How Did America Become So Great?

Legal immigrants from around the world came to the New World to work hard, find land, and worship freely. Many died in the process during the arduous voyage across the sea, in the wilderness they were attempting to settle, from industrial accidents in factories they toiled in, from disease, or in battles with the natives.

All had to stop at Ellis Island for proper identification and quarantine when necessary. They were desperate but proud men and women who did not immigrate to become wards of the welfare system because there was none to be had. They had to work hard in order to survive. No hapless taxpayers were supporting the new arrivals and nobody waved the country’s flag where they hailed from. Most learned English as soon as they could no matter what level of education they had.

Today the legal immigrants fly in with papers and medical records and immigration authorities check the thoroughly and register their arrival. But the illegal immigrants cross the border themselves at great health risk, leaving behind a huge trail of trash, or cross with the help of expensive coyotes, or are herded into the country by government buses in the dead of night and on planes without proper health screenings.

Caravans of invading armies of illegals from Honduras and El Salvador have already jumped the fence at various points of the border, aided and abetted by Mexico, closer to California, where Democrat officials welcomed them with open arms and pockets at taxpayer expense while America’s poor and veterans are ignored.  Nobody knows or cares whether these illegals are sick, financially able to support themselves, able to work, and, most importantly, whether they are friends or foes of America.

Some legal immigrants were turned back at Ellis Island, their dreams shattered by disease. Many had to wait out the quarantine before they earned admission to the New World, an old world but new because it was full of possibilities and opportunities to settle the land.

These legal immigrant men and women built roads, bridges, towns, cities, skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, rockets, and the best medicine in the world. They built factories, invented drugs that saved millions around the world, created machines, built hospitals, ports, and our current civilization. They were armed, fierce, and fought in many wars.

They were Americans first who cherished their ethnic roots at home and during the holidays. They were free to invent, to experiment, to be themselves, but also be part of a larger and important whole. They cherished their families and God had a prominent place in their lives. And they made America great for many subsequent generations who appreciated the sacrifice and work of the previous generations and of their elders.

In the late 1970s, as a newly arrived legal immigrant who luckily escaped communism, I met a lot of nice, well-meaning, pleasant, happy, and ill-informed Americans and I wondered then, how did America become so great with so much willing and shameless ignorance? Now, forty years later, I have my answer.

People were not ashamed to say that they knew so little history and geography. They were enterprising and willing to work hard. They understood patriotism and respect for their elders. Their world revolved around family, happiness, consumerism, and church, all set within a certain mile radius of bucolic neighborhoods, streets, and towns they knew and loved.

Americans treasured their roads and had a love affair with big cars and the mobility that said cars afforded them, but they took for granted the freedom to use them, to move where a gambling spirit took them, the wide open spaces were theirs to take if they so desired.

Nobody stopped them or legislated them into high-rise, mixed use, tiny apartments or forced them into tin cans on wheels in order to save the planet from a manufactured global warming crisis. There was no Democrat New Green Deal to curtail freedom of movement, flying, forcing people to bike to work, and forbidding fossil fuels.

Students dozed off in history classes and shrugged their shoulders when they knew very little about their own country and government. Communism and millions of victims of it, you say? That might as well be a dark specter on another planet; it would never find its way here. We are Americans!

People with a lot of education and experience were no longer allowed in Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education-controlled classrooms. They could not take just anybody off the streets with a degree, as I was told a few times, one had to be licensed by the Department of Education and a member in good standing of the National Education Association.

Generous to a fault and eager to jump and help their fellow man, many Americans I’ve met would give the shirt off their backs if one asked. They naively helped many people in times of trouble, even those that bit the hands that fed them.

They talked optimistically about the freedoms they had and felt sorrow for those around the world who were not so free. America was great, they said, and it was first at everything because they were fearless and took chances to succeed. Family was very important, children were disciplined without fear of arrest by the government, and church and faith were very important to most Americans.

Americans were free to be self-sufficient and self-reliant; they were not free to freeload. There was no internet to bombard the public with constant fake news, communist indoctrination, miscommunication and misinformation. Political corruption was hidden, communists were enemies, and socialism was abhorrent. The best and the brightest succeeded. In time, excellence has been replaced by mediocrity and collectivism. The idea that everyone is special and equal gave birth to the award for walking without tripping or the award for just existing.

Each community had Christian churches and temples that united them in worship and principles. Everyone understood that God was an essential ingredient in the founding of America and life was precious inside and outside of the womb. Nobody killed babies for research or replacement parts.

