The American Culture that President Obama Despises

President Obama has spent the first year of his presidency running around the world apologizing for America and its culture. He sides with those who preach that America‘s Eurocentric, white, Christian heritage is responsible for colonialism, imperialism, racism and sexism. He apparently takes no pride in a culture that: fostered liberty and prosperity for the American people; offered hope and freedom to mankind around the globe; welcomed and integrated multitudes of immigrants into a dynamic civil society; saved the world twice from totalitarian evil; promoted philanthropy, both domestically and internationally; and encouraged self-correction of flaws in its own structure. He would rather replace it with a multicultural strain that: regards no culture as superior to any other; denigrates religion in favor of a statist, humanist mentality; appeases thugs who bear ill will toward America; favors equality of outcome over equality of opportunity; and renders the US Constitution subservient to ‘international law.’ Should we do so, it would be a tragic mistake for our country and for the world. In order to understand why, let us conduct a quick review of the history, achievements and components of the traditional American culture that Obama so despises.

For approximately 250 years, roughly from 150 years before the birth of the USA until a century after, the culture of the American people was fairly constant. It was dominated by British political philosophy, liberal Protestantism, a Calvinist work tradition, and a taste and admiration for, albeit mixed with more than a little suspicion of, European arts and science. Beginning about 120 years ago, this culture was challenged and weakened by two great waves of immigration and a concomitant loss of self-confidence on the part of the defenders of the traditional culture. The first great wave brought southern and eastern Europeans, Catholics and Jews, and a small horde who admired socialist, utopian political/economic/cultural theory more than they valued Adam Smith, John Locke, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, or Alexander Hamilton. Although the vast majority of those immigrants adopted the traditional culture as their own, they and their offspring sowed the seeds of subtle change, which in many ways deeply enriched the culture, but also loosened its roots.

The second great wave of immigration began slowly in the middle of the twentieth century, accelerated in the ensuing decades, and continues to this day. Raining down on our shores are huge numbers of non-European, non-Christian, peoples of color. Many profess allegiance to what they understand as the traditional culture: political freedom, individual liberty, economic advancement, pop culture (sports, music, movies, etc.). But I wager that tremendous percentages of these new Americans have no comprehension of a stiff British upper lip, a Protestant work ethic, the English concept of justice, the Federalist Papers, or the suffragette movement. Nor have they heard of manifest destiny, the Magna Carta, Nathan Hale, Dolly Madison, Francis Scott Key, fifty-four forty or fight, robber barons, or Jesse Owens.

Well, perhaps this is a good thing. Certainly organisms that remain stagnant often wither and die, or are swept away by new dynamic competitors that embrace and adapt to change. The multicultural onslaught has enriched American culture in many interesting and exciting ways. But I believe that an organism, which has no memory or appreciation for the underlying roots that spawned it, will not long survive and prosper. The central cultural dilemma that faces America today is to find a way to integrate what is vibrant and vital from the new cultures invading our shores without shedding the authentic and time-worn fundamental culture that has sustained us for so long. To purposefully not study, indeed to disparage Western Civilization is not a wise strategy for coping with that dilemma. Nor is the castigation of DWEMs (Dead White European Males), a pejorative that usually includes the likes of Washington, Jefferson and Franklin along with Beethoven and Newton. Deluding ourselves and our children that American history is replete with undiluted evil (to wit our poor historical record vis-à-vis blacks and Indians—oops, African-Americans and Native Americans), while ignoring or ridiculing our monumental achievements, which include ridding the world of fascism and communism, creating the most prosperous country in history, acting as a beacon of freedom and liberty to the world, and establishing the most successful true multicultural society on the planet, not to mention correcting our faulty behavior toward the two afore-mentioned groups, is not a recipe for cultural success. It infuriates me to see a black man—who rose from obscurity and who, despite his obvious lack of credentials, was entrusted by the American people with the nation’s highest office—belittle the culture that enabled his meteoric rise. Furthermore, it saddens me to watch white Protestant men, direct descendants of the pioneers who created our great nation, denigrate the culture that is their heritage. Cultural Appeasement! Political appeasement never works; cultural appeasement is just as short-sighted and doomed to failure.

