"...throw
off your small thoughts. Sail away!
Leave the safe harbor,
join the author,
and visit
the Isabella!"
WELCOME -- Published by LFB!--
all about GUTS, GRIT, and COMMON SENSE -- Learn How Ordinary People
Create Civilization and Why the Intelligentsia Destroy Them
While a major theme of this book is that a
historical progress has bubbled up from the bottom -- from the actions
of the common men and women of history--a secondary theme is that most
of history’s evils have come from the top--the intelligentsia, the
organized groups, the soft-science experts who arise in mature
societies and lead their nation’s decline. In the final chapters of
this book we will examine how the onset of decline in free societies
has often resulted from the transfer of authority and leadership away
from those who built the society to a class of intelligentsia
that always arrives after the heavy lifting has been completed. The
arrival of intellectuals also marks the time when knowledge and
decision making appears to enter a steep decline. A review of history
proves that the greatest error in thinking is the common mythology that
intellectuals are wise and should be listened to. This is a persistent,
recurring, and insidious error that has doomed most past civilizations.
“Most of
the social pathology exhibited by the underclass
has its origin in ideas that have filtered down from
the intelligentsia.”
(Theodore
Dalrymple)
“The
fundamental challenge to this faith (in self-government)
was formulated, not by Hitler or Stalin or other
totalitarians… but by Plato and his philosophic descendents.”
(Sydney
Hook)
“Inferiority
may exist, but (it) is not an inferiority due to
nature, but to nurture.”
(Mortimer
Adler)
“Like
William F. Buckley, Jr., I would rather be ruled by the
first two thousand names in the Boston phone book
than by the combined faculties of Harvard and MIT.”
(Norman
Podhoretz)
“The
direct economic drain of supporting an intelligentsia
with little to contribute to the economy is by no
means the sole or most important cost they impose on the rest
of the people.”
(Thomas
Sowell)
Applying
the Case Method to the Humanities
In the hard sciences, rigorous observation and testing is
used to discover truths about the physical world; in the study of law
and business “the case method” is used to determine consistent
practices and efficient methods; but in the humanities most analysis
and teaching is based on the abstractions and subjective opinions of
academics. The latter opinions, although dressed up with numerous
statistics and scholarly citations, have generally thrown little light
on mankind’s historical progress. “Common Genius” breaks new ground in
historical analysis by applying the case method to economic and
political events. This new look at the last 3,000 years explains: What
is the fundamental theme of mankind’s history ? How did prosperity
develop ? What are the forces that helped mankind and what were the
negative forces reversing progress in freedom and prosperity?
The
Freedom-Centric Theory of Historical Progress
The Rise
of the West continues today, surviving the Fall of many predecessor
stepping stones along the way, always simply sidestepping to another
more enabling locale. But this beneficial historical sequence should
not be labeled “The Rise of the West.” It has been more
precisely “The Rise of Freedom”--because it was always the freedom of
the populace that made a society Rise. It has never been a
purely ethnic matter. The peoples of Phoenicia, Greece and the Basques
were quite different from those who populated Iceland and Scotland. If
the Chinese or the Kenyans or the Argentines, or even the Iraqis adopt
the mechanics and institutions that built progress in the West, the
next stepping stone could well be theirs to stand upon. There
are ten “tipping points” in world history that are referred to in
“Common Genius” and each one went in the direction of the emerging
Western nations. The next divergence could favor a different
region--the blueprint is there for all to see--carved out by the
enterprising free common men and women that built each ascending step
during the past 3,000 years of history.
