I’ve seen this, too. Otherwise brilliant business colleagues abroad absolutely lose their marbles once they step away from Excel and wade into “climate change” etc..
Perhaps the BEST explanation for this bewildering schizophrenia is found in a gun rights book. The Samurai, the Mountie and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? by David Kopel explores the national and cultural differences that underpin gun rights globally. That cultural research explains so much OTHER behavior, including European global warming kool aid drinking.
Kopel produces a “ breathtaking sweep…(and) prodigious scholarship…in his detailed discusson of civil liberties, police powers, law and national character with respect to guns in Japan, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Jamaica and the United States”. , Kopel “brilliantly delineates the ways in which each nation's unique history has determined how it deals with guns.”
The title itself is extremely powerful as a concise explanation for all of this thinking. In short, America is a nation of individualists who have as their cultural “hero” the cowboy, who takes personal and familial responsibility first and doesn’t look his/her “betters” to protect or think for him/her. In contrast, the Japanese admire the Samurai, a noble that defends the little people. The Mountie is a government protector.
Reading that book, one comes away with a richer understanding of not just the folly of gun control, but why seemingly smart folks in Europe are so easily swayed to surrender their internal combustion engine and eat ze bugz. In short, their cultural and historic bedrock elevates compliance and subordination and collective harmony. They don’t have childhood games or stories or books or grandparents that elevate individuality. As kids they never learned pithy quotes like “the three biggest lies are I’ll love you in the morning, the check is in the mail, and trust the government.”
Now, they may make fun of the monarchy, but they don’t ditch it. In contrast, John Lydon, aka Rotten, is a massive Trump guy. Some people CAN learn, but most folks avoid red-pilling and stick to the monarchy as their North Star.
The whole ESG thing is the latest case study. Sure, some high-profile American entities are embracing it fully. But their leaders are Loyalists at heart; on the ground, where the cowboys and cowgirls do the work, there is zero consensus that this is Good for Business. In contrast, European leaders AND employees trip all over themselves to Go Green and self-immolate. I’ve heard US reps tell me that their European management doesn’t understand why HQ is all-in but the Yanks are slow-walking this nonsense. That kind of talk warms me bones.
I’m pretty bullish that America won’t dump their gas guzzlers for EVs. Again, 15-20% of the nation were commies, erm, Loyalists from the get-go. It hasn’t changed much in 300 years. Let them flap their gums but as long as Deplorables take their kids to the range, drive SUVs, eat steak, and mock Europe at the dinner table, the future looks ok.
The goal is not to force Americans to drive EVs. Everyone knows (though the left will never admit) that our power grid could never handle millions of EVs. The goal is to force Americans to live in high density democrat controlled cities and rely on mass transit to go anywhere.
“I’ve seen this, too. Otherwise brilliant business colleagues abroad absolutely lose their marbles once they step away from Excel and wade into “climate change” etc..”
These are what Stalin correctly identified as “Useful Idiots” following those who Nassim Taleb labeled “Intellectual Yet Idiots” (IYI).
https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/09/intellectual-yet-idiot/
“I’ve seen this, too. Otherwise brilliant business colleagues abroad absolutely lose their marbles once they step away from Excel and wade into “climate change” etc..”
These are what Stalin correctly identified as “Useful Idiots” following those who Nassim Taleb labeled “Intellectual Yet Idiots” (IYI).
https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/09/intellectual-yet-idiot/
A substantive post, thanks, however, the model in which even youth can be trusted with a gun and learn how to protect and provide for his family without reliance upon a vast government, requires such norms as reverence of God and valid authority, and of procreating parents (not just one or two, and with the man being the head of the family) who example personal and familial responsibility and install required Biblical faith and moral values and qualities.
Which include protection of innocent life, and of property, and sanctity of marriage, and honesty, as well as self-control, industriousness, resourcefulness, sacrifice and perseverance amid hardship, but which the Left militates against.
Which results in the decline of the family and character, and thus with society becoming less disciplined as well as less industrious and less governed by God and conscience, and more by selfishness, disrespect of parents and valid authority, with wanton violence and chaos.
Which includes the climate, however hyped, and the integrity of the electoral system.
Which results in societal insecurity, resulting in incrementally increased government control, leading to dictatorship. Which the plan of the Left which is the earthly author of this, as proxy servants of the devil in this regard, as they both lust for power.
Those who are not sufficiently controlled from within, by God and a sound conscience, must sooner or later be controlled from without, necessitating the growth of civil government. Robert Winthrop (May 12, 1809 – November 16, 1894), and Speaker of the House from 1838 to 1840, and later president of the Massachusetts Bible Society, explained that, “All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State." (Speech to the Massachusetts Bible Society (1849-05-28), quoted in Robert Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions, Little, Brown & Co., 1852, p. 172)
The commission of the born – again Church is to bring souls into submission to the Lord Jesus by spiritual means, “By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left” (2Cor. 6:6, 7; cf. Eph. 6:10-19) — and not by physical arms. Jesus said we are to be the “light of the world” (Mt. 5:14; if only the “lesser light” reflecting the real Light) so that the church, by the use of the Sword of the Spirit, works to bring souls to be controlled in heart and thus actions (atheists, etc., in addition to innate revelations, can also be influenced to have a more Biblically based moral conscience thereby).
In contrast, the commission of the State enables it to use the sword of men to constrain obedience on those who are not sufficiently controlled by the former means (Rm. 13:1-7). It thus follows that the weaker the church is, the more powerful the State must become. “For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof” (Prv. 28:2a). And if the Government itself becomes less governed by Biblical precepts and principles, calling evil good, and good evil (Is. 5:20), and contrary to it's charter, punishes those who do good and praises them that do evil (contra. 1 Pet. 2:14), then “the wicked shall do wickedly,” and persecute those who would actually preserve the State by calling it to be instructed by Christ (Ps. 2). And while in such persecution, the Christ - believing remnant “shall be purified, and made white, and tried” (Dan., 12:10), yet both willful hypocrites and the church that sought to save it's life by compromising truth and placating sin will lose what they sought to save, for some even their eternal souls (Mt. 7:21-23)!https://peacebyjesus.net/causeeffect.html