Freedom is a word that is too easily thrown around. America was built on freedom. The colonists’ freedoms were being infringed upon, so they rose against Britain to get them back. They won the freedom to govern themselves—and to do so in a way that was more aligned with their inalienable rights. Unfortunately, freedom has become one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. Knowing what true freedom is and how to avoid the false notion of freedom is imperative for us to move America into the brightest future possible. In common usage, someone is free if he can do whatever they wish. The more we are able to do whatever we want, with whomever we want, whenever we want, the freer we are. This type of freedom has been called unhindered liberty or even licentiousness. Under this conceptualization of freedom, all restrictions are bad. The more we are “free” to do as we please, the happier we will become—or so we are told. In reality, this vision of freedom often ends in slavery to sin. There is another view of freedom, though. In the Catholic understanding, there are two types of freedom: freedom for license, which I have just described, and authentic freedom. Where license is freedom from something, authentic freedom is a freedom for something. We are given free will by God for a purpose: to love. We are fulfilled not when we do as we please, but when we do what we ought. Unhindered liberty is built on selfishness, ego, and anti-religious philosophies. It sets the person up as his own god. This is the core of all sin. Just as in the Book of Genesis, it is the misconception that we can become gods and arbitrarily determine what is good ourselves. Every sin is an attempt to make ourselves into gods. License is tempting because commands can be restricting. We often think that God’s laws are an attempt to take away our freedom. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, unhindered liberty is a form of enslavement. The person consumed with self-centeredness is not truly free. He is shackled by selfish desires; he simply cannot help themselves. This comes at the detriment of the most important relationships and responsibilities. Authentic freedom is built on faith. It is the understanding that freedom must be placed at the service of love. “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Love can never be forced; true love must be freely given and received. Therefore, the view we have of freedom heavily impacts how we view faith. For God will not and cannot force us to love Him. We must choose to be in a relationship with Him. Choosing to worship Him above ourselves means handing over our self-centeredness and pride to Him. Our choice to live for Him and for love of others, though, leads to the freedom of true happiness. It is then that we become people of love, justice, and virtue. It is then alone that we are able to flourish as human beings who were made for true and authentic freedom. This is the freedom that we should celebrate on every Independence Day. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Those who wish to purge Christianity and the Bible from American public life often trumpet the third president, Thomas Jefferson, as a champion of the “wall of separation between church and state.” Yet Jefferson was far from a secularist hero. As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of his most influential work, the Declaration of Independence, it seems fitting to revisit Jefferson’s relationship with public religion. 1. The Letter to Danbury Baptists On Jan. 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote the phrase secularists love to quote. In referring to the First Amendment’s religion and establishment clauses, Jefferson wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church & state.” The “establishment” of religion forbidden in the First Amendment applied to the federal government, not the states—many of which had established churches long after the Constitution’s ratification. This “establishment” involved directing tax money to support churches, and forbidding it did not mean excising references to the Bible from public places. Furthermore, the letter itself reveals a religious motivation for this declaration. Jefferson wrote, not intending to purge the public square of religion, but intending to protect the Baptists’ religious freedom. Immediately before the “separation” passage, the president stated his belief “that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his God, that he owes account to none other for this faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions.” He ended the letter by stating, “I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.” Jefferson did not intend to force religion out of public life—he explicitly grounded his respect for the establishment clause in his own high esteem for God and religion, and he stated his intention to pray for the Baptists. 2. Church Service in the Capitol Two days after Jefferson sent that letter, he attended a Christian worship service at the U.S. Capitol. Rep. Manasseh Cutler, a Federalist member of the House of Representatives, noted Jefferson’s attendance in a Jan. 4, 1802, letter to Joseph Cutler. Margaret Bayard Smith, a writer and social critic, wrote that “Jefferson during his whole administration was a most regular attendant” of Capitol worship services. Whatever Jefferson meant by the “separation of church & state,” he took no objection to the notion of worship services in federal government buildings. 