A Lesson From Rome: You Cannot Welcome Armed, Unassimilated Enemies and Expect to Survive

In the Louvre there’s a famous painting by the French Artist Jacques-Louis David depicting the Intervention of the Sabine Women. In it the Sabine men, whose daughters were stolen by and then married to Romans in the mid-8^th century BC, returned to avenge Roman treachery and retrieve their offspring.  The scene depicts a woman standing between the belligerents, imploring them to cease fighting:  "If you are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds, then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans."

The men stopped fighting and eventually the Sabines became Roman citizens. This strategy of conquest and integration would characterize Rome for much of the next 1100 years. Other than perhaps Egypt, most conquered lands became essentially Roman. This is demonstrated by the extensive Roman ruins found in places like Britain, Portugal, Algeria, Turkey and more.  Although most would never become Roman citizens, their lives would have had similar characteristics throughout the Empire. What’s more, when armies would attack Rome, when they were defeated, which they almost always were, the Romans would sell the women and children (who sometimes traveled with armies) into slavery and the men, if not sold into slavery, would be conscripted into the Legions, but sent to regions far from their native lands.

The result of this was that for most of its history Rome faced relatively few consequential internal rebellions beyond civil wars between rival generals. With the 4^th century AD however, that would change. As the Huns moved east from the steppes they began attacking various tribes who would then plead with Rome for asylum. Sometimes willingly and sometimes not, the Romans allowed the Goths, Vandals and others to move into the Empire. But what was different now was that rather than breaking up these foreign powers and disbursing their members throughout the Empire, the Romans allowed them to settle intact on Roman lands. Armed groups living in their own communities, separate from the Romans and maintaining their cultures with no assimilation demanded.  This would be a recipe for disaster and Rome, which, having lasted for more than a millennium, was gone within a century. 

The leaders of the United States and the EU should have paid a little closer attention in history class because they’re mimicking the Roman Empire of the mid-4^th century…

In both places politicians have either tolerated or encouraged an open border for much of the last quarter century with the result being that the United States today houses upwards of 30 million illegal aliens while in Europe the number may be half that.

In both cases, most of the immigrants crossing the borders come from countries with far higher crime rates, far lower income levels and much different cultures.  In the United States illegal immigrants largely come from Mexico and Latin America while in Europe they come from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries in Asia and Africa. 

As immigrants have often done throughout history, when they move to a new place they seek out brethren from their home countries or people which whom they share customs or languages.  Indeed, that’s exactly what the Italians in New York did at the turn of the century. 

The difference here however is that when the Italians moved to New York or the Irish moved to Boston, their goal was to integrate and become Americans. Today’s immigrants to the United States don’t seem to have that same desire.  They may want to become citizens so they can stay permanently, but that doesn’t mean they want to be American.  Indeed, half of American Hispanics are from Mexico and a significant portion of them believe that America’s Southwest is stolen land that rightfully should be returned to Mexico.  At the same time, most of Europe’s newly arrived are from Islamic nations and their allegiance is to Islam, not their new homes.

That’s a problem because successful societies are built around core, fundamental values that are shared by the overwhelming majority of the population. Ideas such as free speech and freedom of religion, individual rights and private property – to various degrees, while they were not always core tenants of western civilization, are so today, or at least were until quite recently.  Without those shared fundamental notions it’s difficult for western nations to function properly. 

It's one thing for a nation to have competing powers within the existing framework, think Democrats and Republicans, but it’s another thing all together if the competing power wants to split off a quarter of the nation or wants to impose Sharia law. 

Recent events have demonstrated exactly how deep the problems are. Across Europe over the last two years there have been giant pro Hamas demonstrations, some of which devolved into violence.  Across the United States Donald Trump’s attempt to begin to ramp up deportations has been met with violence against ICE agents and in California, it devolved into riots with law enforcement members being pelted with rocks, bottles and various incendiaries while cars were set afire, stores looted and the LAPD headquarters attacked.

Of course, demonstrations and riots happen in any country, but when they are symbols of a bigger fissure that’s a problem. 