A healthier attitude toward contemporary American culture would encompass the following principles:

  • The traditional American culture is exalted and worthy of preservation.
  • We should adopt the best of the new cultures that are washing our shores, but they should meld with, not displace, the old.
  • The amalgam, however it evolves, must preserve at its irreducible core the classic American Creed. (Now there’s a word that was popular in my youth but has fallen from favor.) That Creed embraces at least:
  1. An absolute allegiance to the U. S. Constitution.
  2. An acknowledgment that faith and religion played a critical role in the motivations of our founders and the fundamental tenets they laid down, that it continues to animate a substantial majority of our citizens, and that it is valuable to maintain and respect its role in the American experience.
  3. A belief that America has a manifest destiny to show the world the road to a better life—politically, economically, socially.
  4. That we conduct ourselves morally and with decency toward each other.
  5. That we conduct our political affairs civilly.
  6. That we have the highest regard for education and knowledge, and that we seek to have the most educated citizenry possible—but that that education is the responsibility of the citizenry, not the government.
  7. That we maintain a healthy respect for the history of our land and that we will teach it to our children forever.
  8. That we will remain committed to immigration and acculturation, welcoming and reveling in the achievements of new citizens¾provided that they adopt the Creed.
This post also appeared as an article in The Common Conservative, Feb 1, 2010; see

(The link is only live through Feb 15, 2009. After that date, please conmtact the author [ronlipsman@comcast.net] for permission to use.)

On Human Fallibility

This past Sunday’s NFC championship game contained a poignant lesson for more than just football fans. The game featured the New Orleans Saints versus the Minnesota Vikings. With my pathetic Redskins having left the ranks of the contenders long ago, I was free to root with my head rather than my heart. And like many in America, I was pulling for the Saints. The people of New Orleans have suffered greatly because of Hurricane Katrina and a Super Bowl victory by their beloved Saints is an incipient feel good story that would help the residents of that city to recover from their nightmare.

But there was a complication. The Vikings were led by a crusty old veteran quarterback, Brett Favre, who at age 40 performed as well during the season as at any point in his storied nineteen year career. It was difficult to root against him. And wouldn’t you know it, his magical performance continued—under difficult circumstances. For it was clear immediately that New Orleans’ defensive strategy was literally to beat Favre up. Which they did! As relentlessly recounted by the TV announcers, Favre was repeatedly hit by New Orleans defensemen, nearly 20 times by my count; yet every time, he would arise wincing, grimacing, limping or otherwise clutching the latest part of his body to which the Saints’ defensemen had administered a shellacking.

Despite the beating, Favre performed fantastically. The game was deadlocked at 28, when Favre had his offense poised for a game winning field goal. There was little time left, but the ball was just at the limit of the Vikings’ place kicker’s range. The Vikings had an extra down and an extra time-out in which to move the ball closer in. The announcers speculated that Favre would hand off and a run of 3-5 yards would substantially increase the likelihood of a successful field goal on the game’s final play. But some idiot in the Vikings’ coaching staff tried to confuse the Saints and wound up sending an extra player into the huddle. The resulting 5-yard penalty meant that Favre, as the announcers astutely indicated, would need to throw in order to gain about 10 yards and thereby make the field goal more attainable.

At which point, human fallibility took over. Favre dropped back, was flushed out of the pocket, rolled right and had room to run for the requisite yardage. But at that moment, who knows what evil demon took possession of his mind? Violating a cardinal rule that is drummed into the heads of every rookie quarterback, and in spite of 19 years of experience, and despite the fact that the last pass he ever attempted as a Green Bay Packer—under remarkably similar circumstances—ended in an interception that deprived him of another Super Bowl appearance, Favre wheeled and threw across his body back toward the center of the field—where the ball was easily intercepted by a Saint defender. The Saints went on to win in an overtime in which Favre never touched the ball. Thus, against all rationality, in defiance of every good football practice, in the face of an excellent chance to win the game by playing it safe, and despite the fact that life had offered him the same choice previously on which he had made the wrong decision, Favre again played gunslinger and brought disaster upon himself and his teammates. It is almost certain that the errant pass will be the last he ever attempts in his life. He will be haunted by his reckless decision for the rest of that life.