3. The Declaration of Independence Any close reader of the Declaration of Independence would not come away with the opinion that its author wanted religion excised from the public square. The declaration doesn’t just mention God four times; it credits God for giving the moral foundation of good government. The declaration cites “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” for the notion that Americans have the right to assert their independence from Great Britain. The document states that “certain unalienable Rights” are “endowed” by our “Creator.” The signers appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the world” to vouch for their righteous intentions, and declare their “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” Jefferson wrote the document to represent the members of the Second Continental Congress, so he doubtless made compromises to represent the entire group, but he still grounded America’s fundamental rights in God, not in government. 4. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which the Old Dominion’s General Assembly passed in January 1786. While the statute disestablished the Church of England in Virginia, it explicitly grounded the right of religious freedom not in secular government but in man’s duty to God. The statute declares that “Almighty God hath created the mind free” and that “all attempts to influence it by temporal punishment… are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who, being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either.” In fact, the document frames the disestablishment of Anglicanism as a way to protect religion, warning that establishing a religion “tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will eternally profess and conform to it.” No Secularist Hero As an American Christian, I am grateful to Jefferson for stating the principles that founded our country. I also acknowledge that Jefferson was hardly an example of Christian orthodoxy—he did cut up the Bible to remove passages describing miracles, after all. However, the idea that Jefferson would have championed the secularist removal of symbols such as the Ten Commandments from government buildings is utterly contrary to his documented history. Let’s set the record straight: Jefferson was no secularist hero, and his “separation of church & state” is a far cry from the modern secularist agenda.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. Sami Winc: So Victor, I guess the first question maybe we could discuss is how have we made it in 250 years, this republic, a rare thing historically that a republic could go for so long?   Victor Davis Hanson: Well, the secondary reasons are—we had not the primary, but I’ll get over very quickly review the secondary. We had a huge North American continent.  It was richly endowed with natural resources, farmland, etc. We didn’t fragment into European warring states, but we were the size of Europe, but we were one complete nation thanks to people like James K. Polk and [Thomas] Jefferson and other people who saw that we needed to have the whole continent or end up like Europe.  Number two, we had two oceans, so we were protected from what was going on in Asia and Europe. But that is secondary to the Constitution. So we took the Spartan, Cretan and then Roman idea of mixed constitution—a legislative, executive and judicial branch. But unlike some of the mixed constitutions, we put a number of checks and balances in.  So the whole point of it was to slow down radical changes through the president’s power to veto legislation, the Congress’s power to impeach him, the president’s power to pick judicial appointments, the Congress not to approve them, and the judiciary to strike down laws as unconstitutional. And they can impeach—the legislative body can impeach judges. The president cannot appoint people he thinks would be bad judges. There’s—it’s all intricate checks and balances.  Number two is we were the only country to really have a Bill of Rights, so there were certain issues in other countries that have never been up for—I mean, they’re nuances, and everybody reinterprets them, but they’re not up for discussion as far as eliminating them.   The Bill of Rights—the ability not to have your house searched and seized, the right to bear arms, the right not to have to testify against yourself, the right of habeas corpus—that’s all documented.  And then with the amendment system, we have further rights. The other things are more intangible, but that revolution was never a French Revolution.   Sami Winc: One moment, though, just to clarify for the audience, that the Bill of Rights for the United States is the first 10 amendments, and then they flow after that.  Victor Davis Hanson: There are 17 other ones that followed, and they’re very hard to pass. You need a two-thirds vote of Congress, and then you need three-quarters of the state legislatures. So unless it’s something like the 18-year-old vote or women’s suffrage or repealing prohibition, it’s very hard to do—to get an amendment.  