By Selwyn Duke

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times,” famously wrote author G. Michael Hopf in Those Who Remain. It’s fashionable today to slam the United States, as people kneel during our Anthem but bow to China, as they call our system oppressive while enriching overseas tyrants (and themselves). Yet while America’s detractors call her many things and by her defenders are called many things, among them hateful and ungrateful, they are certainly also something else: weak.

In fact, if America is guilty of anything, it’s creating the best of times that have created the weakest of men.

When King George III, George Washington’s former enemy, heard that the latter would relinquish power to a powerless Congress, he stated to painter Benjamin West, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." Yet Washington did do that and, in the process, helped forge history’s greatest civilization.

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