The lesson is that human beings are prone to mistakes—even when the correct path is clear before them. Favre’s fatal toss is a graphic illustration that humans are, regrettably, flawed and in need of forgiveness by their fellow man and redemption from a benevolent God. I pray that Brett Favre receives both.
This piece also appeared in the blog site NFLGridironGab.com at

Obama: Please Shut Up Again!

There was a period about ten months ago when every time Obama opened his mouth, the stock market plunged another 100 points. At that time, the Anointed One rarely missed an opportunity to trash the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, automobile companies and of course big banks. When he wasn’t verbally accosting these industries, he was promising sweeping new legislation and regulations that would supposedly rein them in and curtail their abusive practices.

Not surprisingly, the market reacted very negatively to these threats—both to the specific prospects inherent in Obama’s threats as well as to the uncertainty caused by their enunciation. Untold hundreds of millions of dollars of asset wealth were destroyed by the resultant decline in the Dow and other indices.

Since more than half of Americans are now shareholders, it is not unfair to lay the blame for a decline in the typical American taxpayer’s wealth at Obama’s feet. It is ironic that, last year, when too many Americans were still under the illusion that Obama’s stimulus program, deficit spending and cap and trade and health care monstrosities were going to help rescue the economy (they aren’t any longer), his loose tongue was already diminishing the wealth of the American people. It got so bad that even Bill Clinton had to tell him to button it.

Well, here we go again. This past week his Excellency reprised his repeated thrashing of the banking and insurance industries. With the same result on the stock market! Now, many expected that the recent market surge would yield to a correction. Leave it to our clueless President to initiate the correction and render it more severe than necessary. It’s time for Bill to tell him to shut up again.

This is what we get for electing an ignorant community organizer with no expertise in running a newsstand, much less a country. Republicans might be happy that his Presidency is going up in flames, but that brings scant comfort to those whose wealth he is shrinking. As for the Democrats, if I may quote Monty Pelerin in a blog in the Jan 23 issue of this magazine: The only happy Democrat today is Jimmy Carter. He probably senses the chance to pass his heavy mantle of ‘worst President in my lifetime’ on to ‘The One.’
This piece also appeared on the American Thinker blog site on Jan 24, 2010. (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/obamas_bank_bashing_killing_we.html)

A Flight of Fantasy: What Conservatives Should Do When They Regain Power

I first conceived of the idea for this article in the spring of 2009. At that time the thought of conservatives in power again in the US really did require a flight of fantasy. But since then, the arrogance, duplicity and recklessness of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi gang has caused many Americans to conclude that entrusting the fate of the country to this radical triumvirate was a huge mistake. If the polls continue their current trend, we might yet see a Republican Congress and/or a Republican President before the year 2012 is out. So perhaps the flight I am about to take the reader on is not really that fanciful; nevertheless, the title is catchy and so I did not alter it.

Now conservatives can come to power in one of two modes. One mode would be as it was with Reagan and with Gingrich—i.e., a strong, yet limited mandate. For example, Reagan ran and was elected as a staunch conservative, but he never enjoyed a conservative Congress, even in the Senate where the Republicans had a majority. Similarly, Newt and his band of followers in the House enunciated a strongly conservative platform of governance; but he was easily checked by a liberal President and the remaining liberal members of Congress. Still, Reagan and Gingrich did have some signature successes. If nothing else, they substantially slowed the inexorable march to the Left that the US has been on during the last century. And if conservatives come to power in this mode again, they need to prepare now in order to make better use of the opportunity than either Reagan or Newt did.

