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The Greatness of America, Part II: Technology, Medicine and Science
If you read my first post on The Greatness of America, you know that I am on a mission. It is multi-faceted and is designed to fight the Left’s efforts to destroy our souls, to brainwash us into false thinking, and to breed a hatred in us for America. They’ve made inroads in their efforts as they try to intimidate us on social media, destroy our confidence, and endlessly condemn this country. We must refuse to accept their efforts and powerfully push back. To follow this theme, I am going to extol the many accomplishments that America has developed and contributed to the world. This post will focus on the technological and scientific; it is only a primer. So, I ask everyone to contribute more developments to the list.
Only a partial list of medical advances by Americans is overwhelming. Just to list a few, we developed use of ether as a general anesthetic during surgery (1849); five different vaccines—cholera, anthrax, rabies, typhoid fever, and plague—were developed between 1879 and 1897; the heart-lung machine used in open-heart surgery (1935); first polio vaccine (1955); first vaccine for pneumonia (1977); a rough draft of the human genome (2000); and many other developments, all produced by scientists in America. Let’s not forget the amazing Operation Warp Speed that has created several vaccines for COVID-19 at a speed never seen before.
Most of our modern conveniences were developed in this country. Railroads, telephones, telegraph, and cars. We only need to look at the many projects of Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, John Roebling, and Charles Steinmetz to see the multiple technological developments. Television, radio, and telecommunications platforms are ubiquitous in our times. And let’s not forget our labor-saving devices, many developed or improved upon by Americans: the modern washing machine, a modern sewing machine, modern vacuum cleaners.
The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Americans far surpasses the accomplishments of any other country. The United States has won nearly 400 Nobel Prizes covering several categories. Here is a statement about the Prize:
Between 1901 and 2020, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 603 times to 962 people and organizations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 930 individuals and 25 organizations.
The U.S. has won more Prizes than any other country; as of 2019, the UK was second, having been awarded 132. The only category we haven’t dominated is the Nobel Prize in Literature; I’ll let you speculate on the reasons.
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So, what is my purpose in listing all of these accomplishments? For one, I believe it shows how we contribute to civilizational advancements more than any other country in the world. We have a national curiosity and desire to improve our world in a multitude of ways. Our citizens are devoted to exploring, experimenting, and creating, and their efforts serve not just America, but the entire world. We have attracted people who are committed to these efforts of ingenuity and development. And let’s not forget that their developments affect every human being on the planet through saving lives, job creation, and education.
So, the political Left can try to denigrate us intellectually and spiritually. But we will fight back in every way that we can. The desire to succeed and serve mankind runs in our blood.
And we will never give up.
Please add those accomplishments of which you are most proud so that we can celebrate them with you!
[This is Part II of a series on The Greatness of America.]
Published in Culture
My mom had that exact sowing machine. She often would ask me to thread the needle because she couldn’t find her glasses. She made most of her own Clothes and some for the kids. She made me a beautiful sport coat when I was a teenager.
A large percentage of Jewish people have won the science and medicine prizes (over 20%, IIRC). FYI.
My mom bought a White machine–the year I was born! It definitely would fit into the antique category. I still have it and occasionally use it to sew up a seam or hem. It just keeps cranking away!
My grandmother had a Singer that looked exactly like that. It ran off of a treadle.
I think a case can be made that without the US experiment as the first bottom up republic the world would not have grown as it has. More normal is gradual or rapid centralization, corruption and decay, collapse or war. Top down leads to rot and the larger the society the deeper and less reversible the rot. Their view is that the most clever people, the French elite for instance know more, are smarter and can govern more intelligently (ignore the Soviets, or Nazi’s or all of the elite run third world and all of longer history). The view underestimates what we actually know and how normal people and local economies and big business actually engage, evolve, solve problems or die. It overestimates what really bright people know, can know and how they use what they do know. The real world our founders relied upon is evolutionary and while it appears slow and often inept, and it can learn from and be guided by the top universities, investigative entities, etc. but if the top has power to allocate fundamental resources it rots. Always has and always will. It’s why our founders did what they did and it transformed the world. The people who just stole the election probably won’t allow themselves to be replaced and they will destroy this place and while the Chinese will probably replace them, or rather have great influence on governance, it too will decay and rot along with most of us. If they steal the election again or convince enough folks to win it more or less legitimately in two years, we’ll have insight into our future and will have to do something else. We did it with the Brits we’ll have to do something similar.
Have to give the Brits honorable mention- they discovered the 1st useful antibiotic (penicillin) and invented the modern flush toilets ( hooray Sir Thomas Crapper)- 2 things you definitely do not want to go without. They rank up there with anesthesia and modern dentistry as reasons you want to be born after the 19th century.