America's 250th anniversary is upon us. We are, and have always been, a great country. Indeed, the greatest the world has ever seen.
Two hundred and fifty years of back-to-back world championships!
Our greatness started in 1607 at Jamestown. All across the colonies, an entrepreneurial spirit developed. This mindset was greatly aided by venerable British traditions and institutions, inviolate property rights, English common law, and deliberative bodies of self-government that created order while being careful not to trample upon the natural liberties of the citizenry. These people were fiercely independent. No one was whining for handouts. It was a "just leave us alone" ethos: we will accept the consequences that result from our own industry—or lack thereof.
This fierce independence allowed people to think for themselves instead of having to be led by a martial or kingly presence. A perfect example is the Battle of King's Mountain. British Major Patrick Ferguson, a Scottish officer in the 71st Regiment of Foot, warned the Appalachian settlers from Virginia, North Carolina, and what is now Tennessee that they had better surrender.
Well, surrender my ass!
"If you do not desist from opposition to British arms, and take protection under my standard, I will march my army over the mountains, hang your leaders, and lay your country waste with fire and sword."
The Overmountain Men did not wait for orders. They took action. They had no standing army, no government resources, and few provisions, but they were free men, accustomed to protecting their own liberties. Before Major Ferguson could say "Jack Robinson," they marched across the mountains, destroyed his professional, well-supplied force, and left him dead atop King's Mountain.
We often hear conservative-minded people say something to the effect that "the United States has its sins and dark history, but on balance we have been a force for good in the world." The woke idiots of the Left think and say we are a rotten country that deserves to be overthrown by their army of Marxist terrorists.
To both sides, I say: F-off. The United States has nothing to apologize for. Nothing. Let me repeat: NOTHING.
History evolves, but human nature doesn't. Things that appeared perfectly reasonable, based on a multitude of economic, political, religious, and cultural factors, may not seem reasonable to today's know-nothings, locked in a world of ignorant presentism and collectivist social contagion. Yet even their insane wokeness is simply another manifestation of patterns that have repeated themselves throughout history.
Throughout the centuries there have always been groups of nutjobs who, like lemmings, say and do whatever happens to be fashionable. Right now, the prevailing social virus among the slothful and perpetually unhappy is to hate America and pretty much anybody who is successful. It's called malicious envy. It's been around forever and has been the driving force behind many of the world's great tragedies. Nothing breeds this malady more than ignorance. A lack of appreciation for the wonders of America is rooted in economic and historical know-nothingness.
Everything in the past that postmodernists decry happened for a reason—reasons that, based on the circumstances of the time, often appeared entirely rational to those making the decisions. I can explain why the Israelites decided to destroy the Amalekites, why Athens initially voted to kill everyone in Mytilene, why the Romans exterminated the Druids, and why slavery made economic and societal sense to much of the world for thousands of years. I could recite the reasoning behind virtually every ugly action of the past, even Mao's murder of tens of millions of Chinese—not because I approve, but because these things happened for reasons that we must understand if we don't want them to happen again.
The American Founders knew history. They knew government was necessary, but as Madison observed, men were not angels. Therefore, they constructed a system that recognized God-given natural liberties while limiting the greatest source of history's perniciousness: the state. This framework protected persons and property, fostered a spirit of enterprise, and unleashed capitalism free from many of the chains of the past. As of July 4, 2026, it has created a mountain of wealth and opportunity that no one even one generation ago could have imagined.
Everybody should quit bitching about the past and be profoundly thankful that we live in this miraculous country. Ironically, today's whiners live off and enjoy the wealth and ingenuity of the very people they hate, while contributing nothing but costly burdens to the rest of us. So shut the f#ck up. It is time to quit enabling the whiners. That is why I say the United States has nothing to apologize for.
Hey, whiners: if others have more than you do, it is almost always because they are smarter, more industrious, or exercise better judgment. Yet because of their productivity and wealth creation, you enjoy a standard of living and ease of life greater than that of a thousand generations before you. You carry the Library of Alexandria in your smartphone. Amazon can deliver virtually anything you can dream of to your front door in hours. Medical and technological advances come so rapidly we can barely keep up with them. You are not conscripted into a king's army to die by the millions, as so often happened in Europe. Unlike the countless millions who died of famine throughout history, most of y’all are balls of blubber.
None of this abundance happened by accident. It is the result of our Founding, which created a spirit of enterprise that said, in effect, "We'll leave you alone. Now go out and achieve."
When my daughters were young, they would sometimes whine about some injustice of the past, and I would immediately shut them down.
"Whining is not allowed in this house! Nothing good comes from it. Whiners are losers. Winners don't whine. They go out and do."
This July 4th, let's appreciate what we have by marveling at the wonders of our country and acknowledging the ingredients that made it the greatest civilization in history.