But there is a second mode in which conservatives could achieve power. That would be with a vigorous, sustained and clear mandate to return these United States to a truly conservative political, economic and cultural system of the type that characterized the nation during its first 125 years of independence. This would be heralded by a smashing conservative electoral victory, which installs a strongly conservative President and a very conservative Congress, and then a repeat of the process multiple times for at least a decade or two (comparable to what the liberals enjoyed in 1932-1952, albeit of course in the opposite direction).

Now that’s a flight of fantasy. Or perhaps not! Given the horrendous mess that Obama and his liberal minions are making, there are signs that the American people might finally be coming to their senses. An increasing number realize that the utopian dream of fairness and equality (of misery) toward which the liberals have been driving us for a century is in actuality a gigantic nightmare that will destroy the American way of life. Perhaps the people will be ready shortly to throw the bums out, abandon statism and start over. If so, conservatives must be ready to lead that counter-revolution. I will lay out a grand program for doing so in a future article. Here, I will concentrate on a simpler program that will be suitable if, as is more likely, conservatives come to power in a more limited mode.

Polls and pundits continue to assert that the US has been and remains a center-right country. I am not so sure. In the 110 years since 1900 we have had 19 Presidents—eleven Republicans and eight Democrats. The Democratic Presidents have ranged (in philosophy) from moderately liberal (Kennedy) to ultra-leftist (Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Obama) with the average far closer to the extreme left than the moderate center. The Republican Presidents, on the other hand, varied from center-leftish (Teddy, Hoover, Nixon and the Bushes) to strongly right (Coolidge, Reagan) with the average definitely closer to the center than the right. This does not strike me as strong evidence of our country’s supposed center-right orientation. In fact, in the last 80 years—during which time we have experienced the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society and Obamania—there have been only two strong surges to the right: the election of Reagan and the Republican takeover of Congress led by Gingrich. Newt’s surge fizzled in a haze of faux conservatism wherein the ensuing Republican President and Congresses engaged in a spending frenzy and social engineering worthy of their liberal nemeses. Reagan had more success—especially in foreign affairs (victory in the Cold War) and economic matters (more than 20 years of economic growth and prosperity). Newt’s Contract with America was too grandiose, broad and generic. Reagan, on the other hand, had three clear and focused objectives:

  1. Cut taxes and pursue deregulation in order to jump start the economy.
  2. Defeat the Soviet Union and win the Cold War.
  3. Shrink the government and return it to its proper role as servant, not master, of the people.

Reagan succeeded magnificently in achieving objectives (1) and (2), but he failed spectacularly with (3). Well, two of three is not bad. And his rate of success easily exceeded that of Gingrich, whose agenda was less focused. Therefore, when conservatives return to power, presumably in limited mode, they must be ready to pursue, like Reagan, a short list of clearly defined major goals. And conservatives must stick to them, even though there will be scads of other worthy things they will want to do. But if they attempt too much, they will accomplish, a là Newt, relatively little. So, here are three specific goals that I suggest be the main objectives when our turn comes again—hopefully soon:

  1. Role of Government. Shrink the New Deal/Great Society/Obamania-inspired gargantuan government that is choking freedom out of American life.
  2. Defeat Islamic Fundamentalism. Reduce, and hopefully remove the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to the US, to the West, indeed to the World.
  3. Recapture the culture. Initiate a multi-faceted approach toward rescuing the culture of the US. The basic goal is to restore (a reasonable facsimile) of the traditional culture that permeated American life from the 18th to the 20th century. Start on the long path toward delegitimizing the pornographic, anti-family, anti-religious, egalitarian, multicultural, environmentally wacky, anti-achievement, socialistic cesspool that passes for culture in America today.

Let me elaborate somewhat on each of these.

1. Shrink the government. This objective is identical to Reagan’s unfulfilled third. The need is even greater now than it was 30 years ago. There is virtually no area of American life into which the federal government has not inserted itself. It ranges from the picayune (how many gallons our toilets may flush, which direction our small children may face in our automobiles) to the serious (what we may eat, where we may build our houses, whether we can be promoted at work, where our children may go to school) to the tyrannical (controlling our health care, imposing crippling taxes and regulations on our industry, taking our property on an unconstitutional whim). In many ways, the US government today oppresses Americans to a greater extent than King George’s Britain did in the mid/late eighteenth century. To make matters worse, our government leavens its tyrannical behavior with incompetence. It continues to expand entitlement programs that are on the cusp of bankrupting the country; it increases the national debt to levels guaranteed to impoverish our children and grandchildren; and it refuses to identify clearly and fight resolutely the Islamic fundamentalists (foreign and domestic) who have declared war on us.

