America started well but went badly wrong - perhaps in 1860, perhaps under FDR, perhaps after 1945

No American expected in the 1760s to see independence in his lifetime. Had someone like Pitt the Elder been British Prime Minister America would not have rebelled and would have the same political status as Canada, self governing and with King Charles III not Donald Trump as head of state.

American Indians would have been protected and slavery abolished sooner.

But the Whiggish ideals of the Founding Fathers are not the essence of America. Rather America is based on Anglo Scottish tradition, culture and to some extent blood. Very much in Protestantism. Americans borrowed their view of America being the light of the world from 18th British cant about Protestant British liberty.

Jordan Peterson who's a Canadian wrote today in a long paean on Facebook for America's 250th:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.
This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.
Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.
This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.
But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.
This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

I like Jordan Peterson and he has a point, up to a point, but it is quite wrong to think "the American dream" of success is what the US founding fathers wanted. The second President John Adams in his Discourses on Davila warned that people "measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is" and if these materialistic drives for distinction and wealth go unchecked, they inevitably lead to oligarchy.

The American dream was invented in the 1930s.

JP went on to say

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

Unfortunately this is out of date. The USA in its foreign policy has been more malevolent than almost any state I can think.


I say that not to defend Russia at all. I am utterly on the side of the Ukrainians but American folly and greed for power provoked her invasions of Ukraine and anyway invading Ukraine is a smaller crime than the illegal Anglo-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and now the unprovoked war against Iran.

The Americans accuse Iran of being a sponsor of terror but when it comes to terrorism what terrorists compare with the US armed forces? 

Severe weather has disrupted celebrations of the United States’ 250th anniversary of independence, including in Washington, DC, where a thunderstorm delayed a speech from President Donald Trump by almost two hours.

These things are a parable.

P.S. Brian Berletic in this podcast explains that America has been in a proxy war with Russia since 2014, a war with Iran and a dirty war using terrorists against China, aimed at cutting off Europe's and China's energy supplies and preventing the inchoate multipolar world from replacing American world dominance.

Europeans misled by the American controlled information space and still thinking in Cold War terms can't see it.