Tim Wildmon

AFA president

May 2007 – In March, I traveled for 10 days of sightseeing in Switzerland and Italy with 37 other Americans. There are many reasons why these countries, and Europe in general, are appealing to Americans. But before I get to those reasons let me give you a news flash: The Japanese are taking over the traveling world. They are everywhere. On this particular trip I saw as many or more Japanese than fellow Americans. If your state wants to thrive in the international tourist business, you best figure out something that the Japanese would like to see or experience because they will definitely get on the planes and buses.

But one reason why so many of you reading this are fascinated with Europe is that most Americans can trace their roots to that continent. Our ancestors who made their way across the Atlantic Ocean were Italian, German, English, Dutch, Greek, Scottish or from one of the Baltic or Scandinavian countries. And of course Americans with Irish last names are everywhere.

No doubt, Europeans have contributed more than their share of greatness, especially with respect to literature, music, art and culture down through the millennia. Names like Michelangelo, Beethoven and Shakespeare immediately come to mind. And let’s not forget a gentleman whom many historians consider to have been the most important person of the last 1,000 years, and that would be Johannes Gutenberg, the German goldsmith who invented the moveable printing press, which made the written word available to the masses.

Thinking about these men while on our tour I was also reminded of just how much the people of the United States of America have added to the progression of mankind in our relatively brief, 230-year history. From inventions to discoveries the U. S. has led the way. Some of these include:

• Thomas A. Edison, born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, developed the first practical light bulb.
• Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland and moved to the U. S. in 1870 before he invented and developed the telephone in 1876. (A couple of centuries later “roll-over” minutes were created.)
• Samuel Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1791, and created the Morse Code. For the first half of the 20th Century, the majority of high-speed international communication was conducted in Morse Code, using telegraph lines, undersea cables and radio circuits.
• Henry Ford was born in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1863. Boycott aside, he founded the Ford Motor Company and was father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry.
• Orville and Wilbur Wright, brothers, were born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1871 and 1867 respectively. The two are generally credited with building the first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air human flight on December 17, 1903. In the two years following, they developed their flying machine into the world’s first practical fixed-wing aircraft.
• Bill Gates, born in 1955 in Seattle, is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He was the chief software architect for Microsoft, the world’s leading computer software company.

Those names are a few of the big ones.

These accomplishments are clear evidence that political liberty, the priority of education and the free enterprise system combined, will open the door to the best for the most. Free the individual from the control of other men and/or control from the state, and he will achieve great things beyond the imagination. Especially if there is personal incentive for him to profit financially from his invention. Take away the opportunity for personal gain and one can see how the desire to create, invent or discover would be greatly diminished

I also believe that God was the one who blessed our Founders with the idea of freedom and then blessed them with the means to create and sustain the kind of country which would allow for all these wonderful inventions and discoveries to occur. If you think about it, the Founders were collectively great inventors themselves by virtue of creating a new kind of country which allowed for freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Without the Lord there would be no America and without America, well, we might all be blowing out our candles as we go to bed at night on some other continent.

Can’t wait to see more of the world. But there is still no place like the U.S.A.