In both cases these illegals and their predecessors, many of whom have been legalized, seek to fundamentally change the nature of the countries they now call home. Of course invaders always want to change the nature of the place they invade, just as the Romans did as they were growing their empire.  The difference is when the Romans invaded a new land the people already there usually fought them to maintain their culture. They usually lost, but at least they had enough pride in their culture to fight for it. What we see across the west today is just the opposite.  From Sweden to the UK to Spain and the US, leaders have for years worshiped at the altar of guilt and sought to repent by welcoming millions from cultures far different than their own.  Most of these leaders have been under the delusion that if they welcome these invaders with open arms, give them shelter, food, phones and more that they’ll somehow respect the culture of their new homes and assimilate accordingly. 

Not only did they not do so, but rather many attacked the very people and culture that welcomed them. From skyrocketing rapes and bombings in Sweden to knife crime and rape rings in the UK to drug dealing and taking over apartment complexes in Denver, these illegals have made it perfectly clear that they see their new homes not as refuges from some dysfunctional dystopia, but rather as fertile ground to be exploited. They have no intention of assimilating, and in reality, who can blame them?  If a nation doesn’t care enough about its citizens and its culture to protect them, why should anyone else? 

Here in America we finally have a leader who understands the danger and is doing something about it.  If the leaders of Europe don’t follow Donald Trump’s lead soon they may find that it’s too late.    

 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

First published on June 11, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/learn_from_the_romans_you_cannot_welcome_armed_unassimilated_enemies.html

Whites, Blacks and Culture...

If you spend any time online (particularly after Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show) you’ll come across memes that say that America was built by blacks or that Shakespeare’s work was written by a black woman or that black Africans built western civilization. I’m not convinced.   

To put it bluntly, has black Africa ever given the world anything of consequence since humans originated there? Has black Africa ever had a civilization worthy of comparison to the great civilizations we’re all familiar with? Is there a reason why Africa has the lowest IQs on the planet? That almost every country in Africa is poor while the continent has a majority of the world’s gold, cobalt, diamonds, and platinum? Is it any coincidence that 8 of the 10 most violent countries in the world is either in Africa or is majority black? Ditto for wars? Is it any coincidence that black Americans are 600% more likely to commit murder than whites?

We’ve been told that white racism is the driver behind all of that. If that were true we would expect black Africa before Europeans arrived to be a thriving continent bustling with advanced civilizations. But is that the case?

Some claim it is, and indeed there were a number of large civilizations in Sub-Saharan history.  There was the Mali Empire that dates back to the 13^th century and was once led by Mansa Musa, said to have been the richest man in history. There’s the Great Zimbabwe Empire also from the 13^th century and the Songhai Empire which dates to the 15^th.  Then there was the Kingdom of Aksum that operated as a trading center between Europe, North Africa and Asia and lasted 1,000 years from about 200 BC to 800 AD.

Those and others were no doubt complex societies that traded, warred and lasted for centuries but somehow managed to not become particularly advanced. Compare the intact ruins of the 13^th century Zimbabwe Empire to Paris’s Sainte-Chapelle, also from 13^th century or the 11^th century Dogon Cliffs in Mali to Britain’s 11th century Windsor Castle. The word that comes to mind is primitive. And most of sub-Saharan Africa never really advanced much from there.  While it’s likely that when the Portuguese began exploring the continent in the early 15^th century they encountered numerous population centers of significant size, most would not be what we might call advanced. Compare sculptures from 15^th century West Africa to what was being produced in Europe at the same time. 

While we’re constantly told that the condition of Africans in the 21^st century is the result of European imperialism, the reality is, Africa south of the Sahara was barely out of the stone age when the Europeans arrived in the 15^th century.

What about black Africans today?  Sadly, while from afar the continent is covered with beautiful modern cities, upon closer look virtually every country is economically distressed and many are wracked with violence and war. What about blacks whose ancestors left Africa, what has become of them?  Well, sadly the picture’s not much different. Whole countries, like Haiti, which freed itself from European rule in 1806 – coerced to sign a suffocating indemnity with France that would take more than a century to repay – is one of the poorest and most dysfunctional nations in the world.  Here in the United States black communities are wracked with a spectrum of problems from violence to unwed motherhood to illiteracy to drugs and economic stagnation. Indeed, in some black communities the murder rates are among the highest in the world.

So what does all of that mean?  Lower IQs, lack of civilizational development, extraordinary levels of violence?  Are blacks genetically coded to be inferior to everyone else?

