People

While attending the Moscow branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in early 1991, an older Russian brother was asked about his recent trip “to the great land.’’ He proceeded to tell us about the “great land” and his wonderful and unexpected trip. I asked the translator, not a member of the church, to please tell me where this “great land” was. He said, “you don’t know? It’s America of course.” I was stunned.

For centuries the world and America have been arguing about whether America is great and what is great, if anything, about her. After years of travelling the world, creating companies in America, and being involved in the political process, I’ve concluded America is GREAT for at least three reasons: freedom, opportunity, and charity.

Freedom

Consider Klara Sitka who I met in Budapest not long after Hungary threw out the communists. Still hesitant to speak openly, she finally felt comfortable enough to tell me how, as a student, she got a scholarship to join others from their Hungarian university to study the Russian language and literature in Leningrad, USSR. After many weeks of studying Lenin and then communist author’s works, they asked their teacher when they would be reading Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekov, Tolstoy and other notables. Her teacher quietly told them in pointed threats that if they objected to the modern-day approved authors she could be fired and sent to a camp.

Upon returning, disillusioned by the once glorified USSR, she switched studies to English. After getting high marks, she was selected to escort some American diplomats to neighboring Austria. She and the other guides were petrified to enter Austria as they’d been taught all their lives that capitalist countries were crime-ridden, decaying, poor countries filled with hate. When they stepped off the bus in Nickels Dorf, Austria, they fell to their knees. All around was obvious prosperity. All around were people quietly and cheerfully going about their daily lives. It was everything that their communist propaganda said it would not be. As the guides got up and huddled together, they looked at the tear-stained faces of their fellow Hungarians and Klara declared, “Everything we’ve been taught about the West is a lie.” They all agreed. Quietly they went about their duties, but their hearts and minds had been forever changed.

When they got back to Budapest, they resolved to never tell anyone of their experience but to resolve that someday, Budapest would look like Austria.

That day came quickly as Premier Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Eastern Bloc and the communist Socialist republics. On that day, Klara’s estranged father came to her and begged her forgiveness. He had rarely spoken to her at home since 1956 because he had been a friend of Imre Nagy, the leader of the Hungarian uprising against communism. Nagy was executed and buried in a pig grave. The Russian leaders in Hungary told her father that he was free to go but if he ever spoke of Nagy or the uprising to anyone, his family would receive the Nagy treatment.

Klara hugged her father and for the first time in 25 years, they spoke freely, both determined that no government in Hungary could ever eliminate freedom.

She looked at me and said, “Do Americans understand the freedoms that they have?”

I told her that many do understand. She replied, “Tell my story and help them understand that without freedom, they have nothing.”

Carl Sandburg wrote:

Freedom is a habit and a coat worn, some born to wear it, some never to know it.
Freedom is cheap or again as a garment is so costly men pay their lives rather than not have it.
Freedom is baffling: men having it often know not they have it till it is gone and they no longer have it.
What does this mean? Is it a riddle? Yes, it is first of all in the primers of riddles.
To be free is so-so: you can and you can’t: walkers can have freedom only by never walking away their freedom: runners too have freedom unless they overrun: eaters have often outeaten their freedom to eat and drinkers overdrank their fine drinking freedom.

Opportunity

Opportunity is closely related to freedom, but actually it is also rather distinct.

Freedom is what everyone wants. And America personifies freedom of choice. Just go to any airport in the world. What are the people wearing? Blue jeans, shorts, sneakers, t-shirts with English sayings and other comfortable clothes. America won the culture wars long ago because America produces products people want. The American mind that’s so free that opportunities just keep pumping out products faster than China can steal. Americans are free to invent, and they relish employing that freedom of opportunity. Never mind that you may not like what I invent. Someone will buy it. If they don’t, I’ll find someone who will buy it or make something they want.

