Blessed and Brave and Glorious Fourth.

You know, if there's one thing that really fires up my patriotic fervor, it's listening to the whines and mewls of tiresome freaks at National Public Radio, people who have pretty much spent their whole lives on the government payroll, bitching about how awful the nation is. It reminds me what a wonderful country we have here, and how only an ungrateful crybaby would use the occasion of our national holiday to try to make it seem terrible and frightening and doomed.

Kiss my star-spangled shorts, NPR.

Everything about America is amazing. Nowhere on earth are people more hospitable to strangers with genuine desire to treat the others with respect. You find it lacking here? Look around at the old countries of the world that most of our ancestors fled, some more mired in tribalism than natives of actual tribes living in jungles. And yes, our nation has been torn apart socially (as I discussed on so-called World Social Media Day last week), but that is also a tribal thing, not a racial or cultural thing. Leftism has purposely educated the young as a cult, and now we bear the burden. Why else would an intelligent American want to tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln? Because that American has been indoctrinated beyond the ability to grasp plain facts.

We hope the kids wise up, repent, and rejoin the main culture.

A thunderstorm passed through here Friday afternoon, all Germanic trauma and everything, and when it was over I was grateful that the power didn't go out. Then it occurred to me: The power never goes out. I mean, yes, we've had temporary power outages due to weather, and I've lived through three blackouts, and once a limb fell on the lines outside the house where I grew up and it took a few days for Con Ed to get the juice back. But the fact remains, for 99.9%-plus of my life, when I turn on a switch, the power comes on.

There's food in the stores, and products on the shelves, and jobs for those who want to work.

Okay, so America is a land of goodies. Ah, but these things are not unconnected.

The reason we have so much bounty is not some humongous gold mine in South Dakota that the government stole from the Indians, where they get money to buy stuff. The reason is, we have a capitalist system. For one thing, that means we have strong encouragements for people to learn the complex and sometimes dangerous work required to keep the electricity flowing. Also, medicine, engineering, chemistry, and so on.

We have a Constitution that limits the evils in people's hearts by pitting their ambitions against one another, prodding them to do better by providing good things rather than by taking everything and quashing all others.

Every other nation on the face of the earth that is doing well started doing better after we came along, and that too is no surprise. No peasant in London, no miner in Poland, no serf in Russia said "I want to go to the United States so I can oppress blacks and natives!" We got the go-getters. The rest stayed in Europe to manufacture bad economic ideas, foment revolution, and beat the snot out of one another for decades on end.

Let's pray that God continued to bless us, to bring us together, yes, but never let us think that it doesn't mean we have to always strive to be able to stand on our own. America has so many natural gifts, but none greater than the people who love her.