The task seems herculean, especially in light of two enormous obstacles. First, the entire education establishment (from kindergarten through graduate school), aided by the media and other leftist-dominated, opinion-forming organs of society, has brainwashed too many Americans into thinking that the government is actually performing its assigned role properly and that in fact it is not doing enough. Second, the liberals have arranged it so that an ever increasing portion of the populace is dependent on the government—for direct payments, jobs, contracts, grants and various ‘benefits.’ Such people may recognize the threat that the government has become, but they resist any change for fear of jeopardizing their own welfare.

Shrinking the government is indeed a tall order as Reagan’s inability to manage it substantiates. But there are things a conservative government could do; for example: eliminate the most egregiously wasteful programs, reduce the budget of every federal agency by at least 20%, close at least one cabinet level department (Education, Energy and Labor would be my first choices), re-energize the deregulation  process started by Reagan, and of course cut taxes and spending in general. There is infinitely more that could be done, but that would require the second mode of power. Even in the limited mode, I believe the country would support an effort to shrink the leviathan and move toward restoring the government to the more modest role intended by the Founders.

2. Defeat Islamic Fundamentalism. This objective is of course analogous to Reagan’s second. It is worth recalling that the United States (under Wilson) led the West in the defeat of the German-Austrian-Ottoman alliance—although historians have begun to doubt the worthiness of that effort. On the other hand, there is no question as to the moral correctness or necessity of the effort led by the United States and Britain (under FDR and Churchill) to rid the world of German-Italian-Japanese fascism. Similarly, the effort sparked by Reagan (aided by Thatcher and Pope John Paul II) to dispatch communism to the ash heap of history was a monumental achievement of the Western World. Much as we wish that these sorts of challenges would stop coming our way, the US and the West are confronted once again by an ideological enemy bent on our destruction. The next conservative government must strive to defuse this threat as well.

The hardest part of this effort will be deciding to do it. The detailed plans will be drawn of course by those who will implement them, but it seems to me that at a minimum those plans must include:

  • No more pussyfooting around the identification of the enemy—rather a clear pronouncement that radical Islam, together with the countries that harbor and promote it, is indeed the enemy. Unfortunately, we must also recognize that this pernicious movement enjoys wide support in the Muslim world.
  • Dealing with Iran, whether or not it has become nuclear—presuming that the Mullahs have not been done in by the locals before then.
  • Dealing with Saudi Arabia, the seedbed of Wahhabism and therefore the font of much of the philosophy that motivates the enemy.
  • Helping Europe to deal with its large but undigested Muslim population. Those that pledge allegiance to radical Islam and refuse to be assimilated should be deported; and Muslim immigration must be drastically curtailed.
  • Ditto with our Muslim population.
  • Developing strategies to help bring the non-radical part of the Muslim world into the 21st century.

3. Recapture the culture. There is no analog to any of Reagan’s objectives here. Certainly Reagan recognized the dreadful effect that the liberals’ capture of the culture was having on the nation. But I think he didn’t see it as a political problem, at least not one he could address in a fundamental way. (He did on rare occasions though; e.g., in his ‘farewell’ speech, when he talked about a re-emphasis on the study of American history by the nation’s youth.) Well, not only should the culture be seriously addressed by a new conservative government, but in fact, I believe this objective to be the most important of the three. I (and others) have spoken often of the slowly developing, deadly scheme by which the Left captured the culture of our nation. (See e.g., http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/05/17/what-culture-is-it-that-the-politics-have-caught-up-with/) The theory was that ‘the politics would follow the culture’ and that is precisely what has happened. Therefore, I believe it is impossible for conservatives to permanently regain political supremacy unless they first recapture the culture. This must be one of the fundamental objectives of any future conservative government.

