A couple of centuries ago, Thomas Robert Malthus proposed that catastrophes such as famine, disease and war are the manners in which Nature culls population. Western Civilization has largely found ways to avoid such catastrophes – or at least to blunt them. Most of these ways are due to technology or technological developments. That is a wonderful accomplishment – and if one is truly honest about it, the reason for this is that the ideas of individual social and economic freedom are what unleashed the power of the human mind in a scale never seen in world history. We have so many tools that make life so much easier, and these things have become so ubiquitous, we no longer appreciate them – in most cases, we don’t even notice them.
Back in the 1960’s, when one of the greatest fears was global famine and regional famine was real, America actively led the world in finding ways to increase food production.
You probably don’t know that the famine problem was largely solved by one American, a American named Norman Borlaug.
Borlaug is credited as being the father of the Green Revolution, a period beginning in the 1950s when processes of plant breeding, irrigation, chemical fertilizers, and herbicides were developed and implemented, increasing crop yields dramatically, reducing hunger worldwide.
For his efforts in wheat breeding and improving agriculture in Mexico, Pakistan, and India, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.
Borlaug was a bit of a social justice warrior before we knew what that was. In his Nobel acceptance speech, he said:
“The first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. Yet today 50 percent of the world’s population goes hungry. Without food man, at most, can live but a few weeks; without it all other components of social justice are meaningless.”
The greatest difference between Borlaug and today’s SJW wokesters is that Borlaug did something about it. He built, he implemented, his efforts yielded tangible results for people all around the world – to the point farmers in developed countries are paid not to produce for fear of overproduction.
The message of the woke today stands in stark contrast to the perspectives of the Borlaug era. When faced with similar issues to what the world faced in the 50’s and 60’s it is not to find ways to increase what we need and use, it is to eat less, use less, and produce less. Change your way of life to accept less.
Yesterday, I saw a report on how the America-haters have taken over Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, and have turned it into a woke educational opportunity, deemphasizing a man whose IQ matches the sum total of the IQ of every wokester in America.
Today, I read about yet another attempt to take down a statue of Abraham Lincoln because he didn’t believe and do things that the wokesters would have him do.
I suspect the real villains in these situations is not those who seek to tear these great people down, the real blame falls on the people who allow them to do it.
What confounds me is that the people who presume superior enough to destroy the legacy of great people neither understand nor care that these people became great because they made a choice, a choice to do something very difficult. In the case of many, that choice included the possibility of death.
Those today assuming superiority have never been faced with such a choice – and it is a good thing they haven’t because they lack the strength to stand alone against a raging storm and persevere the way both Jefferson and Lincoln did.
They are sad, little people who live off the grace and patience of others who know who they really are.
Every choice has consequences.
And often the lives of people are traceable to one choice. Jefferson was a brilliant man, but he is remembered largely for his choice to join with the rebels and draft their Declaration. Lincoln was a country lawyer remembered for his choice to go to war to keep the American Union intact.
Those two decisions, the first to build the platform so that all Americans could be free and the second to put that platform to use, define what America is and who Americans are today.
The decisions of these men created. The actions of the woke mean to destroy.
Rather than building for the future, they have chosen the Marxist process of changing the world by destroying the past.
We get what we allow and what we allow is a choice. Choosing not to choose is also a choice.
And every choice has consequences.
Our choices are no different.
Many years ago (early 1990’s) we toured Mt. Vernon. The “woke” was already there even then. The docents had to tell us that George Washington was not a good person and they kept emphasizing, over and over again, how he owned slaves. This stuff has been building for decades.