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.

Shining Cities On Hills Take Centuries to Build but Can be Destroyed Quickly

 America’s Founding Fathers were nothing short of extraordinary.  Never before had a group of men come together to do things that would so change the arc of human history.  To a man it’s likely that they agreed with Sir Isaac Newton’s adage from 1676:  "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." This particularly applies to the two men most responsible for the nation’s founding documents, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison.

Jefferson, whose extensive library was the basis upon which the Library of Congress is built, was extraordinarily well read.  From Plato and Plutarch to Chaucer and Shakespeare to Blackstone and Burke, he was a voracious reader. Perhaps none more so than the giant of the enlightenment’s, John Locke. In addition to the intellectual arsenal all of this gave him, there were specific documents he drew upon in writing the Declaration of Independence.  Among these were his own draft of the Constitution of Virginia, George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights as well as the English Bill of Rights and its antecedent, the Magna Carta. 

Madison shared Jefferson’s familiarity with Montesquieu, Locke, Blackstone and crafted the Constitution with many of the same sources in mind. Given the different functions of the documents, Madison focused the Constitution on the fundamental nature of man and the need to constrain men’s most based instincts while Jefferson’s Declaration was focused on the passions that impel men to act.

The nation they bequeathed to us is of course, imperfect, but it is extraordinary nonetheless.  Based on these documents and the 2000 years of western civilization that preceded them, it has evolved with principles that have been, in aggregate, the most providential in all in human history. Fundamental elements such as freedom of speech, press, religion, the rights to a fair trial and to be free from government molestation in your home created an almost crystal clear limitation on the powers of government and the tyrannical nature of men. At the same time, outside of the explicitly government sphere you have things like private property, Capitalism and the Judeo-Christian tradition that reinforced the framework of the nation.

As everyone knows, America had extraordinary challenges from the beginning, starting with her Original Sin. But throughout she has had at her disposal in the form of the Constitution the tools to evolve and overcome her imperfections and advance. 

The culture Americans have today, or at least did until recently, focused on things like community, church, freedom of speech, limited government, private property, merit & individual achievement.

All of that took generations to build.  It took patriots standing on the shoulders of giants to build… And the result has been nothing short of spectacular.  For most of the last century the United States has been the most powerful nation in the world from both a military and economic perspective, and perhaps most of all, from an opportunity perspective.  From universities to Silicon Valley to Wall Street to main street, America has led the world in scientific advances, economic advances and, again, opportunity.  This is nowhere more clear in the fact that of the 954 Nobel Prizes awarded since its inception in 1900, over 404 of them (42%) are Americans, and of those 404, approximately 35% are immigrants.  And it’s not just intellectuals. There’s athletics. Of the 21,000 Olympic medals awarded since the revival of the Games in 1896, Americans have won over 3,000 or 15%. In this year’s games, approximately 10% of the American team was made up of immigrants or children of immigrants. And money. Of the world’s 2,781 billionaires in 2024, 29% of them, or 813 are Americans. Of those 813, approximately 11% are immigrants. 

All of this suggests that immigrants are good for America.  That’s true.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a problem.  We do. Because culture matters…

Unfortunately what we have seen over the last 30 years has been a flood of illegal immigrants from nations with no concept of the basics of American culture. The breakdown of the countries of origin tells the tale. The top ten nations from which illegals hail are as follows:  Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Columbia, Ecuador & El Salvador. Together they make up 80% of the illegals crossing our border. Those nations have no sustained history of free speech, limited government, private property, free elections or Capitalism. Contrast that with the previous waves of migration (1840-1889 & 1890-1911) when 89% of immigrants came from fellow European nations with overlapping western values. 

It is simply not sustainable for a nation to import tens of millions of people from nations with cultures that are anathema to its own. Indeed of the top ten most dangerous cities in the world, eight are in the countries listed above. The basic elements of western culture, of American culture are not found in DNA, they are found in communities, in the shared history of the citizens and in the laws of the nation. Large numbers of immigrants from nations with different mores can be destabilizing. From crime to the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to support illegals to the strains on services such as education and healthcare to the dollars sent back home, illegals do harm to America.  Just this past week we’ve seen reports of Venezuelan gangs taking over  neighborhoods in Colorado and unleashing chaos in Dallas while 75% of arrests in midtown Manhattan are illegals. 