Schools were run by each state and by counties, not Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education with Bill Gates’ Common Core collectivist standards and colleges indoctrinating young Americans with “social justice” and “white privilege” curricula and proselytizing for Islam. Technical schools thrived everywhere, teaching Americans life-long useful skills that enabled success and prosperity. Nobody relied on foreign labor, skilled or unskilled. The Braceros program had long been destroyed by lawyers.

Americans were willing to fight for their country with words, ideas, principles, and to give up effort and their lives on battle fields to keep intact their heritage, what they believed in, their country and its founding principles. Europe is strewn with graves of brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in order to save Europe and its often ungrateful citizens from the Nazi scourge.

Americans as a whole were lulled into a false sense of security because they lived two oceans away from the threat of communism and any potential war. Surely nobody would dare overrun American shores and our borders in order to occupy their beautiful and successful country, the shiny city on the hill! But nobody counted on the home-grown communist and islamo-fascist enemy within which grew like a contagion in the last forty years.

The indoctrination from public schools, colleges, universities, Hollywood, the main stream media, Communist Party USA, and corrupt politicians was so strong in the last forty years that we are now experiencing the fruits of their efforts – American young who hate their country, its achievements, its greatness, its origins, and even their own skin color.

Liberalism/progressivism/environmentalism/ feminism/socialism/communism created new generations of young Americans who are devoid of patriotism and would not hesitate to turn in their own parents to the government if that would bring them 15-minutes of worthless fame. They derisively laugh at patriotic Americans who helped make this country great, including some of their own relatives, as obsolete men and women, marginalizing and dehumanizing their existence. The sheer hatred coming constantly from the main stream media is not unlike the hatred ginned up against the Jews during Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Laws were upheld, the justice system worked, and politicians respected the legal system and tried to pass laws that represented the best interest of their constituents. Today, unfortunately, the corrupt politicians are only interested in becoming powerful, rich, and representing their crony capitalist friends and the citizens of other countries who are invading our borders for the generous welfare paid to them, no questions asked, from funds provided through taxation of the average working Americans. These illegal aliens are now the voting base in many overpopulated areas and states for the Democrat communist party.

Lately, the more Americans talk about freedoms they think they still have, the more I hear the rattling of the chains of captivity and servitude to the mighty government and to politicians who have stopped listening to the people whose tax money fund their wealth and unbounded and corrupt power.

Derek Hunter wrote, “There are no areas in which liberals, progressives, leftists, socialists, or whatever they want to call themselves this week, are working for the betterment of American citizens or to advance the cause of individual liberty. Their entire existence appears to be just the opposite.” https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2019/02/10/the-democratic-party-needs-to-be-destroyed-before-it-destroys-the-country-n2541109?fbclid=IwAR1EPvOn8HJ7BDsmV6gGgJfILd8nTGPmhJ2kRjXO5mW3goBc6rvSIYFjRYA

Many confused and brainwashed young Americans are saying that America was never great in response to President Trump’s signature campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” while they are living a life which is the envy of the world.  If life is so much better everywhere else, as they claim and wish for an European lifestyle that no longer exists, as they are flooded by Muslim immigrants, why are illegal aliens flocking to our shores asking for welfare and demanding the same rights as American citizens?

The mighty Roman Empire’s road to perdition was cluttered with corruption, traitorous acts, sexual deviance, disregard for life, greed, military expansion beyond ability to rule, disregard for the rule of law, and tolerance of the barbarians. According to the BBC, “Rome covered 1.9 million square miles in 390 A.D. Five years later, it had plummeted to 770,000 square miles. By 476, the empire’s reach was zero.”

We are not an empire and we are not Rome, we are a constitutional republic, “if you can keep it.” If you ask the average Americans who don’t understand their own history, we are a democracy. Are we a government by the people, a rule of the majority? Are we a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections? Does the government listen to the people anymore? Are representatives in Congress legislating on behalf of all American voters? How many illegal aliens who came here to dominate, not assimilate, are now cancelling our votes? How many politicians are listening to their constituents?

The Greatest Generation of the South

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Ina Faye’s mother was a “pack-rat” who lived through the Great Depression. A child of seven brothers and sisters, they lived in dignified poverty, glad and thankful for hand-me-downs, clothes, apples, peas, okra, and whatever their neighbors could share in those difficult years. It was a hard-scrabble life but nobody complained much.

