Nov 242016
 

Gulliver

GULLIVER’S TRAVAILS

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to “make America great again.” Just what does “greatness” look like? How will we know if he succeeds or fails?

On this, Thanksgiving Day in America, it is certainly a “great” day to reflect on just what it is that makes America “great.”

All nations have the potential to be “great” nations, but most unfortunately choose to become like the Lilliputians in the classic Gulliver’s Travels, dedicated to bringing greatness down to their level. Has the United States become a victim of this trend, or will it always rise above the Lilliputians?

Joining us for a second round of post-U.S. election discussion on today’s Just Right are Western University’s Associate Professor of Political Science Salim Mansur, and John Thompson of the Strategic Intelligence Group. Together, the picture they paint of what makes a “great” country looks something like this:

I ndividualism
D emocracy
E xceptionalism
A merica

Of course, America does not hold a monopoly on its potential (and history) of being a “great” nation. Nor is it immune to the forces that can defeat that greatness.

“There are two real fruits of the enlightenment,” says John. “One is the British parliamentary system; the other is the American republic.”

America’s roots, like Canada’s and those nations formed and constituted under the British influence, arose through the discovery of freedom – and of “greatness” – to the extent that they embraced the fundamental values of individual freedom and self-determination.

“America has a pattern of dissent,” says John. “The unassailable god-king-authority figure you find in other civilization models doesn’t appear. Apparent to the West from the very beginning is the notion that government is only possible with the consent of the governed. We govern ourselves. We give authority to those who govern over us, and if we dislike it, they go. Tandem to that is the Rule of Law.”

All Western nations have benefited from this condition of freedom, but are today increasingly ruled (not governed) by collectivist politicians busily destroying individualism in favor of their not-so-great “greater good” for the “greatest number of people.”

Increasingly using race, sex, and ethnicity as their “politically correct” grounds for discrimination and privilege, collectivist politicians are the ones most responsible for creating the racial and ethnic divides we are witnessing today. When collectivist politicians use the word “great,” in their Marxist influenced bromides, they mean not the “greater good,” but the “greater bad.”

“America is not an ethnicity; America is an idea,” notes Salim. “America is the only country where you can become ‘un-American’ if you go against (American) values.”

Individual freedom: It’s such a GREAT IDEA that it must be Just Right.

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