Freedom allows for opportunity. The American Dream is defined differently by many people. I consider the American Dream to be: “I Can Do Better.” People who come to America, struggling with human smugglers, heat, rivers to cross that could kill them, come to America because they believe they can do better for themselves and their families in America. We offer opportunity if they’re willing to sacrifice and work for it.

I’ve written 10 books and taught countless groups in the USSR, Cuba, China, around Europe and throughout the USA about how to use that freedom of opportunity by starting their own businesses. Everyone grasps the principles and grasps them rapidly. The principles such as “find out what people want and find or invent a product that satisfies that want.” (Notice it is NOT “find a NEED and fill it,” but find what people WANT. People sacrifice needs for wants constantly and who are we to determine if it is a need or a want. It’s their opportunity to choose.)

The communist/socialist model believes the world is a giant pie. For you to get a bigger piece of pie means someone else must have a smaller piece of pie. The American way is to make more pies. We have the opportunity to do that. This model must be employed in the poor countries of the world if they are to get out of the poverty they live with daily. Top-end corruption stifles this opportunity. Tanzania, with some of the greatest wonders on earth including Mt. Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro Crater with the enormous herds of animals on the Serengeti, is an impoverished country. 35% or more unemployment. Why? Even though their government charges tourists $1,000 to $3,000 fees per tourist or climber, the roads are terrible on game routes, and there is trash going up the hiking route of Kilimanjaro. Paying people to fix the roads or pick up the trash is not considered by Dar Es Salaam government because the bureaucracy keeps the money for themselves. It is a single party rule established by socialists. Opportunity is stifled.

But the American Dream with its boundless opportunities is a model for the world. We just have to keep those who “know better than we do” out of our way.

Charity

Historian Alexis de Tocqueville certainly got it right in the 1830s while touring America when he wrote, “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did, I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

While holding lectures in the USSR in 1990-91 on the free market and opportunities for Gorbachev’s minister of Higher Education, the mayors and politburo attendees were shocked to know about charity in the USA. They could hardly believe that the world leader in charitable giving of time and money was the USA. Roughly $450 billion – about what the GDP of the USSR was at the time. (Side note: since the fall of communism, Russia’s GDP has doubled. Hmmm.)

Churches led all giving, but churches and individuals do more charitable work and giving than trusts, corporations or foundations. Indeed, individuals provide more than 75% of charitable financial donations. Add to that the donations of time, and estimates put the charity performed at ¾ of a trillion dollars.

In Dan Brown’s novel, Angels and Demons, the lead character, Robert Langdon, is an American professor who prides himself on being an atheist. After hearing him make many jabs at the Catholic church, the head of the Vatican police gave it back to him and said, “I know how many millions of people my church has fed, housed and rescued. How many has your church helped Mr. Langdon?” Atheist Langdon grimaced and said nothing.

The Soviet leaders were stunned because, in communism, all charity is done through the government because with a communist government there is no poverty or need that the government doesn’t care for. But don’t try to convince the government people at my lectures. They kept commenting that they couldn’t believe people would not only donate their money but their time as well. It is well known that the kavartirnyy or state-owned housing, had very nice apartments that people cared for because – they lived in them. But the common areas – stairwells, lobbies, and elevators, were in shambles. When everyone owns it, no one cares for it. And everyone took care of their own gardens where they could count on the weather more than the government.

Indeed, Americans are generous. Charity is the soul of America. It was that charitable instinct that allowed us to rebuild war-torn Germany and Japan. Today Americans are like by every German I’ve known (lived there 3 years 10 years after the war ended) and General Douglas MacArthur who led the occupation of Japan by the USA still has the main thoroughfare in Tokyo named after him.

Yes, America is great and heralded all over the world as a land of freedom, opportunity, and charity. Is it any wonder that it is the land people want most to come to? Hopefully we’ll elect leaders that keep America great and pray as citizens we’ll be good and moral so as to keep the Book of Mormon promise alive,

2 Nephi 4. [4] For the Lord God hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; and inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence.