The West Should Stop Being Ashamed of Its Success And Stop Committing Cultural Suicide

I used to debate one of my teachers about culture.  As a fan of Rome I posited it was the greatest and most consequential civilization in human history.  He queried me about why. It’s laws, its size, its economy, its longevity? I suggested the clearest proof was the fact that there may be more Roman ruins remaining than from any ancient civilization in the world.

He disagreed, believing there were African empires whose cultures were equal if not superior to Rome's. The grandest of such being the Mali Empire in West Africa. Lasting from 1226 to 1670, it’s greatest king was Mansa Musa, who is sometimes said to be the richest man who ever lived.

He pressed me on others, stating that architecture and its survival might not be the best measure by which to measure a culture’s greatness.

Wondering if he might be right, I looked a bit more into some of those other societies about which I knew less than Rome.  There were the Incas, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Qin and Han Chinese, the Mongols, the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates and aforementioned Malian Empire.  All were fascinating.  The Mongols had the largest landlocked empire in history, but left very little in the way of architecture.  There were the Qun and Han dynasties who controlled a quarter of the world’s population some 2000 years ago and built the longest sections of China’s Great Wall. The Abbasid caliphate, which is considered the Islamic Golden Age, was considered to be the most advanced society of its time in reference to things like science, astronomy, math, and medicine.  The Egyptians not only left the Pyramids and Abu Simbel, but their papyrus was the earliest known paper. The Median and Achaemenid Empires of modern day Iran left extraordinary ruins that go back 500 years before Christ. 

Depending on how one wants to characterize them there have been thousands of cultures and civilizations and dynasties throughout human history.  As much as we might know about them, it’s likely there are even more about which we know nothing.  Which brings me back to my original point… how does one measure what a great culture is?  Is it the language they left, is it the ruins they left, is it how much of the earth or her population that it controlled?

It's possible to make an argument for any one of those, but the reality is that given the differences in time, geography and populations, it’s impossible to draw a hierarchical chart that defines “Greatness” with precision, particularly given the differences in what’s left of them.

Nonetheless, I stand by the opinion of my 15-year-old self about Rome being the greatest civilization of the ancient world.

That being said, there’s nothing in the ancient world to compare with what we have in the 21^st century.  And the world of the 21^st century was built by Europeans.  As much as Europe is in the midst of committing cultural suicide, it might be helpful to examine what that European culture has produced.

Yes, it has been cruel, barbaric at times, sanctioned slavery and resulted in bloodshed of native peoples in far off lands.  All those things are true.  But none of them are unique to Europeans.  Depravity is a mark that mankind shares across civilizations and has been constant from one degree or another across the space and time of human existence.

With that out of the way, back to western civilization. It’s brought the world democratic governance. It’s brought the world individual liberty, individual rights ordained by God, limited government and capitalism.  Together those things set the stage for the greatest advancement in the condition of man in all human history.

From the moment most of the people on the planet today wake up until the moment they lay their heads down at night, almost everything they do or interact with is a result of western civilization. Here is a short list of just some of the inventions western civilization has produced:

Automobiles. Telephony. Mobile phones. MRI machines. Plastic. Nuclear power. Bessemer Process steelmaking. Gasoline. Vulcanized rubber. Television. Radio. Elevators. Computers. Flight. Rockets. Electric light. Mechanical reaper. Heart transplants. Vaccines. The Internet. Sewing machines. Skyscrapers. Railroads. The steam engine. Internal combustion engines. Electric washing machines. Barbed wire. Air conditioning. Satellites. Movies. Submarines. Microwaves. Radar. Lasers. Artificial knees and hips. Robots. The movable-type printing press. Antibiotics. Batteries. Refrigeration. And much more.   

Then there are innovations that western civilization has produced:  Containerized shipping. DNA discovery and sequencing. Stock markets. Social media. GPS. Advanced farming. Google maps. Space travel. Blood transfusion. Constitutional Democracy. Individual freedom. Limited government. X ray machines. The assembly line.  Mars landers and solar system probes. And again, much more.

And then there’s science. Of the approximately 800 Nobel Prizes that have been handed out since 1901 in fields like Physics, Chemistry, Economics & Medicine (not including Literature because it’s so subjective and Peace, which after giving one to Barack Obama, has about as much credibility as the UN) Europeans and their offshoots have won approximately 750, including 350 for the United States alone.  

This is the world of the 21^st century and it’s been built by the west. Aside from lost tribes or primitive societies who live like their ancestors did thousands of years ago, there’s virtually not a thing people around the world do on a daily basis that hasn’t been developed by the west.  The west won on the field of battle of ideas and power.  To pretend otherwise is simply fiction.

But that which the west has built is under assault… mostly from within. From citizens who became fat, dumb and happy during the prosperous times to the invitation into their nations tens of millions of people who don’t share their culture, most of whom come from cultures anathema to it.

