As I have often repeated countless time on the air – “Israel is the canary in the coal mine. What happens there, shortly thereafter occurs here in the USA.”
This article re-emphasizes that fact on many subjects. Please read and forward to all – the US, Israel and the West stand at a crossroads.
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THE ISRAEL TEST
George Gilder
New York Post, July 26, 2009
The prime issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and Islam or a split between Arabs and Jews. These conflicts are real and salient, but they obscure the deeper moral and ideological war. The real issue is between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it.
The test can be summarized by a few questions: What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishments? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down?
In countries where Jews are free to invent and create, they pile up conspicuous wealth and arouse envy and suspicion. In this age of information, when the achievements of mind have widely outpaced the power of masses and material force, Jews have forged much of the science and wealth of the era. Their pioneering contributions to quantum theory enabled the digital age. Their breakthroughs in nuclear science and computer science propelled the West to victory in World War II and the cold war. Their bioengineering inventions have enhanced the health, and their microchip designs are fueling the growth of nations everywhere. Their genius has leavened the culture and economy of the world....
Today tiny Israel, with its population of 7.23 million, five and one-half million Jewish, stands behind only the United States in technological contributions. In per-capita innovation, Israel dwarfs all nations. The forces of civilization in the world continue to feed upon the quintessential wealth of mind epitomized by Israel .
Assuming that wealth is distributed from above, chiefly by government, rather than generated by invention and ingenuity, Israel 's critics see the world as a finite sum of resources. Believing that Israel , like the United States , has seized too much of the world's resources, they advocate vast programs of international retribution and redistribution. In their view, Israel 's wealth stems not from Jewish creativity and genius but from cadging aid from the United States or seizing valuable land and other resources from Arabs. This vision of zero-sum economics manifests itself around the globe. Perhaps some of you readers share it....
Anti-capitalists, like anti-Semites throughout history, have always been obsessed with the "gaps" between different groups: gaps of income, power, achievement, and status. Against the background of Palestinian poverty, anti-capitalists and anti-Semites alike see Israel as primarily a creator not of wealth but of gaps. With a gross domestic product of around $200.7 billion (2008), per-capita income of some $28,200, and close to a trillion dollars of market capitalization for its companies, Israel these days is rich, they say.
But look at the gap between its luxuries and Palestinian privation. Look at the gap between Jews in Israel and Arabs in Israel -- sure evidence of "discrimination" and "exploitation." Look at the gaps in the United States . Tax rates are clearly too low. The rich top 10%, who pay more than 70% of the income taxes in the United States , are obviously undertaxed according to the gapologists' model. Jews lead all other American groups in per capita income, signifying another gap, presumably rectifiable by the United Nations.... Nothing is more destructive to opportunities for the poor than diverting resources from entrepreneurs who know how to use them profitably and giving them to government to spend politically.
The Israel test forces a remorseless realism. Either the world, principally the United States , supports Israel , or Israel , one way or another, will be destroyed. There are no other realistic choices. And if Israel is destroyed, capitalist Europe will likely die as well, and America , as the epitome of productive and creative capitalism spurred by Jews, will be in jeopardy....
With wealth seen as stolen from the exploited poor, the poor in turn win a license to dispossess and kill their oppressors and to disrupt capitalist economies. By justifying violent attacks on a civilized democracy -- and then condemning the necessary retaliatory defense -- leftists would allow no solution but tyranny.
Since across the world economy today this scenario is most starkly enacted in the Middle East -- in the Palestinian territories -- all these synaptic suicide bombers of the brain focus instinctively on the Israel test.
They know well which side they are on.
Which side are you on?
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