No, I don’t think so. The hardest working and kindest man I’ve ever know was black.  Thomas Sowell is arguably the greatest economist of the last half century.  We’ve all see Hidden Figures, the true story about how Katherine Johnson and her team played a critical role in sending the astronauts to the moon.  Madame CJ Walker was America’s first self-made female millionaire, overcoming actual, real racism and creating a company that employed 20,000 women at the beginning of the 20^th century.  There are countless more examples of why it’s impossible for DNA to be the cause. So then what is it?

Dr. Sowell argues compellingly in his cultures trilogy that sub-Saharan Africa was backward (my word not his) because with its dearth of navigable rivers, deep water ports and lack of trade and the exchange of ideas with the world beyond. By the 16^th century Europeans had been fighting, trading with and learning from one another as well as Asia and north Africa for thousands of years. European advancement, like most, came as a result of man’s natural competitive forces being honed in the crucible of conflict and war taking place within a geography capable of facilitating efficient exchange of goods, information and ideas over a large area. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and the interactions between the different peoples fueled their development. By the 16^th century those interactions had produced Shakespeare and Monteverdi and Galileo and Columbus and DaVinci, Michelangelo and many more. Black Africa had nothing comparable.

But what about intelligence? Are blacks biologically unequal?  Jason Riley, in his outstanding book Please Stop Helping Us provides the definitive answer: No. In looking at the past half century in America Riley demonstrates that it is culture that has damaged America’s black communities.  He references today’s black ghetto culture and its origin, which arrived in the first half of the 19^th century via the Irish, Scottish and Welsh migrants who heavily populated the south.  He quotes Sowell: “The cultural values and social patterns prevalent among southern whites included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music…”

While most of those whites would move away from that culture, as would many blacks, in the second half of the 20^th century not only would many backtrack, but a majority would champion those very characteristics in an effort to “avoid acting white”.

In championing those values and crying victimhood, black leaders have betrayed the very people they claim to defend.  Riley contrasts the results of black students in teacher’s union controlled NYC public schools and those in nearby charter schools where the outcomes differed like night and day. Drawing students from the same communities and demographic, the former would expect and attain failure while the latter would not only expect success, but would produce some of the state’s best students, regardless of race. Culture matters.   

He further talks about the fact that in the early 20^th century, when blacks were making consistent and significant gains, there were times when more black children lived in 2 parent homes than whites. But then the government got involved and through a variety of programs intended to combat poverty, eviscerated black families. So today in America we have a black underclass that is characterized by poverty, a lack of education and extraordinary levels of violence – which is celebrated in rap lyrics – largely a consequence of government policies that made single motherhood a viable career path. 

Although blacks were part of the antebellum South, they did not build America nor western civilization, and the west is not responsible for the state of blacks around the world. As Sowell and Riley chronicle very compellingly, culture matters. Until that reality is recognized and addressed within the black universe, things will never improve.

Paris 2000 & Paris 2024: A Tale of Two Cities...

On New Year’s Eve 1999 I was tending bar at Outback Steakhouse in DC.  As midnight rolled through each time zone celebrations from each city were shown on TV.  At 6:00 I looked up and what I saw would change my life. It was Paris and I was captivated.  Everything seemed to be outlined in lights.  The bridges, the Eiffel Tower, the walks along the river, the Louvre… seemingly everything. I was enchanted and turned to a friend and said “I have to go there…” 

Five months later I was standing on one of those bridges I’d seen on TV.  It was my first visit to the city and it was the most beautiful place I’d ever been.  I remember standing on a bridge near the Louvre, staring at the Eiffel Tower and saying to myself “I have to live here someday.”

The next day I would meet my future bride in the form of my guide in the gardens of Versailles.  I spent a week in the city and easily had the greatest week of my life. I would go on to visit France a dozen times over the next 20 years and experience much of what the city and the country had to offer… and I would eventually live there too.

The celebration that I’d seen on that night in the bar had been a carefully choreographed effort to show the world, on the biggest stage, the beauty of Paris, the glory of France and invite the world to visit.  It worked for me and tens of millions of others. In 2002 France would become the world’s number one tourist destination, a position it has held for most of the quarter century since.  Tens of millions of tourists would visit Paris and France and their billions of Euros make up 10% of France’s GDP.  That celebration might just have been the most effective advertisement in human history.

