What Makes A Nation?

Whenever I hear advocates for legitimizing illegal immigration, I have to remind people of Japan, South Korea and Israel. All of these countries were poor. Japan is a nation of few natural resources.

The Japanese people have always been afraid of poverty. So afraid in fact, that they developed a work ethic that is so intense and remarkable that it propelled them from a poverty stricken nation to a world power.

Japan was a world power before and during World I and World War II and they are an economic power today. When they were poor and struggling, what international agency helped them? What UN mandate? What foreign agency loaned them money during their rise from poverty to riches?

How many Japanese are illegal immigrants anywhere in the world? I'll tell you. The answers are none, none, none and no one. The Japanese people have earned everything they have. Even in America; few, if any, Japanese are in our prisons or on the welfare rolls. Even though they were horribly discriminated against in this country, they went to war as Americans and fought and died with honor. They are and always will be one of the greatest nation of people on this planet.

Let's turn to South Korea, another great nation of people. South Korea was decimated during the communist incursion into Southeast Asia. Yet, in less than 30 years, they have managed to use all the resources they could find to raise themselves from the bottom to an economic powerhouse. Like the Japanese, there are few, if any, South Koreans in American prisons or on welfare and none, to my knowledge, are here illegally.

What did these 2 former Third World nations, that are now first world, have in commom that is severely lacking in South America, Mexico and a host of other countries? The answer in 3 words is honest, dedicated, leadership. Their governments were not corrupt, ineffective and self-serving.

Their people were committed to each other and their national goals. They worked as a nation and not as individuals. All for one and one for all. When I hear Latinos talking about their countries, I always ask them, "What did your government do to make things better?" "What did the govern do to end government corruption and abuse at the highest level"? I rarely get a straight answer. What I always get is what happened during and after the Spanish occupation.

What makes America great is not our natural resources, its our people. What makes any country great are its people. If natural resources were the key to greatness, The Soviet Union would still be here and would be the greatest and most powerful nation on this earth. The Soviet Union failed and is now a distant memory. It's not religion. Muslims are some of the most religious people on this planet and to a nation, the oil rich nations excluded, they are surviving and, in most cases, just barely.

Then, there is Israel, another great nation of people. Israel is a tiny nation that is no more than a strip of land. It is surrounded by millions of hostile Arabs. Yet this small nation of people, whose ethnicity has caused them to be butchered by the millions, is one of the richest nations on this planet. the Israeli Defense Forces are among the world's elite and its air force rivals our own. They took a barren wasteland and turned it into an oasis.

I could talk about 100 countries where people are struggling and dying rather than coming together as a nation. The answer is always the same. What makes a nation great are its people and those they choose to govern them and lead them.