Prosperity is a two edged sword.  On the one hand it has created a civilization greater than anything in history, but the beneficiaries of that prosperity have lost sight of the hard work, sacrifice, risk and perseverance it takes to create prosperity or how difficult it is to maintain. 

As a result, many, if not a majority of western citizens detest their own culture.  They have tunnel vision, focused with a modern day perspective on their forefathers’ flaws while creating a fictional nirvana-like perspective on every other civilization in history.  The self loathing is rampant within the west.

It's one thing to tolerate or even encourage self reflection in the pursuit of self improvement.  But that’s not what the left does. Like a 78 pound college student suffering from anorexia who looks in the mirror and sees herself as a “fat cow”, western liberals see the sins of their fathers or focus on the imperfections of their society and believe it’s evil, and like the anorexic, they engage in self sabotage, only in this case, it’s the culture they harm.

Culture and civilization are fragile, hard to build and harder to maintain. It’s particularly difficult when the youth of a nation despise their birthright, disrespect its legacy and actively undermine its foundations. Combine that with elites who are the fountainhead from which that disdain arises, and you have a dire future.

The left accuses Trump and the MAGA adherents of being racist nationalists. We’re not.  Charles de Gaulle perhaps said it best: “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism is when hate for people other than your own comes first.”  America and the west will not survive the rest of this century if their citizens don’t become patriots.  Indeed, Osama bin Laden saw the writing on the wall:  “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” Self loathing may communicate many things, but strength is not one of them. 

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.

The Paris attacks and the Mizzou protests are two sides of the same coin…

The ISIS attacks on civilians in Paris and the attacks on common sense across the country are two sides of the same coin.

Both were carried out by those who hate freedom…. Not their freedom of course, but yours. With ISIS (as well as fanatical Muslims around the planet) you are expected to live the way they want you to, to act the way they want you to, but most of all you must believe the way they want you to… or they will simply kill you.

At Mizzou, Yale and Amherst, protesters, (as well as liberals everywhere across the country, including the BLM movement) you are expected to understand their feelings of offense, recognize their “plight” and appreciate how difficult their lives are. Essentially you must believe them when they tell you the world is unfair for everyone other than straight white males. If you don’t agree they probably won’t try and kill you, but they will seek to kill your livelihood.

Both groups have their rules about what you can and can’t do and say. For the former it’s be Christian, be gay, drive a car if you’re a woman, be a girl in school, punish your rapist if you’re a woman or express a view that doesn’t comport with their interpretation of the Koran.

For the latter it’s pointing out that exponentially more black men die at the hands of other black men than white cops every year, support colorblind college admission standards, try police misconduct trials in a courtroom rather than the media, suggest women and men are indeed different with different abilities or that college students might be slightly over sensitive when it comes to being offended.

Neither group believes in the notion of free speech. Across the Muslim world one sees journalists and bloggers killed for the crime of speaking out against terrorism while in the west you have the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the fatwa on Ayaan Hirsi Ali among others.

At the same time, here in the US on the rare occasions conservative speakers make it to the podium on a college campus, they are usually shouted down; counter intuitive “free speech zones” greatly limit a speaker’s ability to be heard; and memorializing the victims of 9-11 is somehow racist. And when there aren’t enough actual incidents of racism or sexism or this or that ism, they must be contrived…

At the end of the day, Paris, Mizzou, and bakers being bankrupted for not participating in a gay wedding are all about one thing… intolerance. Your ideas don’t matter. Your freedom doesn’t matter. Your life or livelihood doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you understand our “pain” and agree with our ideas and bend to our will. If not, we will strike.

One might bristle at the notion of equating the terror in Paris with the “crybullies” on the left, but the parallel is appropriate. Terror is not an ideology, but a tactic, just as hunger strikes and temper tantrums by football players and other “aggrieved” groups are. In both cases the goal is the same: silence dissent, quash freedom, and coerce obedience. Whether it’s a threat to life and limb or a threat to the order of civilized society, both the demands and the actors should be rejected. The actors of the former should be hunted down and killed while the actors in the latter should be ignored, ostracized and in the case of students who think they have a right to interfere with the education of others, they should simply be expelled.

The poorly named “War on Terror” is a war we have no choice but to engage in and win.  We didn't start it, but we must win it in order for our civilization to survive.

The protest war of aggrieved crybullies on the other hand is one that we win by not engaging in. Like a child that bumps his knee, the attention is what propagates the wailing. Ignore him and his attention goes elsewhere. So too with the crybullies. Ignore them and their insipid demands and eventually they will have to start focusing on things of consequence such as getting a real education and learning to be productive members of society.

Obamacare, Gay Marriage and Disparate Impact - 25 Hours Which Will Live in Infamy

When historians look back on the collapse of the United States and seek to pinpoint the beginning of the end, they will no doubt look to the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. If they want to narrow the focus they will point to the period of his reign between 10:00 AM June 25th and 11:00 AM June 26th. Ted Cruz has charitably labeled this period as “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history”. It’s slightly more than 24 hours, but he’s spot on. In fact, he’s far too charitable, they are the simply the most destructive 25 hours in American history.