The only solution is deportation. By the millions. It will be ugly, it will be difficult, it will take courage in the face of withering media assaults and Democrat lamentations, but it is necessary.  If we do not build a wall and send the illegals home, it will be seen as an open invitation to the entire world to cross our border… and as Roy Beck explains with gumballs, that’s not sustainable.

Culture matters. The reality is, not all cultures are equal. If they were there wouldn’t be millions of people seeking to cross our borders. Western civilization in general and American culture in particular has taken centuries to develop, and a quick look around the world will demonstrate that cultures and civilizations that maintain themselves for centuries are few and far in between. 

If Americans don’t recognize that what we have is a gift and is something to be valued and protected, our shining city on a hill will soon devolve into the morass of chaos, violence, scarcity and tyranny where much of the rest of the world resides. If we really want to show compassion to those longing for what Americans have, the solution is not to open our borders and let them in, but rather seek to export the basic elements of freedom which are at the foundation of our success. There’s an adage of much disputed origin that perfectly articulates the idea:  Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Our goal should not be to suckle the millions of illegals who swarm our borders and overwhelm our cities, but rather we should be to export the fundamental tenants of freedom and prosperity to the billions around the world so they can build their own shining cities on their own hills…

The Decline of Art in Western Culture Parallels the Decline of Everything Else

For most of western history art was used as a way for patrons to showcase achievements or propagandize citizens or lionize individuals.  Maybe the single greatest artist in human history, Michelangelo, created his greatest works for patrons of various sorts.  David he created for the Florentine Guild of Wool, the Pieta for the French ambassador to the Holy See and the Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica for popes. Art was, in one way or another an homage to something greater than its creator. 

Fast-forward about three centuries and the art world begun to change.  Art as an indulgence of artists, where they would paint whatever they wanted, with or without a desire that someone would pay for it is largely a child of the late 19^th century.  That’s when Impressionism, that distinctly unconventional, non traditional form or painting emerged.  In a very short period of time the world of art went from uber traditional world of Bouguereau to the anything but world of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh.  Suddenly art was no longer a vehicle for vanity or the celebration of greatness or storytelling.  It was something else. 

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp, a French artist unveiled a urinal on a wooden box and called it “Fountain”.  A hundred years later art had “evolved” so much that a banana taped to a wall with duct tape (an actual banana… not plastic or paper mâché) would sell for $120,000 in 2019…

It is into this universe of art that we find what is supposed to be cutting edge and courageous, in the form of the Pietà by German designer Harald Glööckler.  The revisualization of the classic piece features a tattooed Christ and a trans Mary.  And what’s courageous about this piece?  It stands up to those vicious, hateful… Christians. 

In the cacophony of 2023, while there are other issues that are of far more import than this, this one might be a bit illustrative. 

Having the “courage” to stand up to Christians and defile Christian traditions and symbols doesn’t actually require any courage… because there’s no danger of anything bad actually happening besides some chastising words from a few of the offended.  No one is going to issue death threats against you, no one is going to put a bounty on your head, mobs of people aren’t going to start riots and kill others because of you, as was shown in 1986 with The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili and 1987 with Piss Christ, by Andres Serrano. Of course there is another religion where that’s exactly what happens if one were to criticize it or its symbols… but of course those “courageous” artists aren’t assailing that religion.

This is a symbol of the bizarro world we find ourselves living in.  Other things that are counted as courageous today include a man announcing that he’s a woman, flaunting one’s morbid obesity in public or wrapping oneself in the flag of victimization for being black or gay or some other category. 

None of those things takes courage in 2023 America where being anything but a patriotic heterosexual Christian white male accords hero worship. It doesn’t take courage to assail someone or something where there is no threat of consequences. 

Heterosexual Christian white males built most (but not all) of the world we live in today.  It’s far from perfect, but no time or place in history has been perfect.  But it’s not their DNA that somehow makes them better citizens or better people. No, it’s the culture they built.

We’re told that somehow western culture is bad because it was not crafted by a multicultural collective.  That makes no sense.  Virtually every culture in human history has been built by members of a single race.  There were not a lot of whites helping to craft the Mali Empire in Africa, there were not a lot of blacks at the center of the Chinese Middle Kingdom, not a lot of yellow people helping to build the Inca Empire and there weren’t a lot of brown people helping to build Russia or the Russian Empire. No, most of human history has been dominated by monochromatic empires, nations and cultures.