Once again, those who actually do it will set the agenda, but that agenda should certainly incorporate the ideas expressed in another of my IC articles (http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/04/10/different-visions/), to wit: ‘We need to have conservative philosophers and cultural icons that state the case for and epitomize the worth of traditional Western culture. More mundanely, we need to nurture conservative film makers, fund conservative law schools, build conservative foundations (like Heritage, but more of them), defend and expand talk radio, establish conservative newspapers (like the Washington Times, but more of them), concoct an organization to counter the NEA in the minds of the country’s teachers, abandon the mainline churches and support religious institutions that champion traditional values…’ I would augment those ideas with the need to: develop major conservative media outlets (beyond Fox News) to combat the big three networks; aggressively attack the liberal mindset that dominates higher education; and finally demand that our founding documents (the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers) be studied regularly by all members of society—adults as well as children.

 

Hopefully, a conservative recapture of the culture will not take a century—as the successful liberal assault did. A conservative renaissance in limited mode will allow us to get started. If the miracle of a strong mode occurs, we can surely get it done in a matter of decades. The politics will follow and then my grandchildren will not have to worry—as I do—about whether their grandchildren will live in a free and prosperous United States of America.

George Gilder’s Israel Test: Who Passes? Who Fails?

In his remarkably philo-semitic book, ‘The Israel Test,’ George Gilder poses a short series of moral questions—addressed to both individuals and to nations—the answers to which determine on which side the respondent falls in the ongoing struggle for the political, economic and cultural soul of the world’s people. Mr. Gilder’s dramatic thesis is stated forcefully and clearly in the opening paragraphs of his book, which I quote in part:

The central issue in international politics… is the tiny state of Israel. The prime issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and Islam…The real issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous ‘fairness,’ between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it.

Israel defines a line of demarcation. On one side…are those who see capitalism as a zero-sum game in which success comes at the expense of the poor…On the other side are those who see the genius and good fortune of some as a source of wealth and opportunity for all.

The test can be summarized by a few questions: What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down? Caroline Glick…sums it up: ‘Some people admire success; some people envy it. The enviers hate Israel.’

Today tiny Israel… stands behind only the United States in technological contributions. In per-capita innovation, Israel dwarfs all nations.

As if the anti-Semites of the world needed another reason to hate the Jews. Gilder has not only highlighted two of the most historic causes of Jew hatred, but he has wrapped them in a brilliantly colored package, which, on the one hand, explains much of the vilification of Israel that occurs today and, on the other, will surely attract more hatred in their direction. To explain, let me quickly recall a (probably incomplete) list of seven main reasons for anti-Semitism. The first four of the following are couched in terms an anti-Semite might use.

1. The arrogance of the ‘chosen people.’ That this tiny, in some ways wretched band of people would declare themselves the chosen people of God, entrusted with His mission of redeeming humanity, and then flaunt their arrogance by holding themselves above all mankind in their perverted pursuit of that goal is insulting, contemptible and incendiary. Small wonder that their haughtiness has earned them the enmity of most of humanity.

2. Ethical monotheism. As inventors of a demanding morality (embodied in the Ten Commandments) and by their continued promulgation of their God’s moral law, they render uncomfortable those, and they are many, who would prefer not to be bound by the standards of the Jewish God’s law.

3. Refusal to accept Christ. They spurned the true Messiah when he appeared on Earth and their continued existence is an affront to the Christian religion, which superseded the original mandate the Jews received from God.

4. Infidels. They rejected Mohammed and they epitomize the infidels of the world who stand in the way of a world-wide caliphate and the global reign of Islam.

5. Generally obnoxious. I am not engaging in self-hatred here, yet I think that it is not incorrect to assert that no other ethnic group has any leg up on the Jews in the category of ‘behaving obnoxiously.’

