Ingratitude and Ignorance Are Driving The Destruction of The Greatest Civilization In Human History

I started writing my Imperfect America blog in 2009.  It’s my passion, despite the sad fact it’s never made me a penny.  Not even on Twitter, new or old, where my account is constantly throttled!

My first post was titled “Racism, America’s Original Sin”.  It was a response to the new normal of anyone disagreeing with Barack Obama being called a racist.  In it I talk about the 3/5^th Compromise and the fact that it gave southerners less power in the House than they wanted, but more importantly, it was the key to America being one nation rather than two, one free and one slave. I pointed out that blacks would likely have been much worse off in a nation of only slave states. The 3/5^th Compromise is a literal example of the subtitle of my blog: “Perfect is the enemy of the good.”

At the end of the day, over the last million or so words I’ve written about everything from race to the judiciary to entrepreneurship to European travel and more, most from a conservative, even libertarian perspective. I regularly make the argument that western civilization is the greatest that has thus far been produced by men. And it’s not even close. While the Egyptians built the pyramids 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks developed math and the Chinese invented gunpowder and paper, the reality is, almost every single thing used by most people around the world today is a consequence of western civilization.

For most of human history, life was brutal, short and dangerous. For most today, it’s not.  And there’s a reason. These five elements: Free speech, the rule of law, limited government, private property and Capitalism combined to give humans the unprecedented ability and motivation to be creative and productive. And the results were extraordinary. Longer lifespans. More food. Larger and safer living quarters and conditions. Vastly more options for making a living and safter conditions when doing so.  Cheaper, faster and more comfortable transportation. Unprecedented communication tools and energy. Exponentially more information available and accessible. Leisure time, something almost unheard of throughout history.  And the list goes on.

But none of that happens in a fascist state.  Nor a Communist state. None of that happens in a tyranny, nor in a cradle to grave nanny state. None of that happens when science and math and human nature are ignored, and finally, none of that happens when there are no consequences for bad actors. 

But those are all elements of what America is becoming.  Families on welfare for generations.  Giant banks and corporations privatizing profits and socializing losses.  Government regulation of virtually every aspect of life. Violent criminals let loose on society with slaps on the wrist. Freedom of speech defined by whose feelings get hurt.  Merit taking a back seat to a spectrum of victimization categories.  And this list too goes on.

But here’s the thing.  No society ever prospered on the basis of victimization and a nanny state culture where citizens turned on one another and the few worked to support the many. Never, not one.  And no, modern European nanny states haven’t prospered because of their paternalism, they prospered in spite of it because the United States guaranteed their security for the last 75 years.

I write to try and make a difference. I try to showcase the fact that most Americans, indeed most westerners, have lost sight of the reality that we’re living in the greatest and most prosperous time in human history, and more importantly, they willingly choose to ignore what created it and indeed attack those responsible. It’s not politically correct to say, but this civilization was largely created by white people, most originating in western Europe. Nor is it PC to say that Christianity was the force that impelled it. And finally, it’s individual liberty, private property, limited government and Capitalism that were the oil that lubricated the engine of advancement. 

To the degree that modern America and western civilization are making policies that are antithetical to all of those things, they’re killing the goose that laid the golden civilizational egg.  And it would be one thing if they could point to an example of some place, some time, some civilization that was equal to or greater than ours, particularly at scale.  But they don’t because they can’t. It didn’t work in New Harmony, Indiana, it never worked in the Soviet Union and it didn’t work in the 1960’s communes.

It was western civilization and the United States that took men to flight, put men on the moon, discovered DNA, invented the computer, harnessed nuclear power and revolutionized farming.

Nonetheless every day we’re faced with a growing faction of citizens who whine because someone else has something they don’t, because they’re victims of someone else’s success, that bad actors shouldn’t have to face the consequences of their actions or that someone is saying something that hurts their feelings.  And for them, the solution is always the same: More government.  More government to take from others to give to them. To stop others from being successful. To silence and imprison enemies and allow fellow travelers to do anything with impunity. That’s called tyranny and it never, ever, leads to prosperity.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the enemy of joy.”  I think it’s no coincidence that he also said, “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.” Both refer to setting oneself apart from others. 

