When the Make America Great Again movement first began, I paid little attention because did not view it in a historical context. Lately have begun to do so. What I came to realize is that most America First and MAGA supporters are far too young to know the time when America became really great the first time.
MAGA is a child of The Greatest Generation. Tom Brokaw wrote about it in his 1988 book by the same name. This was my parents’ generation, and I know that generation well. Only if you grew up among these folks do you understand how great those born between 1901 and 1927 really were.
President Donald Trump grew up during that time, and I believe this is what he may recall when he says “Make America Great Again”.
Read more: When America Became GreatAmerica had many great moments in the past 250 years. Many were dominated by great individuals or organizations, but in my view there were only two times when America was collectively Great. The first, of course, was 1776 and the following two decades. At the time of the revolution there were indeed British loyalists opposing the revolution, but the number of people seeking independence grew with the leadership of George Washington until it became dominant. The subsequent creation of our Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as other First Principals, by the men whose names we all should know, was indeed a time of great thought and wisdom.
The second period of greatness evolved from the Depression when, depending on whose account you read, America might have disappeared. Let’s take a look at that time.
The Depression followed the Roaring 20s decade of celebration following World War I, a time dominated by wild times, speculative investing and uneven distribution of wealth. Then the crash of 1929 brought a ~50% decline in GDP and at the highest point, 25% unemployment. Children like my father quit school to get a job, and the homeless camped in “Hoovervilles”.
Then came WWII.
During the lead-up to US entry, American sentiment was greatly divided. There were many who remembered and participated in recently ended war to end all wars. Isolationist feelings ran high. There were some, including Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford, who were even National Socialist admirers.
During those two years, Churchill tried relentlessly to convince Roosevelt and the U.S. to enter the war, yet Americans and congress were strongly opposed to fighting another European war.
As an alternative, America had been supplying the Allies with huge quantities of material and money in 1940-41, estimated at $49.1B – $1.1 T today, as lend-lease and outright gifts, and that was considered “enough.”
The Nazis had stormed across France, forcing the Dunkirk evacuation, and were poised at the English Channel. The “blitz”, an eight-month bombardment of England, was underway, until the RAF finally repelled it. This was the genesis of the Churchill statement, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
There was no peacemaker or identified pathway to peace in Europe.
Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Congress, as well as every American, including the isolationists were instantly angry and war was declared on Germany and Japan.
Because of the strong isolationist sentiment in America, we can only speculate what would have happened to Europe had the Japanese not attacked on December 11.
6,981 B-17s were produced here
But most importantly, the people of America united in a way they had not since the Revolution, nor anytime since. Young kids like my dad rushed to enlist. Women truly “manned” the factories. The Great Depression finally ended.
The fledgling Greatest Generation created the greatest war machine the world has ever known.
But enough background. Here is the great part.
When the war ended and those kids came home – those that lived through it. They put their lives back together, built their homes, raised families, started businesses, went to school and implemented dreams. These dreams had taken root in foxholes, or the bitter cold behind a B-17 waist gun at thirty-thousand feet, or in the ocean spray standing watch on the deck of a destroyer.
These kids had defeated the German juggernaut! They believed they could do anything! And over the next twenty years they did.
Between 1948 and 1968 those war dreams created baby boomers, computers, automatic transmissions, PhD degrees, the world’s tallest buildings, a roaring economy, the Mustang and Camaro, venture capital, LEDs, supersonic flight, television, lasers, and trips to the moon.
The economy boomed, and the US rebuilt Europe and Japan, both physically and economically at a cost of $15.5B ($212B today), and we still subsidize their economies to this day.
America always with a welcome to the tired and poor of the world willing to work hard for a better life for their families, accepted both friends and former enemies into their ranks.
The Greatest Generation, now fully mature, built the most prosperous and productive country the world has ever known.
I was a child of that generation, and am grateful I could see it happen – and even participate in bits of it.
So when @realDonaldTrump talks about Making America Great Again, I think I know what he really means. I doubt he is thinking of the 80s, certainly not the 70s, or the Obama years, or some other bit of history. He is thinking of a time not many know.
When the Greatest Generation built the Great American Future, and brought much of the world along for the ride.
I am conservative. Not so by choice or argument, but by personal observation and experience. I have seen what hard work, commitment, self-reliance and common sense can produce. I cannot abide those with self-absorbed lives, minimal experience, an aversion to work, trained in Marxist /socialist universities, who ignore the efforts of their forebears.
Not only soldiers like my dad who defeated real Nazis and became a cabinet maker, but those down the road who came home and started a mechanics shop or a construction business or a bank, or Dr. Nick Holonyak who invented the LED, and helped me make one in his lab. These Great Ones fed and housed their baby boomer family for a lifetime.
Now, for the first time since World War II, after six decades of U.S. stagnation, the people of America have the opportunity to recreate part or all of that past greatness. A majority of Americans are now of one mind – we want to be great again.
I truly cannot understand why – other than ignorance – the remainder of our country would not choose to experience the pride and prosperity I did in the 50s and 60s.
True ignorance can be corrected and forgiven, but unwillingness to remember and learn results in stupidity that cannot.
So I say to radical left politicians, many old enough to remember, the news creators, producers and newsreaders at the New York Times, Washington Post @CNN, @MSNBC, @CBSnews, @ABCnews and @NBCnews, and the self-appointed “independent” reporters raging about imagined wrongdoings; Can you stop your rants and foolish criticism and honor this history and what America might be like to have that greatness again?