Now, jump ahead a quarter century when Paris is hosting the Olympics.  The event began ten days ago with what was essentially a three-hour commercial in front of one of the largest worldwide television audiences possible, with upwards of 1.5 billion people watching. 

And what did France do with this once in a lifetime opportunity?  Showcase French culture? Showcase the most beautiful city in the world? Showcase the bridges or the buildings or the sculptures or the parks? The Sun King - Louis XIV, Victor Hugo, or Baron Haussmann, the father of the city we know today?  Umm… not exactly.

While there were tiny glimpses into some of that, the reality is that the opening ceremonies were a celebration of everything but the grandeur of France. From an early ménage à trois hookup in the public library to the despicable mocking of the Last Supper by a cast of deviant trans characters to what looked like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower, almost the entire thing was a giant middle finger to face of culture in general and Christianity in particular.  And don’t be fooled by the Olympic Committee’s “apology” if anyone was offended.  Nor by the designer Thomas Jolly’s disingenuous claims that the feast was based on a Greek festival featuring Dionysus, the god of wine and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine.  In the same piece TheWrap quotes an Olympics producer stating: “Thomas Jolly took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting…Clearly, there was never an intention to show disrespect towards any religious group or belief … [Jolly] is not the first artist to make a reference to what is a world-famous work of art. From Andy Warhol to ‘The Simpsons,’ many have done it before him.”

Despite the denials, the opening ceremonies were clearly an attempt to push LGBT deviancy into the mainstream of world consciousness – in a way that it could never have reached viewers in most of the world otherwise – and do so while mocking the faith of Christians, the one faith the left feels safe in mocking. 

Rush Limbaugh used to say “Politics is downstream from culture”. He talked about it in the context of schools, Hollywood and the media acting as the bleeding edge of ideas that the left was trying to inculcate into America, and that eventually legislation would follow.  There is no better example of this than gay marriage a decade ago and today’s trans ideology and its attendant child mutilation demands.

What we saw on Friday was an attempt to use this traditionally – by design – apolitical venue showcasing human achievement, human competition and most of all human spirit, as the camel’s nose in the world’s tent for the homosexual / transsexual agenda. 

And that right there is the crux of the problem.  The mocking of Christianity is of course vile, but a free society thrives on free speech, and that includes mockery and derision. Similarly, the LGBTQXYZ123 agenda, while perhaps unseemly to many, is welcome to take its place in the arena of ideas. That’s not the problem. No, what makes this event so despicable, and frankly, disheartening, is the fact that given the platform and three hours in front of a billion viewers, rather than France showcasing her beauty and elegance and history and culture, someone decided to hand that opportunity over to activists bent on showing France, not as one of the great foundations of western civilization, but rather to be a nation of depravity, sacrilege and deviance.

Make no mistake, while the Olympics are indeed about athletes and competition and spirit, at the end of the day, money is what makes them work. Broadcasters pay many billions of dollars for the right to be able to broadcast the games. Companies pay billions of dollars to be associated with the games for the specific purpose of advertising their offerings. Hosts pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the Olympic Committee and promise to spend billions more on the games, often knowing they are going to lose money in the process, all in hopes of generating money in the long run from tourism.

This Olympic betrayal is not going to destroy tourism to France. People are still going to come, by the tens of millions. The Louvre and the Mona Lisa aren’t going anywhere. The Eiffel Tower isn’t going anywhere and Paris’ spectacular bridges and boulevards aren’t going anywhere.  But what might have been destroyed is the illusion that French culture in the 21^st century is anything resembling or worthy of that which built some of the greatest achievements in western civilization. Does anyone who watched that spectacle imagine that the France of the 21^st century could ever match the glories crafted by the France of history that brought us the Rights of Man, Mont-Saint-Michel or the palace of Versailles?  Of course not. It won’t do anything in the short run but make Paris and France the butt of jokes. In the long run however, that’s a different story.  Cultures rarely die in a grand cataclysms, but rather wither on the vine from neglect, indifference, ingratitude and contempt. That, I think is the message of the 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony in Paris. For a nation I love, that’s a message, I for one would rather not have seen.