Which is, I think, the fundamental problem with America and the west right now:  comparison, envy and the lack of gratitude for exactly where we are in the big picture.  That skewed perspective is what leads huge swaths of the population to be willing to destroy the good in pursuit of the illusion of perfection. I write to try and wake America and the west up to the fact that continued prosperity is not guaranteed. Much had to go right for us to get here but it wouldn’t take much going wrong to destroy it. 

You can only lay siege to the foundations of a civilization for so long before it collapses. We’re seeing that across Europe and the United States today. Gone is the appreciation of and gratitude for men who did great things and built this civilization, replaced by reverence for and desire to become influencers, most of whom have accomplished nothing. You have large numbers of illegals who don’t share western values and native-born minorities who hate the majorities and think the rules don’t apply to them. Add to that a self-hating wing of the majority and you have a perfect storm that will destroy the west and take civilization as we know it with it. 

Europe will find itself part of the caliphate while the United States will devolve into a bloody morass of demographically defined armed camps. And eventually the economically and militarily empowered Chinese Communists, not constrained by morals of any kind, will enslave much of the world.

When that history is written it will say that a once great west committed civilizational suicide, having crucified itself on a cross anchored by diversity, globalism, environmentalism and compassion. 

I’d prefer not to go quietly into that good night, thank you. Which is why I write. I may make all the noise of a tree falling in the woods, but I’m going to continue doing so for as long as the Lord allows.    

Jews, Jews & more Jews... Lessons to be learned

Jews seem to generate a lot of negative emotions among non-Jews. While it's become particularly intense since Israel began retaliating against Hamas, it's been going on for a long time.  

The Romans fought three wars against the Jews, who had been a civilization for over a millennium before the time the Romans touched the sands of the Middle East.  The first of those wars, the First Jewish – Roman War 66-73 AD, which ended with the deaths of defenders of Masada resulted in destruction of the Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple, the death of 50,000 Jews and absolute Roman control of Jerusalem.

Over the course of the three wars the Jewish universe would change dramatically, with the adherents going from a powerful entity (although one subservient to the Romans) in the eastern Mediterranean, with semi-autonomous local control and nominal power over large swaths of land to a vilified people with virtually no power, no land and its surviving population either sold into slavery or kicked out of its traditional home and spread out across the region.

The reasons given for people hating Jews through the ages are numerous. They were a thorn in the side of the Romans.  They killed Christ.  They’re greedy bankers.  They’re insular, self-dealing and dislike non-Jews and their faith puts them above other 2^nd tier peoples and religions. Then there’s people who say Jews stole the land from the Arabs, put Palestinians in camps and Israel was founded by men like like Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, who were actual terrorists. 

In America some of that hate exists.  Why? The answers are things like: Because Jews control everything.  Jews built and control Hollywood, think Loew, Meyer and Warner up to Weinstein, Geffen & Emanuel. Jews control the media, think Zucker, Iger, Bloomberg, Newhouse and others. Jews frequently use finance to perpetrate scams on others, think Boesky, Epstein and Madoff. They control Wall Street, think Bill Ackman, Larry Fink & Stephen A. Schwarzman, Steve Cohen, John Paulson and many others. They have a huge influence in technology & Silicon Valley, think Zuckerberg, Ellison, Page & Brin, Ballmer, Dell and Cuban.  In business in general they’re everywhere, founding Home Depot, Carnival Cruise Lines, Rocket Mortgage, Levis, Hyatt Hotels, Ben & Jerrys, Starbucks, Snapple and many more.

Then of course there is the place where power is most cancerous, government.  Here, particularly where Democrats are concerned, Jews play a dominant role.  This just fired administration is a great example:  Homeland Security was helmed by Alejandro Mayorkas, Treasury by Janet Yellin, State by Tony Blinken while the AG was Merrick Garland, and the Chief of Staff was Ron Klain, who followed Jeffrey Zients. Not to mention the bottom feeders in Congress from Jamie Raskin, Jerry Nadler, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Adam Schiff.  And the groups which push America to pour billions of dollars into Israel’s security like AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee). 