6. Money grubbers. With their seemingly natural affinity for commerce, the Jews of the world in their roles as bankers, investors, entrepreneurs, accountants and businessmen have proven repeatedly that their ability to accumulate wealth—sometimes deemed at the expense of others—far exceeds that of any other ethnic group, which thereby engenders the envy and resentment of their Gentile neighbors.

7. Unnatural success. Envy and resentment of the Jews is not restricted to their role in commerce. In the arts, sciences, technology, politics, law and even war (at times), the achievements of this tiny tribe is so far above the median that it causes wonder and amazement. The ensuing reaction of many is more than envy and resentment. It encompasses a belief that the Jews must be lying, cheating and stealing from the Gentiles—behavior that merits punishment and retribution.

It is the last two reasons that Gilder has highlighted and conjoined. How? Well, in the last two decades Israel has performed a sharp about-face in regard to its fundamental economic philosophy. Its founders a century ago were hard core socialists and the Labor Party that unilaterally ruled the nation (from pre-State days until 30 years ago) was representative of that mentality. From Labor’s fall in 1977, it took more than 15 years for the nation to overcome its economic blindness. But beginning in the last decade of the 20th century, Israel finally unleashed the entrepreneurial power of its highly educated and creative citizenry. The Zionists became capitalists.

The long delay in the arrival of that transformation is ironic, for as Gilder points out, ‘The great irony of Israel is that for much of its short history it has failed the Israel test. It has been a reactionary force, upholding the same philosophy of victimization and Socialist redistribution that has been a leading enemy and obstacle for Jewish accomplishment throughout the ages. As a Jewish country, Israel should have arisen rapidly after the war as a center of Jewish achievement. Instead, its leftist assumptions actually inclined it toward the Soviet model…Until the 1990s, Jews could succeed far more readily in the United States than in Israel. The Israel test gauges the freedom and equality of opportunity in a country by the success of Jews there. By this Israel test, the United States was far freer and more favorable to creativity and excellence, and thus to Jewish achievement, than the state of Israel itself.’

But the Jews of Israel have more than made up for the lost time, as the closing paragraph of the opening quote from Gilder makes clear. (The actual statistics are on p. 109 in his book.) To reiterate, in terms of technological innovation, Israel ranks ahead of all the nations of Western Europe, ahead of all the Asian tigers, behind only the US. And that is only in absolute terms; per capita, Israel’s entrepreneurial productivity dwarfs that of any other country. ‘Wonder and amazement!’

Thus it is clear how Gilder has folded together items 6 and 7. The Jews are ‘guilty’ not only of an abnormal ability to handle money and of achievements way beyond the norm, but the two come together in an explosion of capitalistic entrepreneurship in the small desert nation. Swell! The Jewish nation is now a model of free market capitalism. One of the prime reasons that too many of the world’s people loathe the United States—and for which it is indeed lustily despised—is its grand success as the greatest capitalistic nation in the history of the world. Israel now joins the US as a second exemplar of democratic capitalism. As I said, the world did not have enough reasons to hate Israel. Now it has a ‘new one.’ But note: the first four reasons for anti-Semitism that I cited are special to the Jewish people. (Some would say, ‘So is the fifth.’) On the other hand, the amalgam of 6 and 7 that Gilder has identified is now intimately tied to the United States.

According to Gilder, all those who hate Israel—and the US, for that matter—because of their economic success are flunking the Israel test. Incapable of celebrating the exceptional achievements of a small nation, they seethe at Israel’s accomplishments. Rather than emulating Israel’s methods, they impugn Israel’s motives and seek to blame the poverty of Israel’s Arab neighbors on the Jewish nation’s economic prowess. They hurl the epithet ‘Nazi’ at Israel, even if they are aware of the obscenity that such an accusation represents.