Follow me on Twitter at ImperfectUSA

The Lesson of Afghanistan is a Simple One, But Probably Not What You Think

 Joe Biden is being roasted for his indefensible handling of the Afghanistan exit.  As well he should be.  Indeed, his incompetence is so legion that he’s actually getting roasted by a media whose only job appears to be to prop up the Biden regime.  Both the New York Times and the Washington Post pilloried him while over at CNN: 'the debacle of defeat and chaotic retreat in Afghanistan' is a 'political disaster' for President Biden. The Wall Street Journal suggested his statement 'washing hands' of Afghanistan 'is one of most shameful in US history'. 

They’re of course right.  This may be the most incompetent diplomatic / military exercise in American history… and it came straight from the Commander in Chief and his incompetent cabal of woke advisors. 

Given the tragedy unfolding today, one wonders if Americans will learn the real lesson of Afghanistan.  Sure, while one lesson would be to never put a senile incompetent leftist in the position of Commander in Chief, that’s not the real lesson to be learned…

American direct involvement in Afghanistan started out twenty years ago after the attacks of September 11^th.  It didn’t take long to discover that the Taliban had been giving Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda training bases and a home from which to attack the US.  George W. Bush sent troops in to rout them, which was largely accomplished within months.  But of course the troops didn’t come home. They stayed, with the ostensible mission of helping Afghanistan craft a nation that would no longer be a haven for terrorists, and a government unwilling to protect them.  We – Americans, not me personally as I did not serve during that time nor in that theater – built roads, schools, bases, buildings, shepherded the writing of a constitution, facilitated elections and helped form a government with all the trappings of legitimacy.  One of the most laudable efforts was help to give girls and women opportunities that they had essentially never seen in Afghanistan.

Of course, the Taliban, while defeated in terms of running the country, never quite went away.  They hid in the hills. They hid in Pakistan and actually took parts of it over.  They operated under the cover of night and gave a constant reminder that they were never far away, having been funded and shielded by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service.  

All of this “progress” cost a great deal, both in terms of money and the lives of brave servicemen.  When all is said and done, the United States will have spent somewhere between $1 and $2 trillion seeking to build Afghanistan into a democracy with a functioning military and government.  At the same time, 2,500 American servicemembers lost their lives executing that mission. 

All for what?  Not much, apparently.  In just a number of days the Taliban took over the entire country.  The president fled. Americans were airlifted from the roof of the embassy.  Girls are now being stolen from their families to be given as wives to Taliban fighters.  Those who assisted the Americans and local police are being rounded up and killed.  The Afghan military has essentially evaporated, leaving the Taliban in possession of tens of billions of dollars of American supplied weapons and equipment.  Soon the Taliban will bring Afghanistan back to the 7^th century, from whence they came.  Sharia law.  Women in bondage. No freedom.  Economic backwater.

The lesson of Afghanistan is not that the United States couldn’t turn The Graveyard of Empires into a thriving democracy, such as our own. That was never in the cards.  The American colonies grew up as part of the British Empire and had been marching slowly towards a representative government with individual freedoms for centuries, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution.  Of course neither of those was the final word and the United States has been evolving towards a More Perfect Union ever since. 

Afghanistan doesn’t have anything resembling the history we have.  Just the opposite.  The nation, to the degree that is actually a nation, exists largely on a map.  The people are far more tribal than they are Afghani, and most live lives like those their ancestors lived 1,000 years ago.  Nation building in Afghanistan was always likely to be a failure, whether the United States spent $2 trillion or $20. 

And therein lays the lesson of Afghanistan, through the words of Ronald Reagan.  “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Americans live in the greatest nation in the history of man, one that took literally centuries to get where it is today.  It’s far from perfect of course, and it’s always evolving, but the fundamental principles of limited government, individual freedom and free markets have been guides the entire journey. But because it’s not perfect, the left wants to destroy it.  Tear down our Founding Fathers because they didn’t think about 21^st century mores when they were busy carving out a new nation.  Eliminate free speech because mean words offend vulnerable sensibilities.  Eliminate free markets because they do not provide for a perfectly equal distribution of wealth.  Divide the country by an endless array of hyphens so that professional victims can identify their “oppressors”. 

The freedom that Reagan spoke of, the prosperity the United States has created and the opportunities Americans enjoy are not predestined. They aren’t written into our DNA, not guaranteed by God and not irreversible.  Just as a generation of Afghanis who grew up in a relatively free nation are about to discover, what is here today is not guaranteed to still be here tomorrow.  History is important. Culture is important. Shared values are important.  Twenty years and $2 trillion dollars in Afghanistan prove that and demonstrate how quickly rights and freedoms can evaporate.  

