America Works

America is the most blessed nation in the history of mankind. We have enjoyed more harmony, peace, liberty, economic prosperity, and victory on the battlefield than any other people.

Former U.S. Congressman and author of “Politics: Easy as P.I.E.,” Bob McEwen said that America counts for only 4% of the world’s population and yet produces 25% of the world’s goods. America writes more copyrights, more compositions, more books, and has more inventions than any other nation in history. The GDP [all goods and services produced] by the fourth largest nation on Earth, Indonesia with a population of 250 million, is smaller than the GDP of Louisiana with a population of only 4.6 million. [1] America works.

General economic prosperity is the result of obeying sound economic principles. One of those principles is found in our Declaration of Independence, where the Framers in their acquired wisdom wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The government protected Liberty of an individual to pursue his or her vision to earn a living is vital to a strong economy.

Do you know how bread gets to your dining room table? Someone whose life vision is to farm buys land, acquires a tractor, a plow, and other necessary equipment from a farm equipment retailer to till the ground, plant, fertilize, and water the seed. The farmer harvests the wheat, loads the kernels into a semi-truck [someone had the vision to build the truck] which takes the grain to a grain elevator.

The person with the personal economic vision to own a grain elevator pays the farmer for his grain, cleans, separates, and sells it to flour millers. The flour millers grind the grain into different types of flour, make ready-to-eat products, and sells them along with sacks of flour to various people who are pursuing their economic vision of owning and operating a grocery store.

Bakers and chefs also buy the flour to, in turn, make their own delightful creations for sale to the public. And you or a member of your family buys bread from the retailer and it ends up on your dining room table.

Neither the realtor who owned the land the farmer bought, the farmer, the farm equipment dealer, the grain elevator owner, the flour miller, the baker, nor the retail grocery store owner were thinking particularly about putting bread on your table. They simply were pursuing their personal economic vision.

But who orchestrated this intricate process to supply the needed bread for you and your family? Well, it was the “Unseen Hand” that carefully and precisely linked each individual vision together with the right timing to bake and sell bread for your consumption. In his brilliant essay, “I, Pencil,” Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education coined the phrase, the “Unseen Hand.” The Unseen Hand speaks of God. America works because it is God who directs the vision and efforts of a free people to pursue their own piece of the pie and bring to market wonderful and desirable goods and services.

It is frightening to see Presidential candidates in America today who desire to replace the “Unseen Hand” with government’s hand. They want to “fundamentally change” America and redistribute wealth from those who freely pursue their personal vision to a government-controlled hand-out system. Socialism deceives unsuspecting people and promises that government will somehow take care of them. Did you know that government neither produces nor manufacturers anything; that government cannot pay for anything? It is the taxpayer who pays; it is the taxpayer who foots the bill.

These Progressive [code-speak for socialist] Democratic Presidential candidates – Biden, Harris, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren, Steyer and the rest - who promise you that government will take care of everything you need do not really want to meet your needs; they want to control you, impoverish you, and empower themselves.

It is difficult and even impossible at times to buy bread in Venezuela these days. The once free Venezuela, the richest nation in South America, is now on the verge of financial ruin because of her disastrous experiment with Socialism.

By the way, did you know that every tenet of the Declaration of Independence came from a sermon preached by the great pastors in the Colonial era? In her book, “The New England Clergy and The American Revolution,” historian Alice Baldwin wrote, “There is not a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1783.” The great principles of the Declaration stem from God’s Word, the Bible. And that’s why America works.

[1] Bob McEwen, Politics: Easy As P.I.E.(2015, Wallbuilders Press) DVD [2] Alice Baldwin, The New England Clergy and The American Revolution (New York Frederick Unger, 1958) pg. 179.

Pastor Bill Ledbetter
pastorbill@fairviewdurant.com