mainly in Europe from 1991 to 1993 and then again in 2001 to 2005. Circa 2002 I had a friend that had a French mother and an American father. The majority of her formative years were spent in France (with annual visits to America to visit her father's family).

She attended university in Paris and was very well travelled. Like many Europeans, her political beliefs were more liberal than conservative.

Once during an informal dinner meeting in Brussels, Belgium, a mutual Belgian acquaintance asked my French-American friend (who was really more French than American), "What's the real difference between being an American and being French?"

Without skipping a beat, my friend said "In America, you truly are free."

She went on to describe how, in her opinion, the words "la liberté pour tous" (freedom for all) didn't quite have the same meaning in France that it has in America, "We speak of freedom in Europe… However, Americans truly are free. They can do what they want, when they want… and they are not subjects of the government. They are citizens."

(Of course she had to follow up her freedom comments with French-superiority commentary on American culture vs. French culture – but that's for another article.)

Needless to say, I never forgot hearing a French-American liberal praise American freedom during that dinner in Brussels.

We can have the technological know-how, the natural resources, and the capacity to industrialize; but without a driving force urging us to move forward to build, to develop, to produce, to grow, to succeed… we would stay stagnant.

In America, our driving force has been our collective desire to exercise our freedom of creating and capitalizing on opportunities. The result has been an unparalleled ability to advance technologically, to industrialize and to become the number one global economy. We've been able to achieve this feat because we have the freedom to act on our dreams. We have the freedom to literally "seize the day."

I served in the US Army from 1990 to 1993. Perhaps the most valuable lesson that I took from the Army was that freedom isn't free. The cost is blood.

America will remain free unless a stronger power takes it away or we choose to give it away.

Like ancient Rome, America doesn't have an adversary with enough military might to conquer us outright. It's far more likely that we would give our freedom away before someone could take it.

I believe that the answer to the question of whether America will still be great one hundred years from now lies with what we choose to do with our freedom. If we give our freedom away, then our nation is as good as dead.

America is a republic. That means that the "people" control the government to a certain degree. There is no monarch or dictator. In our case, we elect the officials who control the government.

Government officials that we put into office are making decisions on how money is spent and what services are (or aren't) available to the people. Our country's accounts don't balance. We are spending money we don't have. Guess what? We, ultimately, are accountable.

There is a cost to everything. One way or another, we pay for what we receive. When we accept another "free" service or bailout from the government; what is the real cost? Is the cost more government control? I believe that more government control = oppression = less freedom.

Who are you going to vote for in the next local or national election? Are you going to vote for the person that has our best long-term interests in mind? Are you voting for the person that is promising a free lunch or are you voting for the person that is hell-bent on protecting our freedoms?

In the formative years of this country, there was no fat government treasury to dole out financial gifts to the citizenry. If we wanted to survive, it was up to us. Financial rewards? We had to earn them. Lunch was never free.

May we have the wisdom to preserve our freedom and may the United States of America be an even greater country 100 years from now. God Bless America.