Ryan Wingerson 1/28/02 English 10-7 "What Makes America Great" Many Americans and people around the world have no idea what has made the United States a great nation. God's grace is certainly a part of it, but other nations are just as, if not more, religious. Many will state it is our form of government, a democratic republic. Many other governments also are a form of democracy. America has had many great political leaders, but so have the other countries of the world. We don't have the largest population, land size, or natural resources. What makes the United States stand out is simply free enterprise or capitalism.
Unfortunately, this basic fact has been overlooked by academia. Economically illiterate teachers, politicians, and the media have taught that capitalism is evil. They view capitalism as a greedy, manipulative system designed to keep the majority of people economically disadvantaged. In reality the opposite is true.
Capitalism
English: A 1911 Industrial Worker (IWW newspaper) ...
Capitalism and FreedomCapitalism is what gives people the opportunity to have the economic freedom to improve the way of life for all people. Capitalism gives people the opportunity to obtain economic freedom while helping others. Capitalism is what created the middle class in America, the largest the world has ever seen.
Many people take up Socialism or Communism as the preferred political and economic system. Yet both of these systems could not feed their own people; they could not supply their citizens with the basic necessities. In Russia, people have been known to stand in line for hours just to get a roll of toilet paper. To keep their citizens from leaving, walls had to be erected, soldiers were posted at the borders, and barbed wire fences were strung up for thousands of miles. None of this is necessary in capitalistic countries. There are no barricades in place to...