Victor Davis Hanson on the appeal of the West:
America remains the exceptional Western nation, whose influence and stature transcend the size of its economy and population, and its vast land mass of rich natural resources. Its cocktail of property rights, unfettered oil and gas development, muscular national defense, gun rights, religiosity, free-market economics, limited government, philanthropy, and great private universities is, again, unlike anything in the West.
Likewise, its excesses that arise from the marriage of free-market affluence and constitutionally protected unfettered expression, in the eyes of the world, appear often as license and indulgence. Certainly, the First and Second Amendments, the National Football League, rap music, the U.S. Marine Corps, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the Ivy League, or 24/7 cable news could not originate elsewhere.
The result is that America exists both as the world’s refuge and its beacon, the sole place where individuals can find a safe harbor. Only in America can the individual remain free and able to live his life under the assumption that the major decisions of his life are his own and not predicated on state approval. Only in the United States does the rags to riches story still exist, given that neither regulation, the deep state, nor an entrenched aristocracy can fully suppress entrepreneurs or aspiring capitalists.
A key goal of my Outer Space Treaty project is to extend this to the solar system. Speaking of which, Michael Listner has an analysis of the latest U.S. legislation along these lines.
“A key goal of my Outer Space Treaty project is to extend this to the Solar System.”
I’ve been here for how many years and didn’t know this?
Tell me more.
“A key goal of my Outer Space Treaty project is to extend this to the solar system. Speaking of which, Michael Listner has an analysis of the latest U.S. legislation along these lines. ”
I agree, but would say, supercharge it, and allow US to actually change the world (and allow “open borders”).
So far, the world is changed simply due to the industrial revolution and technology, and not much from US political power. Opening space frontier could or should be political change plus a space revolution (economic and technological).
Only in America can the individual remain free and able to live his life under the assumption that the major decisions of his life are his own and not predicated on state approval.
It doesn’t have to be. That is the tragedy of the time we live in. Even places that are similar to the USA, like the UK and NZ, are incredibly hostile to many of the rights Americans enjoy.
Meanwhile, tolerance for behaviors once unthinkable in the civilized west is at an all time high. Which I think is at the heart of the decline in civilized rights.