The Republican Convention starts next week and we are destined to hear, over and over again, that America is no longer the greatest nation on earth. On July 10, conservative columnist Barton Swaim wrote on this page, "Republicans need to acknowledge that America is in decline," and that we need a leader who "can manage the decline of a great nation without making things worse." This pessimistic notion reaches bombastic proportions in the speechifying of the GOP's presumptive nominee, Donald Trump. He has yelped, "This country is a hellhole. We are going down fast." Such toxic thinking is at the heart of his campaign to "Make America Great Again," but I couldn't disagree more.
I understand that election year rhetoric is expected to be over-the-top to excite the base and attract disgruntled voters, but joining our enemies in tearing down the United States is not the way to get there. Sure, the nation is beset with some huge problems. The daily news is filled with frightening stories about gun violence and racial strife; the chronically unemployed; ISIS atrocities; Russian, Chinese and North Korean sword-rattling; and endless suicide bombings in the Middle East. This is enough to drive anyone to distraction.
However, we all need to take a breath and consider the following: Bad news has always been with us. Sure we have ISIS, but their fighters can't hold a candle to the Nazis and the existential threat they once posed to civilization. Invading Fallujah is not the same as invading France. And sure, Russia and China may hope to challenge our dominant role in the world, but we are still the most powerful nation in history with the best and most potent military. The U.S. spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined, and our enemies challenge us at their own peril.
Granted we have been slow to recover from the economic meltdown of 2008, but our economy easily bested China, Japan and the European Union's nations in 2015. What has certainly helped is that in the last few years we have become an energy superpower, surpassing all others in oil and gas production. The U.S. stock market is at a record high, and amid all of the world's economic turmoil, the dollar is still the strongest currency and a benchmark for the rest of the world.
Sure, we have a large national debt and have to get a handle on this, especially our runaway spending on social welfare programs. But this debt is the sum of all our past yearly deficits, and the overall total has been declining — from 10 percent of GDP in 2009 to a projected 2.5 percent in 2016. Plus, unemployment has dropped from a high of 9.8 percent in 2010 to today's 4.9 percent. This makes our economy the envy of all others, especially basket cases like Greece, Brazil and Venezuela, and black holes like North Korea and Eritrea.
When it comes to science, we continue to dominate all other nations in Nobel Prizes each year with a grand total of 336 winners. Britain is a distant second with 117. This explains why we are the best worldwide in medicine, computing technology and nano- and biotechnology.
American culture still is highly sought abroad. Go to any movie theater, listen to any radio station, or watch any TV channel around the globe and you will find a sometimes embarrassing abundance of U.S. films, pop songs and TV shows, from "House of Cards" to "South Park."
Demographically, we grow stronger each day with our liberal immigration policy. We are the first choice for those fleeing poverty, war and famine. This has blessed us with the world's most diverse population that continues to grow while Western Europe, Japan and China's populations are in decline.
And so, as you sit in the comfort and safety of your air conditioned living rooms popping cheese doodles and watching GOP convention speakers on your 48-inch flat screens run down our great country, you have my permission to yell back, "Balderdash!" or its barnyard equivalent. It doesn't help that the speaker's platform will be hypocritically festooned with the flag of the nation they so readily disparage.
The rest of the world would think it privileged to live in this so-called "hellhole," for if this be hell, what must heaven be like?
Frank Batavick writes from Westminster. His column appears Fridays. Email him at fjbatavick@gmail.com.
