Happy birthday to the greatest country in the world. Here is a thought experiment. Imagine you are not perfect, and you made some mistakes in your life. Not hard to imagine, right? Imagine you have a friend who found out about your mistakes, and every single day they bring them up. At first, you apologize, acknowledge your mistakes, and talk about how you are a better person now because you have learned. But this is not good enough for your friend. He continues to bring up your past transgressions, over and over. And heaven help you if you make another mistake, even the smallest, because your friend will use that as an excuse to talk about how horrible you are, and you’ve always been horrible, nothing you can every say or do will ever make up for that. You are irredeemable, unforgiveable. This person wouldn’t be your friend for long.

There are many who like to deride America. This is a form of pseudo intellectualism. Why do people like to blame America first, and find the worst in America? If you were to praise America, these are the people who like to say, “yes, but…” You’ve met these people. You might say, “The Nazis were awful,” and these people say, “yes, but America…” You know right away that there is no point in continuing to talk to these people. If America is so bad then why does everyone want to come here? You never hear about people “fleeing” America, unless they are on the run from the law. If you had the choice to live in any country, anyone would choose a Western country, if not America itself. This is because Western civilization is better, and America represents the pinnacle of those ideas. No, it has not achieved that ideal, but it has, is, and always will strive for it.

There is something about criticizing everything that makes some people feel better. I think I know why this is. Back in the 1960s it was popular among radial professors to criticize American history. Not an honest analysis with an acknowledgment of history. Rather, it was a campaign to undermine everything that America stands for, and thus everything Western civilization has achieved. People like to sound smart, and saying something new sounds a lot like saying something smart. If you say something that someone else hasn’t heard before, you sound smart. Further, saying something controversial sounds new (or it used to), and therefore sounds smart. Therefore, going as radical as possible makes you sound super smart. These are the kind of people that dump on everything because they don’t have any ideas themselves. They like to point out the flaws of others, yet get angry when you point out their problems. They are a major downer to be around. They don’t have any friends and have no real accomplishments.

You will find that these people always have radical, Marxist beliefs. They want to erase history and destroy everything that the Western world has built, rather than learn from history. But history has shown that when humans try to erase history and build a utopia then disaster inevitably ensues. It is the height of arrogance to believe that you have all the answers, and that you can build a perfect society from the ground up, without having to reference anything that has come before. After all, everything that came before is evil, patriarchy, capitalistic, blah blah blah. But we today are woke, enlightened, have never made a mistake, and will build the perfect society. Yes, where better to get your ideas than from people who have spent their lives in academia and have no concept of how the real world works?

They want to destroy history and start with a blank slate. Except it’s not really a blank slate. Quite the opposite. Because everyone will be tainted by whatever group they belong to. You’re white? God have mercy on you, because you are forever unforgivable. You’re male? You must forever repent and ask forgiveness for your toxic masculinity. This society creates a purity test that nobody can pass. Instead, the best you can do is make yourself a victim and to grovel at the feet of the social mob for forgiveness for past transgressions, real or imagined.

It is a hallmark of all communist societies. You must not question the State. In this modern society the State is social media, being woke, and cancel culture. You won’t be marched into a court and tried by a government a la 1984. Instead, the Blue Check Brigade will descend upon you with keyboard pitch forks. The angry mob needs blood. Your best chance for survival, should you run afoul of the New Woke Order, is to grovel, apologize, go on about how you were wrong for having an independent thought, and you promise it won’t happen again. Escapees from North Korea talk about how, in school, they would be required to criticize themselves and talk about how they can do better. In East Germany of the past and China of today, criticism of the Party is forbidden. And in the West, you aren’t allowed to question the Woke ideology. Conform, agree, and shut up, and pin some kind of multi colored flag to your chest to show how Woke you are. But be ready to hate those who have been deemed wrong thinkers.

The currency in this society is victim hood. The person with the most victim points gets the highest social status. Rather than seeking to better yourself, you need to find out how you are a victim. Either you personally are a victim, or you belong to a group that has been “historically” victimized. It only stands to reason that if a person can be guilty of a crime that someone who looked like them committed 150 years ago, then someone can inherit the victim hood of a person who looked like them 150 years ago.

