Tearing down statues of Columbus is a symbol of tearing down our predominantly Western (European) civilization. In the same way that a mass LOCKDOWN quickly destroys capital that has taken lifetimes to build up, tearing down our civilization will relatively quickly destroy other valuable portions of our individual and social capital. We’ll end up impoverished if we let this happen. It’s one thing to create and make a place within our civilization for many other cultural ideas that can co-exist. It’s an entirely different matter to work out of hatred and hostility to destroy what’s there and replace it with rubble or ideas that destroy capital and civilization.
With respect to lockdowns, additionally,
let’s never forget that it takes more time to build something than to destroy
it. The
time it takes to build up a collection of better ways to produce better goods
and services is accompanied by their being embodied in physical and human
capital. It takes years for a human being to become an adult, and even child
prodigies take years to grow up. Killing them takes very little time. Burning a
church to the ground takes much less time than constructing it, and the
knowledge it takes to build a magnificent church or bridge took thousands of
years to accumulate. The techniques of making submarine cables and laying them,
and the techniques of building satellites and launching them into space take a
long time to learn. Our knowledge of botany and plant life has taken thousands
of years to accumulate. Western civilization permeates everything that its enemies and
destroyers take for granted. There is no greater act of suicide and genocide
than destroying this incredibly valuable civilization.
The discovery of America took hundreds of years, and it
was a great accomplishment. The natives on this continent didn’t think of it as a New World
or even as a continent. Europeans had been trading with Asia for a long time in
1492, but the trade routes were long and dangerous. At that time, heads of
state and governments financed business ventures. The idea of making London
into a trade center, if a short sea route to Asia could be found, was what
motivated the voyages of John Cabot. Explorers from Spain and Portugal had
similar ideas. The North Men (Norsemen) had landed on Greenland before the year
1,000, but they didn’t discover America as a continent. They didn’t communicate
this idea to Europe. There had to be an Age of Discovery that initiated the
large scale transformation of a thinly populated continent into what we see
today.
Africans didn’t discover
America as a continent replete with opportunities. They didn’t have the ships
or the motivation. Asians didn’t discover America, even though their
descendants lived in the land. They were blocked by the Pacific Ocean expanse.
The process of discovery took a long time and even longer were the complex
processes of trade, commercialization, exploration, invasion, migration,
invention, and industrialization.
We have a bountiful
civilization that’s European in origin. We
have Columbus Day and Columbus statues to memorialize this history. It is by no
means a history of total glory and perfection. There have been many injustices,
and that is the way of mankind. It has all sorts of human blemishes. Our
culture absorbs many influences. Culture is not the same as civilization. Our
language, law, ethics, peoples, family systems and religions have largely drawn
from European sources.
Tearing down statues
of Columbus is a symbol of tearing down our predominantly Western (European)
civilization. In the same way that a mass LOCKDOWN quickly destroys capital
that has taken lifetimes to build up, tearing down our civilization will
relatively quickly destroy other valuable portions of our individual and social
capital. We’ll end up impoverished if we let this happen. It’s one thing to
create and make a place within our civilization for many other cultural ideas
that can co-exist. It’s an entirely different matter to work out of hatred and
hostility to destroy what’s there and replace it with rubble or ideas that
destroy capital and civilization.
LOCKDOWNS have been accompanied
by movements whose aim is to destroy and/or transform America. There are street
movements of which Antifa and BLM are most notable. But off-camera, American
freedom-lovers face many enemies: oligarchs, professional cliques, generals,
deep state bureaucrats, counter-cultural judges and attorneys, socialists, and
fascists.
The challenge ahead of
us is to avoid the destruction of capital and existing systems of civilized
life while ridding our land of elements that are hostile to these.
This is a battle of ideas. The communication of ideas and
understanding to unenlightened people is absolutely essential to win this
battle. The enemies hold important strategic ground in media and universities.
They need to be starved out by withholding funds from them unless they change
their practices.
Anyone who in any way advocates doing away with western
civilization is advocating death by suicide and genocide. Such advocacy is
therefore profoundly immoral and evil. Advocating for specific improvements is
categorically different from “down with Western civ”.
Michael
S. Rozeff [send
him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst,
New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on
American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free
e-book The
U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.