America has done more good for more people than any nation in the history of the world.
By Rich Kozlovich
I often have “why” questions. I have always loved reading history, as a
result I have often asked; “why did they do that?” History isn’t just
about dates, events and places. History is about people and why they do
what they do. It's about human psychology, human wants, needs and
desires. It is about human flaws and human greatness in action and thinking. That's the
beauty and wisdom of history.
History is the fruition of the actions of
millions of people over the course of thousands of years, and those fruits of wisdom, ripened fruits of wisdom, are ours for the plucking. But in order to pluck those ripened fruits of wisdom we need to read that history, understand that history, and apply it wisely. As a society we're doing none of that, and our leaders clearly aren't doing it either. One writer noted the statement "history repeats itself" is wrong. He says we just fail to learn and follow the lessons of history. To a large degree, he's right.
As you grow older, and really delve deeply into the history of the world,
you find that real history goes way beyond what must be considered the
blatant propaganda taught in schools at the lower grades. Perfectly understandable
propaganda mind you! After all, most countries don’t want their children
to learn about the unpleasant things that are a part of their heritage
until they have learned the good things, the honorable things, the
things that make it possible for a society to become whole, especially
one such as ours; a diverse society which became the only truly
successful melting pot of cultures in the world. Something that was
truly alien in almost every other country in the world.
The big difference and the beauty of our culture versus the rest of the
world is we have access to the damning information about America. The kind of information completely hidden from citizens of other
cultures about their cultures. We have the opportunity to see all of our
warts and scars, repent of them, fix them, and become all the better
for it as a society, even if it is in our own personal way.
We can’t fix
our flaws if we're unwilling to see and confront them, and in spite of all the rants about how evil is America, we've sacrificed America's young men and our money to make things right for all Americans, and we've been spit upon for it.
It is still very difficult to get
information of the Rape of Nanking
in Japan, which has been referred to as the forgotten holocaust of
WWII. We don't hear much about it here either because the left controls
the schools now and they subscribe to the idea that the only evil ever
done in the world was done by Americans. So then, if that was the case, why then was America so
successful merging so many diverse cultures? Because those who came here all wanted to add to the American culture;
not change it into the very thing they fled.
My great grandparents and
grandparents came from Serbia. They came here to become Americans who
just happened to be Serbian. They didn't come here to be Serbians who
just happened to live in America. The other side of my family is Croatian. So
I am half Serbian and half Croatian. I tell people jokingly that I'm my own worst enemy, and I've
been fighting with myself my whole life. Why? Because the hate, war and violence
between them was legendary and went on for centuries. Yet, that age old problem, that went
on for hundreds of years in Europe, was solved in less than one generation here, in America! I also have a contingent of Italian family members, a third cousin
who is half Filipino, and others who are Hispanic. Only in America!
But this only can happen because if we all share a common vision as to how the world should
work, and how we should conduct ourselves. My great grandparents and
grandparents learned to speak, read and write English so that their
children and grandchildren wouldn’t have to pay the penalty they were
paying. A penalty they were happy to pay I might add, because they knew
it was a penalty worth paying. They were in America!!!!!!
It wasn’t easy as it is today. My great grandparents didn’t know that my
grandmother had to go to school until she was old enough to be in the
third grade, which is where they started her. She didn’t speak a word of
English. The teacher couldn’t understand her and decided that her name
was “Annie”. My grandmother was 90 when she died and there were people
who still knew her as Annie for most of that long life. She was never offended. It just wasn’t that
important to her compared to the benefits she received for she and her
family by just being in America!
She learned to speak, read and write English, and was proud of her accomplishments, she was even a Democrat party committeewoman. My grandfather worked in the coal mines and ran his own farm providing everything the family needed. Everything we consumed came from the farm other than flour, coffee, salt, sugar and tea. So I don’t have a lot
of compassion for the whining of lefties over this. And there's a reason why. The results!
One
of her children became the president of a United Auto Workers union.
Another became an aeronautical engineer working for a major airplane manufacturer
with forty engineers working for him, and he never finished high school.