Sami Winc: And you were saying that it’s not like the French Revolution either.   Victor Davis Hanson: No, it’s not like the French Revolution because it was limited. In other words, the colonists were not objecting to British free market capitalism. They were not objecting to the language. They were not objecting to the role of religion.  They were not rejecting—claiming that they wanted the poor to take over from the rich. They were not angry at both the British colonialists and the large landowners like Washington and Jefferson.   So it was basically a one-dimensional political revolution, and it said we want autonomy and to be self-governed.  We do not want to be a colony of Britain and have no say in taxation or representation, et cetera, et cetera. That was a much easier revolution.   But what I’m saying is it kept intact the strengths of the British system, the British Enlightenment. And so when we became a nation, there was Christianity, there was Anglicanism—there was all these religions.  They were all tolerated. Nobody had gone out in the countryside and lynched nuns or beheaded priests as had happened in the French Revolution. There was no year zero. There was no renaming the months, the days. There was no god called Ratio that everybody bowed down to.  There was nothing like—I mean, Thomas Paine was the most radical of the founders, but he was nothing like the Robespierre brothers.  He wasn’t even like [Georges] Danton. He was a much more reasonable person in comparison. So that was a big step—that we kept the traditions of the Anglosphere, except political.  And then there were cultural things that were embedded from the beginning. One of them was that there was no peasantry.  There was no serfdom. Those were European ideas. So Jefferson especially said the country was based on the nuclear family and the independent agrarian—the farm—and that person was self-sustained.   He was autonomous, self-supporting. He could feed his own family from his farm. He could control his own destiny, and these were the ideal citizens then to be entrusted with voting and making their own laws and directing their own affairs.  So it was a republic of virtue, and that stayed through—that in the United States, nobody—I’m not Sir Hanson. You’re not Lady Sami. And we have no class distinctions formally. We have a fluidity of classes. Wealthy people have children that are bad seeds, or they don’t want money, and they get poor. Poor people have children, and they become millionaires.  So there is fluidity, but we are not based on class. We’re not based on race. We champion the middle class, but we don’t institutionalize it. Nobody asks in America, “Where was your father born? How many acres does your grandfather have? What was your parents’ education?” Maybe the East Coast or West Coast elites do, but that’s not American tradition.  And then finally, we’re a nation of emulation, not envy. So we’re not like the British. I’ve said that before in this broadcast. It was the old maxim that if you go to Britain and somebody sees a Bentley, they want to kick it in.  And they come to America, they want to know how much a Cadillac—or maybe now it would be a BMW or something—costs and how you finance it.  And I can remember, when I was a young person, we had no money. We lived in a 1,100-square-foot home. My mom stayed home with us. My dad was a high school teacher initially, and then a junior college teacher, but he was a coach, and he tried to farm on the side.  But we would get in cars when we went to Disneyland or we went up to San Francisco, and my mom insisted we drive through wealthy neighborhoods and not say, “Oh my gosh, look at that. Look at how much money the Gettys have.”  She would say, “Oh wow, I love those cypress trees, the way they’ve done that. That’s a good idea. When we get home, let’s plant some. Or then she would say, I love those colors—that gray and white. I like that match.”  Or she’d say, “Wow, some of those Victorians are tacky. They’re overdone with that gingerbread cut. I don’t want that.” In other words, that was a very common thing.  That’s why the Wall Street Journal has one of its most popular features, Mansions USA, because people love to go in there and look at these beautiful lakes and tennis courts and gables. But then they look at the price—Montecito, 30 million.  It’s not that they can ever buy it, but they get little ideas. So say that they’re in Fresno with a 1,500- or 1,600-square-foot tract house, and then they go there and they look at these places and see how they park their car there. Maybe I can make a little version of it.  So in Europe, I don’t think that would be the reaction. That would be the aristocracy, and you’d say that we should burn those houses down.   And I’m kind of worried because that is sort of the attitude of Los Angeles to Pacific Palisades—not that this was a great asset to have these beautiful homes, but, “Oh, they lost their home. Too bad. Let’s not rebuild them.”  When we get to be an envious country, we won’t succeed.   