I want to dedicate this post to Gaphrenia. Once in a great while you come across people who are truly inspiring; who challenge you to think in new ways and who offer encouragement without commitment. If you can find such a person, treasure them and most important of all......listen. Thanks for the jump start Gaphrenia.
George Gilder's book "The Israel Test" is a fascinating look at the historical achievements of the Jewish people which cannot be denied. With meticulous support and logic, Gilder explains how the Israeli experience and position in the world SHOULD deliver a powerful message to those who value freedom and achievement. Like the alien code in the film "Independence Day", at our own peril, we ignore the message that Jewish success sends us. Israel, like America stands as a beacon for freedom and excellence in a world that, ever so inevitably, slips toward mediocrity by pillorying capitalism.
The world's myopia to the success of capitalism and the Jewish experience is borne of envy and jealousy. I have experienced this first hand. Some of my relatives, children of the Great Depression, were brought up to tacitly suspect Jews as having uncommon powers of achievement. For some reason this Jewish prowess was to be considered suspect and in many cases reviled. As Adolf Hitler so dramatically demonstrated, peoples' inability to reconcile Jewish success against their own shortcomings served as the foundation for pogroms rooted in bigotry. This is where Gilder challenges us all.
If one accepts Gilder's premise that the Jews have indeed achieved great things through the application of individual freedoms and defense of capitalism, then we are given a choice; "The Israel Test". We can either wallow in envy and jealousy or we can celebrate Jewish successes, for in doing so we prove ourselves to be unwavering supporters of world freedom and the precepts of capitalism. Failure to do so opens us to manipulation by those who would seek to gain power over us. Think about it for a short time. How many of us celebrate when an acquaintance tells us of his or her latest achievement? Do we jump up for joy, or do we harbor a feeling of "why didn't I do that"; or "well he or she got lucky"? I submit to you that it is the rarity that one celebrates the victories of others. That is a sad state and Gilder makes it clear using the Israel model, that until America and Americans can feel good about the beauty of individual success and the nurturing environment of capitalism which makes success possible we are doomed to bondage by despots and tyrants who know how to prey upon our envy of those who "have" attained success.
One needs only to look at the rhetoric flying out of the White House today to know what Gilder asserts is true. Whether you are an insurance company, a large bank or oil company, or making a goodly sum of money, you are to be castigated. Class warfare is a moniker of the Obama administration. Those who have succeeded are somehow to be mistrusted and hated in order to galvanize one segment of America against another. It's all about concentration of power and the theft of our freedom. If we can understand that individual achievement, success and wealth is a wonderful thing which brings bounty to all, and not a "zero sum" game, America (and Israel) will continue to be the beacons of hope for the world desperately in need of a champion. Without the realization that success is good there will be no will, and no one country, to fight to preserve our way of life and the freedoms we have all come to enjoy. I urge everyone to read Gilder's work "The Israel Test" and some of his other works; very scholarly and impeccably argued.
