The White Man's Burden, by Rudyard Kipling. The title of Kipling's piece is inarguably racist under modern standards, but we must judge them according to the standards of the time in which they were written. Kipling's "white" meant everyone who subscribes to the values of Western Civilization; it had nothing to do with actual race or ethnicity. This comes through in his poetry like "The Mother Lodge" in which men of various ethnicities and faiths meet as brothers in a Masonic lodge, and "Gunga Din." The light-skinned English protagonist of "Gunga Din" affirms that the darker-skinned Indian water carrier is a "better man than I am" because of his superior behavior (tending the wounded under fire). Not all cultures are equal. Western Civilization's cultures are eminently superior to Third World cultures Western Civilization is superior. Live with it. Eminent historian Victor Davis Hansen's Carnage and Culture (2001) shows why. Note that Japan, the only non-Western culture that ever defeated a European Great Power (Imperial Russia) had deliberately Westernized itself during the nineteenth century. Why militant "Islamic" culture is inferior to Judeo-Christian culture Charles Murray on the superiority of Euro-American culture The Widow's Party and the golden age of imperialism I am a Culturalist and proud of it General Charles Gordon, "Khartoum Pasha," sacrificed his life to hold back the tides of Barbarism and Chaos. "A world with no room for the Gordons is a world that will return to the sands."

Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden"

Take up the White Man's burden--   Send forth the best ye breed--  Go, bind your sons to exile   To serve your captives' need;   To wait, in heavy harness,   On fluttered folk and wild--   Your new-caught sullen peoples,   Half devil and half child. [1]  Take up the White Man's burden--   In patience to abide,   To veil the threat of terror   And check the show of pride;   By open speech and simple,   An hundred times made plain,   To seek another's profit   And work another's gain.  Take up the White Man's burden--   The savage wars of peace--   Fill full the mouth of Famine,   And bid the sickness cease;   And when your goal is nearest   (The end for others sought)   Watch sloth and heathen folly  Bring all your hope to nought. [2]

Take up the White Man's burden--   No iron rule of kings,   But toil of serf and sweeper--   The tale of common things.   The ports ye shall not enter,   The roads ye shall not tread,   Go, make them with your living   And mark them with your dead.  Take up the White Man's burden,   And reap his old reward--   The blame of those ye better   The hate of those ye guard--   The cry of hosts ye humour  (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--   "Why brought ye us from bondage,   Our loved Egyptian night?" [3]  Take up the White Man's burden--   Ye dare not stoop to less--   Nor call too loud on Freedom   To cloak your weariness.   By all ye will or whisper,   By all ye leave or do,   The silent sullen peoples   Shall weigh your God and you.

Take up the White Man's burden!   Have done with childish days--   The lightly-proffered laurel,   The easy ungrudged praise:   Comes now, to search your manhood   Through all the thankless years,   Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,   The judgment of your peers.

[1] Very typical of the so-called "developing nations." Note that, when a civilization decides that it really wants to develop, as Japan did in the mid-19th century, matters progress very rapidly.
[2] As an example, Israel's former prime minister gave Arafat almost everything he wanted. Arafat's reply was another infitadah. As another example, the Palestinians who took over Gaza were given greenhouses in which to raise food. Their first action was to demolish the greenhouses, along with synagogues that they might have turned into mosques, housing, or schools.
[3] Some people curse Western civilization for destroying native cultures that included quaint medieval practices like burning widows alive (suttee), ritual murder by followers of the goddess Kali (thuggee), the slave trade, female genital mutilation, stoning women to death for adultery, cutting off people's hands, and so on.
 
Kipling really meant a set of attitudes, values, and beliefs.


Despite Kipling's use of a term that we would call racist today, his writing shows that he was far readier than his contemporaries to recognize that there are no racial or ethnic boundaries to virtue and honor. The son of a British colonel pursues a dark-skinned robber chief who has stolen his father's horse. The two men fight but then realize that each has honor and courage. They exchange gifts and part as friends. 

