“God has a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America.”

Thus concluded 19th-century Germany’s Otto von Bismarck — the Iron Chancellor. The years have heavily affirmed the Teutonic autocrat.

All available evidence indicates it is true. And of these God-blessed categories, we conclude God has most blessed the United States of America.

She has absorbed more divine favor than the most foolish fool or the drunkest drunkard.

Let us first consider God’s providence for fools and drunkards. Their very existence constitutes proof of His benevolent interventions in this fallen world of sin and vice.

How else can you explain their superabundance among us?

Darwin Awards

Leave these gentlemen and ladies to their foolish and drunken ways. It is unlikely many would survive evolution’s ruthless crucible.

Pertaining to fools specifically, we refer you to the “Darwin Award.” Explains Wikipedia:

The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor… [that] recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool by dying or becoming sterilized via their own stupid actions.

Imagine a skydiver who had neglected to strap himself to a parachute. Imagine a tourist taking a “selfie” upon the ledge of a sheer cliff to capture his view… and losing his footing.

Now you have the flavor of it. Yet fools proliferate among us nonetheless… as weeds, rats and venereal disease proliferate among us.

We must conclude God has the majority of fools invisibly by the hand. He eases them across life’s dark and treacherous valley. Thus He exempts them from Charles Darwin and his ruthless rules of survival.

Washington: Magnet for Fools

Incidentally, the United States capital appears a sort of magnet for fools. Do you require proof?

Look merely to the Capitol Building. Look merely to the White House. Look merely to the Eccles Building.

There you will find your proof.

Why they congregate disproportionately in Washington, we do not know precisely. Incidentally, here the fool and the drunkard often combine in the same person.

We will not reveal their identities. Our attorneys counsel us to keep it dark. If the Internal Revenue Service has ever selected you for special scrutiny, you will understand.

Why the Almighty smiles upon these fortunates we do not know. His ways are mysterious… and famously mysterious.

That drunkards enjoy God’s inscrutable, paternalistic favor scarcely requires explanation. It is obvious enough.

Let us now consider God’s special providence for the United States of America…

God’s Chosen Land

God filled two oceans — one Atlantic, one Pacific — to moat it off from marauders.

Russia may have its “General Winter,” it is true. Messieurs Bonaparte and Hitler can attest to his formidability.

Yet the Russian General Winter is nothing against Admirals Atlantic and Pacific of the United States Navy.

Meantime, God emplaced two geopolitical runts against American land borders — one to the north — one to the south.

It is like surrounding a cat with mice.

God furthermore blessed the United States with vast tracts of fertile, bountiful land… an extended capillary system of internal waterways… natural harbors from which to send things out and to take things in.

What other nation has enjoyed such natural, God-granted riches?

God’s Less Favored Nations

An England or a Japan may have its points. For example, the sea forms a high wall against invasion.

A tempest blew away the Spanish Armada in 1588 when it adventured an English invasion.

And two “divine winds” spared Japan from Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281 — or so the legends have it.

Yet England and Japan are island nations. God did not favor them with abundances of natural resources. They must therefore bus them in… which represents a severe vulnerability.

The German U-boat fleet nearly hollowed England out in the Second World War. The American submarine fleet did hollow out Japan during the same world war.

What about Germany? She too lacks divine favor. She is squeezed geopolitically between the French and Russian vise.

German adventurism in 1914 and 1939 were in part efforts to break the squeeze.

And the flat geography of its north… with its absence of natural barriers… renders Germany eternally vulnerable to invasion from east or west.

France — meantime — is eternally vulnerable to Germany.

Russia too is massively vulnerable to uninvited visitors… as history documents richly. And despite its immense bulk it is boxed in by winter ice that chokes its coasts.

Why do you think Mr. Putin fixates so monomaniacally upon Crimea? Its warmwater port of Sevastopol is the historical home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

We must next consider China…

The Celestial Kingdom

China believes it is the Celestial Kingdom, uniquely favored by God. Yet we are not half-convinced it is true.

Why else would China require a Great Wall against invasion?

And it is bottled in by a chain of fortresses stationed off its coast — South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. All ally themselves with God’s chosen nation, the United States, to maintain the cordon.

But let us extend our investigation beneath the global equator. Consider Brazil…

“Brazil is the country of the future,” runs the old saw — and “always will be.”

Much of it is lawless jungle. It lacks arable land. Its primary cities are isolated dots, accessible primarily by air.

The list of second- and third-rate nations runs on. Again, we must conclude: God has sat America down on Earth’s throne.

God’s Sense of Humor

Has God given it a Baltimore… a Detroit and a Cleveland?

Has He populated its capital with rogues, rascals, cadges, chiselers, grifters and swindlers, with fools and drunkards?

Well, friends, maybe He has. Yet He has a mischievous, even puckish sense of humor. He delights in pulling noses.

Yet the central fact remains: He has nonetheless showered America with such immense natural extravagance.

In quiet moments, often in the small hours of night, we often marvel. Why are we so fortunate as to reside in this Eden, this El Dorado, this Elysium? Countless others in the world’s various hells are infinitely more deserving.

Yet we conclude the Almighty must have His reason… and we are consoled.

Only Americans Could Ruin America

America is indeed so blessed, only Americans themselves could make a botch of it.

And it appears we are determined to botch it…

It is Americans who transformed America from a creditor nation to a debtor nation…

It is Americans who have shoveled ourselves into a $30 trillion debt hole — a $280 trillion debt hole when factoring all debts, public and private…

It is Americans who have wasted trillions and trillions of dollars buccaneering around the globe in ill-conceived, ill-planned and ill-starred wars of choice…

It is Americans who impose sanctions on foreign nations… sanctions that will likely hasten the dollar’s demise as the world’s primary reserve currency… and hence hasten America’s economic falling…

It is Americans who assume God’s special providence is limitless, that it will continue, forevermore, world without end.

Yet we hazard that even God’s providence has its limits. How much more He will shower upon the United States of America, we do not know.

Yet we fear the United States of America may soon require God’s special providence as never before…

Regards,

Brian Maher
Managing Editor, The Daily Reckoning