To some that is no doubt hyperbole, after all during Pearl Harbor 2,400 Americans died, on D-Day 2,500 did and on September 11th almost 3,000 Americans died. How is it even remotely possible that Supreme Court decisions giving gays the right to marry, the sick the ability to keep their healthcare subsidies and the government the power to fight discrimination could compare with the deaths of thousands of Americans? Tragically that is the question conservatives are faced with.

The answer, simply put, is that the United States Constitution is the rule of law for 320 million Americans and during one single 25 hour period last week Barack Obama and the Supreme Court cut out its very heart. They essentially eviscerated the document that has helped improve the lives of billions of people around the world over the last century and a half and provided the world with a great deal of stability and relative peace for the last 70 years.  Whether it’s American inventions or American industry or the American military, the United States has been a power for good – albeit an imperfect one – around the world because we had the strongest foundation of representative government yet established. While our Republic has been slow to react on occasion, the basic structure of individual rights protected by the Constitution and the powers ordained, assigned and limited by it have been the rock upon which the greatest nation in human history was built. On Thursday and Friday of last week the Supreme Court endorsed Barack Obama’s shredding of it.

On Thursday in King v. Burwell the Court destroyed the notion that words actually mean what they say. In the legislation that created Obamacare, Congress explicitly stated that subsidies could only go to citizens who purchased insurance on “exchanges established by the States”. When it turned out that many states refused to be coerced into creating such exchanges, Barack Obama simply decided the IRS would issue subsidies to everyone, even those who purchased insurance via exchanges not “established by the States”. Essentially the Supreme Court said “No problem”. As much of a problem as Obamacare is, this decision is far worse. Why? Because while Obamacare can be overturned, the Supreme Court has now set the precedent that the Executive Branch has the power to rewrite laws it doesn’t agree with without looking to Congress to pass constitutionally mandated legislation. That is literally a dagger into the heart of the document’s core separation of powers. Once the executive branch has the power to rewrite laws, what is Congress other than a convenient straw man target whenever a president needs to publicly justify his desire to act?

In a second case on Thursday, the Supreme Court decreed that Barack Obama can now decide where you live. Actually, that is hyperbole, but not by much. In Texas v. The Inclusive Communities Project the court decided that the president can use “disparate impact” to decide whether communities are guilty of discrimination, regardless of whether they have actually discriminated or not. (In this case seeking to protect employees or customers from convicted criminals counts as discrimination!) This literally means that the federal government can look at your community and if it doesn’t like the racial, ethnic or any other makeup, it can coerce the city or the municipality to changing it. I call it the Obamanization of your neighborhood. Let’s say you grew up in Southeast DC, a low income and high crime neighborhood of the nation’s capital. You start a business, find success and move out to McLean, a Virginia suburb of DC and one of the highest income and safest communities in the country. There aren’t many low income families in that community.  Too bad for thinking you could leave your past behind.  Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, even if no one in McLean ever perpetrated one single discriminatory act, if the feds decide the diversity isn’t quite right they can force the a change by coercing the community to build or provide low income housing or otherwise figuring out how to adjust the racial, ethnic or financial population so that it accurately reflects the government’s desires.  The government already had the power to tell employers who they must hire, they already had the power to dictate a schools’ diversity targets and now, thanks to the Supreme Court and Barack Obama they can now tell communities and neighborhoods what they must look like. After work and school, there’s not an enormous amount in life other than faith and families. How much longer before churches risk losing their tax exemptions based on their hue of their congregations and the government decides there are too many monochrome marriages taking place?

Finally there is Friday’s travesty of a decision. In Obergefell v. Hodges the Supreme Court decided there is a right to gay marriage, and in the process likely put a bull’s-eye on the back of the 1st Amendment. Essentially the Court created a fictional right that will trump a right that is explicitly protected in the 1st Amendment, and it did it while the country was in the midst of a vigorous discussion as to how to deal with the issue. Religious freedom is a cornerstone of American liberty; indeed it was the motivating factor for many of the people who founded this nation. Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, that freedom is gone. Across the country we will see churches, bakers, photographers and service providers of all sorts finding themselves in jeopardy of losing their money, their businesses and in some cases their freedom simply because they are exercising their 1st Amendment rights and refusing to violate the tenants of their faiths.

And so it goes… the beginning of the end as the Constitution is shredded. Words no longer mean what they say, the government gets to decide where what our communities look like and courts get to invent new rights while deciding which others we get to exercise, even those constitutionally protected.

If one were drawing up the plans for a dictatorship based on the rule of man rather than a republic based on the rule of law, the 25 hours of Supreme Court folly last week make a pretty good foundation. That’s great when the man making the rules agrees with you… but what happens when the same freedom to act is in the hands of the guy who disagrees with you?