Here are a few facts about America.
The unemployment rate among those with a high school education is 3.9 percent. The poorest quintile of Americans have seen their post-tax incomes increase 80 percent since 1979, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and post-tax and transfer income for that quintile has skyrocketed 32 percent since 2000. The upper-middle class in America constituted 13 percent of the population in 1979; as of 2014, it constituted 30 percent. According to Pew Research from 2015, when it comes to standard of living, “The U.S. stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world. More than half (56 percent) of Americans were high income by the global standard … and 2 percent were poor.”
Fantastic products are cheaper than ever. Human Progress investigated the amount of time Americans must spend to earn enough money to buy key products and found that since 1979, the amount of time spent to earn a refrigerator had dropped 52 percent, 95 percent for microwaves, 65 percent for gas ranges and 61 percent for dishwashers. Between the mid-1960s and 2007, Americans were able to work less and leisure more: They worked nearly eight hours fewer per week, according to The Heritage Foundation. The wage gap is almost entirely a myth: Women who work the same jobs as men for the same number of hours, and have the same work history and same education as men make the same as men. The chief obstacles to income mobility in the United States are related to personal decision-making, not racial discrimination: As the Brookings Institution points out, of the people who finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children, nearly 75 percent join the middle class, and just 2 percent remain in poverty.
What of freedom? In America, people of all religions practice freely, so long as the government isn’t attempting to cram social justice down on them. People are free to speak, so long as government actors aren’t utilizing the heckler’s veto. We are free to use the press, free to associate and free to protest.
All of this is the result of the greatest governmental philosophy ever committed to paper: God-given individual rights protected by limited government. We haven’t always lived up to that philosophy — in some areas, we’ve progressed mightily, and in others, we’ve regressed. But the overall success of the United States should be ringing proof that at the very least, we should be grateful and proud to live here.
Yet as of July 2018, fewer than half of Americans surveyed by Gallup said they are extremely proud to be American. Just 32 percent of Democrats, down from 56 percent in 2013, said they are extremely proud to be American; only 42 percent of independents said are were extremely proud to be American. That’s ridiculous. Regardless of political affiliation, we should be proud to live in a society founded on eternal truths, in which we have the ability to thrive based on our own choices.
No doubt, some have had bad experiences due to the freedoms and opportunity provided by this country. Not everyone has shared equally; some have been held back. However, the vast majority of the negative impression of this great country is due to the propaganda fed them by our liberal, corrupt, biased media. Patriotism is silly, ignorant and passe. Hating America shows how smart and inciteful you can be. Slavery existed 160 years ago, so hate America. The Native Americans got pushed off their native lands and mostly slaughtered in battle, so hate America. The United States has produced the most wealth, benefits, freedoms, opportunity and products of any other nation on earth in history, jumps to the aid of any regions suffering natural disaster and has sacrificed its wealth and blood to save the world from tyranny repeatedly. Meh… what have you done for me lately?
If you’ve watched the National Geographic series “Mars”, you will agree it is a great program, but you have to endure the usual “global warming” propaganda. For instance, in assailing the exploration and use of fossil fuels, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was blamed on companies rushing production to rapidly rather than the truth that because of campaign contributions, the Obama administration waived safety regulation on the platform, with disastrous results. Such lies and propaganda, usually aimed at our enemies, poisons the minds of citizens with results like the Gallup poll… an great success for our enemies.
Don’t like the United States of America? Get the F**K out. Find some place you like better.