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
--Ballad of East and West

The story of an Indian water-carrier who was killed while giving water to a wounded English soldier concludes as follows:

You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
--Gunga Din

Kipling, a Freemason, on the brotherhood of all men in a Masonic Lodge:  


We'd Bola Nath, Accountant,
An' Saul the Aden Jew,
An' Din Mohammed, draughtsman
Of the Survey Office too;
There was Babu Chuckerbutty,
An' Amir Singh the Sikh,
An' Castro from the fittin'-sheds,
The Roman Catholick!
 --The Mother-Lodge

The idea that there is a superior race or ethnicity is total nonsense. Hitler's own wacky racial theories would not have held up to scrutiny under their own assumptions. Hitler said that Aryans ("That depends on what you mean by 'Aryan,'" noting that genuine Aryans or Indo-Europeans may have almost black skins) were Ubermenschen (supermen or superior men). Aryans, meaning (per Hitler) Germanic peoples were the Herrenvolk, or Lord-People (Master Race). Semites like Jews (and Arabs), Negroes, and Slavs (eastern and Balkan Europeans) were Untermenschen, or subhumans. Russians, many of whom have blonde hair and blue eyes, actually have substantial Scandinavian (Nordic) ancestry! If you've seen Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, you'll notice that the Russians wear clothing whose style is similar to that of Sweden, Norway, and Finland, and some of the buildings have Scandinavian-style decorations. Prussia, the nation that united Germany, was once closely associated with (if not part of) Poland. One of the German soldiers in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front was named Stanislaus Katzinsky!

"Western Civilization" encompasses all cultures that uphold and support Natural Law, the universal set of principles that govern all human behavior. The next section discusses Natural Law in more detail. For now, suffice to say that Natural Law is the foundation of the United States' Constitution and its Bill of Rights, and also of England's Magna Charta. Natural Law says that all human beings have natural rights such as life, liberty, property, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion.  


• If people wear grass skirts and live in a tropical rain forest but subscribe to a code that upholds natural human rights, they are what Kipling would have called "White."
• Chinese government officials who wear dress jackets and work in glass-and-steel office buildings, but who suppress their people's natural human rights, are barbarians, while Chinese students who demonstrate in Tiananman Square for Westernized liberties are civilized.
• Saudi oil magnates in jackets and ties who oppress women, Jews, and Christians deserve infinitely less respect in the hypothetical grass skirt-wearers who uphold natural human rights.
  

Demagogues (e.g. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) who rely on the support of the Black underclass, and thus on the perpetuation of a Black underclass, resent successful Blacks for "acting White." There is a joke that someone complained that there were no Blacks in the Bush administration, and was told, "Bush appointed Colin Powell Secretary of State." The complainer answered, "No, we want a BLACK man!" The complainer meant, of course, someone who (like Louis Farrakhan and Rep. Conyers of Michigan) wants reparations for slavery, affirmative action, welfare, and other handouts, i.e. someone who does not subscribe to "White" values like industriousness and hard work (which is how successful Blacks like Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell, and Roy Innis got where they are today).

White supremacists who believe that their skin color entitles them to special privileges, meanwhile, have the same values as the Black underclass. They feel that the world owes them a living, and that Blacks and Jews (as opposed to their own alcohol problems and unwillingness to get an education) are responsible for their condition.


Kipling's "White" includes honor and fair dealing. There was a commentary in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Arabs and Palestinians who routinely break truces: "Among white men, a truce means 'no fighting.'" This has been true historically; the vast majority of European nations and armies (and those of the United States) could be trusted to keep truces. This sense of trust was so strong that French and English soldiers played soccer with German soldiers in no man's land during First World War truces. Among civilized people, truces really do mean "no fighting." Among barbarians like Arabs and Palestinians, a truce is a way to get the other fellow to turn his back long enough to insert a knife.

Arab nations, whose cultures are uniformly inferior to those of Euro-American nations, resent Israel because Israel is culturally  Euro-American. Many Israelis are, like Americans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European emigrants. Kibbutzniks, or communal farmers, are similar to American frontier farmers who had to clear forests to make crops grow. (The Israelis' problem is getting fresh water for irrigation so they can make a desert bloom). 


Russia, with its vast expanses of untamed land (personified by the sorceress Baba Yaga), also has a frontier heritage in common with the United States. Al Stewart's song, "Russians and Americans," points this out:  

From the wars of Europe, the pilgrim fathers set off with their hopes  and their bond,
some settled down by the coast, others cross the mountains and into the flatlands beyond.
From the scramble and dust of Muscovite streets,
merchants develop the trade routes, and open the Door to the East.
Pioneer waves choked by the cold breath of winter, and baked by the heat of the day.