To the degree that pampered leftists who, in a global sense were born on third and think they hit a triple, want to change the rules of the game called America, change the dimensions of the playing field and change the players in the lineup, they’re playing with fire. They think they know where those changes will lead.  They’re wrong.  Free speech, and the respect for the free exercise of such, once gone are almost impossible to regain.  Private property, once taken, almost never makes it back into the hands of the rightful owners and with it goes free markets and prosperity.  Government programs, once launched almost never end, and edicts, once written are almost never rescinded.  A government unleashed from the constraint of the Bill of Rights will never find its way back into the cage.    

Some people know that reality while others clearly don’t.  Compare a 25 year old Afghani woman who is now facing home detention, a burqa for life and a husband she didn’t choose to a 25 year old American grad student standing in $300 sneakers holding a $1,000 phone and barking “F the police”.  One clearly understands what freedom is while the other wallows in his utopian fantasy utterly clueless of how the world actually works.  There’s a reason millions of people risk their lives every year to come to America or literally cling to the wing of a flying plane in order to escape Taliban Afghanistan.  It’s called reality. 

It would be nice if the left would learn the simple lesson of Afghanistan, that freedom is fleeting and must be prized and protected, but sadly they are unlikely to allow machinations in the real world intrude on their delusional fantasies.   

King Leonidas, ISIS and the Culture War Barack Obama Refuses to See… Nevermind Fight

A week and a half ago fascist thugs of ISIS attacked Paris. Three days later President Obama addressed the world from Istanbul and said the attack was “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share.”

That is a wonderful sentiment, but like most things that come out of Barack Obama’s mouth, it’s wrong. There are not universal values.

Take freedom of speech. Across the planet, from China to Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela, (and most places in between) nothing resembling freedom of speech such freedom exists. In the West, from Australia to England to Italy to Canada, freedom of speech ostensibly exists, but the restrictions continue to grow. Even here in the United States where freedom of speech is enshrined in our Constitution, it is under siege everywhere. On universities, the very places where ideas are supposed to be studied and debated, speech codes are suffocating liberty and mini fascists seek to limit your ability to say anything they disagree with. In everyday life criticizing anyone for anything opens one up for accusations of being racist or sexist or homophobic or some other form of intolerance.

Freedom of religion? One wonders how Coptic Christians in Egypt feel about freedom of Religion. Try wearing a crucifix in Saudi Arabia. How free do the followers of Falun Gong feel in China? Jews in Europe… Here in the United States Christians are under assault for refusing to participate in gay weddings while atheists seek to eliminate even the shadows of Christianity from the public square.

Freedom in general is not something found on most parts of the planet… Across the Muslim world women are slaves and getting raped is a crime for which one can be ostracized, jailed  or even killed. South America and Africa are rife with failed states where graft is the natural order of things and the populations are mired in poverty (real poverty… not what passes for poverty in the United States) while government officials and their connected cronies live in luxury. In China the government or government aligned corporations control virtually everything, even down to reproduction.

All in all, the values that Obama is suggesting are universal are nothing of the sort. Widespread notions of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and individual liberty simply don’t exist. The vast majority of people living on the planet today do not share or experience any of those values. There has never been a time in human history where a majority of people shared such values. Indeed it’s never even been close.

It is only with the rise of the West, where such freedoms and values were developed and flourished and codified, that the notion of “universal freedoms” could even be imagined. Such freedoms hit their apex with the writing of the United States Constitution. For the first time in human history there was a document that not only explicitly spelled out the rights of citizens that could not be impeded, but more importantly, explicitly limited the power of government to only those things it was specifically empowered to do by the citizens.

The reality is, the “universal freedoms” Barack Obama talks about simply don’t exist. They never have. But somehow he, along with the rest of the left pretend that they do, which is exactly why they seek to shift power away from the constitutionally constrained government of the United States to the unconstrained United Nations. They live in a fantasy world where if everyone would just put down their weapons and embrace one another that the world will suddenly be all right. They feel like if everyone simply kept the “fair share” of their income then magically the world become a nirvana in which every family enjoys a lifetime of Norman Rockwell dinners.