Ina Faye’s dad came from a well-off family. Even though he could give her mom whatever she wanted, mom still tended to hoard things. Dad was a farmer who owned a dairy, a milking machine, and even ran Charlet (Charolais) cows bred for beef.

Recycling grease in containers for later use, she would cleanse the grease with potatoes to prevent cross contamination of frying smells. Having brought her frugal ways into the marriage, she saved all the time and cut corners.

When she passed away, Ina Faye found yards and yards of string, old twine, boxes of saved aluminum foil, washed, dried, and neatly stored for future use, jars of buttons, tubs and tubs of Crisco shortening, used tin foil plates scrubbed clean, and batches of home-made lye soap for her husband to use after fertilizing the fields and working on farm equipment.

Ina Faye’s mom always stocked up on sale items and, since Southern ladies fried most of the things they cooked, Crisco shortening was a must pantry item to store in excess.

Old dresses and ragged shirts would be cut into strips and made into lovely quilts which Ina Faye still proudly displays in her Mississippi home. As it was the case then, mom always made clothes for her girls until high school. A terrific seamstress, she made dresses and aprons for herself and other females in the family, a must in the wardrobe of any Southern country woman at that time.

Hancock Fabrics made a good business selling sewing implements, from Singer sewing machines, to buttons, to thread, fabrics, yard sticks, and McCall’s dress patterns made of thin onion-skin beige paper.

Ina Faye found an entire cedar chest filled with fabrics her mom had purchased to make dresses for Cox’s army. The fragrant scent of cedar brought back instant memories when she opened the lid.

In the late 70s and early 80s, the tide started to turn and southern moms started shopping more and more for ready-made clothes in department stores and the fabric shops started to disappear. There are few left around the country, such a novelty that the younger generations do not understand.

An occasional downtown fabric shop in a small town always makes me stop to peruse the racks of fabrics. The smell of cotton dye, the wooden shelves, and polished floors bring back memories long forgotten. I too had sewn my own clothes and my babies’ little dresses in the late seventies and early eighties. Sewing was terrific therapy for the soul and it saved us so much money.

The Greatest Generation learned to scrimp and save, using everything up until it could no longer be fixed and it had to be recycled. An appliance, a tractor, a vehicle, a stove, or anything with a motor, was fixed and reused until it fell apart. And even then, it was recycled or scavenged for parts. Nobody liked to buy on credit; they saved until they had enough money to buy what they needed.

And then, there were Green Stamps given at the grocery store each time a purchase was made. Women filled books of them and bought kitchen items and small appliances. It was so exciting to fill a new book, that much closer to a can opener, an electric frying pan, or a set of dinner plates.

Amway and Tupperware became popular among country folk. Families would have parties, selling vitamins, soap, farm surfactant, and plastic storage containers from Tupperware. There were few families in the South who did not have a Tupperware party and kept their rice, flour, tea, sugar, and other ingredients in classic orange Tupperware containers. My girls played with a Tupperware red and blue puzzle ball with different geometrical yellow shapes that had to be fitted through proper slots.

Everything people ate was produced on the farm. On a special day, dad would take the children to town for a cold cola in a glass bottle, taken out of the grocery store cooler or on a trip to the downtown Rexall Drugs counter where they served cola floats from a real fountain. When the children finished their drinks, dad would return the empty glass bottles to the store owner for a 5 cents refund per drink.

Ina Faye’s parents never bought them candy because mom would parch peanuts grown on the farm and would make chocolate fudge with the peanuts; on weekends, while they played games with friends, they had delicious treats. Her cakes and fried chicken from scratch were “second to none.”

It was a simpler life, close to home and to the country that revolved around church, a life that the children of today will never get to experience. It was much safer, closer to church on Sunday morning, evening, and on Wednesdays. Few girls were sexually active, it was something people did not do, it was immoral and dishonorable, and guys did not expect girls to “put out.” There was intense shame attached to such loose morals, and children were taught right from wrong. Most kids did not get into drugs, there was no Hollywood telling them that anything goes.

Ina Faye’s dad was highly respected in the community and knew most people in the area. He was the Justice of Peace for many years and a good friend of the Sheriff who lived up the road from his home. Her dad would sometimes hold court in their living room and a few couples were married on their front porch.

It was a life from another century when family, church, citizenship, hard work, and morals mattered. It was the 20^th century generation of Americans that had made America great.