Russia also is hated by the barbaric hordes of militant "Islam." Russia's conflicts with Islamic supremacists goes back to Peter the Great if not before. Remember that the United States is the Great Satan and Russia is the Lesser Satan to militant "Islam."

Not all cultures are equal

despite what you might hear from the left wing or the National Education Association (NEA). Western cultures are markedly superior to Third World cultures. This has nothing to do with how the people dress, or the kinds of fine and performing arts they create. It has everything to do with Natural Law, the unwritten laws that govern all human behavior.

 Natural Law is a universal set of principles that governs all human behavior:  

 Our effectiveness is predicated upon certain inviolate principles— natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging, as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension. These principles are woven into the fabric of every civilized society and constitute the roots of every family and institution that has endured and prospered.
 Principles are not invented by us or by society; they are the laws of the universe that pertain to human relationships and human organizations. They are part of the human condition, consciousness, and conscience.
 …The lesson of history is that to the degree people and civilizations have operated in harmony with correct principles, they have prospered. At the root of societal declines are foolish practices that represent violations of correct principles. How many economic disasters, intercultural conflicts, political revolutions, and civil wars could have been avoided had there been greater social commitment to correct principles? (Stephen Covey, Principle-Centered Leadership, 1991, 18-19)

The Declaration of Independence applies Natural Law to human rights:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, which are the ultimate foundation of our country's laws, rests on Natural Law. The Bill of Rights includes:  

• Freedom of nonviolent expression (freedom of speech)
• Freedom of religion (as opposed to putting Christian missionaries on trial for their lives as the Taliban did, or prescribing execution for converts as is done in Saudi Arabia and the Sudan)
• The right to keep and bear arms for defense of family, self, and country
• Freedom from unreasonable (without a warrant or probable cause) search
• The right to not give evidence against oneself
• The right to trial by a jury of one's peers (as opposed to a king, or a religious Sharia court)
• Freedom from cruel and unusual punishments (like amputation of limbs, stoning, and crucifixion, all of which are practiced in the Arab world)
• Freedom from involuntary servitude (slavery, which is still practiced in the Arab world, e.g. in the Sudan)
  

Natural Law is so important that Asian Indians deify it as Dharma, "The Right Way." It's Tao (the Way) to Chinese, and Do (same as Tao) in Japan. China, a Third World dictatorship, is ruled by tyrants as opposed to Taoists or Confucian scholars. Hindus say that Dharma protects those who uphold it and destroys those who go against it. In fact, the definition of Natural Law allows an objective definition of good and evil. Whatever supports and uphold Natural Law is good, whatever goes against it is evil.

"Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the RIGHT to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the RIGHT to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, NOT of respect for the nonexistent 'rights' of gang rulers." - Ayn Rand [written before the collapse of the Soviet Union]

It is the moral right (if not the duty, since putting this into practice requires soldiers to risk their lives) of Western Civilization to destroy and replace any evil culture it encounters, i.e. any culture that goes against Natural Law. This does not mean that the culture's practitioners (at least not the common people) should be harmed. They are victims of the evil culture. In 2001, for example, Afghans pointed out quite rightly that most of them were not terrorists. They were instead concentration camp inmates, and the Taliban were the guards. Examples:
• Destruction of the Mainland Chinese government would give ordinary Chinese their natural human rights to worship (or not) as they choose, to express themselves nonviolently without the risk of being massacred as they were in Tiananmen Square, and freedom from compulsory abortions.
• Deposing or destroying the Saudi Royal Family would emancipate half the country's population (the women) and give every ordinary Saudi his or her natural human right of freedom of religion. It also would free every ordinary Saudi from the whims and caprices of religious Sharia courts, and replace these with rule of law.
• Overthrowing the Sudan's government would eliminate slavery of Black Christians, as well as religious persecutions.
• Deposing Saddam Hussein would benefit 90 percent (or more) of the Iraqi people. Update: Most Iraqis welcomed Americans as liberators in April 2003.
  

Western Civilization is Superior. Live with it.

Victor Davis Hansen's new book, Carnage and Culture, shows explicitly why Western civilization has been superior to all other world cultures for two and a half thousand years. 