And lastly it was the Rosenbergs who gave the secrets of nuclear power to the Soviets, Marc Elias who helped Joe Biden steal the White House and George Soros who has funded the near collapse of the United States. 

All in all, for someone looking to hate, Jews make a good target. 

But here’s the thing… most of the names listed above – even the vermin Democrats – are relatively well known because they’ve been successful.  And most of them – except the vermin Democrats – have become successful because they created a business or a service that consumers – all consumers, not just Jews – were able and willing to exchange their hard earned money for in a free market, i.e. making people’s lives better.  That is very possibly the most noble way for a human being to make money.

When someone stops to think of all the Jewish names above, and other ones they know, one might think that Jews are a huge segment of the population.  But they’re not.  Here in America Jews number about 7 million, or about 2% of the population. Worldwide the 16 million Jews, represent just .2% of the population.

Do you ever wonder why when we think of Jews we think of banking and media and not construction or farming?  Is it because Jews can’t build or farm? No. They built Jerusalem long before the Romans arrived and created a vibrant farming industry out of what was essentially a 19^th century desert in what would later become Israel.  The reason Jews are often associated with banking and media and other such pursuits has to do with the fact that historically, in much of the world they were prohibited from large swaths of the economy. In Europe, under both the Romans and their Christian successors Jews were often excluded from craft and merchant guilds.  In Islamic lands while not necessarily excluded, they faced Jizya, a tax on non-Muslims. 

Those exclusions and taxes dovetailed with usury bans on Christians and Muslims to open up a significant opportunity for Jews, which they were well equipped to take advantage of.  A key element of their being able to take advantage of that opportunity comes directly from the Jewish faith itself, which requires Jews read the Torah.  Literacy, and its companion numeracy, allowed Jews to be successful bankers. That expertise and success in turn provided them with the capital and connections with which to branch into other elements of what we would today call white collar businesses. 

One might ask, given this success, why are there still so few Jews relative to the rest of the population. A number of factors. In increasingly prosperous nations, success tends to reduce the number of children a family has. Additionally, successful Jews often intermarry, particularly into Christian families and seem to drift away from the faith. And lastly, as Gad Saad points out in The Parasitic Mind, Judaism demands a great deal of its adherents and even more from those who want to become members.  The result is that while Jewish civilization is one of the oldest in human history, its adherents remain a tiny fraction of mankind.

That tiny number hides much.  With their focus on education handed down over thousands of years, Jews have among the highest IQs in the world. Indeed, while representing just .2% of the world’s population, Jews represent more than 20% of Nobel Prize recipients across disciplines and fully 41% in Economics, 26% in Medicine and 25% in Physics.  Jews outperform virtually every other group on the planet in terms of success across a wide swath of culture and civilization.  Mark Twain observed:  “[The Jews] are peculiarly and conspicuously the world’s intellectual aristocracy… [Jewish] contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world… and has done it with his hands tied behind him.”

While like members of every other group on the planet, there are no doubt Jews who are avaricious, malicious and mendacious, but I would suggest they too are a minority.  I would further suggest that the hatred with which Jews are held by has little to do with anything other than envy.  People hate or dislike Jews because they are in aggregate so successful, and they focus on the key elements that made them so: family, community and education.  (I myself neither hate nor dislike Jews, but I am somewhat dumbfounded why so many ostensibly smart people vote for Democrats, who are against virtually everything Jews have harnessed to succeed…)

The fact that Jews make up such an incredible proportion of successful Americans should not be a reason to hate them, but rather should be taken as a roadmap.  Tony Robbins may have put it best:  “If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.”

While I doubt I could ever become a chess master regardless of how much I practiced, the notion of strong families, strong communities and a focus on education is a proven 3,000 year old recipe for success.  America would be far better off if more people followed it.