Another became a successful small business owner, and many of their
grandchildren became business owners. A grandchild of one of her siblings was a graduate of Annapolis. Only in America.
These immigrants were on the lowest rung on the social ladder in their
homelands, but they were the best that Europe had to offer. Smart,
tough, hardworking, religious, self-sacrificing and family oriented.
Those are the base components of a stable society. When any one of
them is missing the whole structure erodes; slowly perhaps, but the
downward spiral is unmistakable. The sad thing about great grandparents and grandparents is
that they die before you are old enough to fully appreciate what great
people they truly were.
Today we see people who are descendants of those who worked to make America a great nation and a great people. Descendants who have
lived in the best culture the world has ever known and yet they hate that
culture. They rant unendingly against its perceived inequities,
screaming for social and environmental justice. Demanding that everyone
should live at exactly the same life style as everyone
else, irrespective of what they are willing to work for, or willing to work at all.
They rant and scream with vile fervor that America is a racist nation, in spite of the
fact that American capitalism raised more people out of misery, squalor
and suffering than any other system the world has ever known, including black Americans. Name one nation that's offered more opportunities to black people than has America!
Socialism exists primarily in its communist and fascist forms. Fascism
as a leftist movement became defined (mostly by Mussolini) in the early
20th century as the right wing of socialism and communism as the left
wing, but they are both totalitarian, two sides of the same coin. Both subscribe to the philosophy
of the “19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel”,
who was the “most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl
Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and
university socialists to this day” that:
"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State."
Those socialist and “progressive states” who've have taken on the mantel of Godhood has brought
nothing but death, destruction, starvation, mass murder, misery and
suffering at a level that is unparalleled in human history. Dystopia
is the true child of socialism. Why then to do so many in the western
world embrace and praise those who practice this demented philosophy? Especially among those who are allegedly well educated, and more so among academics!
Since they hate America, that means they hate Americans who
practice and believe in American exceptionalism and capitalism. But that
leaves them in a quandary. The normal functioning of the human mind is
to see patterns. Patterns allow one to draw conclusions. That of course means being judgmental, how else can you determine what is true and false.
What works and what doesn’t work. What information to discard and what
information to embrace.
Yet, they deliberately ignore the historically proven patterns of success and look for alternatives. Alternatives they absolutely insist on believing in. Alternatives that have failed over and over again, how can that be considered sane?
But this is America. They're allowed to believe in and promote their alternatives because they're living here, in America! Here, where they don’t have to face the consequences of their passion
for alternative lives or alternative forms of governance. Here, where they can believe any
idiotic thing they wish to believe without being persecuted, and even protected. Yet they
hate the system that permits their thinking and actions, and largely without penalty, and lately even when those actions are clearly criminal. How can we not wonder if they're sane!
A former Muslim man in Afghanistan was going to be executed because he
converted to Christianity and refused to give up the convictions of his
conscience, to give up his faith. This is from a society that preaches
and demands the destruction of anyone who disagrees with them, including
those who share the same faith with some differences, as in the Sunni
and Shiite sects. Yet these lefties embrace and excuse them as allies. Allies with whom they have only one thing in common: Their hatred of
Americans, American capitalism and American tolerance!
Do they
really believe that if Sharia was imposed on Americans they would be allowed to
practice their political philosophy and personal moral passions as they
do now? They would be among the first to be killed! So when I read their
views it's impossible to not wonder if they're sane.
A number of years ago there were demonstrations against some world
economic summit (I think it was in Seattle, there have been so many I
can’t remember for sure) and the policies being outlined there. One
National Public Radio interviewer (Yes...I actually listened to NPR) asked
a young woman demonstrator what they were against and why. She made her
case and then the interviewer asked her, “What alternatives do you
offer”? She very confidently and smugly stated that “great minds” were
working on this. Remember, this is NPR so I was amazed at his next
question. “So then, you have no alternatives?” She wasn’t so smug at
this point, but fell back on to her “great minds” claptrap.
Leftism, in all it's forms and permutations, and their "allies", are part of the same package. There is a
reason greenies are called watermelons. The lefties embrace economic
and social concepts that have been shown to be so seriously flawed, and that no matter
how many times they're tried, they've failed. They eschew concepts that have succeeded over and over again. No
matter how many times they're tried, they succeed, and the left is against them.