And that tells you exactly why ISIS is a problem and the West is in decline. Europeans, along with the left in America, willfully ignored what made the West a success in the first place… culture inspired by Christianity – although at times hindered by it as well, built on intellectual curiosity and empowered by individual liberty and freedom. The notions of freedom of religion and speech and private property as we know them today evolved in the West over a period of 800 years. They were not codified by an edict by a Pope or Martin Luther or Napoleon or Queen Victoria or even James Madison. These decidedly non-universal values came about as the result of a struggle between church and state and citizenry as well as between churches, states and citizens. Much bloodshed was spilled in the process of developing those values. They were hard fought for and won, and to the degree that they exist in other places around the world, for the most part they were brought there by westerners.

It is not so much that the West is collapsing because it’s being invaded (which it surely is) but rather rotting from within because it has spend the last half century protected in a cocoon of security provided by the American military. After rescuing much of the world from the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII, for more than half a century the United States has provided a bulwark against the Soviets and the Chinese and later the Russians. Under the protection of American power, the West - including the United States – deluded itself with the notion that peace was now the norm and that civilization had finally come to humanity. As such, it was possible to create vast social programs to nurture citizens from cradle to grave with little concern about fiscal or social responsibility. In addition, they opened their doors to allow millions of immigrants to enter their countries and enjoy those programs without ever being required to assimilate. Indeed, in many European countries assimilation could be almost impossible even if it were desired, which it rarely was.

Today we have the logical conclusion of the argument that no culture is superior to any other. Because Western culture is no better than any other, there is no basis to demand assimilation. Migrants by the millions move to the West and then seek to establish mini-me versions of the failed states and dysfunctional cultures they left behind… Indeed, across Europe there are movements under foot to implement Sharia law above national law while France, Britain and other nations are peppered with “No-Go” zones.

Given that it’s seen as racist or xenophobic to suggest that one’s culture is superior to another, it’s verboten to ask who put men on the moon, mapped the human genome or invented mobile phones. Such questions do not matter because all cultures are equal. And so it goes. As the self loathing West derides the very things that made it successful in the first place it finds itself under siege by those who are not only proud of their culture and values but are willing to both kill and die for them.

To see how this juxtaposition of passion and cultural apathy might play itself out, read or watch something about the Battle of Thermopylae. Observe how a small force of highly motivated and passionate fighters can have an impact exponentially larger than their numbers might suggest. King Leonidas and his men lose their lives and the battle… but the Greeks win the war. Unfortunately for America and the West, our impotent and incompetent leader is Barack Obama, who refuses to even see that we’re in the midst of a culture war, nevermind recognize that for the other side it’s literally a fight to the death. Let’s hope the next occupant of the Oval Office understands that America and the values she holds are not only, not universal, but they are exceptional, and indeed worthy of both praise and protection.

Why Culture Matters: The Natural State of Man is One of Poverty, Scarcity and Conflict

One of my favorite teachers in high school was Mr. Kelly. Ostensibly he was a reading teacher, but his interests were far more inclined towards history and cultures. We once got into a discussion about the great cultures throughout history. The obvious names came up… the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans, Aztecs, ancient China etc. Then he asked the question about what determines a great culture. My answer was something like: “A great culture leaves something tangible behind.” My reasoning was simply that whether the Parthenon, the Coliseum, various pyramids or the Great Wall of China, all of these cultures left tangible representations of their greatness. Mr. Kelly then posited that maybe that was the wrong measure. Maybe instead we should measure a culture’s greatness by the vibrancy of life enjoyed by its people during its heyday. In particular he mentioned two cultures in western Africa who left nary a trace of their existence, but apparently had a vibrant society centuries ago. He suggested that it was possible that they were every bit as great as the cultures as those we usually mention when discussing history. I was skeptical but it was an interesting discussion.

Sadly, after 30 years I don’t remember the cultures he mentioned. But I do remember the question itself of how we go about measuring great cultures. That question is very much relevant today. Since then I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard various professors or pundits or pontificators suggest something like “All cultures are equal and deserve the same level of respect”. I’m as skeptical about that today as when I first heard it. Yesterday’s New York Times provided a perfect example of that exact thing. In it was a story titled: U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies. The various Marines and soldiers who became aware of the abuse were told by higher ups that they could not intervene because it was “their culture”. Indeed, a number of American servicemembers who took steps to stop the rampant pederasty were disciplined and even kicked out of the military.

