By Jim Dickson
There has been much discussion about “Making America Great”, and while I agree that some of the things that have made America great throughout our history may have been forgotten or lost, but America is still a great country. If that is true, what does make America great and different from almost any other country in the world?
I believe, just as many of our founding fathers did, that morality and religion play a very important part in our ability to be a great nation. The interpretation of morality and religion may vary, but civic virtue and ethical conduct are essential components for a nation to effectively govern itself and preserve its liberty.
We may have lost some civic virtue along the way, and some of our elected officials are not paragons of ethical conduct, but I still think that for the most part we are an ethical and moral people. Even immigrants from lawless and failed counties change when they come to America and are exposed to moral and caring people.
We are compassionate people. We are willing to spend our time and resources to help people in need at home or abroad.
We have always cared about traditions and our history. We are at our best when we study and learn why and how this nation was founded and the struggles that Americans over the years have gone through to bring us to where we are today.
We learn from history the things that have been done right and strive to build on that base; and the things that have been done wrong, and correct them going forward. A nation that doesn’t know and value its history and traditions has to start over every day and make the same mistakes over and over again. Unfortunately some recent generations have not been taught our history and traditions as well as they should have been, but hopefully that is changing.
We are optimistic and brave people. We are a country of immigrants, and if people immigrated yesterday or 200 years ago they were optimistic people who saw hope for a better life by coming to America. It takes an optimistic and brave person to board a ship or walk a jungle trail with little or no money, unable to speak, read or write the local language, with no assurance of what work they might find or where they might find a home, and come to a completely unknown and foreign country. Yet they come, and for the most part find prosperity if not immediately for themselves, but for their children and future generations, and that still goes on every day.
We are honorable people who value the rule of law. All societies have criminals who flaunt the laws and we have our share. But for the most part we obey the laws and do the honorable thing because we believe that it is the right thing to do, not from fear of punishment or incarceration. We know that for a society to succeed we must live together in an honorable and lawful way.
We are capitalists; capitalism rewards innovation, hard work and success. Socialism and communism stifle it, and eventually kill it off completely.
I guess if you had to sum up what makes America great in a word, it would be “opportunity.” America is a place where the humblest and poorest person, who is willing to work hard can achieve whatever success that they want. It might be fame, or wealth or simply a desire to make a better life for themselves and their family. This is one of the few places on earth where we have the freedom and opportunity to be much more than we are.
Opportunity is no doubt the driving force to make America the number one place where millions of people around the world would like to live. Don’t believe people who say the American Dream is dead, they are dead wrong. It’s alive and well in the greatest country in the world, America, and if you live here, consider yourself very lucky.
Born, raised and educated in the Southwest, Jim Dickson served in the U.S. Navy Reserve in Vietnam before a 35-year business career. Retired to St. Helena Island, Dickson and his wife are fiscally conservative, socially moderate and active in Republican politics, though they may not always agree with Republicans. Having lived around the country and traveled around the world, Dickson believes that the United States truly is the land of opportunity.
