The difference between history’s winners and losers obviously depends on the criteria we adopt to discriminate between success and failure at the level of nation, culture, and civilization. For the purposes of this article, I will leave the display of military splendor and the creation of great art out of the equation. Neither military parades in a public square nor architectural wonders constitute a boon for ordinary people, even if they produce a feeling of national pride. Rather, I define success as a function of three complementary factors: the ability to survive intact for extended periods; the achievement of approximate prosperity in a largely impoverished world; and the fostering of a relatively free, confident, and vigorous citizenry. (Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian calculus developed in his A Fragment on Government, based on “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” plainly does not consort with these observations, since happiness is both an ambiguous concept and a non-measurable “quantity.”)
Naturally, political and social conditions will differ markedly, owing to the contingencies and realities of the epoch in question, but these three criteria appear essentially stable. I should also specify that the term “winner” in this context does not designate mere brute power leading to longevity but comes with a moral valence as well — ideally, a quality of mercy, respect for one’s fellow citizens, and the sane administration of reasonable laws. President Kennedy was no paragon of virtue and some of his pronouncements are distinctly troubling; yet he clearly recognized the moral component of national success when he wrote, in his Cuban Missile Crisis address of Oct. 22, 1962, in refutation of Thrasymachus’ “might is right” doctrine in Plato’s Republic: “Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right.” It should be noted, too, that the three basic factors I have outlined do not necessarily apply as an indivisible unit; sometimes one, sometimes another, will predominate, but no single one is sufficient in itself.
What I regard as failure reverses the elements involved: an abbreviated sojourn on the historical calendar; the curse of subsistence living or economic destitution; and a repressive sociopolitical system in which individuals are merged into a featureless collective or, for one or another reason, despoiled of the opportunity to realize their innate potentials.
Of the losers, the most prominent contemporary instance is the Soviet Union, whose overhyped “Communist utopia” collapsed after 70 years. Founded on unworkable principles, meretricious theory, false premises, and a complete misunderstanding of human nature, the surprise was that it lasted even that long. Another undoubted loser is the Islamic imperium. Of course, Islam, as a composite civilization embracing many diverse nations, has endured for over 1,400 years. It satisfies the criterion of longevity, but its current differential prosperity relies on external sources and is concentrated, for the most part, in the hands of a dynastic or theocratic minority. Nor can its citizens generally be described as vigorous, inventive, well-educated, and emancipated. Aside from a brief efflorescence in the medieval era, Islam has given the world little in the way of human thriving, maintaining itself through violence, dogma, slavery, conquest, and outright theft. It is a non-productive civilization.
In his indispensable and encyclopedic Sharia versus Freedom, Andrew Bostom quotes the scholar of religion James Freeman Clarke to the effect that Islam “makes life barren and empty… It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the submission to infinite despotism.” Any nation or institution that makes common cause with Islam or allows its incursion into the body politic or into social and cultural life will eventually and most likely go the same route.
Arguably, the greatest winner in history was Rome, spanning the period from early founding to Republic to Empire, before disintegration set in. The United States of America is not far behind in the winning category, probably the most dynamic nation ever to have appeared on the historical proscenium and the bulwark of Western civilization in the modern world. It is the greatest experiment in republican governance, individual liberty, free market economics, industrial potency, and energetic entrepreneurship within the harsh demands of survival in an unforgiving world. In order to survive, it must fight the portents of decline: debt, internecine conflict, racial politics, affirmative (or infirmative) action, the multicultural salad bowl, intellectual debasement of the general public, a decadent clerisy, and incompetent and sybaritic leaders associated chiefly with the Democratic party and its Republican rump.
In historical terms, it seems inevitable that winners become losers in the chronicle of nations, cultures, and civilizations, tracing the deciduous arc into the mulch of time. The decline is invariably accelerated by the inner loss of the civilizing imperative, the erosion of pride in accomplishment, of political integrity, fiscal sobriety, and belief in a system of core values, laws, and conventions.
One recalls Alexis de Tocqueville’s well-known and oft-cited passage from Book Four, Chapter VI, of Democracy in America, which I quote in part:
“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd… such a power does not destroy… but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
One recalls, too, Benjamin Franklin’s famous observation from the Historical Review of Pennsylvania of 1759: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Franklin’s apothegm itself derives from Aristotle’s seminal discussion in Politics: A Treatise on Government, where he stresses the necessity of active and committed citizens if the state is to flourish and remain strong; where such commitment is absent, the state invariably grows weak and decays into anarchy or absolutism. The octopal state has its tentacles everywhere, and its citizenry is subject to the invasive probing of a panoptic and all-encompassing entity.
Despite turbulence and disruption, history has been kind to America for an ephemeral moment in aeonian time, and America has been good for the world. But not everyone loves a winner. Envy and resentment rather than gratitude have been its international reward. But what is even more damning and far less preventable is the spirit of envy and resentment that emanates from within the republic as it turns against itself — envy directed toward the productive classes; resentment for accomplishment and earned stature. Once an entitlement mentality asserts itself and begins to determine public policy, as Milton Friedman warned, the tipping point relentlessly approaches. When, as it has been said, there are as many people riding the wagon as there are pulling the wagon — the socialist conundrum — the wagon moves ever more slowly before grinding to a halt. This is precisely the condition that America must avert, and it explains to a large extent Donald Trump’s vigorous opposition to the Democratic Party’s intent to transform an admirable nation into a one-party neo-Marxist caricature of itself.
The major issue that remains is whether a winner that is facing internal dissension can reclaim its place on the podium. A strong and determined leader emerging unexpectedly on the scene may stave off disaster, at least for a time. For all his foreign policy blunders — withdrawing the marines from Lebanon, arming the Islamists in Afghanistan, his general displeasure toward Israel — such a leader was Ronald Reagan, who in his Farewell Speech pointed out “what it means to be an American,” namely, “a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions,” without which that “rare” and “fragile” thing, freedom, would be lost. The same is the case of his true successor, Donald Trump, a proven winner who refuses to become a loser and refuses to allow his country to let longevity, prosperity, and confidence slip away.
Trump understands that Reagan’s proud city “strong and true on the granite ridge” is under threat of sliding, brick by brick and building by building, into the environing river, now polluted, whose current Regan thought it could withstand. The current is not the issue, but the feculence is. The cleanup must proceed despite the cloacal emissions of the Democratic left. This is what the true patriot and responsible leader recognizes. This is the redemptive meaning of Donald Trump’s presidency and accounts for the corruption, decadence, hysteria, falsehood, and stupidity he must constantly confront and resist. Great presidents understand that history is always claiming its due and that history does not play favorites. Indeed, history does not play.
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