What America was could be again

A country's mood is telling.

Allan J. Feifer | June 15, 2026

A country's mood is telling. With brief interruptions, we can see America's positivity reaching a high-water mark on September 2nd, 1945, with the formal end of WWII. Except for the widows and orphans created in that just war, and perhaps even a goodly number of them, an entire country rejoiced with the prevailing belief that there was no better place on Earth to live or that had as much sheer opportunity.

Graphic: Mt. Rushmore, Editor

In the next 30 years, America was "the" country in the world, with no peer, the only superpower. America's unmatched industrial base, democratic legitimacy, and moral clarity made it the only nation capable of rebuilding a shattered world. Much of the world admired, loved, and tried to be like America. Our enemies pretended our success was a lie and that we were wolves in sheep's clothing, intent on ruling the world. 

At that time, we represented the best chance for world prosperity, if only the rest of the world followed our example of democracy, individual rights, and the importance of a moral life. Only later did we find out that a significant slice of that world wanted the goodies we could offer without the duties and responsibilities required.

Over those thirty years, the list of accomplishments was so long that it would take a book to list them all. Here are the top ten world-shaking things we accomplished, most of them still operative and the bedrock of the free world:

Creation of the Postwar International Order (UN, Bretton Woods, IMF, World Bank) created and led by the United States The U.S. created and shaped the institutions that structured global diplomacy, finance, and trade after WWII, helping stabilize a devastated world economy and preventing another global conflict, having learned from the failed European "revenge" strategy........

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