What Virtues Have Made America Really Great?

It is argued that there are four virtues of the American people that have allowed them to establish and maintain the preeminence in the world that we enjoy, today: Industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity.

INDUSTRIOUSNESS: Francis Grund, writing in 1825 said, “Active occupation is not only the principal source of the Americans’ happiness, and the foundation of their natural greatness, but they are absolutely wretched without it…[It] is the very soul of an American; he pursues it, not as a means of procuring for himself and his family the necessary comforts life, but as the fountain of all human felicity.”

HONESTY: John Adams, looking at France and the Netherlands in the 18th Century commented on the difference between their revolutions and the revolution in America; he wrote: “It is a want of honesty, and if the common people in America lose their integrity, they will soon set up tyrants of their own.”

MARRIAGE: James Wilson, writing during the Revolutionary era said, “Whether we consult the soundest deductions of reason, or resort to the best information conveyed to us by history, or listen to the undoubted intelligence communicated in holy writ, we shall find that to the institution of marriage the true origin of society must be traced…. To that institution, more than to any other, have mankind been indebted for the share of peace and harmony which has been distributed among them.” And Cicero said “The first bond of society is marriage.”

RELIGIOSITY: John Adams wrote: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The above thoughts are encompassed in a fine book by Charles Murray, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” I strongly recommend this book to you all.