- They rant, rave,
demonstrate, destroy property, and attack people (physically and
personally) while claiming to be paragons of compassion.
- They scream
disruptively, and throw pies in the faces of speakers in an attempt to
silence their views, while claiming to be the ultimate defenders of free
speech.
- They illegally occupy public places without permission or
compensation.
- They leave violence and filth behind. While screaming that
they have rights they completely ignore the legitimate rights of
others.
- They embrace extremist and murderous dictators and tyrannical systems of governance while decrying
every action taken to defend the innocent by defunding the police.
- They embrace energy concepts that have failed over
and over again in the past, and even eventually turn against any
of the alternatives they support.
Why?
Because they're irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. As a result, they can never be pleased, no matter how hard anyone tries, because their foundational values of all these misfits are based on hate, anger, envy, greed and violence. Without hate they can't
exist. Happy people cannot be haters and haters cannot be happy. As a
result there is nothing you do that will ever satisfy them.
They hate truth: It defies the narrative of the day. They hate history: It condemns them. They eschew compassion: Leftist dictators murdered 100 million people in the 20th century and green activists are responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people since the 1960's. They hate solutions that work: That exposes their incompetence and stupidity since they have no solutions that work.
The
reality is that they are really great at finding fault, but their
failure and incompetence at finding solutions is legendary. That's history and that history is incontestable. Is it unreasonable
to wonder if they're even sane?
I read an article (about a Lutheran church that had an event of "guided meditations"
"by a high priestess of the pagan fertility goddess Isis." They refer
to this as the "fifth annual Faith and Feminism Conference" hosted by
the "Ebenezer Lutheran Church in San Francisco, which bills itself as
"herchurch." The article goes on to say, "Among the scheduled
participants is Loreon Vigne, high priestess of Isis Oasis – a temple,
retreat and animal sanctuary Vigne founded in 1978 in Geyserville,
Calif. "I personally see Isis as Mother Nature," Vigne says, "and that
she encompasses everything with her wings. She's a winged goddess. She
encompasses any other goddess from any culture."
You know.....you just can't make this stuff up. It is one thing when
concern about the environment turns into a pseudo-pagan secular
religion, and another thing when the media, the universities and
government agencies are complicit with this. After all, the kind of
Druidic paganism that environmentalism has become has been very subtle.
But what is wrong with the minds of those in their own churches
(especially their leaders) who adopt this stuff right out in the open?
One the things that the founding fathers never considered was the idea
that this nation would be based on anything except Judaic/Christian
principles. It was obvious to them that Christian thought was so far
superior to every other religious concept that no one would even consider anything
else.
Boy, were they wrong!
In ancient Israel the Jews adopted local
pagan religions practices and pagan gods on an ongoing basis over the
centuries. The priests even had pagan images right in the Temple at one
point. I used to wonder how such a thing could occur; after all they did
have a permanent priesthood that was supposed to have all the knowledge
necessary to stand against such actions?
It turns out they were the
parties most guilty of these actions. They didn't do this all by
themselves either. Between the ruling classes and their society as a
whole, this is what people wanted and they went along with and found
"reasons" to justify it. I have no doubt that every argument that's
heard today about inclusion was used then.
There is nothing new under
that sun and apparently there is no level of gullibility that is too
great for humanity to swallow. Going along to get along requires a
degree of gullibility and culpability, both of which are first cousins to stupid! And you
can't fix stupid!
How did our culture come to this? Why as a society do we listen to these
people? Why do we tolerate the insane things they promote? As a result, as a society, I then have to wonder as to our sanity. I am not optimistic.
Editor's Note: This is a reprint and update of an article I published in 2011. That article could have stood alone without change and still appeared as if it was written today. That's disturbing! RK
“Meeting the group of about 20 US business figures, who included
Chubb’s Evan Greenberg, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Qualcomm’s
Cristiano Amon in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Xi insisted
that Beijing remained committed to reform.”