[Xenophon's] Anabasis makes it clear, however, that the Greeks fought much differently than their adversaries and that such unique Hellenic characteristics of battle-- a sense of personal freedom, superior discipline, matchless weapons, egalitarian cameraderie, individual initiative, constant tactical adaptation and flexibility, preference for shock battle of heavy infantry-- were themselves the murderous dividends of Hellenic culture at large. The peculiar way Greeks killed grew out of consensual government, equality among the middling classes, civilian audit of military affairs, and politics apart from religion, freedom and individualism, and rationalism. [page 4]

In contrast to these enormous armies of screaming "barbarians" without consensual governments and written constitutions-- "formidable in outward bulk, with unbearable loud yelling and the frightful appearance of weapons brandished in the air" [today, Palestinians and other undisciplined savages fire automatic weapons into the air, despite the obvious hazards of celebratory gunfire]-- "citizens of states like yours," [the Spartan general] Brasidas assures his men, "stand their ground." Notice that Brasidas says nothing about skin color, race, or religion. [And neither does Omdurman.org.] Instead, he simplistically connects military discipline, fighting in rank, and the preference for shock battle with the existence of popular and consensual government, which gave the average infantryman in the phalanx a sense of equality and a superior spirit to his enemies. [pages 6-7]

The most gallant Apaches-- murderously brave in raiding and skirmishing on the Great Plains-- would have gone home after the first hour of Gettysburg. [page 9]

The Western way of war is so lethal precisely because it is so amoral-- shackled rarely by concerns of ritual, tradition, religion, or ethics, by anything other than military necessity.
...Western armies often fight with and for a sense of legal freedom. They are frequently products of civic militarism or constitutional governments and thus are overseen by those outside religion and the military itself. The rare word "citizen" exists in the European vocabularies.
...Because free inquiry and rationalism are Western trademarks, European armies have marched to war with weapons either superior or equal to their adversaries, and have often been supplied far more lavishly through the Western marriage of capitalism, finance, and sophisticated logistics.
...Western capitalists and scientists alike have been singularly pragmatic and utilitarian, with little to fear from religious fundamentalists, state censors, or stern cultural conservatives. [pages 21-22]

Battles Cited, and their Outcomes

• Salamis (28 September, 480 BCE, Greece versus Persia): Persians slaughtered like sheep
• Gaugamela (1 October 331 BCE, Alexander the Great's Macedonians versus Persians): Persians slaughtered like sheep
• Cannae (2 August, 216 BCE, Hannibal's Carthaginians versus Rome): Romans defeated but Rome continued to fight until it won the Second Punic War.
• Poitiers (or Tours) (11 October, 732, Charles Martel's Franks versus a Saracen horde): Saracens defeated
• Tenochtitlan (24 June 1520- 13 August, 1521, Hernando Cortez's Spaniards versus Aztecs): Aztecs defeated
• Lepanto (7 October, 1571, Mediterranean Europe versus Ottoman Turkish horde): Turkish horde defeated
• Rorke's Drift (22-23 January, 1879, England versus Zulus): English defeat 40-to-one odds, and the Zulus did have some guns.
• Midway (4-8 June, 1942, United States versus Japan): Japanese defeated
• Tet (31 January 1968 to 6 April, 1968, United States versus North Vietnam): North Vietnamese defeated
  

Of these nine battles, a non-Western culture was the victor in only one-- and Hannibal had, in fact, adopted many Western (Roman-style) methods and tactics. He made expressly sure that he was not going to lead any undisciplined hordes against Rome's mighty legions. Additional examples:  


• Thermopylae (Persian horde of perhaps a million men versus 1000 or so Greeks): 300 Spartans killed to last man, but only because a dirty traitor (Ephialtes) showed the Persians how to get behind the Spartans. King Xerxes lost ten to twenty thousand soldiers in exchange.
• Aleksandr V. Suvorov's anti-Turkish campaigns (late 18th century): Suvorov claimed 100,000 Turkish casualties in exchange for 500 Russians. He ascribed this to superior Russian training and discipline.
• Isandhlwana (20,000 or so Zulus versus 1800 British and native troops): British annihilated, but Zulus suffer heavy losses as well. Had the British been able to get their ammunition boxes open, matters might have turned out differently...
• Operation Desert Storm (1991, United States and England versus numerically-superior Iraqis): Iraqis routed and slaughtered like sheep on the "Highway of Death," until they surrendered in droves. Allied fatalities numbered below 500.
• Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003, United States and England versus numerically-superior Iraqis): Saddam Hussein kicked out and possibly killed, along with his murderous sons. Good riddance. Allied fatalities numbered below 200 despite the claims of Iraq's "information minister" to the contrary.
  

