Our Greatest Export
The United States has long carried a trade deficit. Assuming that the definition still holds, a trade deficit means that we import more than we export. So why haven't we gone broke already? We must be accumulating wealth through some other means. This should be obvious, since so much of our wealth accumululates in investment and real property. For example, my trade deficit at home has been negative for as long as I can remember, but my family has more wealth today than we did 20 years ago. Only farmers have a "trade surplus".
Unfortunately, our biggest export cannot be measured in dollars, and it has by far the greatest influence on our reputation in the world as well as our national security. We export ideas. We import them as well, but with characteristic Yankee ingenuity, we learn how to replicate these ideas and build on them, then spew them back at the world one hundred fold. The poisonous ideas which emerged from the collapse of the Christian church in Europe have captured our intelligentsia at all levels. We now teach the world, and what do we teach? The United States is the root of all evil. There is no God. Man is not a creation, but an evolving system, perfectible and designable. Capitalism is evil, socialism is Heaven on Earth.
America is suffering from an autoimmune disease. Our great institutions of thought have turned inward to destroy America and everything it represents. Nothing escapes the non-stop worldwide self critique. From Hollywood to Harvard, on every major television network, in every major newspaper, the drumbeat continues and the world consumes the vomit. We barely even see it anymore. It has become a part of our intellectual landscape, briars and weeds and ugliness, cynicism and skepticism, anti-establishment, anti-faith, anti-capitalist, anti-everything. America sucks.
Is it any wonder that we stand almost alone in the world? If anything, it is a backhanded compliment to our true greatness as a nation that the United Nations, residing on our free soil, opposes virtually everything we do and everything we represent, for it too is one of OUR institutions. America is like a doctor who decides to operate on himself but fails to realize that self-administered anesthesia may well be terminal.
Our intelligentsia is dominated by the Left: the faculties of our liberal arts universities, the press, most state and local governments as well as the federal government, our law schools, our courts, our mainstream churches. Those institutions dominated by the Right are mostly part of the private sector: business, engineering, finance, and most of the middle and working classes. In other words, our leaders in the world of ideas are leftists.
Because our schools have worldwide recognition, we have become the world's teaching center for anti-Americanism. The American liberal arts institutions are of one mind with their European counterparts. They exercise contrarianism for its own sake. To be the opposition is fulfilling in itself. Knowing that they are secure behind a wall of nuclear defense, they are free attack the wall and cheer on the barbarians on the other side. Knowing that Western democracies are safe places to grouse without retribution, they relentlessly criticize the institutions which protect them and take sides with totalitarian monsters.
Meanwhile, middle America continues to shop at Walmart and watch insipid television, seemingly oblivious to the intellectual warfare. We feel vaguely manipulated by big business, big government, big media, and big academia. We know that we have become the policeman of the world, and we know that we are hated, but we just want to live our lives. Why can't we all just get along? Maybe if we stopped bullying other nations. Maybe if we weren't so rich. Maybe if we weren't so arrogant. Maybe if we didn't have all those ugly nuclear warheads, and nasty evil jets and tanks and other destructive stuff. Maybe we could just replace our flag with a big smiley face and everyone would love us. Where do we get these vague impressions, these implicit ideas, this dangerous naivete?
We "sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." We can no longer afford this self-immolation, because we don't live in a bubble. The little tyrants of the world cannot defeat the giant, unless the giant defeats himself.
Unfortunately, our biggest export cannot be measured in dollars, and it has by far the greatest influence on our reputation in the world as well as our national security. We export ideas. We import them as well, but with characteristic Yankee ingenuity, we learn how to replicate these ideas and build on them, then spew them back at the world one hundred fold. The poisonous ideas which emerged from the collapse of the Christian church in Europe have captured our intelligentsia at all levels. We now teach the world, and what do we teach? The United States is the root of all evil. There is no God. Man is not a creation, but an evolving system, perfectible and designable. Capitalism is evil, socialism is Heaven on Earth.
America is suffering from an autoimmune disease. Our great institutions of thought have turned inward to destroy America and everything it represents. Nothing escapes the non-stop worldwide self critique. From Hollywood to Harvard, on every major television network, in every major newspaper, the drumbeat continues and the world consumes the vomit. We barely even see it anymore. It has become a part of our intellectual landscape, briars and weeds and ugliness, cynicism and skepticism, anti-establishment, anti-faith, anti-capitalist, anti-everything. America sucks.
Is it any wonder that we stand almost alone in the world? If anything, it is a backhanded compliment to our true greatness as a nation that the United Nations, residing on our free soil, opposes virtually everything we do and everything we represent, for it too is one of OUR institutions. America is like a doctor who decides to operate on himself but fails to realize that self-administered anesthesia may well be terminal.
Our intelligentsia is dominated by the Left: the faculties of our liberal arts universities, the press, most state and local governments as well as the federal government, our law schools, our courts, our mainstream churches. Those institutions dominated by the Right are mostly part of the private sector: business, engineering, finance, and most of the middle and working classes. In other words, our leaders in the world of ideas are leftists.
Because our schools have worldwide recognition, we have become the world's teaching center for anti-Americanism. The American liberal arts institutions are of one mind with their European counterparts. They exercise contrarianism for its own sake. To be the opposition is fulfilling in itself. Knowing that they are secure behind a wall of nuclear defense, they are free attack the wall and cheer on the barbarians on the other side. Knowing that Western democracies are safe places to grouse without retribution, they relentlessly criticize the institutions which protect them and take sides with totalitarian monsters.
Meanwhile, middle America continues to shop at Walmart and watch insipid television, seemingly oblivious to the intellectual warfare. We feel vaguely manipulated by big business, big government, big media, and big academia. We know that we have become the policeman of the world, and we know that we are hated, but we just want to live our lives. Why can't we all just get along? Maybe if we stopped bullying other nations. Maybe if we weren't so rich. Maybe if we weren't so arrogant. Maybe if we didn't have all those ugly nuclear warheads, and nasty evil jets and tanks and other destructive stuff. Maybe we could just replace our flag with a big smiley face and everyone would love us. Where do we get these vague impressions, these implicit ideas, this dangerous naivete?
We "sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." We can no longer afford this self-immolation, because we don't live in a bubble. The little tyrants of the world cannot defeat the giant, unless the giant defeats himself.
posted by moleses | 4:08 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home