Is America Better Now Than Five Years Ago?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the realization that President Donald Trump is fixing America. We were living in a broken country. There were too many people living illegally in the United States. Foreign nations were taking advantage of the goodness of Americans. Republicans are concerned that the November election will follow the historical precedent that the party in power loses seats in the House and Senate and possibly power.

Victor Davis Hanson believes that we are getting an inaccurate picture. In his article published in The Daily Signal, Hanson suggests that we look at the real world and compare the current conditions with those of the Biden administration. 

Let’s start with Canada. Canada is very angry. We’re in a trade dispute. Is Canada now making a serious effort? Does it promise that it will meet its NATO commitments? It hasn’t yet, or it barely has, but it’s making progress. It better do it. Is it trying to address, in a haphazard fashion, the idea that it can just dump product, or it can have these high tariffs and run $50 billion to $80 billion tariffs with impunity, as Mexico did? No.

Our relationship with Canada is changing for the better for us. It’s changing for the better for Mexico. Do they like it? No. Why don’t they like it? Because they had a pretty good deal at our expense.

Is the border closed? Yes. Is illegal immigration plaguing us at 10,000 a day? No. How about Venezuela? Is it importing terrorism and narcotics to North America? No. We just signed a deal that will essentially allow the United States, for 100 years, to have access to 65 billion barrels of high-sulfur, thick, but very valuable Venezuelan oil. They get $19, no matter what, without spending a dime, off every barrel that the oil companies try to extract.

And if you do the math, the cost in Venezuela is not Saudi Arabia, not the United States. It’s not light sweet crude. It’s not easy. It’s a politically difficult place. It’s a geographically and climate-challenged place, and it will cost those oil companies anywhere from $30 to $40 to $50. And if oil goes below $65, it’s going to be hard to see how they make a profit. It’s good for Venezuela. That’s why they agreed to it.

But more importantly, all of South America and all of the Caribbean and all of Central America is unrecognizable from five years ago when Joe Biden entered office. There is no problem now with the Panama Canal. Cuba is on the ropes. There’s only five governments in Latin America that are anti-American. The vast majority are capitalist, democratic, pro-American.

Go to the Middle East. One of the biggest problems we’ve had the last 50 years in the Middle East, one of the biggest, the biggest, is Iran. But not just Iran, its proxies: the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah. There was no Lebanon. It was kidnapped by Hezbollah.

You heard the Lebanese prime minister the other day. He said, for the first chance, there’s real opportunity in Lebanon. Why? Because Hezbollah has been defanged by Israel, but more importantly, it has no money. Why? Because we have the strictest sanctions, embargoes, that we’ve ever seen on Iran.

And as Iran, as we hear, is winning the war, they’re just about kaput. They’re strangled. We talked about an Anaconda program. Their military has been degraded by about 90%, but more importantly, they have no oil. No oil is getting in. They even have gas lines in their own country. Their currency is worthless. They’re the pariah of the world….

It’s not that the war is going bad or going good. It’s that the war is irrelevant. In other words, our life goes on and Iran’s doesn’t, and time is on our side. Maybe it’s going to be six weeks. Maybe it’s going to be six months. But it cannot survive the economic sanctions that are now in place.

And the entire Middle East is starting to wake up and see that there’s a really good chance to go to a normal regional atmosphere without that pernicious, toxic government.

The Strait of Hormuz is going to be irrelevant in two or three years. Pipelines are already in progress that will bypass the Strait of Hormuz….

But when Iran is out of the question, oil prices will not just drop, I think they’ll crash. And who’s going to control most of the oil in the world? The United States, because it’s got this good deal with Venezuela, and it’s already the largest producer of natural gas.

If you look at Russia, Russia’s a shadow of its former self. If you look at NATO, it’s rearming in a way that no one had thought would ever be possible….

You add it all up, and the EU model …it’s been thoroughly repudiated….

In other words, the socialist model has failed all over the world, and it’s starting to implode. And it’s not gaining ground in the United States. It’s a last gasp of a frustrated urban elite and partly due to radical immigration.

Add it all up, and the United States is in a preeminent position. And the world today has nothing in common with the world just five years ago. That could be very bad.

But when you look systematically in a disinterested, rational fashion, and you look at the power of China vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Russia vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Latin America vis-à-vis the United States, you look at the Middle East vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Europe vis-à-vis the United States, you come up with either two conclusions, and they’re not incompatible.

No. 1, the United States is much stronger and in a much better position than those countries and regions I just mentioned.

And No. 2, whether they like us or not, they’re moving toward the United States, not because they want to necessarily, but because our system is producing spectacular growth economically, militarily, socially, culturally, and, more importantly, in the technologies to come in the future: AI, software, space exploration, satellites, bioengineering. We’re preeminent.

So, do not listen before these midterms that we’re in crisis, the loss of war: We’re in a world that is completely unrecognizable to the one five years ago. And the fact that we haven’t been able to appreciate it is largely because we’re right in the middle of the storm. We’re in the eye of the hurricane.

But the storm is passing, and it’s going to be very advantageous for the United States in the next decade.