It just happens to be the case that on Earth’s competitive landscape the culture built and developed by straight, Christian white males is the one that has generated the greatest increases in freedom, technology and prosperity in human history.  And it’s not even close.  But because not everyone has shared equally in the material gains from that culture, it must be destroyed…

Because that culture largely focuses on meritocracy, accountability, individual liberty and limited government rather than coercion from above, people who have yet to achieve their desired goals have the opportunity to criticize it with impunity, something they cannot do in most other parts of the world and couldn’t have done throughout most of human history virtually everywhere. Yet without the threat of consequence they often call themselves courageous. 

Western civilization, the driver of said unprecedented levels of freedom and prosperity and opportunity in all of human history, today finds itself under attack by those who have migrated to it, have invaded it or whose ancestors were brought to it, because they’ve not achieved their desired goals. This, despite the fact that conditions back wherever they or their ancestors left from are likely far worse than they are anywhere in the west.  But no matter.  These “protesters” use the freedoms accorded by western culture to attack it.  That’s a problem. No culture can survive if there are no shared values.  No culture can survive if citizens don’t have at least a common appreciation for the nations’ fundamental culture and assume it to be a good thing.   

Here at home, if those criticizing America were just a few outliers there would be no problem.  A strong nation can withstand critique, even from within, and that’s why we have a 1^st Amendment.  The problem in 2023 however is that fully half of the country has been brainwashed into believing that the bedrock principles upon which America is based are somehow evil, corrupt or illegitimate.  They got that way because one of the two main political parties has proffered that lie for decades and enlisted its fellow fabulists in the media, academia and the government to reinforce it.

That is simply not sustainable. Like the movement of art from the classical style of Botticelli, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Rubins to the self important renderings of Basquiat, Mark Rothco, Robert Mapplethorpe and Glööckler, the transition from the a nation built on universal God given fundamental rights to one based on balkanization and subjective grievances based on “equity” and victimization promises to replace something great with something absurd.  What’s more, that absurd subjective culture cannot long stand.  Just as we’ve seen with the Democrat party since the beginning of the war in Gaza, at some point groups joined by victim status can and will splinter as their various victim classes turn against one another based on the current hierarchy of victim status. 

As we march towards what will be the most consequential presidential election in American history, we might want to start suggesting to those who seek to destroy what “white heterosexual Christian males” have built that they take a look around. They’ll not find a better combination of opportunity, freedom and real equality anywhere on earth or in history, particularly as it relates to protecting minorities.  They should, unlike the Gays for Gaza buffoons we see in the streets, consider what happens to them if they actually get what they wish for. 

Collapse of Civilization: Lessons Voters Might Take From Roman Britain

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it,” said George Santayana. He could well be describing modern leftists, careening back into the dark ages of post-Roman Britain.

At the end of the 2^nd century AD Britain was a fully developed province of the Roman Empire.  It was as Roman as any city in the Empire. While still largely rural, Roman Britain developed towns and cities that mirrored those found in Italy or North Africa and connected them with a spectacular roadway. They had majestic villas, sprawling estates, baths, plumbing and of course aqueducts.  The Romans brought industrial sophistication to mining, unprecedented architectural capabilities and improved agriculture.  The province was awash in imported goods from around the Empire: Wine from Gaul, olive oil from Hispania, pottery from North Africa, and philosophy teachers from Greece; all the while exporting precious metals, agricultural products, shellfish and salt across the Empire.

One of the extraordinary things about the Roman Empire was the unprecedented, widespread prosperity it created from the Pillars of Hercules to the Levant and virtually everywhere in between. While there had always been a market for fine goods such as silk and porcelain and exotic foods, the Romans brought those goods to the masses. By building roads, ports, transportation hubs and funding the trade necessary to support the Legions, the Romans drove economies of scale and created a mass market for goods that had formerly been available only to the rich but had become inexpensive across the Roman world.  In doing so they created a cosmopolitan empire so thoroughly Roman that people from what are today Morocco and Britain and Germany and Israel likely spoke some version of the same language and would have found familiar products available regardless of where they were in the Empire.

Back in Britain, three hundred years after Caesar first invaded the untamed island in 55 BC the province was a sophisticated, shining example of all of the Empire had to offer. It was not to last however… In less than a century after the Romans abandoned the island for good in 410 the population collapsed, the economy collapsed, cities became ghost towns or disappeared and chaos reigned. Londinium, whose population peaked at 60,000 in the 2^nd century, dropped below 20,000 and saw more than 75% of its buildings dismantled with the materials carted off into the countryside.