But make no mistake. The hatred of Israel extends to an equally virulent hatred of America. In the words of Iran’s Mullahs, the USA is the ‘Great Satan’ and Israel is the ‘Little Satan’; both must be eradicated. Well the Mullahs are certainly one of the Israel-haters referred to above. Who are the others? That is, let us examine who has passed the Israel test and who has failed it. First, I’ll discuss those who receive a passing grade—a pathetically short list, actually. It includes the United States, a few other nations in the Western Hemisphere, a small group of European countries, and a very limited number of Asian and South Pacific states. I have purposefully not identified the specific countries that pass the Israel test (beside the US) for the following reason. It is a highly subjective exercise and I venture that the list’s contents would depend heavily on who is compiling it. For example, Canada is on the list, but is Mexico? Poland makes the cut; sadly Britain probably does not; what about Germany? Regardless of who compiles the list, it is guaranteed to be short.

Fifty years ago the list was much longer. However, the Israel test was also much easier to pass then. Israel was a socialist country, the world was restrained by the shame of the recent Holocaust, and the tiny Jewish nation was still cast as the underdog in its battle to survive in the Middle East. But the Six-Day War in 1967 removed the underdog status; the check that the memory of the Holocaust exerts has weakened substantially; and Israel has cashed in socialism for capitalism. The list of those who pass the test has shrunk dramatically. Former friends like France vanished from the list long ago. Other Western European and South American nations have followed suit in recent years.

Now who has failed the test? Above all, the Muslim world. With the exception of Turkey—and it seems to be reassessing its stand lately—the unremitting hostility toward Israel from the Muslim world is nearly universal, not to mention fierce and grotesque. The next group of failures includes all the left-leaning socialist and semi-socialist countries of the world. Outside the Soviet bloc, that group was relatively small and declining during and after the Reagan era. But in recent times, it has expanded dramatically and all those who have fallen into the leftist mode are now chalking up failing grades on the Israel test. Then there are the third and fourth world basket cases throughout Africa and Asia. The fact that they extort foreign aid from the US and Israel does not prevent them from falling in line behind the previous two groups in their condemnations of Israel. That doesn’t leave many countries left on the map. In summary, aside from the US and a few other friendly countries, the vast majority of the world’s nations earn failing grades on the Israel test.

Here is a really sad postscript to the previous observations. Even within the countries that pass the test, there are substantial segments of the population that fail individually (or in groups). This is even true of the United States. For heaven’s sake, the President of the United States gets a resounding failing mark on the test. And finally, painful as it is to admit, one must acknowledge that a not insignificant part of the Israeli public—largely left over from the Halcyon days of Labor rule—flunks the test.

Let me be close by stating more forcefully what is implicit in much of the above and very explicit in Gilder’s thesis. Namely, Israel is the canary in the coal mine of Western Civilization. In some ways at the moment, the prognosis for the canary is better than that for the mine. That is an audacious assertion, not easily or quickly justified. Therefore, for lack of space, I must refer the reader to my article, ‘Broken Deals: Violating the Commandments, Abrogating the Constitution’ (http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/12/14/broken-deals-violating-the-commandments-abrogating-the-constitution/), which fleshes out the claim. Here, in its furtherance, I will also note the following. Benjamin Netanyahu, who as Prime Minister of Israel in the 90s and Finance Minister in the early part of this century, gets the lion’s share of the credit for altering Israel’s economic path, has set an astounding new challenge for his nation. One of the gravest crises confronting the US, Israel and what’s left of Western Civilization is the overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels. While Barack Obama leads the US down the blind alley of climate change through ‘cap and trade,’ Netanyahu has challenged the scientists, technicians and entrepreneurs of his country to really solve the problem. This seems almost laughable. How can tiny Israel meet this monumental challenge? Whether it can or not, the fact that it will try is a testament to the role that Israel plays in the world today. And of course that effort will only increase the size of the lightning rod that Israel has become for the flunkees of the Israel test.

If Western Europe continues to decay and if the US succumbs to the socialists who are currently running our country, then it is legitimate to ask: What comes next? Who will be the world’s top dog? China? Russia? India? An Islamic caliphate? The answer to that question is only partly clear. Russia and the Muslim world flunk the Israel test hands down. If Gilder is right, neither will be top dog of anything. What about China or India? In some sense both are still sitting for the test. Their—and our—fates await the outcome.

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This article appeared originally in The American Thinker (www.americanthinker.com) on Jan 3, 2010.