Posted on 07/12/2025 12:06:30 PM PDT by Starman417
I spend a lot of time talking about how western civilization – in particular as driven by the United States – is easily the greatest that mankind has yet created. If one looks at it objectively, it’s not even close. The list of things that are part of the everyday life of people around the world is basically a list of things that were invented or developed in the west. From cars to planes to advanced agriculture to elevators to plastic and mobile phones and computers and DNA and much, much more.
But every now and then something happens that makes me question that. A couple of years ago I watched Matt Walsh’s “What is a Woman” where he spends most of the movie talking to leftists and doctors trying to get a definitive answer to the question of the title. Most of the time he’s unsuccessful. The most interesting part of the movie however didn’t take place at a feminist conference or in a studio, but rather in Africa when he was speaking with Maasai tribesmen. When asked a simple question about whether a man can become a woman, he was quickly given a definitive “No”. Straightforward, no debate, no hedging. Essentially 180 degrees from the insanity that Matt encountered in the United States.
This was brought back to me last week when reading about Justice Thomas’ destruction of the “expert class” in Skrmetti. The Justice took direct aim at the notion that Americans must ignore their common sense, relinquish their lives and give up their Constitutional rights to those the elites have pronounced as “experts”. As we all learned during COVID, with the Hunter Biden letter, and have been seeing with climate scares for decades, “experts” are rarely that, and often are simply shills for this or that monied interest.
Justice Thomas stated clearly that the government can no longer use such “experts” to manipulate and control the lives of citizens. Although the specific case had to do with the butchering or harming confused or coerced minors, it applies everywhere else as well.
Which is a very good thing. Because there’s a danger in success – as in a successful civilization. It breeds complacency, entitlement and most importantly, the loss of a functional memory of how things work and how they became successful in the first place… which leads to an over reliance on “experts”.
I frequently mention Cyrus McCormick as the man most responsible for the rapid advance of western civilization. Of course people can argue that others, like Isaac Newton, Jethro Tull, James Watt, J.D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford or any number of others could wear that badge. I choose to award it to McCormick because he almost single handedly helped 85% of Americans and substantial numbers of others around the world, escape the farm. Not that there’s anything wrong with farming, obviously, but because of the efficiencies McCormick brought about, 95% of Americans work at something other than farming while in his day that number was in the mid-teens.
So basically he freed up 80% of the nation to go out and be everything from baseball players to scientists to doctors to entrepreneurs to inventors to, sadly, social media “influencers”. It’s basically division of labor on steroids, where people focus on what they want to do, are good at, or can make a living at, while paying others do the things they can’t or don’t want to do.
That works well when the choices of options are shoemaker, baker, blacksmith, farmer, soldier, etc., i.e. things society actually needs. It even works when options include things that society wants, like literature or sport or art. Baseball may not be as critical to the continuation of society as say, electricity generation or infrastructure maintenance, but there’s a demand and people are willing to work for money to pay for it out of their own pockets.
Where it breaks down is when options include things that no one actually wants or needs, yet they get produced nonetheless, or get produced in quantities that make no sense. Things like gender studies graduates, therapists and lawyers. Shakespeare talked about lawyers (as a bulwark against the masses) so we don’t need to.
The fact that gender studies even exist in the first place tells you how far America has moved from the fundamentals of a successful society.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
I got a simpler explanation. Just look at how many fat
Mexicans are out there. Poor country and they’re all here.
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