One can downplay it, but culture matters—a lot.
I walked by a light rail station the other day and noted a lot of verbiage on the ground. “Stand Here.” “Let Passengers Exit Here.” I asked my son and he told me that a friend’s supervisor had been in Japan and saw similar things there on the subway system. So he decided to import the street graffiti to Jerusalem and place them at each train station. As we spoke, a train rolled in and parked about two meters from the designated landing spot. The people miraculously exited and entered the train without the instructions on the ground to safely guide them to success. Japan is a highly precise society, and if a train conductor stops at the wrong spot, he would probably be shamed into retirement. Israel is a seat-of-the-pants culture, and the fact that the train stopped at all was cause for celebration.
Differences in culture matter, and this concept is by no means new. The Battle of Britain was won by the Brits for several reasons. A major one was Goering’s mistake of stopping his bombing campaign of RAF bases and moving toward blitzing London and other cities. Another factor was RAF victories in the air. The Germans lost more planes than did the RAF. Ultimately, Hitler moved on from his plan to invade England as his Russian timetable demanded forces in the East. One point noted at the time was that the much more battle-experienced Luftwaffe pilots were required to fly according to very rigid rules, whereas the Oxford/Cambridge-trained British fliers were more open to freelancing their air attacks. The German culture expected planes to stay in formation, even when attacked, and there were fixed protocols of engagement. The British flyboys were more flexible in their approach and attacked targets of opportunity as they became available. Nearly 1,000 Germans were taken prisoner after they were shot down or crashed.
The enormous success of the United States over the past 250 years has been in part due to people subsuming their previous identities in order to become “real Americans.” It is a decision that my parents made for us, just as millions of others did: we may have come from country X, but our children will be Americans. If it means eating TV dinners and playing Little League, then that’s what it’s going to be. For the past 20 years, Democrats have pushed the “salad bowl” versus the melting pot approach, where they strongly encourage foreigners—mostly illegal—to keep their identities and consider themselves superior to the locals. This is the reason we get booing of the American national anthem at the Rose Bowl when Mexico plays the U.S. in soccer. It’s the reason we no longer have the assimilation and integration of people who insist on keeping their culture and look down on the American Way. My mother did not have bilingual German-English education: get with English or you’re toast. Today, one can take a driving test in a host of languages—at the expense of a cohesive American culture.
One of the many stories from Europeans who have attended the World Cup in the U.S. involved an older British man who said that Americans don’t realize who good we’ve got it. In his eyes, Americans can do more or less whatever they want, can buy things relatively inexpensively and travel hither and yon. He is right as things apply to Europe. One of my boys pointed out that the French would rather let people die from the heat than install air conditioning at least in hospitals where they might be able to recover. Nope, climate change is too important; better to let them die. Shouldn’t you stop the crazy uncontrolled immigration? Nope, we were colonialists and thus evil. Our countries should be overrun, even if it means the death of our native culture.
But how free are we as Americans? Probably more so than most people in the world. Forget China and Russia, where they’ll send a “Gezuntheit!” by SMS every time a comrade sneezes. Let’s think of all of the governmental bodies that stand over the head of a typical American:
- Probably a Home Owners Association (HOA). You think that you are going to redo your front lawn. Expect the black helicopters before the landscapers arrive.
- Local School System. If you have kids, there is somebody that tells you the rules they expect your children to hold by. They’re the ones putting disgusting books into your kids’ libraries and kick out your son for wearing a FREEDOM shirt.
- Local government. When they want to completely change the zoning of your area to add more businesses to a presently pastoral space, they will hold a hearing and then do whatever they so please. Across from us (in Jerusalem), they are building ten-story apartment buildings where there are presently 50 trees and a low-slung building. All requests to leave the trees and build a pool/health club for the people of the neighborhood fell on deaf ears.
- State government. They’re happy to tax everything you buy and will expect you to file a state tax report. When the local roads suck, they are often the ones wasting gas tax money on junkets and not making your roads and schools successful.
- Federal government. Pay your income tax, strip down to board a plane, pay federal gas tax, and follow federal rules for COVID, etc.
Even with all of the above, Americans are still freer than their British brothers who can be arrested after hitting “Send” on a Facebook post suggesting that putting too many illegal immigrants into small towns is a bad idea. Americans are freer, but the movement toward the ersatz socialist movement is reflective of Americans feeling that government today does not serve them. They pay their taxes, play by the rules, but find themselves going nowhere. Much of the blame is on them: ridiculous and worthless college degrees at great expense, poorly marketable skills, etc. But the more a government is detached from the governed, the greater likelihood of political or physical revolution. Eighty percent, including Democrats, want picture IDs for elections. John Thune and his band of brothers in the Senate won’t pass the SAVE America Act, because it would bring more MAGA people to Washington and further dry up their USAID grift.
How many multibillion-dollar projects have nothing to show for them? California spent billions on high-speed rail and there is not an inch of track. Elon Musk says that Senator Susan Collins told him that she helped the Navy get $12 billion for submarines. When she asked what they did with the money, they could not answer her. Vice President Harris was given $42 billion to hook up rural homes to the internet. The money is gone and not a single house was connected. People are sick of this: the government does whatever it wants, enriches itself, and ignores the legitimate interests and requests from its citizens. Expect pitchforks sooner rather than later if these issues are not properly addressed. Harris blew through $1.5 billion on a shorted presidential run of around 100 days. One fellow said that they were throwing around money to the point that an outside adviser could make “generational wealth” from the sums they were handing out.
America was born from a Puritan spirit and strong religious foundation. The Founders saw the successful creation of the country as a God-granted miracle. For generations, people came to American to become Americans. Most Americans, including Donald Trump, do not have to go too far back to find their LEGAL immigrant ancestors. The Democrats put forward that one could come, often illegally, and just remain as they were in their failed countries. We are dearly paying for this approach today.