I used to debate one of my teachers about culture. As a fan of Rome I posited it was the greatest and most consequential civilization in human history. He queried me about why. It’s laws, its size, its economy, its longevity? I suggested the clearest proof was the fact that there may be more Roman ruins remaining than from any ancient civilization in the world.
He disagreed, believing there were African empires whose
cultures were equal if not superior to Rome's. The grandest of such being the
Mali Empire in West Africa. Lasting from 1226 to 1670, it’s greatest king was Mansa
Musa, who is sometimes said to be the richest man who ever lived.
He pressed me on others, stating that architecture and its
survival might not be the best measure by which to measure a culture’s
greatness.
Wondering if he might be right, I looked a bit more into
some of those other societies about which I knew less than Rome. There were the Incas, the Aztecs, the
Egyptians, the Qin and Han Chinese, the Mongols, the Abbasid and Umayyad
Caliphates and aforementioned Malian Empire.
All were fascinating. The Mongols
had the largest landlocked empire in history, but left very little in the way
of architecture. There were the Qun and
Han dynasties who controlled a quarter of the world’s population some 2000 years
ago and built the longest sections of China’s Great Wall. The Abbasid
caliphate, which is considered the Islamic Golden Age, was considered to be the
most advanced society of its time in reference to things like science, astronomy,
math, and medicine. The Egyptians not
only left the Pyramids and Abu Simbel, but their papyrus was the earliest known
paper. The Median and Achaemenid Empires of modern day Iran left extraordinary
ruins that go back 500 years before Christ.
Depending on how one wants to characterize them there have
been thousands of cultures and civilizations and dynasties throughout human
history. As much as we might know about them,
it’s likely there are even more about which we know nothing. Which brings me back to my original point…
how does one measure what a great culture is?
Is it the language they left, is it the ruins they left, is it how much
of the earth or her population that it controlled?
It's possible to make an argument for any one of those, but
the reality is that given the differences in time, geography and populations,
it’s impossible to draw a hierarchical chart that defines “Greatness” with
precision, particularly given the differences in what’s left of them.
Nonetheless, I stand by the opinion of my 15-year-old self
about Rome being the greatest civilization of the ancient world.
That being said, there’s nothing in the ancient world to
compare with what we have in the 21st century. And the world of the 21st century
was built by Europeans. As much as
Europe is in the midst of committing cultural suicide, it might be helpful to
examine what that European culture has produced.
With that out of the way, back to western civilization. It’s
brought the world democratic governance. It’s brought the world individual
liberty, individual rights ordained by God, limited government and
capitalism. Together those things set
the stage for the greatest advancement in the condition of man in all human
history.
From the moment most of the people on the planet today wake
up until the moment they lay their heads down at night, almost everything they
do or interact with is a result of western civilization. Here is a short list
of just some of the inventions western civilization has produced:
Automobiles. Telephony. Mobile phones. MRI machines. Plastic.
Nuclear power. Bessemer Process steelmaking. Gasoline. Vulcanized rubber.
Television. Radio. Elevators. Computers. Flight. Rockets. Electric light. Mechanical
reaper. Heart transplants. Vaccines. The Internet. Sewing machines. Skyscrapers.
Railroads. The steam engine. Internal combustion engines. Electric washing
machines. Barbed wire. Air conditioning. Satellites. Movies. Submarines.
Microwaves. Radar. Lasers. Artificial knees and hips. Robots. The movable-type
printing press. Antibiotics. Batteries. Refrigeration. And much more.
Then there are innovations that western civilization has
produced: Containerized shipping. DNA
discovery and sequencing. Stock markets. Social media. GPS. Advanced farming. Google
maps. Space travel. Blood transfusion. Constitutional Democracy. Individual
freedom. Limited government. X ray machines. The assembly line. Mars landers and solar system probes. And again,
much more.
And then there’s science. Of the approximately 800 Nobel
Prizes that have been handed out since 1901 in fields like Physics, Chemistry,
Economics & Medicine (not including Literature because it’s so subjective
and Peace, which after giving one to Barack Obama, has about as much
credibility as the UN) Europeans and their offshoots have won approximately
750, including 350 for the United States alone.
This is the world of the 21st century and it’s
been built by the west. Aside from lost tribes or primitive societies who live
like their ancestors did thousands of years ago, there’s virtually not a thing
people around the world do on a daily basis that hasn’t been developed by the
west. The west won on the field of
battle of ideas and power. To pretend
otherwise is simply fiction.
But that which the west has built is under assault… mostly
from within. From citizens who became fat, dumb and happy during the prosperous
times to the invitation into their nations tens of millions of people who don’t
share their culture, most of whom come from cultures anathema to it.
Prosperity is a two edged sword. On the one hand it has created a civilization
greater than anything in history, but the beneficiaries of that prosperity have
lost sight of the hard work, sacrifice, risk and perseverance it takes to create
prosperity or how difficult it is to maintain.
As a result, many, if not a majority of western citizens
detest their own culture. They have
tunnel vision, focused with a modern day perspective on their forefathers’
flaws while creating a fictional nirvana-like perspective on every other
civilization in history. The self
loathing is rampant within the west.
It's one thing to tolerate or even encourage self reflection
in the pursuit of self improvement. But
that’s not what the left does. Like a 78 pound college student suffering from
anorexia who looks in the mirror and sees herself as a “fat cow”, western
liberals see the sins of their fathers or focus on the imperfections of their
society and believe it’s evil, and like the anorexic, they engage in self
sabotage, only in this case, it’s the culture they harm.
Culture and civilization are fragile, hard to build and
harder to maintain. It’s particularly difficult when the youth of a nation
despise their birthright, disrespect its legacy and actively undermine its
foundations. Combine that with elites who are the fountainhead from which that
disdain arises, and you have a dire future.
The left accuses Trump and the MAGA adherents of being
racist nationalists. We’re not. Charles
de Gaulle perhaps said it best: “Patriotism is when love of your own people
comes first; nationalism is when hate for people other than your own comes
first.” America and the west will
not survive the rest of this century if their citizens don’t become patriots. Indeed, Osama bin Laden saw the writing on
the wall: “When people see a strong
horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” Self
loathing may communicate many things, but strength is not one of them.