And by the way, when we used to nation-build, or any country used to nation-build, they never said to Iraq or Afghanistan or South Korea or Vietnam or Europe itself after World War II, “We’ve got a really good system for you. It’s called a Senate, a lower house, a Supreme Court, a president and a Bill of Rights, and here’s how you do it with a two-party system.”  No. They have a parliamentary system because it’s much easier.  Ours is a very complicated system. It’s very hard to reproduce. It’s designed on one principle: people are no blank good.  And I think many of the founders said if we were angels, we wouldn’t need a constitution. But it assumes that unlike the French Revolution, Rousseau—you know, we’re all born into chains—that we’re not.  We’re all born evil, bad, fallen—the Christian notion—and we need to be redeemed. We need to curb our appetites and our excesses, and one of the things we have to curb is the desire to power and to tyrannize others.  So we’re going to make a constitution where you cannot have a dictator. And they can say all they want about Trump. The closest we’ve ever had was FDR. He had four terms, but he did things that are just unthinkable.  You know, go to The New York Times and say, “If you write another bad op-ed about me, I’m going to pass antitrust legislation or inheritance taxes that’ll ruin your family.”  So it’s a wonderful system, but it’s very intricate and complex, and it requires an educated populace, and we don’t seem to have that to the degree sufficient anymore.  So I’m kind of worried. That’s how we survived for 250 years. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Texans, hide your kids—or else they’ll be forced to hear that “love is patient, love is kind.” Yes, the radicals on the Texas State Board of Education have decided that public school students in the Lone Star State should become just a little familiar with the work that arguably influenced American history and Western literature more than any other. How dare they. On Friday, the state education board approved a new list of mandated readings for students. The list, which was passed with a 9-5 vote and included classic works as well as the Bible, will start to be implemented in 2030. “We’re going to stop watering down American history. We’re going to teach the truth. Our nation was founded as a Christian nation, and Texas is a Christian state,” said board member Brandon Hall, a Republican and a pastor, according to CNN. Two-thirds of Texans are Christian, and about 6% practice other religions, including Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, according to Pew Research Center. Besides the oh-so-controversial 13th Chapter of First Corinthians, students will also be expected to read the Beatitudes, Psalm 23, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, two chapters from Exodus, and several chapters from the Book of Job, according to a draft circulated before the vote. Fourth graders will have to wrestle with Luke 14:7-11, where Jesus recommends people not start by sitting in the highest-status seat. (Perhaps the school cafeteria social scenes will never be the same.) Sixth graders, in an era where adolescent mental health seems more fragile than ever, will have to cope with Matthew 6:25-34, which pushes the radical message that God will take care of people and worrying is unnecessary. Yet, of course, there is still outrage from the expected quarters. “A mandatory public school reading list should never function as a Bible lesson,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in a statement. “Texas is telling millions of children that one religion deserves the government’s seal of approval, while everyone else is an afterthought.” Never mind, apparently, that American history is dominated by figures highly influenced by Christianity, from the Founding Fathers to Martin Luther King Jr. You simply can’t understand our nation’s history without some grasp of Christianity—but you can grasp our nation’s history without an understanding of Islam or atheism or Hinduism. Gaylor’s view is also an outlier in Texas. A 2024 Texas Public Policy Foundation poll found that 64% of Texans approved of putting religious stories into the public school curriculum. Of course, reading the Bible doesn’t mean that public school students have to assent to Christianity. In high school, when I was homeschooled and using a Catholic Great Books program, I read portions of the Quran. I was reading to try to understand where Muslims came from and how this book had shaped their history, not because I believed the Quran. Atheists, Muslims, Hindus, etc., can do the same when it comes to reading the Bible in Texas. Ultimately, reading the Bible will help give Texas students a deeper understanding of the ideas that form the foundation of our culture. As Julie Pickren, a Republican on the education board, told The Texas Tribune, the readings will give “important insight into the moral and philosophical traditions that have shaped Western civilization.” A draft of the readings included classics such as William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” Anne Frank’s “Diary of a Young Girl,” and C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” “A classical approach to education, one that emphasizes the careful study of primary historical documents, plays a vital role in developing strong critical thinking skills in students,” Pickren