The Front Porch
July 4th is a traditional time to celebrate America’s republican democracy, eat hamburgers and pie, set off fireworks, and take stock of where we are at as a nation. By some measures, we are doing fantastically well — a military hyperpower with global reach powered by the world’s most advanced economic engine. Investors anywhere on earth would be foolish to sell Silicon Valley short. They would also be wrong not to take advantage of America’s thriving biotech industry, or to ignore the contributions of American farmers and fishermen and miners, or to neglect the many other fields in which American craftsmen, entrepreneurs, inventors, and engineers bring their bounty to market, often in miraculously short spans of time. Let’s take Elon Musk for example. Musk is a modern-day Thomas Edison crossed with P.T. Barnum and Tony Stark; he’s invented electric cars and now trucks that millions of people actually pay money to drive. Now, every other month, it seems, the man comes up with a new …