Hansen also points out that the non-Westerners usually had the advantage of the home ground. The Europeans were usually the "visitors," and subject to the disadvantages of numerical inferiority, long supply lines, and so on. Cannae (and the sack of Constantinople in 1453) may well have been the only instances in history of non-European armies defeating Europeans in Europe. A Turkish horde did reach the gates of Vienna in 1683 but it was repulsed very soundly.


Winston Churchill on "Palestine:" "Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell—a handful of philosophic people—in wasted sun-drenched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea."


Why Islamic Supremacism is inferior to Judeo-Christian culture


The Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas described Reason as the Bride of Faith. "God cannot make the sum of internal angles of a triangle add up to more than two right angles," Aquinas wrote. (If God did not want Man to fly, He would not have given Man the brains with which to invent flying machines.) Aquinas' idea that Science, or rational inquiry into the laws of Nature, could coexist with religion, was accepted by Western Civilization. In contrast,


At the very moment Aquinas was telling his fellow Europeans how faith and reason could coexist, his Iranian counterpart, the leading Arab philosopher Ghazzali, concluded that the treasure of ancient texts represented social dynamite. The study of science and philosophy, he wrote, was harmful because it would shake man's faith in God and undermine the Muslim religion. Accordingly, the ruling caliph of Baghdad, to demonstrate his piety, ordered the burning of all manuscripts in the city's great library. [This was in an era when books were frightfully expensive because they had to be reproduced by hand.] Muslim scientists, tightly controlled by the ruling theocracies, had access to the ancient science texts, but were ordered to use any of the knowledge they gained only for religious purposes (Ernest Volkman, Science Goes to War, p. 60).


The printing press was illegal in the Ottoman Empire until the 18th century because the "Islamic" rulers were afraid that it would be used to spread "unacceptable" ideas. It is quite clear that a culture that reads books is going to be superior to one that burns books (and possibly their writers). This is why women in militant "Islamic" cultures cover their faces with veils while American women sometimes cover their faces with space helmets. It is why people from militant "Islamic" nations ride camels to Mecca while Americans ride Saturn rockets to the Moon.

The Widow's Party  (Written in the era of Queen Victoria, the Widow at Windsor)

WHERE have you been this while away,  Johnnie, Johnnie?”  Out with the rest on a picnic lay,  Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!  They called us out of the barrack-yard  To Gawd knows where from Gosport Hard,  And you can’t refuse when you get the card,  And the Widow gives the party.  (Bugle: Ta—rara—ra-ra-rara!)   “What did you get to eat and drink,  Johnnie, Johnnie?”  Standing water as thick as ink,  Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!  A bit o’ beef that were three year stored,  A bit o’ mutton as tough as a board,  And a fowl we killed with a sergeant’s sword,  When the Widow give the party.   “What did you do for knives and forks,  Johnnie, Johnnie?”  We carries ’em with us wherever we walks,  Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!  And some was sliced and some was halved,  And some was crimped and some was carved,  And some was gutted and some was starved,  When the Widow give the party.

[This price tag is why civilized nations have the moral right, but not the duty, to overthrow dictatorships] “What ha’ you done with half your mess,  Johnnie, Johnnie?”  They couldn’t do more and they wouldn’t do less,  Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!  They ate their whack and they drank their fill,  And I think the rations has made them ill,  For half my comp’ny’s lying still  Where the Widow give the party.  “How did you get away—away,  Johnnie, Johnnie?”  On the broad o’ my back at the end o’ the day,  Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!  I comed away like a bleedin’ toff,  For I got four [bearers] to carry me off,  As I lay in the bight of a canvas trough,  When the Widow give the party.  [This is the happy ending for the common people when a civilized Western nation "takes up the White Man's Burden."]  “What was the end of all the show,  Johnnie, Johnnie?”  Ask my Colonel, for I don’t know,  Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!  We broke a King and we built a road—  A court-house stands where the reg’ment goed.  And the river’s clean where the raw blood flowed  When the Widow give the party.  (Bugle: Ta—rara—ra-ra-rara!