Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

A great deal can be ascertained about the relative health of a nation by what it exports and what it imports. One may also take a snapshot of history which can tell a story through a nation’s intakes and outflows. For example, in 1950, the United States’ top exports were automobiles, industrial machinery and iron and steel manufactures, along with grains and petroleum. America in 1950 imported fine men’s clothing from Britain, women’s fashions from France, and wine and foods from Italy. It was a time of a strong America.

And the U.S. back then exported more than just what was on a fiscal balance sheet. The United States was the vision of democratic principles and constitutional governance, of mutually respectful political parties, of judicial integrity, of law and order, of fair and free economic markets, and a free media, all of which created a unique domestic political stability, which the world looked up to with admiration and longing.

Insofar as nations around the world imported the ideas of our Constitution and our legal and economic structures, they prospered and were politically stable. The United States was the measure by which other nations judged their freedoms. The U.S. in turn benefitted through the import of world peace and stability that resulted from the export of such constitutional strength. Such was the picture of the world then.

But nothing ever stays the same, does it? The philosopher Heraclitus said it first, one can never step twice into the same river. Our reality is always getting either better or getting worse. What can we discern from today’s imports and exports? Let’s take a picture.

One of our largest imports today is illegal aliens, between 13 and 15 million in the past three years, some of whom are exiled gangs from Venezuelan prisons, some of whom are male Chinese spies of military age, some of whom are slaves imported to serve in the sex trade. One of our other largest imports is fentanyl, a drug that has killed over 100,000 U.S. citizens per year for the last three years. That’s 300,000 young people or six times the number of U.S. soldiers who died in Vietnam. Enough fentanyl has crossed our border in the past year to kill every living citizen in the United States.

But there are other notable imports that the practice of abandoning our border and the law unleashes on the streets of our “sanctuary” states and cities – there is chaos, there is bloodshed and there is death. It is a lawlessness that is systematic and a system that is protected by the inaction demanded by one party of our government, the Democrats. Just last week, this systematic disregard resulted in the death of a young college student, Laken Hope Riley, at the hands of a Venezuelan criminal, left at large by Democrat party policy.

On the other side of the ledger, one of our largest exports today is the billions of dollars being sent to the Mexican drug cartels, which import their corruption into the government of our nearest neighbor, Mexico, and create lawlessness again, throughout that beleaguered country.

How our once brilliant beacon, our once shining vision to the world has been eclipsed.

When the world looks to the United States now for some measure of freedom, what picture does it see?

It sees a “Democrat” party that does not execute the laws of the land. It sees a Democrat party sponsoring and creating economic socialism, something that is anathema to free and fair markets. The world sees a Democrat party that has corrupted law enforcement agencies and the judiciary to defeat its political opponents. It sees a Democrat party that protects those who break the law, and that stands by while citizens die. It sees an American media that has become so corrupt, it is no longer an independent institution but has become a monolithic propaganda engine. The world is seeing a Democrat party in America crack the foundations of our Constitution and the foundations of our society. The world sees a Democrat party in America that looks like it was imported from Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela.

It was said of the Roman tyrant Nero that he forged his infamous name in the fires of a burning Rome. The world is witnessing one of our own political parties forge its name in the infamy of a burning America.

And what of the world?  Where does any nation in the world turn to view the peace, stability and prosperity of a nation built on constitutional, democratic principles? The world cannot look to America any longer for that once shining example. It is no longer an American product.

Only when the Democrats are driven out of power will that product, and that example, be back in the picture.

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Richard Lyons

Richard C. Lyons, author of The DNA of Democracy: Volume I and Shadows of the Acropolis: Volume II is a third generation printer, whose early career centered on religious and special education publishing. Lyons has since engaged in literary pursuits as a poet, essayist, screenwriter and indie publisher.

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