Gavin McIness reflecting on the good life and western propsperity.

Last night wasn’t particularly eventful. We went out to dinner with some guys from work to celebrate Christmas break. The restaurant wasn’t very fancy and we spent a normal amount of money. Then I put on my Third World glasses and screamed, “Holy shit!” When you compare your average American’s night out with the 50% of the planet who live on less than $2.50 a day, you realize we are gods. America is a country built on mind-boggling inventions, remarkably diligent entrepreneurs, and unfathomable mountains of hard work. We take all this greatness and indulge in opulence that makes the Roman Empire look like a trailer park. What is everyone complaining about? Right now we’re celebrating a tradition that involves getting drunk with people who love you, eating until your stomach hurts, and opening tons of presents. What the hell is in heaven, cheaper beer?

Anyone can do what we do. The technology is available, the resources are there, all of the know-how is written up in books. So why doesn’t anyone else do it? It’s not really a mystery but you are not allowed to say.

David Solway on the impossibility of dealing with Islamic terrorists. As part of an interesting and reflective article, he answers this question, where do such jihadists derive their power?

First, they are not bound by the Geneva conventions, they do not wear uniforms, they do not regard civilians as non-combatants, they do not care for the wounded, they do not respect the sanctity of rescue and medical corps, and, what should be immediately obvious, they do not take prisoners; they take hostages. Which is to say, they are out-and-out barbarians with no redeeming traits and their only connection with what we call civilization is deceptive and parasitical. As PJ Media columnist David Goldman writes in the Asia Times, “The trouble is that very large numbers of Muslims are willing to kill themselves in order to harm enemy noncombatants, and the number appears to be increasing. To my knowledge that is something new under the sun. Japanese kamikazes and Nizari assassins in the Middle Ages, like the pre-1917 Bolsheviks, were willing to die to kill public officials or soldiers. But the murder of noncombatants through suicide attacks (or attacks likely to prove suicidal) is something we have never before witnessed.”

Second, they are subjectively invincible. They do not take casualties. Their bodies are like weapons; when these are spent, they can be discarded. In other words, they do not die, but are immediately translated into Jannah, the Muslim heaven, where they will revel eternally in sparkling brooks, fruited orchards, and harems of sloe-eyed virgins. In a sense, they are the zombies of the modern world, the armies of the living dead who, as they are fond of saying, love death more than we love life. They cannot be defeated, they can only be quarantined, kept at bay, left to rave and rampage in the killing grounds of their own countries.

I have heard the term but never knew what it meant. Now I know.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: “the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours.’ ” . . .

There is one important difference between the American oik and his European counterpart. American patriotism is not a blood-and-soil nationalism but an allegiance to a country based in an idea of enlightened universalism. Thus our oiks masquerade as–and may even believe themselves to be–superpatriots, more loyal to American principles than the vast majority of Americans, whom they denounce as “un-American” for feeling an attachment to their actual country as opposed to a collection of abstractions.

Yet the oiks’ vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .”

This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false.

If you are young and also if you are stupid, your wish to be distinct from the herd drives you into this kind of herd-like behaviour. Not one in a hundred (a thousand) could provide an articulate expression of their beliefs that would make genuine sense. See below, although it does take a Dinesh D’Souza to apply the cure.

There are some people who are beyond my wildest understanding of their bravery and virtue, and this is one. The story’s title, ‘We are all Jews’: Israel honors US soldier who stared down Nazi 70 years ago, and here are the opening paras:

It was January, 1945 and Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds had a gun to his head.

The commandant of the Stalag IXA POW Camp near Ziegenhain, Germany, ordered Edmonds, of the 422nd Infantry Regiment, to turn over the Jewish-American soldiers under his command. Edmonds and his men – Jews and non-Jews alike – stood together in formation.

“They cannot all be Jews,” the German said, looking over the more than 1,000 POWs.

“We are all Jews,” Edmonds responded.

“I will shoot you,” the commandant warned.

But Edmonds had his own warning: “According to the Geneva Convention, we only have to give our name, rank and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes.”

The commandant stood down.

Those four words uttered by Edmonds echo 70 years later, as a testament to the solidarity he and his men showed to their Jewish brothers in arms. And because of that, Edmonds’ name will be etched in history when he becomes the first American soldier to receive the Yad Vashem Holocaust and Research Center’s Righteous Among the Nations recognition and medal.

This is a description from one of the soldiers who was there:

Lester Tanner and Paul Stern were two of the Jewish POWs Edmonds protected, and recall how they stood next to him during the tense exchange with the German commandant.

“It was 70 years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday,” Stern, 91, said from his home in Reston, Va. “He was very calm, even with a gun to his head. It’s amazing even to this day.”

I don’t know how a story like this has stayed buried so long.

I put up a post a while back on millennials and especially their choice of someone to admire in Egon Musk. As the recipient of $4 billion of government handouts, not my perfect example of the entrepreneurial spirit. My son, however, wrote me to say this:

Musk made $22 million for himself by creating an app when he was 27 years. He then invested 3/4 into a new business that became PayPal and sold that and made $180 million. He was 31 at this point. Only after that did he get into Tesla and building rockets and other things. Lots of risk and lots of hard work.

So I wrote him back with this reply:

Ah my son. You should read my Economics for Infants to get your Dad’s take on these things. Musk is no Thomas Edison. His app plus PayPal on your arithmetic comes to around a $200 million increase in value to the world. His Tesla, on the other hand, has soaked up $4 billion so he is now a net debtor, socially speaking, to the tune of $3.8 billion. Not really that much risk when the government forks over so much. Green scams irritate me, and whatever he may have contributed to the world, he is no Steve Jobs. In fact, he reminds me of Malcolm Turnbull who made his fortune by being part of Ozemail which he sold for around the same amount as Paypal, as I recall. But I will stay tuned to further developments.

So he wrote to me again.

Musk didn’t sell PayPal for $200 million, he sold it for $1.5 billion. But he made $180 million (after taxes) for himself. PayPal’s Market Cap is currently at $43 Billion. Also, he sold Zip2 (his first business) for $307 million, but personally received $22 million from the sale.

He’s also a genius. At the age of 9 he got his first computer and finished the “how to program” guide in 3 days. By 12 years old he invented a game and sold it to a computer magazine for $500 (this was in 1983).

He then started three companies, with his own cash on the line. This is how much he personally invested: $100 million in SpaceX, $70 million in Tesla and $10 million into Solar City. This was a huge percentage of all the money he had earned.

SpaceX is now worth $12 billion and has allowed companies to launch things to space for the lowest cost in history. Yes, this does include government agencies like NASA. But NASA was spending much more to do it than SpaceX.

Tesla is now worth $30 billion and their newest models are a massive success with the highest ever consumer report and safety ratings in history for a car company.

SolarCity, which went public in 2012, now has a market cap of just under $6 billion and has become the largest installer of solar panels in the US.

The definition of an entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.”

He now operates businesses that employ more than 30,000 people and has taken on massive financial risks, with his own money.

Anyway, that’s my thinking.

To which I replied, via my iPhone and was therefore of necessity being brief:

OK. I’m convinced.

To which he has now replied once again:

Haha… Really? Or do you just want to drop the discussion?

Yes, yes, really. I am convinced. Selling a product to NASA is not the same as having money given to you as a typical form of government waste. It’s even possible that the Tesla is the car of the future and Musk is the Henry Ford/Thomas Edison of our time. Astonishing in every respect. These millennials may be onto something after all.

Hi Joshi. LtU