It is no secret that the founding of the United States of America has profoundly and beneficially impacted the prosperity of the entire world.  By extension, the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is one of the key tools, and last resort, to ensure that prosperity continues.

According to the American Enterprise Institute:

In the decades that followed World War II, America exercised its leadership to underpin and shape globalization in a manner that ensured economic prosperity both at home and abroad. This international economic system, which could not have been created without America, has been responsible for lifting nearly a billion of people [sic] out of poverty at a pace never before seen.

We did this by promoting lower international trade barriers, fairer trade standards, and consistency.  Our conservative and capitalist values and the strategic use of military power ensured the safe and cost-effective movement of goods throughout the world.

The exceptions, at first, were socialist countries and other dictatorships that sought to exert absolute control over the local production of goods and food.  They sought absolute control over their citizens, too.

Although it is not the case today, during the height of the Cold War, the U.S. shipped millions of tons of grain to the USSR, which could not sufficiently feed its own people.  In 1985 alone, the U.S. sold 85 million tons to the USSR.  The USSR's dependence on imported grain became one of the driving factors behind perestroika.  Economic reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union's centralized economy led to Russia and Ukraine being major exporters of grain today.

In other words, freedom and capitalism matter, and the drift of the U.S. toward socialism is a huge threat to global prosperity.  The U.S. Constitution is based upon limited government, the primacy of the people, personal freedom premised on a capitalist economic system, and the moral precepts of Judeo-Christianity.

To ensure the primacy of the people over the inevitable encroachment of the government into our lives, the Founders enshrined the Second Amendment into the Bill of Rights.  Contrary to popular belief, this amendment is not so hunters may hunt or for the sake of protecting shooting sports.  The Second Amendment exists so that the people can protect themselves from government encroachment.

It took a decade of frustration with England's actions in the American colonies after the French and Indian War for free-minded conservatives like the Founders to decide to act — and act they did.  Despite attempts to work with the English government to stay a part of the United Kingdom, over time, the Founders saw no alternative than to declare independence.  By force of arms and a tragic war, the United States was born.  It was as much a civil war as a war with England.

Is there still time to use political means to shift our trajectory back to the principles that made our country the "shining city on the hill" that so many others have tried to imitate?  I pray for the political answer but take some comfort in the fact that our Second Amendment is there as a backup.  War is a horrible thing and a very last resort for preserving our freedoms, realigning our principles, and staying in a leadership position in the world.  If we fall to socialism, so too will the rest of the world.