Things have a historical context. Not everything or everyone was 100% good or 100% bad. And given the Woke Culture’s purity test, everything must be bad because nothing can be 100% good. Making judgments about anything, including history, requires a foundation upon which to base your ideas. A moral person knows the difference between right and wrong and can discuss the philosophical underpinnings of his beliefs. A wise person has discernment, and is able to separate the good from the bad. Whereas a Woke person’s goal is to dump on everything that isn’t at the extreme end of their ill-founded beliefs. This is a Woke, nihilistic philosophy. Let us call it “Wokehilist.” If everything is as bad as bad can be, then you don’t have to spend the effort to think about how some things might actually be better than other things. Rather than looking at a figure from history, talking about what good this person did, and acknowledging the bad, the Wokehilist will declare that the figure is tainted by his flaws and is therefore as evil as can be. There was a story about a man and woman who were fascinated by Victorian era culture. They dressed and decorated their house in that style. To them it was interesting and fun. But during an interview someone brought up the fact that women weren’t allowed to vote at that time. The woman said something to the effect of voting not being that important. This was the wrong answer. A reasonable person would look at their story and say, “oh, how interesting. They must like history.” A Wokehilist would say, “The Victorian era was not perfect. Therefore we should hate everything about it and destroy it completely! And no mercy to anyone who dares to have a kind word for it.” As I said, it is a purity test that nobody can pass.

A Wokehilist has a childish mode of thinking. Children are first taught what to think, and then as they mature they are taught how to think. Hopefully, a child develops their ability to think critically, applying facts, moral foundations, and logic. But a Wokehilist doesn’t get to that next step. Children are taught to not judge a person merely for their race, sex, origin, etc. In the past, white people mistreated black people. A Wokehilist, who is not taught critical thinking, then takes this to mean that all white people always mistreat all black people all the time, now and forever. Then the Wokehilist virtue signals and tries to earn woke points by declaring how evil they themselves are. They spout catch phrases and buzz words. When you ask a child for an answer to a complex problem, you get a childish answer. You are not allowed to study the complexities of history, with the good and bad, in the context of the time, and how that has shaped out current society, and what we can learn from it. Nope, it’s all evil and everything that can somehow be associated with it is evil. It is a lot easier to put things into one of two categories: evil, and woke. But nothing is woke enough.

How would a child solve all of the world’s complex problems? Poverty? Just give poor people money. War? Just stop fighting, and our enemies will stop too. Environmental damage? Just shut down factories. The consequences do not matter. All that matters is that we “do something.” It is enough to say that we have the solutions on paper, the realities don’t matter. Nor do the moral implications, or the philosophical underpinnings. What is the ethical implications of taking money (by force, using people with badges and guns) from one group and just giving it to another? What are the economic implications of taxing the air itself? Not to mention the massive bureaucracy and money needed to manage such schemes, thus giving more power to the people in charge, and making the poor poorer. Again, all the better for the Wokehilist leadership.

Eventually the Wokehilists begin to turn on themselves, just like members of Communist regimes do. When they have destroyed their enemies, they destroy each other, outing each other for not being woke enough. The Woke “philosophy” is a monster that has gotten out of control and is self-sustaining. It is not based on any moral foundation, unless you count Marx, whose teachings have led to the deaths of hundreds of millions. They take thousands of years of human history, throw it away, and start from scratch. We know what the early days of human civilization were like, so why would we want to keep reliving them? Western thought is based on enlightenment, which can be argued logically. It is possible to have a debate and think things through. We can say one idea has become outdated, and we can replace it with a better idea. But Wokehilist ideology is not based on reason, just raw emotion, namely hate. You can’t argue with someone who just wants to hate. They don’t have a coherent foundation that they refer to. Instead, they are lead like sheep by whichever “thought” leader has the best charisma. Think of how often a Wokehilist admires someone for how cool, funny, or charismatic they are. The politicians, celebrities, movie stars, or comedians. They vote for people with the best smiles or loudest rhetoric, not the best ideas. All the better for these leaders. They spew empty slogans, and let the Wokehilist fill in the gaps.

A person with a moral foundation and discernment can say of history, “this event was not perfect, but there was some good there.” A Wokehilist will say, “burn it down, for it is not perfect. We shall not learn anything from this.” I choose to learn from history, while contributing to the improvement of human kind. I love America, because I love humanity and what we are capable of achieving. I love Western civilization because it, with all its flaws and horrors, has given human kind the freest, most prosperous societies history has ever seen. We can stumble around in the dark ages and destroy everything that came before us, and try to start from scratch every time, as the Wokehilists are wont to do. Or we can accept our flaws and glory in our accomplishments. The founding ideas are a major mile stone in human history. Ideas like “all men are created equal,” of course taken today to include men, women, or whatever you want to call yourself. Freedom of speech, which the Wokehilist abhor. Freedom of or from religion. The right to own property. Have we lived up to those ideas? Not 100%, but we are getting better. And that’s all you can ask from we flawed humans: Improvement. Nothing is created perfectly. Perhaps the best we can do is try to improve an imperfect world. So here’s to you Western civilization, and to America. God bless you.