This story comes on the heels of two other events that bring up the question of cultures. Europe is being invaded by millions of Muslims. The United States is being invaded by millions of Mexicans and others from Latin Americans.

Today we find ourselves in a situation where the West, home to the greatest accomplishments of mankind, are under siege by “migrants” from cultures and nations that are abject failures. The West in general, and the United States in particular, are the home of the greatest advances in human history – or in some cases harnessing innovations from elsewhere: Computers. Man on the moon. Mapping of the Human Genome. Flight. Nuclear power. The Mechanical Reaper. Air conditioning. The automobile. Plastic. Electricity. Add to those things that are essential to Western, or at least American culture: Representative government. Limited government. The outlawing of slavery. Freedom of speech and the press. Freedom of worship. Individual rights. Private property. Together these things have allowed the West to create nations where more people have enjoyed more prosperity, more freedom, and longer lives than any people in history.

Prosperity, freedom and longevity may not be the best measures of a culture’s greatness, but they are probably pretty close. Of course that doesn’t mean that either the United State or the West are perfect. They are not, not by a long shot. But for all of their failures they are by and large exponentially better places to live than the rest of the world.

It’s thus strange then that many of the beneficiaries of these advanced cultures seek to diminish them and draw an equivalency with other cultures, regardless of the reality. In much of the Muslim world women are 2nd class citizens… at best. Homosexuals are murdered. The freedoms of speech or the press or religion are virtually nonexistent. Most of the population lives in poverty, or not far above it. And of course there is the near constant threat of terrorism or war, as more than half of the ongoing conflicts on the planet involve Muslims.

Then there is Mexico and Latin America where the economies are in constant turmoil, where corruption is a way of life, where governments know few if any limits and where drug cartels reign supreme via bribes and brutality.

None of those things create a foundation for prosperity or freedom or longevity. But somehow not only are Americans and Westerners supposed to respect these dystopian cultures as equals, at the same time we are supposed to welcome the masses escaping them into our communities. It would be one thing if the vast majority of these “migrants” were seeking to assimilate into their new locales and contribute to their prosperity. They’re not. In Europe Muslims are seeking to apply “sharia law” in enclaves across the continent - UK - France and trying to bend the locals to their mores... including outlawing Octoberfest in Germany!.  Ninety percent of Middle Eastern “refugees” are on food stamps and “Asian” rape gangs proliferate, seemingly without fear. In the United States illegal immigrants receive government assistance at twice the rate of the native population while in some places they are responsible for over 1/3 of the murders and other violent crimes.

Unfortunately, the subject of culture is no longer simply an academic question to be discussed in Social Studies class. Today the question implies real world consequences such as poverty and death. While Muslim or African or Hispanic cultures may have positive aspects about them, and may have been great at one time long ago in history, today they are largely dysfunctional and often abject failures where the citizenry suffer great calamity both economic and physical.

Liberals in the west would have us eliminate all borders and welcome in anyone who might want to escape their failed states as we are assured that “diversity” is the key to the West thriving. As usual, they are wrong. The Judeo Christian foundations of the West, the march of limited government begun with the Magna Carta, the individual freedoms hammered out in the US Constitution are all elements of a culture that has laid the foundation for the success the West currently enjoys. While adding various elements of far less successful cultures may make liberal elites swoon, it doesn’t do much for the society as a whole, and in terms of jobs, education and quality of life it usually has a decidedly negative impact on those at the bottom of the economic spectrum… but not so much for the elites behind their walled gardens.

As this is America and liberals see racism and hate around every corner, I'll state that this is not some clarion call for a whitebread America or West. On the contrary. It matters not whether someone's hue is that of milk or oil. It’s the culture that matters, not the skin. Charles Napier, the British Army's Commander-in-Chief in India in the 19th century understood this. When confronted by Hindu priests angry at the Brits prohibiting Sati – the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband – he said this:

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

Can anyone imagine a General in Barack Obama's Army saying something similar and keeping his job?

Customs matter. Culture matters. The natural state of man is one of poverty, scarcity and conflict. The West has greatly succeeded in diminishing all three. Western culture is indeed imperfect and leaves much room for improvement, but there’s a difference between introspection and cultural suicide. Western elites don’t seem to know the difference. Maybe they should be forced to endure life in some of those failed states before they are allowed to diversify our culture out of existence.