In less than a century Roman Britain went from a rich, flourishing cosmopolitan province with bustling urban centers and goods from across the known world to an economic and cultural backwater where modern architectural, plumbing and farming techniques seemed to have disappeared along with most of the import of goods. 

Most of the people living on the island in the middle of the 4^th century probably assumed, like much of America in 2022, that the advances of civilization move only in one direction, upward.  They expected to continue to enjoy inexpensive food and pottery and clothing from elsewhere in while selling their wares in return.  The government would continue to provide protection and would maintain the ports and roads that facilitated trade. 

When those things didn’t happen life in Britain became a far darker experience.  Cities disappeared, warlords set up fiefdoms and invaders came from seemingly everywhere. Farming techniques were lost, building techniques were lost, trade collapsed and citizens were forced to become self sufficient as numerous petty would be “kings” set up trade and travel barriers and goods from the Continent became scarce.  The opposite of economies of scale and free trade took hold and Britain became far less prosperous as goods became more expensive, countless products and varieties of products simply disappeared and staples had to be produced locally.

It’s here where Santayana’s missive becomes relevant. Given that the history of post Roman Britain so clearly demonstrates the fragility of civilization’s advances, we might want to pay attention.  The reality is, our world, far more tenuously than the Britain of 1700 years ago, is but X bad decisions away from an agrarian, subsistence economy with no electricity, no gas, little trade, few economies of scale and most certainly no security or safety. 

Go through a day and see how many things we rely on that we couldn’t replace if a disaster occurred.  Imagine a blackout.  How many things would that loss of electricity impact?  Not only the lighting in our homes, but the refrigerators, phone chargers, garage door openers as well.  Outside our homes there’s even more: Elevators.  Gas pumps. Plumbing.  Street lamps & stop lights. Virtually everything in a hospital. Cell phone towers. Police switchboards and dispatches. Train signals and countless other things.

Then there’s the social aspects of such a crisis.  Rules and laws would go out the window, and it wouldn’t take long. During the New York City blackout of 1977 crime surged, with looting, vandalism and arson rampant (over 1,000 fires were set) while police arrested 3,776 people in the largest mass arrest in the city’s history.  The chaos cost over $1 billion in today’s dollars, and the lights were off for less than 24 hours!  Now jump forward to the BLM / Antifa riots of 2020 and the defunding of police.  Not only was there chaos and mayhem, there were murders, assaults, and rapes nationwide and communities literally burned to the ground. Then there is the mass looting and random violence that has occurred since 2020 and seems to be growing worse every day… and through all of this we still had electricity!

Of course electricity is only one element of what keeps our society civilized.  There’s gasoline, there’s trade, there’s what used to be a widespread respect for the rule of law.  Imagine no diesel fuel.  Trucks wouldn’t be able to deliver food and store shelves will go bare.  You probably have enough food in your kitchen for your family to last a few days or maybe a week at most. Then what? Are you going to grow wheat on your windowsill or in your backyard?  Is the neighborhood stray cat going to be your family’s next meal? Do you have a cow for milk? Not to mention medicines, building materials, gasoline for your car… the list of goods delivered via diesel is endless. 

One of the downsides of trade, division of labor and economies of scale is that most of us are dependent on others to provide for us those things we don’t produce for ourselves… which is to say, almost everything.  Our society is based on a trade system where we get paid to do some things and we pay others to do the things we don’t. It’s a well oiled machine… until it’s not.    

And that’s the point.  The climate alarmists who want to do away with fossil fuels have no concept of the ramifications of that folly. The equity cultists who want to eliminate the police and “reform” the justice system don’t care about the consequences of that absurdity. 

Just as the razor thin layer of atmosphere surrounding the earth sustains life on earth, our modern society thrives thanks to plentiful, inexpensive energy and a respect for the rule of law.  Inexplicably, those are the two primary targets of the Democrats who are currently in charge of wide swaths of the United States.  Indeed Californians regularly endure the absurd manmade disaster of rolling blackouts while Illinois is about to essentially decriminalize crime.  Neither is necessary…

When Americans step into their well lit, safe and private voting booths on November 8^th they’d do well to think of those 5^th century Britons who were about to careen into a darkness from which it would take almost a millennia to emerge, and vote accordingly.

 

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.