added. “When students engage directly with original writings, speeches, sermons, and foundational texts, they can evaluate ideas and develop a deeper understanding of the principles that have shaped the USA and Texas.” Preach it. In the TikTok era, where students are far more likely to spend hours watching inane reels than poring over a tome that changed the course of history, it’s critical that students be forced in school to actually engage with ideas. And by ideas, I don’t mean some emotional rant in a 30-second video, but a reasoned argument that has resonated for decades or centuries or millennia. Students should read the Bible—and the Founding Fathers, and Shakespeare, and Plato, and so many of the thinkers that profoundly affected the course of Western civilization. Some young Americans may still decide to reject the values of their ancestors. But at least it will be done after actually having some understanding of those values and ideas’ origins, not just seeing a few social media posts talking up socialism or atheism and arguing against straw men. Thankfully, Texas isn’t the only state to realize students need to engage more deeply with the works that influenced America. “Utah students will be required to analyze specific Bible passages referenced or ‘alluded to’ in U.S. historical documents,” in the future, thanks to legislation passed earlier this year, reported The Salt Lake Tribune. “Oftentimes, where Texas goes, other states will follow, right? So, this is a pretty substantial move that I could imagine other states picking up and moving forward with as a possibility,” Antero Garcia, a Stanford University professor and the president of the National Council of Teachers of English, told ABC News. Hopefully, more states and districts will follow—and provide future voters with a better understanding of the history of the country they live in.

In this year that we celebrate 250 years since the Declaration of Independence—and the ensuing U.S. Constitution and unprecedented national prosperity—it is vital that Americans understand the evil roots of the communist movement that is seeking to supplant our nation’s birthright of liberty. The biblical account of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 provides a profound archetype for the destructive power of envy—the emotional and spiritual engine behind revolutionary ideologies. The biblical warning remains as relevant in 2026 as it was in the beginning: rule over the sin crouching at the door, or it will rule over you. Cain, a tiller of the ground, grew resentful when God accepted Abel’s offering of the firstborn of his flock but not Cain’s produce from the soil. Rather than examining his own heart or effort, Cain allowed jealousy to fester. God warned him: “sin is crouching at your door; its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Cain did not. He murdered his brother in the field. The story is not primarily about material inequality or “unfair favor”; it is about the refusal to accept another’s legitimate success or divine blessing and the turn to violence and destruction that follows. Cain’s envy is the oldest recorded instance of what later became systematized in communist and socialist thought: the transformation of personal resentment into a moral justification for seizing what belongs to others. Abel had done nothing wrong; he had simply offered his best in faith. Cain’s response was not reform or greater effort—it was elimination of the one who had more favor. This pattern repeats across history whenever movements frame achievement as illegitimate exploitation and demand redistribution through coercion. Historical Parallels in Revolutionary Movements The French Revolution began with Enlightenment abstractions about equality but quickly descended into the Reign of Terror, where resentment against the aristocracy justified mass executions and property confiscations. The guillotine became the instrument of “equity.” In Russia, Bolshevik ideology explicitly weaponized class envy. Lenin and Stalin targeted “kulaks”—successful peasant farmers who had improved their lot through effort—as class enemies. Dekulakization involved confiscation, exile, and execution. The result was the Holodomor famine in Ukraine and the broader collectivization disasters that killed millions. Property was seized not because of individual crime but because its owners had achieved more. Mao’s China followed the same script on a larger scale. Land reform campaigns executed or persecuted landlords and “rich peasants.” The Cultural Revolution mobilized youth to attack anyone perceived as having more status, education, or success. “Capitalist roaders” were purged based on resentment dressed up as revolutionary justice. Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge took it to its logical extreme under Pol Pot: Year Zero abolished private property, money, and most distinctions of achievement, resulting in roughly a quarter of the population murdered or starved in the name of erasing “unequal” outcomes. These were not aberrations. They flowed directly from the core Marxist premise that unequal outcomes stem from exploitation rather than differences in talent, effort, culture, family structure, or providence. The “justification of violence and property seizure on the basis of resentment toward those who achieve more through their own effort” is not a bug of communism—it is the feature. Philosophers from Edmund Burke onward warned that abstract demands for perfect equality, untethered from tradition, law, and human nature, produce tyranny. Biblical values provide the moral dimension: the 10th Commandment explicitly forbids coveting what belongs to your neighbor. Envy is treated as a serious sin precisely because it corrodes the soul and society. Proven economic theory, drawing from thinkers like Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, emphasizes that wealth creation is not zero-sum. When property rights are secure and effort is rewarded, the rising tide lifts far more boats than redistribution schemes ever have. Socialist experiments consistently produce the opposite: shared poverty, capital flight, and the empowerment of resentful elites who control the redistribution apparatus. The Modern Example of Zohran Mamdani New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani fits this pattern with striking precision. Elected in 2025 and sworn in January 2026, Mamdani—a democratic socialist and DSA member—campaigned on and later advanced policies that explicitly invoked racial and neighborhood demographics to justify shifting tax burdens. During his campaign, he proposed reforming New York’s property tax system to “shift the burden” from overtaxed homeowners in outer boroughs to “more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.” The language was not accidental. It framed success and property ownership in predominantly white or higher-wealth areas as an inequity requiring correction through higher taxation. When confronted on camera as mayor-elect—“So you intend to tax the white neighborhoods more?”—Mamdani deflected by claiming the reference to “whiter” neighborhoods was merely a neutral description of current geography and assessment patterns, not an expression of racial intent: “the use of the term was a description of neighborhoods, not a description of intent.” He insisted the goal was simply a “fair property tax system.” This rhetorical move—stating a racially charged policy, then retreating to colorblind language when challenged—is a classic example of the same ideological sleight of hand that allows resentment to operate under the cover of “equity.” As mayor, Mamdani released a Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan that cited stark wealth disparities (median white household wealth over $200,000 vs. under $20,000 for Black households) and attributed them primarily to “systemic racism.” This was used to justify expanded DEI initiatives, higher taxes on wealthier residents and corporations, and even proposed cuts to NYPD positions. This warped belief system represents the migration of classic communist class envy into identity-based form. Instead of “bourgeoisie vs. proletariat,” it is reframed as historical “oppressor” groups (often white or Asian Americans who have achieved through effort, culture, and family stability) vs. designated victim groups—pure identity politics. The Marxist remedy remains the same: use state power to seize or redistribute resources on the basis of group identity rather than individual conduct or neutral rules. This tyranny violates core constitutional principles—equal protection under the law, colorblind governance, and the sanctity of private property. Conservatives rightly note that such policies are themselves divisive and unconstitutional. They ignore cultural and behavioral factors that drive outcome gaps (two-parent households, educational attainment, work ethic, time preference) in favor of perpetual grievance. They disincentivize the very behaviors—saving, investing, maintaining property—that create wealth in the first place. New York has seen repeated cycles of high-tax, high-regulation policies driving businesses and productive residents outward; accelerating this through explicitly demographic targeting risks accelerating capital flight and fiscal strain. The Enduring Historical Critique From Cain’s field to the guillotine, the gulag, the killing fields, and contemporary identity-driven redistributionism, the straight line of human envy connects the dots. The impulse is the same: resentment toward those who have more—whether through divine favor, personal effort, or cultural inheritance—is elevated into a political program that justifies coercion and violence. American constitutional philosophy counters this destructive human impulse with ordered liberty: secure property rights, rule of law applied equally, personal responsibility, and a moral framework that treats envy as a vice to be mastered rather than a credential for power. History shows that societies built on resentment and redistribution eventually consume their own productive capacity. Societies that channel human ambition through secure rights and cultural norms that celebrate achievement rather than punish it generate unprecedented prosperity. These are the enduring lessons that every American must rediscover in this year that we celebrate 250 years of true freedom, if we are to continue to be the greatest and most prosperous nation in the history of God’s earth.